Love Letter: The Constable

[ojomojojojo]

Earlier today I played a game of Love Letter that seemed absurdly unfair. In an 8 player game of Love Letter, there was one player who had "the Constable". The Constable is a card that gives you 1 point if you are knocked out during the round. Before he got the chance to play it, someone played a Prince against him and he was forced to discard the card. At the end of the round he still got a point for being knocked out. I'm not sure if it is a bug or it is the regular mechanics of the game but it just made very little sense to me. He did not play the card, it was involuntarily discarded from his hand. Can someone please clarify if that is the way the game is supposed to be played or is it a mistake made on the site.

This means that the Constable is extremely overpowered card. So if I happened to draw a Constable whether i play it or not, I am most likely to get a point during the round, That cannot possibly be right. If so, there should definitely be a major edit on that

[RobertBr]

You do not play cards in LL, you only discard them. Those are the official rules, on your turn, draw one card, discard one card - carry out the effect printed on the card. I have not checked the specific rules but the game uses the players discard pile as memory so given how the Constable works I do not see how it could work in any other way (how would you know if the person had voluntarily discarded rather than be forced to discard?).

[CB Droege]

I see constable as a balance for the increased player count. In the normal game, it takes fewer points to win the more players there are, but the game is already somewhat arbitrary, and reducing the number of points to win much further would exacerbate that problem, so they needed a way to get more points delivered instead. That way the game still finishes in about the same number of rounds. So, two ways to get points: win a hand, or get lucky with the constable. It's not overpowered (that doesn't even make sense in this context because every player has the same chance of drawing it) it's just more arbitrary than the other way to get points. The game is still mostly about attacking the current point leader, so the constable just might shift who that is in a different way. An 8-player game of any sort is going to be pretty random, but if you're good at the game, you'll still win a bit more than you'll lose, even with the extra arbitrariness.

[ojomojojojo]

Hey guys, thanks for your feedback. It turns out it was a bug. It was fix because I noticed it stopped happening in other games I played. But I totally disagree with you both. Playing a card when it is your turn is totally different than discarding a card because someone played prince against you. If someone guess I was a baron and the baron gets discarded, does that mean my baron goes into effect?... nope.

CB, you missed my point here. While i di agree that it weeds players out in a game that consists of a lot of players, thats not what i was trying to say. I was saying that it should not be unstoppable to the point where discarding it from a players hand still carries out the effect. In this case, its safe to say its over powered whether people have an equal chance of getting it or not.