Board Game Arena

There’s been a few times that my point score actually went down when I added a mermaid to my hand, and once when I added a captain to my hand (a steal). Why would points decrease with certain added cards and how would I know about these scoring rules? I can’t find anything of the sort listed in the rules anywhere.

I believe I have a fairly good understanding of the scoring issues encountered this season. In my opinion, this situation mainly stems from two factors:

- the new expansion, which introduces new rules;
- the fact that the Starfish card now counts as 2 points even when it is not played (it is enough for it to be paired with an unplayed duo card).
→ see the ticket explaining this change: bug #183237

From what I recall, the main issues I have encountered are the following:

- the shark/shark and swimmer/swimmer duos are not considered as duos as long as a STOP or LAST CHANCE has not been declared.
As a result, the duo scores neither 1 point when it is alone nor 3 points when it is completed with a Starfish.
→ see bug #190064

- when a Starfish / duo triplet is in hand, 3 points are correctly counted, which is expected.
However, if a duo card is played at that moment, the score is not updated immediately; it is only updated when another card enters the hand.
This can be particularly confusing if, at first glance, the player has not noticed that their score already includes a Starfish / duo triplet.
→ see bug #190930
→ and bug #190908

- when cards are stolen by a shark/shark duo, the score is not updated immediately.
→ see bug #190232

There are a very (too) large number of tickets open on this topic. On my side, I made the effort to sort out real bugs from false alerts, because when putting myself in the developer’s shoes (it is my profession), it was really difficult to make sense of everything.
At this stage, I do not think there is any need to add more tickets; it is simply a matter of being patient while the issue is being properly addressed.