Archives

Q: What happens if I Draw 3, Play 2 of them, and get Draw 2 and Use Em?

A: The way this works looks like this:

1: You have your hand, and decide to play Draw 3 Play 2 of them (D3P2)
(You put D3P2 on the table, since technically it’s not yet in the discard pile)

2: You set your main hand aside, and draw three cards, creating a temporary sub-hand, or “mini-hand.” One of them is Draw 2 & Use ‘Em (D2UE) and you decide to play that for your first of the two plays.
(You put D2UE on the table, with the other, since technically it’s not in the discard pile yet either)

3: You set aside your mini-hand from D3P2, which is just two cards. They do not get combined with your main hand.

4: You draw 2 cards and use them in whatever order you wish, and then D2UE goes in the discard since it’s finished.

5: You then pick up your 2-card mini-hand, and finish D3P2, by playing your second card and discarding the last one. D3P2 is now completed and goes in the discard pile.

6: Then you pick up your main hand again, and continue your turn (assuming you have any plays left, of course).

There are a few other cards which can cause situations like this, where you are playing a mini-hand (or sub-hand) with a main hand set aside: Fizzbin and Goal Bonanza. Naturally, this means that they could also be involved in a “nested sub-hand” situation as described here, and hopefully you can extrapolate from this example how that would work.

Q: Must you complete an Action before using an optional Free Action allowed by a Rule? What about Keeper powers?

A: Yes, you must complete your compound Action (Draw Two and Use ‘Em, Draw 3 Play 2 of Them, Fizzbin, or Team Up) before you opt to take any optional Free Actions allowed by the Rules.

And, just to preemptively respond about Keeper powers as well, Andy rules that those should also be held until after any compound Action is resolved.

Example: If you could win with the current Goal if you had a Crew Member you don’t have, and you Draw 2 and Use ‘Em, receiving the Captain and some new Goal, you can play the Keeper The Captain (who’s special power lets you steal a Crew Member), but you can’t use his power before you complete the compound Action by playing the second card: the new Goal that you can’t win with. Them’s the breaks sometimes.

Q: If I play Draw 3, Play 2 of Them, and one of the cards I draw is Let’s Keep Doing That, is Draw 3 Play 2 of them available to “Keep Doing”? What about the unused third card?

A: The first answer is very easy: No. D3P2 does not technically go in the discard pile until you are completely done executing everything on the card.

You also seem to be asking whether the card you don’t play from D3P2 is in the discard pile, available to pull out and use with Let’s Keep Doing That.

Technically, you should execute the instructions on D3P2 in the order stated: Play 2 of them, and [then] discard the last card.

So you play D3P2. It’s not technically in the discard pile yet. Then you play, from your mini-hand of 3 cards, Let’s Keep Doing That. Nothing in your mini-hand is in the discard pile yet. You must pick your Action out of the discard pile right then, as part of your play of Let’s Keep Doing that, so, no, the last card from the D3P2 is not yet in the discard pile, available for use with Let’s Keep Doing that. It will be after you’re done playing both of the cards you choose to play, and not before.

Note that this ruling will also apply to Draw 2 and Use ‘Em (D2UE) and Fizzbin. Cards executed from your temporary hand are not in the discard pile until the whole Action is completed.

Q: If I play Draw 2 & Use ‘Em and one of the cards causes me to win, but the other negates it, can I win?

A: You can absolutely win. You just have to play the card that makes you win as the FIRST card. At that point, you just win, and you’re not required to play the other card you drew for Draw 2 & Use Em, since the game is now over.

The situation would be similar if your conundrum was in the middle of Draw 3 Play 2, though this issue is less likely to confuse people, since it’s pretty clear that they have (slightly) more options. Fizzbin or Goal Bonanza can also create a similar situation.

Q: If someone plays Rock-Paper-Scissors Showdown out of their Draw 3 Play 2 mini-hand, and loses, do they lose the mini-hand, or their main hand?

A: Whenever something played during Draw 3 Play 2 (or Draw 2 and Use ‘Em) affects your “hand” it means your real, set-aside hand, never your “temporary mini-hand”. So you’d give up your actual hand if you lost.

That said, if you still had one more card to play from the Draw 3 Play 2, you’d still complete that. It’s even possible that you could recover cards back to your newly emptied real hand, via… I don’t know… Jackpot, Everybody Gets 1, or just a Draw increase (you’d draw the difference between your original draw and the new draw, and these newly drawn cards would go into your newly emptied hand).

Q: What happens if I play an Action that causes my turn to end immediately in the middle of Draw 3 Play 2 or Draw 2 & Use Em (or Fizzbin, or Goal Bonanza)?

…Since these cards are all played as part of a single play, would the player get to finish playing them out, or would their turn just stop? And if it just stopped, what would happen to any unplayed cards? We’ve been letting the player keep them.

A: The clear answer is that if you decide to play one of these turn-ending Actions, your turn would end immediately, and you would not get to continue playing cards from your temporary mini-hand (in other words, no, you would not get to finish playing D3P2/D2UE.

Of course, in the case of Fizzbin, you don’t get a choice as to the order of cards played, but that card most closely resembles D3P2/D2UE, since you set your main hand aside, and are working from a temporary hand of extra cards to execute the Fizzbin.

Using the optional Free Action Rule Goal Bonanza also creates a sub-hand with your main hand set aside. While it’s not in any decks with turn-ending Actions, it’s in the More Packs, which could be added to any deck, including those with turn-ending Actions.

However, there is NO way that any remaining cards would go back into your set-aside hand. They are never intended to go into your actual hand at all, as indicated by the requirement to set your hand aside. Any cards left unplayed when you played the turn-ending card are discarded. If you wanted to play them, you should have done it before the turn-ending card.

Brain Transference: Discard remaining cards in your temporary hand and trade places with the player of your choice. Turn ends.
Time Portal: Choose a card as described and add to your set-aside hand. Discard remaining cards in your temporary hand. Turn ends.
What Do You Want: If you choose to take a Keeper or Goal out of the discard, it goes into your set aside hand. Discard remaining cards in your temporary hand. Turn ends.
I’ll Be In My Bunk or I’ll Be Right Back: This card does not specifically say that your turn ends immediately, but you certainly can’t continue your turn if you “Excuse yourself from the game and leave the room for a few minutes.” Discard any cards remaining in your temporary hand. Leave the room.

Swap Plays For Draws and Get On With It, while they do involve having your turn end immediately, are New Rules, not Actions, so, as you can see from this answer, things would work a bit differently:
See: Can you Get On With It or Swap Plays For Draws with your cards from an Action like Draw 3 Play 2?

Q: When I play Draw 2 And Use Em, or Draw 3 Play 2 (or Fizzbin or use Goal Bonanza), can I look at my set aside hand?

A: Yes, you are allowed to LOOK at your hand, to consult it to see what your best play is from the cards drawn from the action. Your hand is not invisible, it’s just inaccessible.

The main reason we have people set their hand aside is so that they don’t think those Action cards mean they can draw cards, add them to their hand, then play any two cards from their hand (and discard, depending on which Action you’re talking about). So feel free to pick up your set-aside hand and look at it, just keep the cards drawn for the Action separate.

Q: When a card says to “pick up your hand and continue with your turn” does that mean that it didn’t count as one of my plays?

Exactly two cards say “then pick up your hand and continue with your turn”: Draw 3 Play 2, and Draw 2 And Use Em. We have a player who thinks that because those cards say to continue with your turn, those Action cards are a free play, and they still have a play left, even if it’s Play 1.

Since there are 20 other Action cards that do not say “continue with your turn”, he cannot be convinced that these two Action cards are the same as the others (in that they are not free plays).

A: The reason that those two cards say, “…then pick your hand up and continue with your turn,” is that those two cards require you to “Set your hand aside.”

The point that needs to be made to this player is that, just because you “continue with your turn” does not mean you have any plays left. Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don’t. If it is only Play 1, then you used your Play to play that Action.

“Continuing with your turn” means –>evaluating the current rules and seeing what you might have left to do. Sometimes you might have nothing left you can do, and your turn is over.

One thing that should be kept in mind is that all of the cards played as a result of one of those actions counts as a single play. These cards both say that, and this might be the better evidence for your argument, that, while they only count as ONE play, they do count as one PLAY (no more, but also no LESS than one play!)

Hope this is helpful. The reason these are the only two cards that have this wording is because of the way they ask you to set your hand aside, and they need to tell you that when you’re done PLAYING that Action, you do get to pick up you hand again. Luckily, they also have the caveat about how many plays that Action counts as.

Q: What do I do if I draw a Creeper because of an Action?

A: If a Creeper is drawn by the active player, they must take the Creeper (play it in front of themselves) and draw to replace, such that all the cards they have drawn for whatever the Action indicates will contain no Creepers.

For example, if I play Everybody Gets One, then I, as the active player, am the one drawing cards. As such, I have to take all the Creepers I draw, redrawing until I’m holding enough non-Creeper cards to give 1 to each player including myself. In a deck with a lot of Creepers, anything that makes you draw cards is a liability!

Q: If I play Draw 2 And Use Em, and increase the Draw Rule, but then get rid of it with the other card, do I get to draw extra?

For example, if the current rule is draw 1, and the card “draw 2 and use ’em” is played, and the cards drawn are a Draw 4 (New Rule) and Let’s Simplify (Action). The player then plays the new rule card followed by the action to simplify, and removes the new rule; does the player draw the addition cards as per the new rule? We were not sure if having set aside one’s hand would mean that you couldn’t draw those extra cards until the “mini hand” was resolved.

A: You’d resolve the increased draw as soon as it was played, whether your hand is set aside or not. In other words, if you started with Draw 1, and, within the mini-hand played Draw 4, you’d draw 3 more cards, and put them in your set-aside main hand. Then you’d play the Let’s Simplify, and the Draw 4 card would go away.

Note that this ruling will also apply to Draw 3 Play 2 of Them (D3P2), Fizzbin, and when executing Goal Bonanza.

Q: Can I use a Surprise from my set-aside hand to cancel a Surprise played on one of my Draw 2 & Use Em, or Draw 3, Play 2 (or Fizzbin, or Goal Bonanza) cardplays?

Also, could I use a Surprise that was part of the subturn to cancel the attacking Surprise, and if so would that count as one of the plays?

Example:
Player #1 plays “Draw 3, Play 2 Of Them” and gets an Action, a Keeper, and a Surprise.
They play their Action and Player #2 plays Belay That [Avast, Stop That] to cancel it.
–> can Player #1 use the Surprise in their mini-hand to cancel that Surprise,
–> and if so do they still get to play their Keeper afterwards?

A: Yes, you can use a Surprise from your main hand, or from your sub-hand, to cancel another player’s Surprise during your Draw 3, Play 2 Action. Playing a Surprise to cancel a Surprise is a free action, so yes, you would get to play the third card if your second card is a Surprise that you use to counter a Surprise being used to stop your first card.

Using Goal Bonanza also results in the play of a “sub-hand” while the rest of your hand is put aside, and the same things would apply there as well. Yes, you can counter-Surprise from either your main hand or your sub-hand.

In the case of Fizzbin, you don’t have the option of using any of the cards in your temporary hand, you have to play them blind, in random order, so any Surprises that are in that temporary hand won’t be useful to you – but you can still use Surprises in your set-aside hand to counter Surprises played against cards played as part of your Fizzbin action.

Q: Can you Get On With It or Swap Plays For Draws with your cards from an Action like Draw 3 Play 2?

A: You could certainly put either of these New Rules (Get On With It, or Swap Plays For Draws) into play as part of an Action like Draw 3 Play 2 of them (D3P2) or Draw 2 and Use Em (D2UE), or Fizzbin (or your cards drawn via the Rule Goal Bonanza) but you could not utilize their functions while in the middle of executing one of these cards. While all four of these Actions/Free Actions do give you a sort of temporary hand, you can’t substitute it for your real hand to “discard and draw back up to 3”, for example.

You would either need to invoke Get On With It! before the Free/Action with the temporary hand is played or after. The Playing of D3P2/D2UE/Fizzbin/Goal Bonanza, and all actions as a result of it are considered 1 “Play”.

See also: What happens if I play and Action that causes my turn to end immediately in the middle of Draw 3 Play 2 or Draw 2 & Use Em (or Fizzbin, or Goal Bonanza)?

Q: Do cards drawn as part of Draw 3, Play 2 of them count towards the Goal 10 Cards In Hand?

A: No. You have set your main hand aside, and cards drawn as part of Draw 3 Play 2 of Them (or Draw 2 and Use ‘Em) are not considered part of your actual hand. They exist in an alternate temporary mini-hand dimension.

The same is true of the cards drawn as part of utilizing Goal Bonanza. Those cards which you draw and must immediately use are not considered part of your “main hand.”

Q: What happens when you are required to draw more cards in the middle of performing an Action like Draw 3 Play 2?

For example, suppose we are at Draw 1 and I play Draw 5 as the first of my Draw 3 Play 2 cards. I’d need to immediately Draw more cards, right? So Where do they go? Should I put the extra cards in my original hand or in the side hand I’m using for the “Draw 3 Play 2” card?

A: New cards would be added to your set-aside hand in this case. Since you’d already drawn 1 new card at the start of your turn, you’d need to Draw 4 more and add them to your set-aside hand. It’s OK to look at them as you do — in fact, you need to, since you’d need to play and redraw any Creepers that came up in those 4 cards.

Similarly, if you played Jackpot! you’d add the new cards to your set-aside hand, and if you played Discard and Draw, it would be your set aside hand that you’d throw away and replace. If you played Rotate Hands, it would be your set-aside hand that you rotated.

Note that this ruling will also apply to Draw 2 and Use ‘Em (D2UE) and Fizzbin, as well as when executing Goal Bonanza.

Q: What happens if I play Draw 3 Play 2 with no draw or discard pile? Do I redraw it as part of executing it?

A: You would draw as many as you can and make do with what you have at that point, even if that makes it “Draw 0 Play 2 of them.” If you don’t get your full value for the card because of the situation, maybe it’s not a good idea to play that card at this time.

The important point is that you would not redraw the Action played as one of the cards for the Action. The Action card does not become part of the discard pile until after the Action has been fully resolved. (I find it helpful to imagine that the Action card hovers in the air above the discard pile while the Action is happening, perhaps spinning slowly in space so that it can be seen by all, then gently settling down onto the discard pile afterwards.)

Note that this ruling will also apply to Draw 2 and Use ‘Em (D2UE) and Fizzbin. Neither the original action, nor the cards executed from your temporary hand are in the discard pile until the whole Action is completed.

Q: If Inflation is played as one of the cards during the Action Draw 3 Play 2 Of Them, does it apply to the Action in progress?

A: Yes. Since everything happens instantly in Fluxx, Draw 3 Play 2 Of Them (D3P2) suddenly becomes Draw 4 Play 3 Of Them (D4P3, if you will). The player should immediately draw an extra card and add it to the remainder of the cards being chosen from (the mini hand for the Action, not the set-aside main hand). It’s kind of like if you’d only drawn 2 cards instead of the 3 you were supposed to, realizing the mistake after playing one of them, and drawing the extra card you need at that point.

Of course, your regular hand will also need an extra card, since the Draw Rule itself has also incremented. You could do that at the time you’re executing your D3P2 by drawing a card and adding it to your set-aside hand, or you could catch up with that when you pick your regular hand back up again after the action. Note you’ll also have an extra Play to execute as well.

Star Trek Fluxx includes Fizzbin, which is similar to D3P2/D2UE. If Inflation was played as part of Fizzbin, all numbers would need to be increased, so you’d draw an extra card from the draw pile, and take an extra card from your neighbor. You should then reshuffle your temporary Fizzbin hand and continue.

Adventure Time includes the Inflation analogue, Mathematical! Inflation is also available as a promo card to add to any Fluxx deck.

Math Fluxx includes a card called Increment All, which is similar to Inflation except it only affects Actions and New Rules.

Drinking Fluxx includes a card called Double Vision, which is similar to Inflation, but only changes 1 to 2, without affecting any higher numbers, so actually, it won’t affect Draw 3 Play 2, but it’s worth noting.

Q: How do I Trade or Rotate Hands, or Discard & Draw, in the middle of Draw 3 Play 2 or Draw 2 & Use Em (or Fizzbin, or Goal Bonanza)?

Suppose I play Draw 2 and Use ‘Em (D2UE) and the first of the cards I play is Draw 3 Play 2 (D3P2). From the second D3P2 set of cards, I play Trade or Rotate Hands. Which of my three “hands” would I trade – my D3P2 hand, my D2UE hand, or the original hand with which I began the turn?

A: For anything played as part of one of those Actions (D3P2, D2UE, or Fizzbin, or when executing Goal Bonanza) any things referring to “your hand” mean your set-aside “main” hand. So, you would trade or rotate your original hand away (or discard it, if playing Discard & Draw) – the one you set aside at the start of the first set-your-hand-aside Action. The hand you receive through trade or rotation, or from redrawing after discarding it, would then become your new set-aside hand, dormant until all of the D3P2/D2UE/Fizzbin/Goal Bonanza cards are fully processed.