Immediacy, Curses, and Card Draws

[sapph42]

This question is a question of conflicting immediacies.

The rules state that you may play a card as soon as you get it (assuming it is otherwise legal to play). The rules also state that curses take effect immediately. So, with that in mind, here is the setup:

Nick is fighting a monster that offers four treasures upon defeat.
Amanda plays Midas Potion (removes the level reward from a monster, but otherwise does not affect combat).
Nick kills the monster.
Nick draws four cards from the treasure deck.
NB: At this point, Nick has not seen the cards he has drawn, he just dealt four cards from the top and picked up the stack.
Amanda plays Viking Duck (players to the left and right of the cursed player may draw a card from the cursed player's hand).

Amanda claims that as soon as the four cards are picked up, they are part of Nick's "hand" and fair game for Viking Duck.

Nick claims that:
a) He has not had the opportunity to play the cards, and he must have that opportunity before the curse can take effect.
b) He was holding the cards, but they were not yet "in his hand", as he hadn't truly completed the draw
c) He was in the process of blindly placing all four cards "in play" (they - as a stack - were face up and Nick was putting that stack in his "Pack" area), and thus should not be counted as part of his hand.


Who is correct? And if Nick is correct, on which point(s) does his victory lay?

[Andrew Hackard]

Unfortunately for Nick, once he drew the final Treasure, those cards were technically in his hand. He cannot blindly put them into play because some of those Treasures may not be playable in that fashion -- he has to see them first, at which point he has drawn them and they are in his hand.

HOWEVER, you must allow Nick the chance to *look* at the cards before the Curse takes effect, although you do not have to allow him play any of them. The reason is simple: if one of the cards is a Wishing Ring, Nick can play it to cancel the Curse. (Wishing Ring, as a one-shot Treasure, is playable from the hand.)

To sum up: there was no problem with the timing of the Curse play, but Nick gets a chance to see if he has a Wishing Ring to cancel the Curse before it takes effect.

[sapph42]

Nick has resolved, in future games, to pull one card at a time, playing it if possible, before drawing the next card, insuring that he (ideally) never has all four treasures in his hand at once. Is this legal?

[Andrew Hackard]

No. Treasure is drawn all at once; you cannot pull one card, decide whether to play it, and then draw another.