Summer Sea Corsair (RotK) says: "Response: After Summer Sea Corsair comes out of Shadows, reveal 1 card from the top of your deck for each Smuggler character you control. Choose 1 revealed card and add it to your hand. Then, shuffle the rest back into your deck".

If SSC is the only Smuggler character I control when he comes out of Shadows, then I reveal the top card of my deck and place it into my hand.

My question is: At that point: must I shuffle my deck / may I shuffle my deck / am I not allowed to shuffle my deck?

Thanks!

AerysII said:

If you have nothing to shuffle back into your deck, then you do not need to shuffle.

Bomb said:

This is actually a curious one. Is the rest 0 or "null"? If it's 0, then you must shuffle. If it's "null", then you can't shuffle. Are you assuming it is "null" or 0, Bomb?

mdc273 said:

I honestly don't really care if it is 0 or "null". I have nothing to shuffle back into my deck which implies that I need to have something that used to exist in my deck and can be returnable.

If I went to someone's house and they gave me 3 eggs and said "return the unused eggs back to me", and I used all 3 eggs, I wouldn't travel back to their house to return 0 eggs to them. Sometimes you should treat some of the game like you can apply a real life scenario to it.

If you were given a choice to eat green eggs and ham or live in the house that Jack built, would you kick a pregnant snake in the belly after it at slithered down the hill top and into Yogi bears "pic-a-nic basket" as long as you were in Jellystone park at 6:33pm on an overcast day with a little rain and a chance of meatballs?

Bomb said:

Mmmm… I'm not sure that's the best metaphor. It should be more:

Your boss tells you to replace all the towels on the towel rack. There are no new towels to replace them with. You go to your boss and say "There are no towels on the towel rack. Do you want me to take down the old towels and not replace them or leave them there?"

You appear to be going with the "leave them there" version.

Do you have experience with Boolean logic?

mdc273 said:

Not sure I agree with the context of that metaphor in its application to Summer Sea Corsair. It would be more applicable if you said "Take the dirty towels off the rack and wash them. Take one washed towel to take a shower with. Put the rest back on the rack."

The question is, do you go to the towel rack with nothing and go through the motion of putting a non-existent towel on the rack?

mdc273 said:

Yes.

Bomb said:

Metaphor battle!!!!!

Okay, let's look at this from logic gate logic.
if(x>0,shuffle(),end()) //yea yea… i'm using Excel if's, sue me. If you don't know, it's if(comparison,true,false) or something like that

x = null
If(null>0,shuffle(),end())
This returns null whereas

x=0
if(x>0,shuffle(),end())
This returns end()

This is why I say null and 0 are significantly different. The final effect says Shuffle(x).
Shuffle(0) returns a shuffled deck.
Shuffle(null) returns null.

Maybe I should disclaim all of my posts with…

*I understand what the concensus is and will rule as such. This is a pure theory argument.*

Oh look, another classic thread where MDC tries to complicate something that is straight forward.

If you have no cards to shuffle back in, then you do not shuffle. This is not something you need Damon to tell you; this is general card game knowledge.

Don't worry, if you keep flailing around in every rules post, then you'll eventually get something right…on accident.

sWhiteboy said:

This is legitimate discussion. Null != 0. Shuffle(null) != Shuffle(0). I do not doubt that someone WILL ask for a TO to rule on this someday and lack of clarification is what allows TOs to make incorrect rulings. There is no such thing as "common sense" or "mutual understanding" when it comes to creating a clear and concise ruleset. It either is established and precedented or it isn't. At least if you had cited the precedent or rules I would be fine agreeing with you, but you didn't.

I hate the circlejerk that goes on in here at times. Basing a ruleset off of assumptions and word-of-mouth is how you set up a ruleset for failure.

Not to be a ****, but how about basing it on common sense instead. If you have no cards to put back in your deck, the unshuffled deck is as random and unknown to you as the shuffled deck would be, so what would be the point of shuffling it?

J_Roel said:

If your opponent played Dark Prophecy on you and then you bring out Summer Sea Corsair as your only smuggler it will matter. If your next three cards are beneficial, you probably don't want to shuffle, but if you have jank, you'll want that shuffle. Your opponent will most likely want the opposite of what you want.

I don't think you can shuffle 0 cards into your deck, so there is no shuffle. Too bad it didn't say, then put the rest on top of your deck and shuffle your deck, because you can clearly do that.

Actually, even if no cards are to be shuffled in, you (or an opponent) might know about some cards (some effects put cards at the bottom of your deck).

Okay, fair enough, there may sometimes be knowledge of some of the cards that you aren't revealing through the single smuggler. However, that knowledge was there before you added the one card to your hand, so if just having knowledge of the cards was reason enough to shuffle, why do we not shuffle every time we draw cards and have knowledge of the next ones (drawing after using Shade of the Evening during Summer, for example). Anyway, I was just facepalming at the argument over something so trivial, maybe I shouldn't have chimed in (I'm still in the "no shuffling if you have no cards to shuffle back" camp)

J_Roel - while in most cases it's trivial, in others (multiple stalwart characters, you've looked at the top of your deck, you just placed cards on the bottom of your deck) there could be a distinct advantage to shuffling (or not shuffling). If I really need my finger dances, I have every incentive to re-shuffle my deck after placing one at the bottom of my deck.

While it's unlikely to frequently impact the game, it's a valid templating concern. I'm usually in the anti-Mdc camp, his concerns here are entirely legitimate.

I suppose one could make a compelling argument either way on this issue (though I'm siding with Bomb), but I don't think knowledge of the top or bottom of the deck is a valid one, so I shouldn't have brought it up in the first place.