It's about midgame and logistics has 2 bonus counters on it. After initiative and imperial are chosen, I have first crack at it. I choose logistics, then another player plays the card that forces me to choose another SC. I play sabotage. Then, the player to my immediate left plays the card where he goes through the discard pile and picks out the card that I sabotaged, My question is...How should all of this have worked? The player who played his first AC was OK since he announced his play, I am OK with the sabotage, but after that it gets foggy. Did the player to my immediate left have to announce his AC when the initial AC was played? We played it as though I was unable to choose logistics because of the 2nd AC, although I wonder if that was supposed to be how it is played. My logic is, he would have to wait to play that card, in which case I would already have logistics. (Completely off topic, it got worse from there. I took technology instead and then had scientist assassination played on me that turn as well)

moony29 said:

The AC that takes the card just sabotaged keys off of Sabotage. How could he know that a sabotage would be played when the first AC was declared, unless of course he has the sabotage himself? I think he played correctly in declaring that card as soon as Sabotage was played. I think it would unreasonable to ask him to anticipate a sabotage before he knew one was being played. You didn't declare your sabotage until after the first AC was revealed, right? Unitl you knew you wanted to use it. He didn't declare his until he knew he wanted to use it.

moony29 said:

Did the player to your left immediately try to play the first AC again after picking it out of the discard pile? You didn't actually say that up above. Unless I'm misremebring the card, he just takes the discarded AC and puts it in his hand.

In any case, he couldn't re-play the first AC like that, because that would be playing the same AC on the same situation, which isn't allowed. You can only play one copy of any given AC on a single trigger instance. The sequence of play you describe is a clever way to effectively get two of a single card in the game, but it doesn't change the fact that both cannot be played on the same activity. Even if the player to your left had had a second copy of the same AC, he couldn't have played it on you after you sabotaged the first. If he had had a different AC that accomplished a similar effect (preventing you from taking Logistics) that would be all well and good, but not two of the same card.

It might be helpful if someone could provide the exact text of the cards in question, to make sure I'm not mistaken about exactly what they do. =)

Public Disgrace is played after a player has choosen a SC

Synchronicity is played during status phase and allows you to take a AC from the deck and put it into your hand.

Touch of Genious lets you dublicate the effect of an AC from the discard pile, by spending 3 influence.

About the play order, here's what the rules say:

How to Play an Action Card
If a player wishes to play an Action Card, he must
publicly announce that he wishes to play an Action
Card. Then other players, at that time, may announce
that they also wish to play an Action Card. After all
players have been given the opportunity to announce
that they are playing Action Cards, all the Action
Cards are revealed and resolved in order of play.
If Action Cards are about to played at a time where
players do not have Strategy Cards, then resolve them
in clockwise order starting with the Speaker.

Question to the situation:

You pick Logistics?

A player announces he's playing an AC...no one else announces a play of AC

He reveals the AC he's playing (Public Disgrace)

It is sabotaged.

Then a new player announces he want's to play an AC....should he has announced that before or is this a new situation??

if so then he spends 3 influence to dublicate Public Disgrace....and since the first Public Disgrace was sabotaged, the latest thing that haapend was the choosing of Logistics, so that's proberbly okay...but I'm in doubt myself...

Don Kristobal said:

Player A is the OP, Player B is the one who played PD, Player C is the one to his left, who played ToG.

Player C is well within his rights to wait until after the Sabotage to play Touch of Genius, IMHO. That part is not in question to my mind.

If Touch of Genius duplicates a card in the discard pile, and does not actually ask you to take that card out and play it again, then things from this point on get a little fuzzy. The question becomes "Does using Touch of Genius to duplicate another AC count as playing a second copy of that AC?"

The situation is still the same. Player A is trying to pick Logistics as his SC. If Player C had a second copy of Public Disgrace in his hand then it would illegal for him to play it immediately after Player A Sabotaged the first one, that much is known. So, if using Touch of Genius counts as playing a second copy of the duplicated card, then he cannot do this. If, however, Touch of Genius is considered a different card even though it completely duplicates another AC (in this case Public Disgrace) then it would be okay.

This is how I understand the rules, anyway. Unfortunately, the FAQ is silent on this question about Touch of Genius. Personally I'm inclined to say it does count as another copy, and that Player C could not do this owing to the "no two cards on one situation" rule. It's my understanding that the purpose of this rule is to make Sabotage more potent by not allowing people to repeatedly play copies of the same AC until it goes through. There are only 4 Sabotages in the deck, after all. If a player lucks out and gets two, it would be kind of a gyp if they were forced to use both against a single AC (which might end up going through anyway if there are three copies of that AC coming in.)

I read this ruling in the wiki-forum about ToG (made by Corey after looong discussions):

ToG used as a sabotage, can be sabotaged...I read that as: it's not the same card being played, but a card copying an effect...

Wow, I wasn't even thinking along the lines of same effects of a card twice....but either way, I think we played it out right. I didn't throw a fit at the table over it or anything, just wanted to make sure we have the "timings" of the ACs right for the next game. We have played 2 games so far, and we are kind of sloppy as far as "announcing" we are playing a AC before throwing it on the table.

Don Kristobal said:

That's actually a different situation, I think. The ToG "Sabotage" would be targeting AC X, whereas the real Sabotage is targeting the Sabotage effect of ToG.

If one player Sabotaged AC X, and another player Sabotaged the Sabotage, and then a third player tried to use ToG to Sabotage AC X again (which is currently going ahead) then that would be playing two sabotages on the same situation (AC X.)

I know, it's confusing. I don't claim to have a full grasp on the question myself.

moony29 said:

I've played more than a few game of TI and we're still pretty sloppy about announcing things. 99% of the time it isn't a huge deal anyway. As long as everyone is satisfied with the result and continues to have fun, that's the important part. =)

Steve-O said:

Sorry if this was addressed in one of the other posts and I missed it, but this is actually not quite correct. While the rule you mention is indeed there, a card that was Sabotaged is considered to have not been played at all, per the FAQ. Thus, if you play a card, and it is Sabotaged, you could play another copy of the same card, because the first one is basically null and void - it was not considered played, and thus playing a second copy doesn't violate the rule.

sigmazero13 said:

Actually that ties things up quite nicely. So the answer to the last detail we were discussing would be that player C is quite allowed to use Touch of Genius as described, and the OP did indeed play everything legally. I guess my understanding of why the rule was included is a bit skewed then (since it has nothing to do with helping sabotage, as I thought.)

Well the rules aren't wonderfully clear.

Regarding timings: an action card can only be played on the cue listed at the bottom of the card. If you miss that trigger you don't get to play the card.

For the rules "How to play an action card" to add anything more than just word count to the book, it should be accepted that there's only one opportunity to play action cards per cue.

For example, "before any round of space battle" is one such cue, you don't get to annouce your Stategic Retreat after an opponent plays and resolves his Moral Boost , you've missed the boat by that point. Both of you need to annouce you are "playing an action card before a round of a space battle", then both reveal and resolve in play order.

Same thing in Moony's game, where the cue was "after a player has chosen a strategy card", by the time Touch of Genius was announced, that trigger had long since passed.

Kama said:

That was my logic at the table, but I think it was a bit of a reach. The player to my left (player C) then played ToG after I had played sabotage, so technically you could make the argument that the "trigger" was still alive and well, since nothing else had happened. I had still been the last player to draw a SC, so the trigger "play immediately after a player has chosen a SC" would still be in play I would assume.

Kama said:

I don't think that's being disputed as the official way to play it. The problem is, doing it that way is clunky and awkward. Really, that means any time you want to play a card, you technically have to say "I want to play a card", and see if anyone else does, too, and then actually play it. Since most of the time, simultaneous cards don't affect each other anyway, and the rare cases they do they are resolved in initiative order, I don't think anyone really does this in practice; I know I never do, because the game takes long enough as it is, and even the little extra time where you want to play a card and have to announce it first and wait for others to say if they want to also play it or not is just a waste of time and doesn't accomplish anything useful.

I love TI3, but the Action Card Playing rules is one of the clunkiest methods for doing so that I've seen.