by bigtex01
Anyone able to figure out why this commonly overlooked rule was included in the first place? The natural tendency when drawing Tactics cards is to put them with your other Tactics cards already in hand. But once you do that, it may be easy for a player to overlook which cards in hand are playable and which aren't. And there's no way for other players in the game to verify that each player is following the rule in this case.The best way to be sure that everyone follows this rule is to place all drawn Tactics cards face down on the table somewhere in a player's area that is separate from their playable Tactics cards. The cards can then be taken from this "time out" area into hand when the next season card is drawn. But this seems kind of clunky in a game that already has a LOT of moving parts.
Why bother with this rule in the first place? What are some possible justifications for having included this rule in the first place? Does it "help" or "balance" the game in some tangible way? I mean, if Tactics cards are already super-powerful, does delaying their play by just one season actually reduce that "super-powered" effect down to a "just-the-right-level-of-power" effect?
It would be different if Tactics cards were open knowledge, then you could say that opponents can plan their turns with that knowledge and that surprising them with a powerful Tactics card drawn in turn could disrupt those plans so much that it could be considered unfair. But the content of Tactics cards are not open knowledge (at least I don't think they are). So, if an opponent plans out his turn carefully and you play a "Super Ambush Of Annihilation" Tactics card to surprise him, there would be no way for the opponent to know that you didn't already have that card in hand during their initial planning. The only way it would make a difference is if you had ZERO Tactics cards in hand (since number of Tactics cards in hand IS open knowledge) and the opponent planned out their turn assuming that you weren't going to play any Tactics cards that turn that could disrupt their plans. In this isolated case, the rule ensures that if a player starts a season without any Tactics cards, they're not going to surprise anyone with Tactic card play later on that turn.
Would eliminating this rule and allowing Tactics cards to be played the season they are drawn really change the game that much? Has anyone played without this rule, either by accident or by choice? I'd really rather not have to remember this rule or enforce that others are following it if it really doesn't make a significant difference in game outcome.