This was an interesting question posted on the BGG forum for this game so I thought I'd post it here for discussion:
The Sandpoint Cathedral location closing action states "When Closing: Banish either a blessing or Father Zantus."
The Town Square location closing action states "Banish a card from your hand."
My initial assumption was that all banished cards come from your hand, however after scanning the FAQ and rule book, nothing specifically states they MUST come from the hand (except for cards that specify, obviously).
So can players choose cards from their discard pile to banish instead of their hand? It would seem, since all cards in-hand and in-discard are your combined life points, that taking them from either is an equivalent loss of "HP". Then again, there may be an obvious rule that clarifies this and I just missed it.
Thoughts?
RULES: DRAWING CARDS
Unless a card says otherwise, drawing means taking a card from
the specified source and putting it in your hand. If no source is
specified, draw it from your character deck.I still think that this will come from your hand though.....maybe im wrong
That refers to drawing cards, but not banishing them. Interesting that this really isn't clarified anywhere in the rules or FAQ.
I just think they had more space on the Town Square card, so they added the from your hand part. I believe that banish (and all the 'playing cards' actions listed on page 10 of the rulebook) is something you do with a card in your hand, unless otherwise noted. I couldn't find a line in the rulebook that says you can't play cards from your discard pile ... but come on, it wouldn't be called that if it was the case.
I just think they had more space on the Town Square card, so they added the from your hand part.
To be frank, that's a ridiculously poor excuse to add verbiage to a card. It introduces ambiguity and gives rise to questions like this.
Anyone with an ounce of experience with card game development knows that consistent phrasing of abilities and actions is critical to a smooth-running game. If you use the phrase "from your hand" on a card's ability and it applies to all cards with that ability, you use the phrase on ALL the cards.
This game's FAQ is evidence that not enough time and attention was paid to proofreading and card wording. I grant that this game is very card-heavy and wordy, but that just makes attention to detail that much more important.
Will be using the "from hand" on this until someone says different.
I'm of the same opinion, but nonetheless I'd like to see some clarification on this.
Who knows? Maybe banishing from your discard pile was intended to be an additional strategic decision point of the game? Or maybe it was just a bad design decision to include "from your hand" on some cards and not others.
|
Okay, let me get this right. Every other card or rule in the game states or implies 'from your hand', and just because this one doesn't, that is the exception of the rule? Even though it doesn't say 'from where ever the heck you want to.
So basically, there is nothing to support your claim that you can Banish it from the Discard pile. Under your assumption, we can look through the location deck and see if there is a Blessing there to banish. Or heck, since it doesn't specifically state it, let's just Banish it from the Blessings Deck. You know there is a bunch there.
|
From your hand.
The added verbiage on the Town Square is not just because of space. It's because there is a small need to be more specific - if it just said "Banish a Card", then people would be asking if that card came from the player's hand, the location, or some other deck - partly because it does not reference a specific type of card.
The rulebook describes "banishing" as one possible action you must perform when playing a card. Cards are not played from anywhere but your hand unless something specifically says otherwise. In this particular case, you're banishing it by playing a blessing (from your hand), as the location gives any blessing in your hand an additional power of banishing the card to close the location.