Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Because that judging guideline only solves if your opponent plays a card during your action. How long do you get to decide of you are playing a Dom after your action? Half a second? A second?

I get as long as reasonably needed to make my decision which I signal to my opponent by either playing a dominant or asking if he would like to play a dominant. (Just like I can take a reasonable amount of time to play an enhancement when I have initiative during battle.) My opponent would not be able to play his dominant until asked if he would like to just prior to taking my next action or passing initiative.

If I take a second action without asking, my opponent would be able to call a judge over and say, "He didn't tell me he was leaving the draw phase (or whatever), and I wanted to play my dominant." The judge would then let you play your dominant.

All the while your oppenent is waiting, so he plays his Dom and suddenly no no you were just about to play one responding to own action! Responding to your own action is yet another bandai. Its helps judging but doesn't actually solve the problem.

If you look at the one case where this proposal is actually used currently (playing a dominant versus playing an enhancement in battle), I think you would see that your concerns are overblown. Currently the vast majority of players (even the most competitive) ask, "My initative?" or somesuch prior to playing an enhancement, precisely to avoid any arguments over whether you did/did not give enough time for your opponent to play a dominant. I cannot remember the last time I was called to judge a case of enhancement vs dominant slapjack nor do I see board threads asking about it.

Two posts back you said that basing on outcome on how fast you could get a card out of your hand was a broken mechanic. Not only do I agree with your assessment I would go you one better and say that any "how long do I have to wait" mechanic is just badbadbad. Remove the timing element (to the same extent it is removed for playing enhancements when you have initiative), and you resolve the dominant slapjack problems once and for all, *without* fundamentally changing how dominants work in general.

That would be fine with Dominants followed initiative but they don't. Initiative is a clearly defined mechanic for when you can play a card, that Dominants completely ignore.

I am (like you are) proposing to make changes to the rules on how to play dominants. In my case the change is that dominants would start following initiative, but of a higher priority sort that preempts initiative for non dominant cards. So if you have initiative to play a card or change phases or fill-in-the-blank I could say--"No wait, I want to play a dominant."

Asking your opponent "would you like to play a dominant" is a verbal que to them that if they don't, you are likely going to, it gives them an advantage, and all because we don't have a clearly defined rule for "dominant initiative"

I am proposing that we actually have a defined rule for "dominant initiative." This rule would be a straightforward extension of the existing rules for initiative in a manner that is essentially the de facto standard for how dominants get played in battle proper.

I agree that asking for initiative to possibly play a dominant may give my opponent an advantage--just like asking if I have initiative to play an enhancement signals I may be interested in playing an enhancement. So what we should do is compare the results of our two proposals. Which do you feel is the larger advantage...giving your opponent a verbal clue that you may be interested in playing a dominant or being prevented from playing a dominant at all outside of battle when it is not your turn?