I have a quick question in regards to the Hacan's ability to trade action cards. When they do this, do they trade them for trade goods, other action cards or both?

Cheers,

El

I would certainly allow the Hacan to trade ACs for TGs (in either direction) if they wanted to, or to trade ACs for ACs. I'm not 100% sure what the RAW position is though.

The only ruling I have seen about this only states that the Hacan player may NEVER have more then 7 cards in their hand.

It is perfectly acceptable for the Hacan player to sell/buy action cards for TGs or for future promises, which may or may not be upheld.

There has been many games I have been tempted not to uphold a future promise because it would benefit me not to, but if I were to do that too often the other players would no longer trust my future promises.

The Hacan can trade them for whatever is legal to "trade": Other ACs, TGs, "promises", etc.

Brilliant, that makes it more interesting than merely swapping action cards!

It's worth noting, too, that the Hacan can act as a "broker" to allow trading between other players, also; basically, Player A trades/gives the card to Hacan, who trades/gives it to Player B.

Thus, strictly speaking when this happens, Hacan can legally look at all the cards being traded, since they are technically in his possession, even if briefly.

sigmazero13 said:

And he can pocket a few TG for himself in the process. Yet another reason why Hacan truly are the masters of trade.

One of the things I've started doing is "selling" my action cards when I'm any race, doesn't have to be Hacan.

Instead of trading it and letting the other player play it themselves, I will play the card on the other player's behalf and pocket the money.

Another good tactic is to threaten to play a card on someone to get some trade goods out of them when you have no intention of ever playing the card on them. Once they pay you, you can use the card on the real intended target.

I remember getting to pick the Technology strategy card at least 3 rounds in a row by simply stating during the strategy phase "I would strongly suggest against selecting Technology." When asked why I would just repeat the same. Most in my group know this card exists so they picked up quickly what I had. I ended up discarding the card (Scientist Assassination) a few turns later using Hyper Metabolism as I didn't feel I needed to punish anyone anymore.

All interesting ideas, definitely looking forward to seeing these guys pop up in my next game!