Mind Numb

Not the card, but my state of recall since coming back to the game...

As I commented the other day in a response to one of my other posts, despite having been a tournament judge in the past who prided myself on knowing the rules really well and most of the errata almost as well, I have been rather shocked by how many of the basic rules I had forgotten over time, let alone adapt to the new ones.

I found myself having already forgotten some of the classic rule traps, only to have vague recollections of them mid-game, or as my partner would probably say, just at the most inopportune times for her. To be fair, as we are still at the learning stage (in her case) and re-learning stage (in my own case) of the game, if I do recall a rule mid-game we don't normally enforce it until the next game to try and keep it fair.

Some of the rules and details I have gotten caught out on so far were:

• Having to actually look up different phases first game (ouch!)
• Having to look up several skills to see what they were called or do
• Forgetting about not having to pay the cost for blocked actions
• Forgetting about being able to toss a vote card during referendums
• Then forgetting about only being able to toss one vote card during referendums!
• Forgetting that two-player games should only have 60 library cards
• Forgetting whether 'ready' minion refers to an untapped minion or not
• Forgetting you can equip from another minion
• Forgetting about the sliding-scale influence transfers for turns 1, 2 and 3
• Forgetting that recruited allies can't act the turn they are recruited

Then came the time I drew a card and had absolutely no clue what it was. After several moments of confusion (it looks a bit like a master but it isn't a master, it doesn't seem to have any symbol or format I recognise!) eventually I realised I must be holding an event card.

I had heard of these just before I stopped playing but never seen one as such. This led to the further error of not knowing I could have waited to play it later, but thought it had to be played right away... fail! :)

Having a good read through the Rules reference over at the V:EKN would have saved me from much of the above. Aptly described by Darby over at Inferior Babble as the 'The Cliff Notes version of the Rulebook' this rules reference, albeit still fairly lengthy, was indeed a good place to remind myself of the intricacies of the rules.

So Mind Numb has at times felt more like completely Mind Dead!

It was painful enough making these mistakes as a newbie, let alone the embarrassment of making them all over again as an oldbie, but slowly and surely, the intricacies are coming back. Even with several years away from the game engaged in admittedly memory-leaking programming jobs though, I should still know better than to make the silly mistakes confessed to above... >;-)

Have any silly errors like these caught you out recently? Probably not...