Archives

Q: Can Invitation to Join the Q be stopped by a Memo?

…It kind of gets played after the game has ended, so does that work?

A: Yes, a Memo CAN stop the playing of that win card, even though it’s a kind of a little bit after the game ends. Memos, like Surprises, are meant to be that powerful.. provided they’re used in a timely manner. It’s meant to work in much the same way as the Secret Cultist Surprise, which can be stopped by another Surprise.

Q: When a player is allowed multiple plays on their turn, are there any guidelines for timing between plays?

A: TLDR: Officially, no… BUT, when playing in any of our games which include interrupt cards which cancel a previous play (Surprise, Memo From Your Future Self, Stop Time) it’s good practice to play a little slower if you happen to be executing multiple plays, so that your opponents have plenty of time to play one of these cards, should they so desire.

Deliberately playing super-fast, “shotgunning” as one fan put it, is just rude, and, rather than avoiding arguments about interrupts, actually ends up causing them. So if you have someone who insists upon playing that way, feel free to implement a requirement of a full one-hippopotamus silent count between card plays. We think those worried about their second-to-last winning play being foiled by an interrupt will find that others are not as psychic as they feared. Read on…

So here’s a typical Surprise situation, which can cause a bit of controversy:

I recently won when the rules called for Play 2. I played my first card, a Keeper, and then a moment later I played a Goal card that caused me to win. My opponent then showed me that he had the Surprise card in his hand that could have stopped me from playing the Keeper, and we had a brief discussion about whether I should have left him more time to consider playing it.

In my opponent’s defense, I didn’t leave him much time to play his Surprise card that would have allowed him to take my Keeper for himself. In my defense, he didn’t really have any reason to play the Surprise card and take the Keeper – until he saw that my next play was the winning Goal.

So… are there guidelines on timing between playing consecutive cards?

Slapping them down so quickly that no one has a chance to do anything doesn’t seem entirely fair – but it also doesn’t seem strategic after playing a card to wait and look around at other players to see if they have any game response before playing the next card.

(Related question: A player doesn’t have to “announce” or “report” their play out loud, right? They can just play their cards and if other players aren’t paying attention, that’s the fault of the other players? We all want to have good sportsmanship, but you know how games can sometimes get, in terms of either other players not paying attention, or in terms of being very competitive!)

Here’s our response:
While we don’t have any official guidelines about exact timing of card plays, We recommend a slight pause between a two-card play like this when the active player knows it’s going to make them win. It’s rarely the case that the person with the Keeper-stopper will intuitively know that the necessary Goal is coming… until it gets there (or vice-versa: if they had the Goal-stopper, and you’d decided to play the Keeper last, they couldn’t know you’d have the winning Keeper to play after the innocuous Goal), so playing slow is often to your advantage, as the player who’s about to win.

In fact, playing casually, even pretending you don’t know what you want to play next, can be a great move. Playing slowly enough to allow a possible Surprise doesn’t have to mean broadcasting your impending win. (For example, looking significantly around the table as if expecting a challenge). Of course, announcing your your play is in no way required, but could even be part of your nonchalant act, depending on how you do it. (“Hmm… Well, there’s this Small Moon… and… let’s see… That’s No Moon, for the win!”)

That said, one often doesn’t have the presence of mind to think about deliberately hesitating. In real life, you’re usually just taking your play, and winning, at regular game speed.

Here is where the question is really about what your opponent was thinking, and they have to be honest about it: did it only occur to them to play the Surprise after you’d played the winning Goal? If you’d just accidentally played the Goal first, and then the Keeper, their Keeper-canceling Surprise would have gone through and prevented your win. But just as they couldn’t know your next play would be the end of the game, you couldn’t know they had a Surprise. For all you knew, they had the Goal-stopping Surprise, and it’s just chance which order you chose to play those two cards in. It’s not as though you deliberately played in such a way as to deliberately thwart a Surprise on your first play.

The thing to point out here is that, had you stopped playing after the Keeper, would it even have occurred to them to use the Surprise? Probably not, if they’re being honest. It’s extremely rare that one’s opponent is prescient or observant enough to realize that this play might be your second-to-last. People rarely want to squander a Surprise on the off-chance that your next play will be the winning one*. In the kind of situation you describe, the Surprise-having player usually just shrugs, and says “Darn! I had [the Surprise that would have prevented your second-to-last play], and I could have stopped that play, but it’s too late now… Oh well. Let’s deal again…”

Because, in the end, if they didn’t get that Surprise in after the applicable card, that’s the way it goes, and that’s the official ruling if people get – ahem – unruly.

*I mean, imagine it. If they’d canceled your Keeper before you’d played the winning Goal, your best reaction is probably simply to shrug as if mildly confused by such a powerful play, apparently for nothing, and make them feel like they just wasted their Surprise on a random Keeper play… heh heh. You don’t have to let them know they totally blocked your win. Meanwhile… you don’t have to get upset about missing that chance… it’s just Fluxx, and victory is snatched away at all the time in the course of any given game – usually completely by accident. Or you can let them know their spidey-senses were working, or congratulate them on how observant they are. It’s up to you.

Now let’s return to that “shotgunning” player who’s deliberately playing quickly so that nobody can slip a Surprise in on that penultimate play… It is, as the fan above pointed out, not entirely fair, and, moreover, it invites the argument “But you didn’t leave me enough time to play my Surprise!” If, on the other hand they had played it slowly, as described above, their opponent has no excuse to challenge the win, on the claim that they “were going to play a Surprise.” The opponent had plenty of time, but in the vast majority of cases, they won’t play the Surprise, because they have no idea what’s coming next. That’s part of the beauty of Fluxx!

Q: When using Memo From Your Future Self (or any of its analogues) to cancel a Rewind or similar card, do you have to cancel that card, or can you wait to see what was pulled before canceling?

A: You can wait. If someone plays a card like a Rewind, you can choose to cancel the Power Action itself, and save that player the trouble of going any further, or you can wait until they choose a card, and then cancel the card they selected as they use it.

In the Back to the Future card game, similarly, you can stop someone from ever even going on a time trip by canceling the Time Machine card outright, or you can wait to see what they do with it, and then cancel that. Either way, the Time Machine goes in the trash and the Timeline remains the same.

Q: Can I use a Memo From Your Future Self to stop an Artifact/Item ability?

A: Basically, yes. In cases where you’d discard that card from play in order to use its power, you could target that card with the Memo, causing it to be discarded without effect. That’s pretty straightforward. For example, in Chrono-Trek, the Artifacts which could be discarded from play to be used as an Inverter would simply be discarded without effect.

For Back To The Future (BttF) only, note that if a Time Car is being memo’d it’s that card which would go into the discard pile without effect, but any required fuel item would remain (Plutonium, Lightning Prediction, Overpowered Locomotive, or the card discarded to use v4 would go back into the players hand).

Most Artifacts in Chrononauts don’t have powers, but a few that do would be affected: promo card Carl Sagan’s Joint, for example. In this case you’d normally give away the Joint and gain an Artifact from another player. If that forced trade is memo’d, the Joint would go in the trash (you were going to lose it to the other player anyhow) and the other player’s Artifact would remain with them. (I guess there weren’t a few puffs left after all…)

More complicated are Items/Artifacts/Gadgets whose power is passive. These include the (BttF) Gray’s Sports Almanac, Mr. Fusion, The Jade Statue of Tirade, any and all Gadgets. In these cases, you cannot stop the usage of their powers. If their power allows or involves the play of another card, THAT card may be targeted for cancellation via memo, but those cards already in play are not themselves affected by memos.

For example, when attempting to “feed” Mr. Fusion a card from your the table to gain two cards in your hand, it’s that card which would be targeted by the memo, and discarded with no corresponding benefit, and Mr. Fusion would remain on the table.

When “using” the Jade Statue of Tirade to get the extra bonus for Sell and Artifact or Perform A “Miracle”, it’s those Action cards which would be targeted and discarded, and the Jade Statue would simply remain in play, unsold, or unused as a “Miracle”.

The only time these cards with passive powers could be targeted by a Memo is when they themselves are actually being played to the table, in which case, instead of going into play, they’d go into the discard pile.

Q: In the Back To The Future card game, it says that the Fax cannot be used to prevent it’s own theft, but what about countering a counter-memo?

…If someone tried to steal my Fax with You’re So Gullible, and I counter it with You Steal My Stuff? and they counter with a Memo, can I counter THAT with the Fax, since it wasn’t the original card being used to steal it?

A: No, not if it was the Fax which was the original item being stolen. It cannot participate in any way to intervene in its own theft.

Q: If someone Memos my Really Fast Time machine extra play, do I get to draw to replace it?

In this case it was a Patch, and obviously I would not get to draw an extra card as a reward for patching the timeline, and the card I’d attempted to play (whether a Patch or an Inverter) would be discarded, not put back in my hand, but we couldn’t agree on whether I could draw a card to replace this second play given by the Really Fast Time Machine. Since the attempt to play a card had been canceled, would the resulting draw to replace also be canceled? We didn’t think a Memo should decrease the size of the targeted player’s hand, but we weren’t sure.

A: Yes, you would still get to draw to replace your Memo’d Patch/Inverter. Usually, on your turn, you draw and then play, to keep your hand size unchanged. Normally, if someone had memo’d a Patch/Inverter played as part of a normal turn, the target player would have already drawn the card that keeps their hand the same size. It’s only because this is a special extra action that you end up drawing after you play, and it’s done to maintain the correct hand size.

With that in mind, it’s the playing of the Patch/Inverter which has been Memo’d, and not the corresponding draw, which is more a function of the Time Machine. As you point out, memos should not decrease the hand size of the target.

Q: Can someone Memo a Memo?

i.e. can you stop someone playing a “Memo to Your Future Self” by playing a Memo or using the Cake card’s Memo ability?

A: Yes, a Memo can indeed be used to stop another Memo. And it’s mighty satisfying when you do! This also applies to the similar cards found in the Back To The Future card game.

“Looks like I Got There First to your dinosaur trap, and captured that Stegosaurus you thought you had.”

“Oh no you didn’t, because I sent a Memo to myself, telling me that you’d get there before me, so I got there 15 minutes before you, so actually, I still have Steggy.”

“Oh yeah? Well I sent myself a Memo telling me that you were going to get there 15 minutes before I got there before you, so I got there 15 minutes before you got there 15 minutes before me getting there before you, so actually, the dino is mine…”