by TwitchBot
captainTheo wrote:
As far as the Animal Trainer goes, however, the official rules are resolved heavily in the player's disfavour with respect to Dancer (and Juggler). Specifically, the official rules state that:
"A.Only the food that was lying on the action space can be used to buy animals. If you use e.g. the Juggler or Dancer, the additional food cannot be used.
B.Juggler and Dancer are used before you use the Animal Trainer to buy animals."
Thanks for the response,
Assuming you're looking at the compendium, and not something in the actual rule book I'm forgetting, the ruling that you have listed as "B" above is not an official game rule. The material in brackets in the compendium are unofficial rules that Eugene put in the compendium, which usually represent a general consensus. (Which, for the record, I abide by 98% of the time.)
That was kind of my point in bringing it up. Eugene's rationale for Dancer not comboing with Magician essentially comes down to saying that the Dancer "goes last" and is going to increase your net food (food received after card modifications) up to 4 rather than increasing your gross food (food on the space) up to 4.
But this is contradictory to how to deal with Animal Trainer. We apparently have a precedent in the compendium for other traveling player cards being applied after the Dancer. So why wouldn't Magician work the same way?
This seems to me to be a very ad hoc way of making decisions which is based not on what the cards actually say, but on how we think the designers intended them to work. But we have no such ruling from the designers on this point, and honestly even the Furnace discussion linked to was less than decisive.
It seems to me that there are only two logical ways for Dancer to work:
1) It's just like other occupations, and you can resolve it in whatever order you want - functionally by increasing the number of food on the Traveling Players space up to 4 (though of course this food is not actually ever on the space, so doesn't count for Animal Trainer, etc.) either before or after other TP related occupations are resolved. This is the position that Byrann and Geoff are taking.
OR
2) Dancer is special, and really is more like a special Traveling Players rule for you, that says that any time you receive food from the Traveling Players space, you must receive at least 4 even if you would normally receive fewer. In this case Dancer always "goes last", so it doesn't combo with Magician. This seems to be Eugene's position.
But if #2 is correct, then the Compendium is wrong when it comes to Animal Trainer, and Animal Trainer MUST be resolved before the Dancer - meaning I can spend the food down, and then still get my 4 from Dancer.
Otherwise, in my opinion, the rulings are not logically consistent with each other.