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By Dukat (Andreas Rheinländer)
 - Gamma Quadrant
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1E European Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
1E German National Runner-Up 2024
#581314
Hi guys,

very stupid question: Do cards from the Q-Flash, that have a point box, go to the point area?
Or are the points scored and the card returns to the side deck?


After all, the side deck says:
When [Q] cards leave play, place them face up here only
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
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Community Contributor
#581315
Dukat wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 12:15 pm Hi guys,

very stupid question: Do cards from the Q-Flash, that have a point box, go to the point area?
Or are the points scored and the card returns to the side deck?


After all, the side deck says:
When [Q] cards leave play, place them face up here only
Short answer: It depends.

If it has a point box it goes to the point area if the points are scored.

So for example, Mandarin Bailiff goes to the point area if the opponent "posts bail", Quandary, goes to the point area if you don't pull the matching person, Risky Business goes to the point area if it triggers and the opponent chooses to lose the points.

Bailiff also acts as a "trap" card if the opponent doesn't post bail. Risky Business might go under the mission with the right trigger, but otherwise all of these cards go on top of the Q Flash when resolved if there are no points scored.

Does that make sense?
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By Professor Scott (Mathew McCalpin)
 - Delta Quadrant
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Trailblazer
1E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#581326
So posting bail permanently takes that MB out of future Q-Flash rotations this game.

Edit for clarity, as it appears that MB was never supposed to go to point area, nor does it now; it goes back to the flash pile. Pity, because I was hoping for a one and done as it's a pain to hit, lol.
Last edited by Professor Scott on Wed Jul 20, 2022 7:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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By Ausgang (Gerald Sieber)
 - Beta Quadrant
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1E European Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#581355
Armus wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 12:22 pmDoes that make sense?
This may have been correct until the errata of Q-Flash. Now, many of the rules previously described in the glossary have been transferred to the card itself. The "golden rule" should knock in:
Rulebook wrote:A specific rule overrides a more general rule, and a card's specific text overrides an otherwise applicable rule.
Therefore, the way it is scripted now, I would argue that [Q] cards with point boxes go back to the Continuum no-matter-what as the card Q-Flash specifies the destination which trumps the general rule.

Not sure though if that was intentional.
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
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#581358
Ausgang wrote: Wed Jul 20, 2022 12:35 am
Armus wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 12:22 pmDoes that make sense?
This may have been correct until the errata of Q-Flash. Now, many of the rules previously described in the glossary have been transferred to the card itself. The "golden rule" should knock in:
Rulebook wrote:A specific rule overrides a more general rule, and a card's specific text overrides an otherwise applicable rule.
Therefore, the way it is scripted now, I would argue that [Q] cards with point boxes go back to the Continuum no-matter-what as the card Q-Flash specifies the destination which trumps the general rule.

Not sure though if that was intentional.
Hmmm... you may have a point there. That sounds like the kind of argument I'd usually make. :wink:

It's probably not intentional, because from what I've seen there have been a lot of unintended consequences with the Q- flash errata. Such is life when you rework a PAQ-era card with multiple glossary pages of rules baggage. :P
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#581361
I'm not convinced Bailiff was ever supposed to go to the point area. The Old Glossary said (emphasis mine):
Your used Q-icon cards from your side deck do not go to your discard pile if you have a Q-Continuum side deck. Instead, whenever one of them is discarded or otherwise leaves the table, place it face up underneath your side deck.
That seems to me to be a more specific rule than the more general rule that cards with point boxes go to the point area when they resolve. So I don't see a good reason, even under the old rules, for Bailiff to go to the point area, and so I'm not sure it's right to frame the current behavior as a change.

In any event, I think we've shown that OP's question was not a stupid question. :)
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By geraldkw
 - Beta Quadrant
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#581374
BCSWowbagger wrote: Wed Jul 20, 2022 2:25 am I'm not convinced Bailiff was ever supposed to go to the point area. The Old Glossary said (emphasis mine):
Your used Q-icon cards from your side deck do not go to your discard pile if you have a Q-Continuum side deck. Instead, whenever one of them is discarded or otherwise leaves the table, place it face up underneath your side deck.
That seems to me to be a more specific rule than the more general rule that cards with point boxes go to the point area when they resolve. So I don't see a good reason, even under the old rules, for Bailiff to go to the point area, and so I'm not sure it's right to frame the current behavior as a change.

In any event, I think we've shown that OP's question was not a stupid question. :)
I feel like there is a lot of burden here to convince someone who sees a point box and expects it to work like a point box that it doesn't work like a point box.

First I would have to reference the rules to show that going to the point area is "leaving play". Then I would have to point out the clause "When [Q] cards leave play, place them face up here only (even if closed)" and remind them that "a more specific rule overrides a general one" (maybe searching the rules or glossary for something to support that. I guess maybe try to reference this thread...

Can we just remove the point boxes and put "loses/gains X points" if that's how it's supposed to work?
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 - Gamma Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#581377
Oh look, more yes vs no problems.....

I would argue that the rule on point boxes isn't specifically being overridden by card text and so the point box rule still applies. Otherwise why have the point box at all?

To James example:. I would say the card has never left the table. It was played and then went to the point box area.

This highlights my other problem I said in the other thread - "specific vs more general" can often be the eye of the beholder and is not really helpful in many situations.
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By Dukat (Andreas Rheinländer)
 - Gamma Quadrant
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1E European Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
1E German National Runner-Up 2024
#581382
BCSWowbagger wrote: Wed Jul 20, 2022 2:25 am I'm not convinced Bailiff was ever supposed to go to the point area. The Old Glossary said (emphasis mine):
Your used Q-icon cards from your side deck do not go to your discard pile if you have a Q-Continuum side deck. Instead, whenever one of them is discarded or otherwise leaves the table, place it face up underneath your side deck.
That seems to me to be a more specific rule than the more general rule that cards with point boxes go to the point area when they resolve. So I don't see a good reason, even under the old rules, for Bailiff to go to the point area, and so I'm not sure it's right to frame the current behavior as a change.

In any event, I think we've shown that OP's question was not a stupid question. :)
Can you make this into an OFFICIAL ruling?

It seems it is not as clear as it sounds.
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#581497
Hoss-Drone wrote: Wed Jul 20, 2022 10:09 am Oh look, more yes vs no problems.....

I would argue that the rule on point boxes isn't specifically being overridden by card text and so the point box rule still applies. Otherwise why have the point box at all?

To James example:. I would say the card has never left the table. It was played and then went to the point box area.

This highlights my other problem I said in the other thread - "specific vs more general" can often be the eye of the beholder and is not really helpful in many situations.
To be clear: I think the current rule is fairly clear, and we all (so far, at least) seem to agree with it. Cards trump rules, Q-Flash's specifics therefore trump the general bonus point rule (and the "only", in italics, should put all doubts to rest). Meanwhile, the bonus point rule was recently rewritten to explicitly allow some cards to "divert" point-box cards from the bonus point area, which Q-Flash appears to do, so clearly the rules support and even expect this. Finally, the Gift of the Tormenter Glossary entry suggests how these cards should be read:
This card's specific statement that it is placed in a discard pile (even though it is a [Q] card) overrides the gametext that [Q] cards are placed face-up beneath Q-Flash.
This implies that Gift of the Tormenter (a card with a point box) would normally be placed beneath Q-Flash, if not for its unusual extra-specific diversion text.

So, under current rules with current cards, I think we're all in agreement: Mandarin Bailiff recycles into your Q-Continuum side deck. Correct? (It would go to your bonus point area if brought into play by some other means, such as Beware of Q, so the point box is not wholly irrelevant.)

The questions that hoss-drone raises are pretty interesting, but (if I understand them correctly), they pertain only to the old, pre-errata rules, which were decidedly less clear. Fortunately, there is no need for the Rules Committee to rule on old rules; we only support current rules. (Traditional-format players must make their own rulings on tough questions.) Still, it's an interesting question, so let's explore it a bit further.

Before the errata, players had to make a judgment: is the Q-Continuum "it goes back into the side deck" rule more specific than the bonus point area's "it goes to the bonus point area" rule? Players had to make this judgment because, instead of a card vs. a rule, this was a case of a rule vs. a rule. As hoss-drone says, specificity is a tricky concept to pin down, and the old rules were less helpful than the current rules.

The old bonus point rules said that they triggered when a card "resolves scoring," not when it "leaves play" (as it says today). Meanwhile, the old Q-Continuum rules said that they triggered when a card "is discarded or otherwise leaves the table" and not when it "leaves play". Did these old different wordings imply that they operated at different timings? Hoss also suggests that "leaves the table" is different from "leaving play," which is a colorable argument (why would Decipher use such a weird phrasing otherwise), except that it implies that your discard pile should not be on the table. (Did we play this wrong all those years? Were discard piles supposed to be under the table at our feet all along? Nah, I think we can dismiss this as just bad wording; Decipher likely meant "leave play," and that's what Q-Flash now accurately says.)

The old bonus point rules also make no mention of exceptions, which makes it very hard to determine under what circumstances it can be trumped (if any). This is precisely what caused the trouble with [Bor] ships (which have point boxes) and Federation Flagship: Recovered: the argument a while back was that the bonus point rule meant the Borg ships went to the bonus point area before Federation Flagship could save them. The counter-argument was that card trumps rule, but relying on the Golden Rule can be an ugly crutch -- and not always one with an obvious answer anyway. And so the rule was revised to explicitly carve out exceptions to the bonus point area rule.

However, I still think the weight of evidence supports the idea that [Q] icon cards with bonus point boxes returned to your Q-Flash, even under the old rules. The tipping-point argument for me is, again, the Gift of the Tormenter ruling, which read at the time:
Because it specifies that it is placed in a
discard pile, this card overrides the rule to
replace it face up beneath your Q-Continuum
side deck.
Again, GotT has a bonus point box, yet this Decipher ruling doesn't say that its text overrides the rule to put it in your bonus point area; it says the text overrides the rule to put it face-up beneath your Q-Continuum. So Decipher assumed that [Q] cards with bonus point boxes were generally going under your Q-Continuum, not to your points area, even under the older rules, pre-Q-Flash errata, when the answer was much much less clear.

Thus, the Q-Flash errata clarified the existing behavior, which was confusing, and many players seem not to have realized what the rule was -- but the Q-Flash errata did not introduce a change.

P.S. A follow-up question someone might ask: It's true that Mandarin Bailiff's bonus point box could be relevant if Bailiff is seeded with Beware of Q. But Lemon-Aid can't do that, and the existence of Gift of the Tormentor ensures that [Q] [Int] will never be able to seed beneath missions without a Q-Flash the way [Q] dilemmas can. So what gives? Why would Decipher put a point box on those cards instead of just saying "score points"?

The answer is deceptively simple: At the time Q-Continuum was developed, Decipher considered the bonus point "area" optional, a kind of annex to the discard pile (which could not yet be Regenerated, only Toff'd/Res-Q'd), that existed solely for player convenience. The Premiere Rulebook offers the idea lightly, very nearly in the tone of a suggestion. (The only reference is in the section on encountering dilemmas: "Set aside all bonus point cards you've scored as a reminder." In context, this seems to cover only dilemmas, not cards like Particle Fountain.) It was later cards, and our own intense scrutiny of the rules as players, that caused the bonus point area to harden into an actual zone with well-defined, mandatory rules. And it wasn't actually until the CC era, with the errata to Kevin and Amanda to give them point boxes, that we really started to lean on the bonus point area to remove certain cards from the discard pile.

So the expectation at the time the Q cards came out, then, was that it wouldn't even occur to anybody that the bonus point suggestion should override the clear rule that [Q] icon cards return to your Q-Flash. Point boxes were used, I presume, because point boxes are pretty, and clear, and because cards in the game that scored points (at the time) nearly always had point boxes. The conflict came later, as the bonus point rule took on more teeth. (QC is the set where you start to see cracks in that foundation, with Timicin and Subsection Q omitting the point box -- something that I believe only Interrogation had done previously, and even then only for lack of space.)

During the discussion over Fed Flag: Recovered, Rules discussed making the bonus point area fully optional (hearkening back to Decipher's early attitude toward it), but research showed that doing this would affect too many cards nowadays, so we opted to simply make it clear in the rules that the bonus point rule is overridden by explicit gametext.

There you go! More than you could possibly have wanted to know about this bit of rules, but I hope adequate to answer all questions anyone has about current or former rules for Q-icon cards with bonus point boxes.
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 - Gamma Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#581499
@BCSWowbagger

The Federalist Society would be wholly impressed by your adherence to original intentionalism in this sphere buddy. Good thing our cc "supreme court" has term limits and ouster options or I might have to start protesting. :P :P :P :cheersR: [1E-Maq]
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
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#581502
Rejoinder:

I suppose, thinking through it in light of this discussion, I can agree with how things work now, but if we're doing the academic exercise of how things worked then, I'm not sure I'm totally on board with your analysis.

When Q Continuum ORIGINALLY came out in 1996, there was no Flash cycle rule.

Q Flash cards happened, then were discarded into your discard pile. You could Palor Toff/Res-Q them, though it's not entirely clear why you would do so, as you couldn't play them from hand.

However, in that context, "Posting Bail" with the Bailiff *would* put the card in your point area instead of your discard pile. Ditto His Honor..., Lemon-Aid, Pla-Net, etc.

I think that matters because it was never made explicitly clear even after the cycle-flash rules change that bonus point cards were handled differently. I played Q Flash at the highest level for YEARS, including the 2000 World Final with Evan and Kathy refereeing the game, and while they made a spot ruling on Q's Planet having to go on the same spaceline as the Flash it came out of, neither of them said anything when Bailiff went in the point area, implying fairly strongly that we played it correctly at the time.

I think the better historical reading is the one where all the rules apply: any [Q] card with a point box goes to the relevant point area of the player scoring the points, if any points are scored. Otherwise, absent any specific instructions (e.g., Gift), the card returns to the Q Flash.

Prior to last November, that was the way I played it for years. Maybe I played it wrong the whole time, but if I did, both a lot of high level players AND high level rules experts didn't give me any indication otherwise...

Take that for whatever it's worth.

:twocents:
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#581518
Armus wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 4:06 pm When Q Continuum ORIGINALLY came out in 1996, there was no Flash cycle rule.
Hold on, what?

*checks QC rules supplement*

*checks DS9 Glossary*

Yeah, you're right, that necessarily changes my analysis of what Decipher originally had in mind when QC came out!

(I don't think it changes my conclusions, and it would hardly be the first time it turned out that the general custom among high-level players conflicted with the dead text of the rules. But it certainly casts it in a different light!)

When did they add the Q-card cycling? I don't have it in my fairly extensive notes on rule changes. Either it was announced in one of the small number of CRDs I still don't have a copy of, or Decipher just snuck it in one day without telling anybody, as was its frustrating wont.
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
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1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#581520
BCSWowbagger wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 7:06 pm When did they add the Q-card cycling? I don't have it in my fairly extensive notes on rule changes. Either it was announced in one of the small number of CRDs I still don't have a copy of, or Decipher just snuck it in one day without telling anybody, as was its frustrating wont.
If I had to guess, it would be at or around the release of BoG - since tactics were introduced and (I think) had the cycling rule at intro. That probably prompted them to do the same with Q-Flash.

Actually, I found a copy of the BoG supplement online - https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/ ... wgermesorg. and it says
This is now also true for Q-Continuum as well
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#581529
boromirofborg wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 7:12 pmActually, I found a copy of the BoG supplement online - https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/ ... wgermesorg. and it says
This is now also true for Q-Continuum as well
Ah, yes, don't put it under its own heading, Decipher, that would be too communicative! Players might actually find it that way! Put it in a parenthetical aside in an entry about a different side deck. SMDH.

Clearly you all figured it out, though, so whatever system they had going must have worked for the established player base. (Me, I was playing casually with my little 10-year-old friends at the time, and I didn't figure out how Q cards were played until 2012.)
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