Cactus Game Design Message Boards

First off, Mayhem doesn't discard. Secondly, it says "Shuffle hand into deck TO draw six." Because you didn't shuffle your hand into the deck, then you shouldn't get to draw.

Corrected, smart alecks.

And yes, a shuffle occurred, including all the contents of my deck and all the contents of my hand.

On a slightly note, lets say you played Birth Foretold and then your opponent played Mayhem. You wouldn't shuffle your whole hand into your deck, so would you be left with one card in your hand and not draw?

a shuffle occurred

Orly? What got shuffled from your hand?

Nice try, but it doesn't work that way. Mayhem isn't targeting any decks, and decks don't factor into Mayhem's do X to do Y function. I'm not disputing that the hand and the deck exist as a location even when there are no cards in them, I simply contend that a cost which involves shuffling or discarding or whatever cannot be satisfied of no cards were shuffled or discarded or whatever.

"Discard" is not an ambiguous term. If no cards were Discarded, no Discard took place.

All the cards that were in the hand were discarded.  It is not the ability's fault that the quantity happened to be zero, but the player has no cards remaining in hand after applying the discard ability.

Why am I getting the feeling that this debate is about dividing zero?

-C_S

"Discard" is not an ambiguous term. If no cards were Discarded, no Discard took place.

So if I have 0 redeemed souls I can't use Herod's Temple because I couldn't discard any cards off of my deck because X is 0?

It should be the same with Mayhem and PO, it says all, which means the number you have, which is 0, so the cost should be fulfilled if the amount you have to shuffle or discard is 0, if you discard or shuffle 0

I propose that if the rule is allowed that you can discard a hand of zero cards, then you can no longer have a hand from that point on in a game.  Why?  You obviously discarded it since there were no cards discarded.


Actually, I removed the tongue-in-cheek.  I'm serious.

I know they are different, but the biggest argument is that with a 0 card hand you aren't discarding anything so how can it satisfy the condition?

Herod's temple involves discarding something to satisfy a condition (yes its slightly different, its an instead ability and whatnot) but the logic is the same you are discarding 0 cards and getting the benefit even though you aren't discarding anything.

At least that's the way I see it

In the case of HT, you always have to discard a matching brigade card from hand, so there's always at least some cost being paid.

First, I think there is logic to both sides but I heavily prefer the side that wants it changed. 

I think the main divide is between looking at the hand or looking at the action.  Scheaf says that you discard or shuffle your whole hand (which is 0) and have the result of having 0 cards in hand which fulfills the requirement.  I understand that mathematically you can be directed to discard X, X=0, and so discarding nothing is discarding X. 

However, if you focus on the requirement (to shuffle or discard), that is an action and in order for that action to take place, it requires a minimum of 1.  In other words, did the act of discarding take place?  If nothing was discarded then no. 

 example:  a lunatic comes to your neighborhood and tells all the husbands to kill everyone else in their house or else very bad things happen.  Lucky for you there is no one else in your house.  You do nothing.  Then the police come looking for killers in your neighborhood.  Did you meet the lunatics demands?  yes  Did you kill anyone and will you go to jail for it? no  When the police ask you if you killed everyone else in your house, you will tell them no.
What is important here is not that the technical requirement of 0 was met but whether the action took place.

For Jepthah you could say that I discarded my whole deck (which happens to be zero) and my whole deck includes my top card so I satisfied the requirement.  After all, top card is not a number but a position and the card in that position is discarded just like deck or hand.  That does seem kind of weird but when you have do nothing count as doing something then I'm not sure why that couldn't work for this too. 

Regarding some of Scheaf's other objections about adding cards to an empty hand or deck: 
It is not debated that the location of deck and hand exist even if there are 0 cards in them.  You can logically perform the action of adding cards to a location that is currently empty so searching or shuffling is not a problem.  But when someone rescues the shuffler lost soul and you have no lost souls out, you don't shuffle; you don't get to say that you are shuffling all (0) your souls so you can shuffle your deck.  And when you discard your 0 card hand, you observe that no (0) cards went into a discard pile so they in fact did not discard.   What if their were cards that said "every time you discard your hand, you may do x" or "every time your opponent discards their hand you can do x" would they be fulfilled along with PO?  Would they be fulfilled every discard phase when they "discard" their 0 hand? 

For Trumpet Blast you discard an evil Fortress to discard the evil characters, no fortress discarded = no evil character discarded.  What if the card said "discard all evil fortresses to discard all evil characters  in battle" and there are no evil fortresses out.  According to your logic, even though the cost is worded to be more, it can be fulfilled when there are no evil fortresses to discard.  You discarded all evil fortresses which happens to be 0 so it works.