[OFFICIAL] Rules clarification about unpayable cards

[Tisaac]

Hi all,

As some of you might know, the garage module has stayed in alpha because of some rules clarifications needed for some corner cases. After discussion with Days of Wonders, we finally reached an agreement and thus this is what is now implemented on BGA for such a case :

• the game will not prevent you to plan a set of cards that will be unplayable, so you can delibitarely select a card eventhough you wont be able to pay for it during the react phase. The only restriction that applies during planification is the +-1 for gear, or +-2 with heat, with the cluttered hand rule when not possible
• during the react phase, if you have enough heat to pay for your upgrades, you will see 0 difference with previous existing flow
• if you are lacking some heat :
  • you wont be able to use some symbols. The only symbols you can use before paying for heats are : adrenaline, free boost (with weather), cooldown, direct play from your hand
  • you will have a button "I cant pay for my cards". When you click on it, here is what will happen :
    • your car will go back to where you start
    • you will be prompted to select as much cards you can pay for as possible (this part is automatic if you have 0 heat left or you cant pay for any ugprade)
    • the other cards (the ones you cant pay for) will be discarded and resolve as a stress instead
    • you will move your car with your new speed, and go back to the react phase with the new set of symbols without "cooldown" and "pay for heat"

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More discussions below :

• with this resolution, the car will move forward with the least possible speed value. Indeed, one of the upgrade that needs heat is a brake, so we cant know how much speed you choose for this card and undo this exact speed and moreover this would be too beneficial to let the user choose again after resolving some other symbols. And we also wanted to keep the flow as simple as possible
• make sure to use your cooldown before clicking on the "I cant pay" button. It seems pretty obvious because there are no reason to not using cooldown right away, but be sure to do that because you wont be able to cooldown afterwise
• this solution is close to the rulebook but differs/is more precise in several ways :
  • the rulebook is pretty clear that player should be able to resolve symbol in any order they want during react phase. We are restricting this to make sure we wont have to undo some symbols, in particular the ones that reveal hidden information (like boost)
  • in particular, the rulebooks is not preventing you to use a payed boost if you have only one heat and you need it to pay for an upgrade. Notice that this can actually be a positive thing for the player because that way he can play 1 more stress card in total with that hack. This is forbidden on BGA.
  • the rulebook is not saying anything about the case where you have several cards that needs payment (eventhough it's pretty rare). If I have a card that needs 2 heat, a card that need 1 heat, and another card that need 1 heat, and I have 2 heats in reserve, can I choose to pay the 2-heat cards and discard the others ones ? The rulebook would not prevent you from doing so, but BGA will.
  • this solution makes the use of word "accidentaly" in the rulebook absurd. It's not about whether you choose the card without checking you could eventually pay for it or not, it's really just about "not being able to pay for card at some point". In particular, sometimes doing this would actually be beneficial for the player : the RPM with 1 speed would only let you advance 1 cell whereas a stress card can be better than that. Similarly, the notion of "accidentaly" implied a concept of "playable card" during the planification, which was raising question about the cluttered hand rule. If I know I cant play the cards in my hand because I wont get enough heat for them, do I have a cluttered hand or not ? The definition of cluttered hand makes it sound like no, but the choice of the word "accidentaly" was making the whole thing less clear. So the solution chosen here is again beneficial for the players because resolving a stress card is far less punitive than having a cluttered hand.

[Magnus3740]

That makes sense. When will it go into effect?

[Remkar]

That makes sense. When will it go into effect?

Message on the main page says:

"This solution is now deployed on prod so as a consequence, we will move garage module to beta after a few days when we are sure it's working as expected."

[Phoxtrot]

Thanks !

First, I think that there are 2 small typos next to each other:

eventhough you wont be able to play for it d

-> "even though you wont be able to pay for it"


So, let me rephrase a bit the whole stuff to see if I understand.

1. I can choose to play cards that I cannot fully pay for and BGA will let me do that
2. If I do pick cards that I certainly/probably/possibly won't be able to pay for, the game will make me play phase 3 and start to play phase 5. This is true even if I'm in the "certainly" case.
3. In phase 3 (so before phase 5), Cards with a "+" symbol have had their + symbol already resolved. This applies to both regular Stress cards and cards like 40,41,47 have of course already . And luckily, none of those cards have a heat cost (but I did not check sponsor cards). If any such card ever had a heat cost, it could had up to the mess.
4. In phase 5, I will, in some situations (see questions below for exactly when), be forbidden to use certain symbols until every heat cost has been paid for.
5. If I do end up clicking on "I cannot pay", then my "car will go back to where you start" but nothing else is undone. In particular, heat paid is not recovered and heat cooled down stays cooled down and "direct played" cards remain played (Caution there about not increasing the gear because of them when replaying phase 3...). And the resolved "+" symbols are not "unresolved". (Caution with the display there...)
6. When that happens, I have to select which card I want to pay for (If I can pay for any). Note that in phase 5, I might have already paid some of the heat cost so the game should remember how much I paid. (Note: As I understand it, the game cannot fully know what cards I want to pay for just by looking at what I already paid in phase 5 because the heat symbols in phase 5 are not clearly associated to specific cards)
7. Then, my cards gets resolved again (phase 3). The already resolved "+" symbols for cards played are new "+" symbols have to be resolved as the cards I could not pay for are being treated as stress cards.
8. Then I go back to reaction phase (phase 5) but I don't have to pay anymore as costs have already been paid. This does pose an issue with gas pedal 27: Am I allowed to direct play it in this second phase 5 ?

Some questions and considerations:

1. Or do I recover the heat already spent when clicking on "I cannot pay" ?
2. When exactly will the button "I cant pay" available ? It seems a bit risky to make it always available. I think it should only be available if the total cost of cards currently played is above the heat you have. Possibly, it should even be available only if total cost > available heat + usable cool downs (but you seem to have already opted to not do that last restriction)
3. When exactly will I be restricted about the order in which I use the symbols ? I think that "always" would be a bit annoying. But because of card "gas pedal 27" that has direct play, 1 cooldown , 1 heat and move 4 it can be tricky.
4. So related to the above question, what happens If I have enough Heat to pay for everything I have played so far and I do use some of the trash symbols and all that and then, with 0 heat left in my motor and hand, I direct play card "gas pedal 27" and I cannot pay for it ?
5. don't we also have situations where the interface ends up allowing use to cooldown of a particular card like say 42 (Turbo compressor: cool3, 2 heat, move 7) to pay for the cost of another card like say 30 (RPM) ? That might be a bit of a cheat.
6. And about the cluttered hand: I guess this means that I can only declare one if I don't have enough "non-heat cards" in hand to play ? In other words, if I can play enough non-heat cards for my gear but I cannot pay for them because they have a heat cost that I cannot pay, I will have to play them and let the entire logic above resolve the situation ?
7. As I understand, the whole structure of events means that after the "pseudo rollback", I can select which cards I wanna pay for knowing what the resolution for the originally played + signs is. I don't know what new + signs for unpaid cards will be but this could clearly lead to abuses. Especially if we can decide that "I cannot pay" even when I actually could. One such case would be if say I played "[card 42 turbo compressor] + +" and the ++ resolved into 44 making me pass a corner that I didn't want to pass, so now I decide that to not pay for that turbo compressor even though I could so that it gets transformed into a "+" so that I won't pass that corner and spinout... ("unresolving" the + signs alone wouldn't help with the issue and "unresolve + shuffle reminder of deck" doesn't really help either as it brings its own lot of problems)

I'm glad I wrote this down but it did become more and more complex in my head as I tried to straighten things up.
Still think that "undo and spinout at the start" would be simpler. (But not as simple as it looks either as you have to decide what to do with cards drawn during phase 3 and 5 and the trashed ones: do you undo them too and reshuffle the reminded of the deck or do you leave the deck completely "as is". I would leave it "as is" as I think that the spin out would be way enough of a cost that you probably cannot really abuse this mechanism)

[Tisaac]

You cant partially pay heat so that answers a lot of your concerns.
As a consequence, it's really a binary situation :
- either "heats to pay" <= "heats in reserve" (where "heats to pay" might be 0 if you havent played any upgrades with heat or if you already paid for them)
- or "heats to pay" > "heats in reserve" and therefore you see that button
And this situation is re-evaluated at each step of the react, so if you use cooldown and now you have enough heats, the button vanish and it's the usual case again.
The only thing that might break this is indeed the gas pedal with direct play and heat, but you have literally 0 reason to do that so if you do AFTER you payed for heats for other cards and now you wont have enough heats, then you will discard all the cards, even the ones you payed heats for. We are not going to make our code more complex for absurd cases that shouldn't exist.

You are thinking about "abuse" but it's not if you just drop the word "accidentaly". It just becomes part of the strategy eventhough it's not very good thematically-wise. The definition of cluttered hand is pretty clear in the rulebook so we are not changing that, so indeed it's sometimes beneficial to play cards that you cant pay for.

Again, I am not saying I am happy with this clarification as a player, but this resolution is close to the rulebook and easy enough to code, so that's fine for me as dev.

[Phoxtrot]

Thanks.
Yes, indeed, having to pay for all or nothing does reduce the problems a lot.

When I'm talking of abuse, I'm not thinking of avoiding a cluttered hand. I'm ok with that and it's just a consequence of the removal of the "accidental" keyword.
When I'm talking of abuse I'm thinking of those categories which all involves a false claim of "I cannot pay" in phase 5:

1. I want to transform some speed 1 card (like RPM [card30]) into a + so I'll claim in phase 5 that "I cannot pay" when I actually can pay. Also works with wanting to reduce a 6 card (like carrosserie [Card 18]) into a +
2. I want to use the cooldown effect of a card (like Turbo compressor [Card 42] or cooling system [Card 11]) but not pay for their heat cost even though I could so that I actually recover Heat during my turn while still claiming "I cannot pay".
3. I originally wanted to pay for the cards I'm playing but I got unlucky (most likely something like getting ++ resolved into 44). This bad luck will cause me to cross a corner line and spinout in phase 7. So I decide to claim that I "cannot pay" even though I actually can and I will decide not to pay for one of the cards I played (like maybe [card 47]) so as to go less far and not cross that corner line.

There are many variations to the categories above including some very rare scenarios that do not actually involve a + symbol, I can detail if anyone wants. And there is a more concrete example in my previous post involving [card 47] if the above is a bit too vague.

I think that many players will see those cases as abuses and consequently they should be reduced to the minimum while still respecting the decision of the publisher.

To greatly reduce the problem (and still respect the ruling in my opinion), I see this:

1. Do not allow the player to click "I cannot pay" if he actually has enough Heat in motor to pay
2. A bit more tricky and slightly less important: do not allow the player to claim "I cannot pay" until he has used all his cooldown powers. This only works if the player is also forced to use cooldown to their maximum (which you always do anyway unless you precisely want to use the "I cannot pay")
3. Do not allow player to play gas pedal if he has 0 Heat in motor and 0 Heat in hand (because gas pedal is one way to force a "I cannot pay even though I actually could pay" situation)
4. After clicking "I cannot pay" and being asked to select the cards you want to pay for, you cannot leave cards unselected that you can actually pay for. (This greatly reduce problem categories 1 and 2). Example: I have 3 Heat in motor, 2 cards costing 1 heat and 1 card costing 2 so I must either select the two 1 Heat cards for a total of 2 Heat or the cost 2 card and one of the cost 1; I cannot just select a cost 1 card
5. This one might not be fully according to the ruling but I think that some of the situations that I see as abuses (essentially category 2 above) can be avoided by saying that after clicking "I cannot pay" and selecting the cards you do want to pay, you have to pay ALL your heat in the motor even if the cards you select do not amount to all of your heat.
6. There might have been a 6th point but I cannot remember it... Might come back.

This list of ideas to reduce the problems is of course directly related to all the ways that a player could claim "I cannot pay" when he actually can pay (depending on the actual implementation rather that the ruling itself).

Note: Some of the ideas listed only really make sense if the idea just above is also implemented. Like I wouldn't implement point 5 without point 4 or point 2 without point 1.

[SquashEngineer]

Thanks !

First, I think that there are 2 small typos next to each other:

eventhough you wont be able to play for it d

-> "even though you wont be able to pay for it"

Ye ole typo corrector Karma.

[Tisaac]

Thanks.
Yes, indeed, having to pay for all or nothing does reduce the problems a lot.

When I'm talking of abuse, I'm not thinking of avoiding a cluttered hand. I'm ok with that and it's just a consequence of the removal of the "accidental" keyword.
When I'm talking of abuse I'm thinking of those categories which all involves a false claim of "I cannot pay" in phase 5:

1. I want to transform some speed 1 card (like RPM [card30]) into a + so I'll claim in phase 5 that "I cannot pay" when I actually can pay. Also works with wanting to reduce a 6 card (like carrosserie [Card 18]) into a +
2. I want to use the cooldown effect of a card (like Turbo compressor [Card 42] or cooling system [Card 11]) but not pay for their heat cost even though I could so that I actually recover Heat during my turn while still claiming "I cannot pay".
3. I originally wanted to pay for the cards I'm playing but I got unlucky (most likely something like getting ++ resolved into 44). This bad luck will cause me to cross a corner line and spinout in phase 7. So I decide to claim that I "cannot pay" even though I actually can and I will decide not to pay for one of the cards I played (like maybe [card 47]) so as to go less far and not cross that corner line.

There are many variations to the categories above including some very rare scenarios that do not actually involve a + symbol, I can detail if anyone wants. And there is a more concrete example in my previous post involving [card 47] if the above is a bit too vague.

I think that many players will see those cases as abuses and consequently they should be reduced to the minimum while still respecting the decision of the publisher.

To greatly reduce the problem (and still respect the ruling in my opinion), I see this:

1. Do not allow the player to click "I cannot pay" if he actually has enough Heat in motor to pay
2. A bit more tricky and slightly less important: do not allow the player to claim "I cannot pay" until he has used all his cooldown powers. This only works if the player is also forced to use cooldown to their maximum (which you always do anyway unless you precisely want to use the "I cannot pay")
3. Do not allow player to play gas pedal if he has 0 Heat in motor and 0 Heat in hand (because gas pedal is one way to force a "I cannot pay even though I actually could pay" situation)
4. After clicking "I cannot pay" and being asked to select the cards you want to pay for, you cannot leave cards unselected that you can actually pay for. (This greatly reduce problem categories 1 and 2). Example: I have 3 Heat in motor, 2 cards costing 1 heat and 1 card costing 2 so I must either select the two 1 Heat cards for a total of 2 Heat or the cost 2 card and one of the cost 1; I cannot just select a cost 1 card
5. This one might not be fully according to the ruling but I think that some of the situations that I see as abuses (essentially category 2 above) can be avoided by saying that after clicking "I cannot pay" and selecting the cards you do want to pay, you have to pay ALL your heat in the motor even if the cards you select do not amount to all of your heat.
6. There might have been a 6th point but I cannot remember it... Might come back.

This list of ideas to reduce the problems is of course directly related to all the ways that a player could claim "I cannot pay" when he actually can pay (depending on the actual implementation rather that the ruling itself).

Note: Some of the ideas listed only really make sense if the idea just above is also implemented. Like I wouldn't implement point 5 without point 4 or point 2 without point 1.

1. , 4. and 5. are already working like that, as explained in the first post (or at least I tried to explain...)

[Phoxtrot]

Yes, I have seen
As it stands, I think it is difficult to really (ab)use the system to get an advantage beyond the basic "transform a card with a heat cost into a +".

I have tested various scenarios (still some to test) and have found only the 2 minor bugs I reported.

I'm just a bit worried as to whether people will understand how it works since it is not in the (current) rules.

As a side note, I guess it is normal that the weather module is no longer in alpha but the garage module still is ?

[thoun]

As a side not, I guess it is normal that the weather module is no longer in alpha but the garage module still is ?

It was released a while ago, as alone it is not subject to rule debate. Only weather with garage was an issue, so after thinking there was no reason to let weather module in alpha. It was in alpha just a few days after release.
For the garame module in alpha, we'll probably remove the flag soon, if no other bugs about it are reported.