Please forgive me if this has already been asked. I looked and found no mention of it. When playing the Genius, barring cards/powers that require you to reveal part or all of your hand to someone else, is there any rule saying you have to tell the other players how many cards you have in your hand? I pis...greatly annoyed a friend using this tactic (not revealing, I mean) so that he couldn't keep track of my potential victory through card collecting. I could find nothing in the rules to deny me this tactic, but would really like an official adjutication.

Thanks in advance.

Fantastic game by the way...

I believe there is no rule requiring you to reveal on demand how many cards you have in your hand, although we have always played with a house rule that requires revealing how many cards you have.

Yeah, that's pretty much how we're doing it. (If only because he owns the game.) I'd still really like an official ruling on it, though. Being able to say, "Hey, guess what Fantasy Flight said..." as I hide my cards from him would be emminently satisfying.

I do so love being a jerk.

There is however one case when you may have to reveal how many cards you have - when the special destiny that targets whoever has the biggest hand shows up. If you have a full hand and everyone else has like three cards it's obvious, but when it's close I don't think anyone will let you go without counting them up.

There's also nothing in the game that says you can keep the information hidden. Since the special destiny says to attack the player with the most cards in hand and does not demand that everyone reveal how many cards are in hand, it seems to work under the assumption that this is public knowledge. This is how we've always played.

I thought that it said in the rules that the number of cards a player has is common knowledge and if you are asked you have to tell them how many you have, but I could NOT find it in the rules. Now that I think about it I think it says that in the Avalon Hill rules, but not in FFG rules. so the answer to your question would be the rules dont say, however I feel that if someone asks you how many cards you have you should tell them. If you suspect a player may have cheeted or be cheeting how could you catch them if they dont have to tell you how many cards they have? For example if they just drew a new hand and you think they took an extra card, but they wont tell you how many cards they have how would you catch them?

Toomai said:

QED. I hand size weren't public knowledge, how would you know who to attack?