In a game last Friday a question came up as to exactly what the "Deck" was for cards that search and then shuffle the deck.
Checking the original rules was confusing. The illustation of the playing area identified seperate piles as deck and trash. But in the glossery, Deck was defined to be all the cards with the same back. Which would include the trash and all cards in play as well as the undrawn cards. The Enhanced Editoin rulebook only lables the trash with nothing labled as deck on the play area.
It seems very very wrong to search the deck, then have to shuffle all cards for that hero/villian (including those in play).
On the other hand, If Plague Rat isn't searching his trash, then he's not likely to ever flip in a 5 player game where even one infect card has been destroyed. That didn't seem quite right either at the time. But after looking the enhanced rules, it looks like Plague Rat isn't supposed to be one of the more powerful villians, so perhaps that is as intended.
I think the problem here is that there are two different definitions for "deck", but only one of them is in the glossory. Could someone please confirm this?
You search your deck. Things that mean your deck and your trash say "deck and trash"
Instrumental Conjuration (Infernal Relics), for example, says Deck and Trash.
The deck is the stack of cards that is next to a trash, and doesn't include cards that are in play.
Plague Rat can be hard to flip in the 5 player game, but remember, if you destroy even 1 infection, that deals every hero 5 damage, and maybe 6 if you are playing Advanced, that is a hefty price to pay to stop Plague Rat from flipping, effectively dealing the heroes a total of 30 damage (on Advanced) for one infection card destroyed. Play Plague Rat, play him on advanced, and then come back and let me know if you think he's too easy. The other thing about Plague Rat is that his "flip" side isn't that much worse than his regular side, so him not flipping is not a huge deal.
With that said, the game IMO is still best with 4 players. You can play it with 5 or with 3 and not have too many problems, but every now and again something like this will come up.
"He robbed from the rich and he-
gave to the poor.
Stood up to the Man and he-
gave him what for.
Our love for him now,
aint hard to explain,
the hero of Canton,
the man they call "Jayne""
Thanks!
We had two characters that could prevent Plague Rat from doing damage for a turn (Wraith and Tachyon), so getting rid of infections wasn't that hard. We were playing him wrong, but we did end up with 3 characters incapacitated by the time we had to call the game because of time.
Now that we know how he's supposed to work, maybe we'll try him again next week.
Yup. On one hand, a hero deck refers to the hero character card and all of that hero's forty other cards. On the other hand, while playing a hero deck refers to the set of cards from which cards are drawn into a player's hand.
One way to think of this, perhaps, is that all forty cards start in the deck, but during play some cards leave the deck to go into hand, into play, or into the hero's trash.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
I think this is the key - it's not that there are different definitions, it's that the state changes depending on if you're in game or not.
Magic avoided this by using "library" to represent the deck during play, but I personally don't feel SotM needs to go to that level, as most other games haven't, either. That's just me, though.
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
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