My friends and I play a house rule that "On-Guard" cards, count towards your hand size for purposes of discarding/drawing at the end of movement/hazard phases.
We do this, because 98% of the time we played a card on-guard, it was so we could draw an additional card, and get through our decks faster.
Is there any official ruling for or against our method, or what I beleive to be the written rule, which would imply it is not counted?
Thanks,
Olorin
On-Guard Cards and Hand Size
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Bandobras Took
- Rules Wizard
- Posts: 3157
- Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2007 2:30 pm
On-guards do not count against hand size. This is the official rule so far as I know. They do, however, get returned to your hand at the end-of-turn phase before you resolve hand size.
This has become especially burdensome in the case of squatting or stationary companies. If no cards are being drawn, you can still move cards by playing a card on-guard against each company.
I guess if there is not an official ruling to the contrary, does my annoyance at this resonate with other players? Do other people have the same experience? Do you ever play on-guard cards for no other reason than to draw more cards? My buddy with whom I primarily play both seemed to find this a better way, what does the community think? Do some people like the mechanic as yet another wrinkle to take advantage of, a strategy to employ?
I guess that is more the question I'm asking than 'What is the official rule?'.
Thanks to those replying.
O
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Be honest, did you know the meaning of my user name without looking it up?
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I guess if there is not an official ruling to the contrary, does my annoyance at this resonate with other players? Do other people have the same experience? Do you ever play on-guard cards for no other reason than to draw more cards? My buddy with whom I primarily play both seemed to find this a better way, what does the community think? Do some people like the mechanic as yet another wrinkle to take advantage of, a strategy to employ?
I guess that is more the question I'm asking than 'What is the official rule?'.
Thanks to those replying.
O
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Be honest, did you know the meaning of my user name without looking it up?
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Bandobras Took
- Rules Wizard
- Posts: 3157
- Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2007 2:30 pm
The whole point of on-guards is that they can be a bluff; they don't ever have to be something that damages the company. With that in mind, I think the original secondary intent was card movement. As written in the original rulebook, "In METW you will draw multiple cards each turn, and in some cases you will have to discard a number of cards each turn. Don't let this worry you, it's part of the flow of play. Just keep cards that are immediately useful during the next turn or that are crucial to your overall strategy (i.e., your primary resource acquisition strategy)."
Card flow is both directly and indirectly indicated as an underlying assumption in the game, and as such I find it neither against the spirit nor the letter of the rules to play on guards to facilitate card flow.
Card flow is both directly and indirectly indicated as an underlying assumption in the game, and as such I find it neither against the spirit nor the letter of the rules to play on guards to facilitate card flow.