by NateStraight
The rule is badly written, y'all.Not for the reason of the ambiguity of the word "never", but for the reason that the physical manipulation described is unnecessary to perform the action. It is, as someone said, simply a good mnemonic device to use to help you remember that you don't put the demanded cards into your hand even though they're coming from the other players' hands. In fact, the entire "Rome Demands!" mat is unnecessary and simply a mnemonic device. Writing rules in terms of physical manipulation of bits is generally a very good practice [see Through The Ages], but not when the physical manipulation described is unnecessary to the performance of the game's mechanisms. The rule he missed wasn't a mechanistic one, but one related to an unnecessarily complex physical manipulation: "Once you have completed the action, pick up your hand and turn over the card you revealed so that it is no longer showing--the card you use to demand materials never leaves your hand." Had he not missed this, the card would not have remained backward in his hand, and the [also unnecessary] statement concerning "never leaves" would have been unambiguous.
The rule ought to have been written as:
- For each Legionary action you are allowed, reveal a card from your hand and announce "Rome demands [name of material(s)]". You must reveal all allowed cards at once; you may not reveal the same card for multiple Legionary actions on the same turn.
- Blah blah blah collect cards etc
- After you have completed the Legionary action, return the cards you revealed to your hand. ["They are not discarded to the pool with the Legionary you led / followed with" would have been preferable to "never leave your hand".]
The fact that he got confused and did something that sounds silly is neither a sign of ignorance or insanity. Nor does appealing to the "real world" help in any way. There are plenty of game mechanisms that don't make functional or real world sense. When reading game rules, you have to take them at face value, and you are reading them without the benefit of knowledge of the context of game flow that experienced players of the game have. For all Trent knew, it might have been the intention and might have made sense that cards used to demand fill up space in your hand. There are similar mechanisms in some other games [Snow Tails, for instance, with the "dents"; Dominion with the "curses"]. The rules were not concise enough, and depended on understanding a procedural element [putting your hand down, then picking it back up] that was irrelevant to the intended mechanism.