Board Game Arena

player A is clue : X 1 1 X
they played the most right 1 first. Should it give information : "I am playing my most right 1" means "I can see 1bk in someone hand" ? (the 1 they played are NOT in discard position)
thx !

Hello,
tldr: Nope, you should be playing rightmost 1 first, and playing second rightmost should tell everyone you are seeing bk1.

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So we should start by the basics, assume you don't play with black bowder, and so 5 suits or 6 suits normal.
Someone give you three 1s turn 1: 1-x-1-1, what do you play first?

So firstly if all 1s are the same or are different, what you play doesn't matter. So let's see the cases where 2 are the same and one is different:

1) r1-x-r1-b1
Here if you play leftmost first as usual, then the second one you will be playing would be the second r1, and it's bad.
If you play rightmost first, you will play b1, then r1, and then there is a chance either all 1s are clued or visible, or that you receive some others color clue which tell you for free that your last 1 is useless.
So rightmost is better.

2) r1-x-b1-r1
Here it's the same, playing left or right first will give the same upsides and downsides.

3) b1-x-r1-r1
Here leftmost would lead to b1 and r1 played first and that's good.
About rightmost, if you can you really want to make that player discard. If you can wait to clue them, or if you can show them somehow that they should discard (per example by stealing their clue), and if they discard, you will be able to clue 1 and get b1+r1.
So leftmost is better, but you got more options with rightmost.

And so overall, rightmost is better. In your games, you should have seen that you got players who plays their 1s first from left to right because they just follow the usual rule and didn't understood the upside of rightmost (or want a simpler game), and you got players who optimise things and who plays 1s from right to left.
Often those kind of situations are annoying because it's a conflict between simplicity and optimality. The order of playing 1s has the big upside to very rarely causes problems (it can when you absolutely want a specific 1 played early, and so you could be forced to take safer line since you don't know the order that player will play their 1s).

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Since you talk about the discard position it stay the same reasonning, if you have g3-b1-r1-r1-g3, then you still have the option to make that player discard twice. That's a lot weaker so a lot more situationnal, but if you have ways to show to him they should discard once, and if nobody clue them after that, it should look like from their pov that their hand is really bad. And so they could be discarding twice.

About only have two 1s, that's much closer since my example doesn't work anymore. The thing which make you play leftmost first is that the card is new, and so if nobody clued you during one turn and you discarded (a non red card), and then you receive red clue: r-x-r-x, then this clue could have been given before: x-r-x-x and that wasn't. And so since no red card is on chop, that look logical to think that the leftmost red is playable.
But that's not the case at the start of the game, all your cards has been drawn at the same time, so when you receive a clue, the rightmost card clued has more value since it was closer from being discarded, even if you receive a red or a 2 clue. But for simplicity, bga and hgroup decided to make you play rightmost first for 1s, and leftmost first for others clues (you got value too to have different focus between color and number).

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Now to come back to black powder, we now know that rightmost should be the default option (especially since black powder is harder, it should attract more of the community who wanna play 'optimaly' ).
So rightmost said nothing.
And second rightmost (imo) should tell you that this player is seeing bk1.

Yes, the currently used conventions of the top master level gamers include notifying others if you see 1k or not. Romain is out of date with regards to these conventions and while what he says about basic game (or Avalanche only) is most definitely true, when playing with Black Powder you might be viewed as subpar patrner if you don't play with "I (don't) see 1k" convention.

As always, before the start of the game you can ask your teammates if they all follow this rule.

You can find some interesting details with examples about this topic in this group: https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=884 ... s673747550
You will have to scroll to the bottom and click "See more..." several times. The post I'm directly linking to is from 2 years ago and will highlight when you reveal it.

BGA convention system doesn't use much of chop moves like hgroup does, but tracking 1k and promise bluffs are examples of this and people will not reclue your 1k to "save" it when you should have already known about its exact position from the way someone else played their 1s.

Here is another text I've written some time ago about this topic:

When you are marked multiple 1s with a number clue (eg. 1 1 X X or 1 X 1 1), play them from rightmost if you can see 1k, otherwise play them from leftmost. This simple convention has very powerful implications:
- after a single play, you indirectly clue negative 1k on all other hands or
- you indirectly clue the person who can't see 1k, they already have 1k somewhere in hand

If another person knows from your play they don't have 1k in hand and are clued with number 1 that touches the rightmost card, they should eventually play that card with no further prompts required. That person must also follow this convention to reveal information back to you.

Example 1:
Alice and Bob both clue 1 to Charlie and Donald
C: 1 X 1 1
D: X 1 1 1
On their turns both C and D play their leftmost 1, letting each other know their marked cards do not contain 1k and also letting A and B know neither of them has 1k. From this point all players understand all six 1s will eventually play and don't require any kind of prompts. Marking unplayed 1s with color will either be a play clue such as a direct play, finesse or bluff with focus on new card, or a way to notify about a duplicate card that should be discarded, most of the time if both hands contained 1m.

Example 2:
C: 1 X X 1
D: 1 X 1 1
Charlie plays rightmost 1 first, notifying Donald about marked 1k. From now on everybody understands Donald will play both leftmost and middle 1, but will hold on to rightmost 1 until 2k is played. If for example Alice clues Bob about a 2 after Donald has played both 1s, Donald will play leftmost card instead of marked 1 in an attempt to find the missing piece.

Example 3: (exception to the rule)
C: 1 X X 1
D: 1 1 1 1
Charlie plays leftmost 1, letting Donald know he doesn't have 1k. Charlie draws a card and it turns out to be 1k. Donald now sees 1k, but he needs to play leftmost 1 first to "lie" to Charlie he doesn't see 1k, so Charlie plays his chop 1. If Donald plays his rightmost 1 first, Charlie would have to assume his chop 1 is 1k.

Example 4:
Alice has 1k X X X. Alice clues 1 to Bob.
B: X 1 1 X
Bob plays rightmost 1, letting Alice know she has 1k somewhere in her hand. After many rounds, when all her cards except for leftmost are marked, played or discarded, she learns the exact location of 1k and must treat is as if marked/saved. If anyone clues 1 on her that doesn't touch another card, it is treated as either bluff or finesse to play all remaining black cards.