http://www.alderac.com/doomtown/2015/06/24/no-turning-back-preview-cookin-up-trouble/
What is he building in there? It is getting a little bit lovecraftian in Gomorra…
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TUMBLEBLEEDS!
They’re like little carnivorous lovecraftian tumbleweeds, with fangs, and razor sharp barbs.
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I think it would be better if this card had two different abilities, similar to One Good Turn and the recent errata to Doyle’s Hoyle:
Noon: Look at another player’s hand.
Cheatin’ Resolution: Look at his hand, choose and discard a card.
The way it’s worded now, sure you get some extra utility by being able to play several of these off one cheatin’ hand. But the problem I see is that we now have to keep track of whether any player cheated or not. Not just register and announce this information, but also keep track of it until the end of turn.
Imagine a situation like this: halfway into the turn I use Circle M Ranch and draw this card. I’m like: “Hey man, did you cheat in lowball?..” - “Heck, I don’t remember, man, let’s try to reconstruct the events… oh damnit, I have already shuffled my discard into the deck since then!”
Maybe I’m overthinking this and it won’t be a problem in actual games, but I just don’t like the idea that I now have to keep track of something that I didn’t have to before, all because my opponent MIGHT be playing this card.
Also, I wonder why can’t you remove cheatin’ cards from your opponent’s hand? Is it for balance or flavor reasons?
It’s not massively hard to track. If you;re running this card, you should be paying attention to your opponent;s draw hands more closely anyway so it shouldn’t pose too much of an issue.
Not hitting cheating res is balance based. Cheating Res effects are there to punish cheating, and rightly so. It’d be a bit too good to allow people to actively remove the hate cards if they’re running 3:16 or other heavily stacked decks.
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I agree with every word, it is not even a big problem for you to remember whether your opponent was cheating or not, it is a big problem to make your opponent remember whether he was cheating, you are practically giving him an information about your deck if you mention it.
I’m also not a huge fan of having to keep a check on that game state…that said, this is a minor check, and as long as this is the extent of it (not something like “If your opponent cheated three times or more…”), then I can live with it.
I don’t think Jonah featured in the Frontier Justice fic, so I’m assuming while the Sloane Gang were messing around with Phil, he was out capturing Tumblebleeds and isn’t aware of what’s currently going on re: riding into town to rescue Lawrence. Looks to me like he’s got his own plans for sowing chaos in Gomorra. Whether these will conflict with the rest of the gang’s interests remains to be seen…
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If I want to play this during a tournament game and my opponent denies cheating previously, how is this handled? I am sure this is a pretty rare case, but good to know nevertheless.
Not on my watch 
This would need to be raised with the TO of the event. Depending on the level of the tournament, flagrant lying / outright deceit could result in anything from a game loss to an event DQ.
Thankfully, I have not come across anyone in our wonderful community that would attempt such a thing.
Ok, discarding a card you choose is a very powerful effect, but isn’t it heavily conditional?
Costs money, can only be used if the oponent cheats and you can’t discard cheatin’ resolution cards…
There are much better, in my opinion, alternatives for the 4 of clubs slot.
Well this is similar to keeping track of once-per-turn abilities. Your opponent can blatantly lie or just forget they used them as well.
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What if i’m playing in a tournament and i draw this from Circle M Ranch, i play this and say “you cheated in lowball” and my opponent says “no i did not” and he already shuffled his discard into the deck, so we call for a judge, and what is the judge supposed to do now?
Yes thats the point. Of course I have to tell truthfully if I cheated but even if my mistake is not intentional, how is the judge able to know?
I’m not sure why drawing this from Circle M is relevent here?
As a TO I would expect every player at one of my events to conduct themselves in a friendly and open manner with everyone they sit down against.
I would expect a thorough investigation to be performed by the judge in question and suitable punishment to be handed out to the cheater (either claiming a cheat to play this card falsely, or denying a cheat to prevent it being played)
Alas, without context or an actual event arising this is too vague a scenario to answer fully without the discussion actually arising.
If it’s a legitimate play / memory error, it is no different from any other play mistake such as pointed out by @db0 above, using an ability more than once a turn by accident (or God forbid, on purpose)
Me and my friend we are using markers to keep track of used abilities, this is different, since normally you didn’t keep a track of that information and by insisting you are doing it you are revealing a card in your deck. Now the situation is created where all of the players ( tournament or not ) start keeping track of this information in every single game or you have to reveal an information about your deck by asking them to do it.
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Honestly, you could just have a token of innocent/cheatin’ that you flip for each player.
Might be a fun thing for tournament prizes.
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If there are more cards like this coming you could introduce this as part of the rules. Some cards can only be played against cheating players or can only be played by innocent ones.
But I really like the card, if there is going to be a reason not to play coachwhip I think this card might be it.
That’s a lot to expect from every player in a tourney for one card that may or may not be in either player’s deck.
I like to play that every time a draw hand/lowball is revealed, they player says “Cheatin” if it’s illegal. This provides an audial cue that can be referenced, and a verbal agreement that it happened.
Having to keep track of once-per-turn abilities is already a rather poor game mechanic, I believe. Other games solve it simply by making you tap the card to show it, and untapping it lets you use the ability one more time. In Doomtown we have this:
- You have to remember if you used it this turn;
- You have to mark it with a counter to remind about it;
- You have to remember to remove the counter at the end of turn.
These things are not big problems by themselves, but they tend to accumulate, and then it’s all the easier to forget about one thing or another, or to have your whole board crammed with markers and tokens and counters. It’s been okay so far, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to consider it as an acceptable design solution and add to it. It’s rather something to avoid.
Regarding the tournament/judge thing - it’s easy to be an organizer and a judge when you expect all your players to be nice and friendly, but ‘keeping it casual’ is not really a good way to make the game popular and widely played. If all you want is a small group of friends playing this game then it’s okay, but if we actually want the community to grow then this is not a proper way to address tournament issues like this. A game should be well-refined.