My first question is for Researching Anywhere. When you "discard the rest" of the cards you didn't add to your hand, do you choose the order or does it go by the order it came off the deck. It is important for Researching the Past interactions.

Next question has to do with Playful Slice. It's static effect says "While this card is in your card pool, your attacks get -2 difficulty." When exactly does this take effect? In other words when does an attack enter the card pool, or would Playful Slice require only a 2 check to be played if it was the first form you played.

Phlip45 said:

"4.4.3 If an effect puts two or more cards into the same discard pile at the same time, the owner of those cards may arrange them in any order."

So feel free to put them down in whatever order you care to.

About Playful Slice, it only works while it's in the card pool. However, unless you put it there with a card effect (Xianghua, Sword of No Name), it can only be added to the card pool by playing it, which means that until you play that card, your difficulties don't change. In short, it won't reduce its own difficulty to play it. The reason is a zone called the "transitional zone", which is where all cards that are about to be played go.

"4.8 The Transitional Zone (Aka Purgatory, not to be confused with Limbo)

This is the area that a card moves through as it is in the process of being played. (See 8.1 Playing a Card from Hand.)

4.8.1 When a card is announced to be played from hand, it immediately enters this zone.

4.8.2 Once a card is successfully played, it leaves this area for the card pool."

So as you can see, until the card leaves this middle ground, it's not considered to be played, and thus is still not in the card pool when you are checking for its difficulty.

Thanks, this will help when I'm doing stupid things with my Xianghua deck.