Discarding Cards Questions

[Jack]

You keep avoids in your hand because your opponent has at least 1 playable card in his possession, either placed or in hand. There is a chance (> 0%) that any 1 of those cards could be used as some form of attack.

I'm sure one could argue the case where: player B has no cards placed or in hand (or simply has pass his turn) and player A draws an Avoid, you would have to discard that avoid as unusable.

[gameplan.exe]

You keep avoids in your hand because your opponent has at least 1 playable card in his possession, either placed or in hand. There is a chance (> 0%) that any 1 of those cards could be used as some form of attack.

I'm sure one could argue the case where: player B has no cards placed or in hand (or simply has pass his turn) and player A draws an Avoid, you would have to discard that avoid as unusable.

well, it's not even as remote as that. I've played many hands holding a personal avoid for somebody that never gets played because the attacks go to other people.

if the "playability" of a card cannot depend on actions taken by your opponent, then you can't really keep any defense-only cards in your hand. even if you have a Spawn-type avoid, what if a player is using Venture+ deck, and/or only attacks your battlesite?

don't get me wrong, I'm not at all advocating this measure. as matter of fact, I'm hoping to show that defensively played cards should not fall under this rule. otherwise, I'm afraid there is a big problem.

[thetrooper27]

I'm not the rules guy or anything like that... but it would stand to reason that because any frontline character can play their specials, then avoids fall under the category of specials that can be potentially played because each frontliner is able to be attacked.  Reservists aren't active during the battle unless another circumstance makes them active, so at the time of discarding, their cards aren't playable, whereas a frontline characters cards are ALL playable at this time.  From a logical standpoint, that seems a reasonable evaluation

[Demacus]

But there are characters who CAN attack the reserve character.  Battlesites could bring those possibilities even if the opponenets team does not.  I would think the Avoid 1 for the reserve character should be allowed to be kept, just like an Avoid for any of the Frontline characters.  You NEVER truly know if you'll need defense until the time of the attack where it could be used.

[thetrooper27]

Has anyone ever toyed with the idea of not discarding unusable cards?  I guess you wouldn't venture big too often, but has anyone ever played that way?  Lots of confusion would be eliminated...

[Demacus]

I remember a time before it was mandatory to discard unsusables, at least in non-tourney play.  We had a buddy who insisted we play by tourney rules, so every time the rules updated, so did our play style, but initially, there was a period WAY back when you could hang onto cards for bluffing purposes.

I remember when that rule change came down the pipe, one of my other friends almost blew a gasket because hanging onto cards for bluffing purposes was half of his game.  We never put cards that didn't belong in a deck, but if a character died before his cards came up, those were now just in your hand to make it look like you might still have plays left, and after you passed once, it made it appear that you were holding a hand of just defense, which was almost scarier to be sitting across from, lol.

IF discarding unsusables was always there from the first tournament, then it just took a while to reach us where we played, cause none of my group ever went to a tournement, we just had one guy who insisted that we use the tourney rules, just in case any of us did go to a tournement.

I remember when they first announced Beyonder and his "May play any special cards" I.A.   I was so stoked that I went home that night and threw together a deck of all of my best duplicate specials, in preparation for his launch.  And when we each did get our copy of Beyonder, and found out that he came with his own rules, "Can only play teammate specials, can not play OPD specials, counted as 28 points for deckbuilding" that was the end of using Beyonder...  lol