Heretic Joker and Bottom Dealin'

Rules Questions: Doomtown
1

If Heretic Joker ends up in my opponent’s hand after I play Bottom Dealin’ on him, is his hand rank decresed by 3?

2

Yes. And you choose the value too. Congratulations you just won the game.

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3

Yep that’s 100% correct however remember that if it goes to hand rank 1 it will be a king high and not some lower value.

4

But it is the lowest value in hand rank 1 if it goes below 1?

5

Yes thats correct. :slight_smile:

6

Heretic Joker is BFFs with Bottom Dealin’ :slight_smile:

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7

Not to step on your toes here Scott, but that’s not correct. If you modify down you go to the highest version of that rank, if you modify up you go to the lost version of that rank.

So if you modify down to rank 1 (you can’t go lower) you automatically end up with King high

8

Actually we have ruled on this today, If a hand rank would go below 1 it is now viewed as a 6 high

9

Wait.

So the “Raised to lowest and lowered to highest” ruling, a reversal of the “modified to worst for format” ruling has been reversed back?

10

Nah it is not, what Scott is saying is that if you would decrease your hand rank to 1, it has it becomes highest possible hand in this hand rank( you always get highest possible hand in the hand rank when you decrease initial hand rank), but if it would go below hand rank 1, it is the lowest possible hand in this hand rank: A,2,3,4, 6.
At least this is my interpretation of answers above :slight_smile:

11

This rule is currently under discussion. The “Raised to lowest and lowered to highest” ruling is right now still in place. The specific issue is what happens when you would go below Rank 1, hence the 6 high result (since there is no Rank Zero), however, this is still being discussed. For now, please defer to Scott’s ruling on a 6 High if you would go below Rank 1.

12

Hm, maybe I should start another thread for it, but I will ask here. Does rank 11 have highest and lowest hands, or DMH is always tied, regardles of modifiers?

13

This thread is fine and great question! Rules Team is currently discussing both issues so we have a hard clarification on these hand ranks!

14

I’m sure I read somewhere that rank 11 hands are always tied.

Yep - Page 21 of the rulebook.

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15

Whatever get’s decided, hopefully it will apply equally for hand rank 1 and hand rank 11.

Although for a shootout the stakes are much lower than for lowball - because in a shootout a “perfect tie” results in the leader choosing casualties first, effectively becoming the “loser” in a way (just not for the sake of actual card effects). In lowball, a “perfect tie” creates a scenario where the phase can’t actually resolve!

I could see a few things being considered here if a “perfect tie” was allowed to stand:

  1. Redraw lowball hand and try again (with same bonuses, if any).
  2. The Winner from last turn carries over to this turn - players get their antes back.
  3. The Winner from last turn carries over to this turn - and gets to keep the antes too.
  4. All unbooted dudes boot into the Town Square for a grand Shootout (kidding!)

Number 1 may be a little physically card-drawing intensive in some match-ups (think: four Heretic Jokers circulating). Number 2 & 3 fall apart when this happens on the first lowball of the game. Number 4 might make a good game tie-breaker rule…

…

I am reminded of a rule that has always bothered me. Did anybody watch the Superbowl? I consider it incredibly inelegant to take a game about “skill” and go about making a major decision (such as who gets “initiative”) decided by an out-of-game chance element (a coin-flip). This is actually one of the reasons why I like watching Basketball much better than Football.

In Classic, back when Unique dudes were truly Unique (barring Bio-engineering), if both players revealed, say, Jake Smiley in their starting posse, only one player got to keep him. And it wasn’t resolved by a stinking coinflip! It was resolved by a Pull, which, being an in-game chance element, I thought was entirely clever. And more importantly, fair. Because you can build for it.

So what if there was a way in DTR, failing the initial Lowball, to determine initiative (for Grifters and other Reacts and maybe even “perfect ties”) that utilized in-game chance elements? Where is my Jump Ball!

16

Hand Rank 11 cannot have a higher or lower value as @Doomdog states

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17

The rulebook on page 15 does indeed state the resolution for perfect ties in lowball is your scenario 1.

18

Snipped!

19

As well as his helpful reply above, I’d like to thank @soulblight for their diligence in updating dtdb with the latest errata as card reviews. :slight_smile:

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20

I wish I could do more! It’s been a bit since some of the tickets in the Bitbucket have been addressed.

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