From: allan@sunk.hc.ti.com (Allan Poindexter)
Subject: Re: Fungus and Terrorist
Organization: TI Computer Science Center, Dallas
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 18:23:11 GMT


In article <DELOURA.92Dec19235925@felix.noaapmel.gov>
deloura@noaapmel.gov (Robert DeLoura) writes:

   An interesting situation came up in one of our games this evening.  I
   was Fungus, and the Terrorist had planted a bomb on one of my
   planets.  He attacked that planet with one token.  When I defeated
   him, I took his single token and "adhered" it to one of my tokens on
   the planet he'd attacked.  Then, he pointed out that the planet was
   bombed.

   If that counts as "new tokens landing on the planet", then Fungus is
   "damned if you do, damned if you don't" anytime he's challenged on a
   planet that has a bomb on it (very annoying).

No one said that the the Terrorist power had to give Fungus a break.
The wording is not "new tokens landing on the planet" it is "Whenever
new tokens arrive on a booby-trapped world".  The wording is clear and
specific.  New tokens have arrived.  The Terrorist bomb would go off in
this circumstance.

   However, on careful reading of the Fungus power, we decided that this
   did not set off the Terrorist bomb, and I was curious what other
   people think about this.

You owe the Terrorist player an apology and a forfeit.

   We're playing with the Mayfair set, and the relevant clause from
   Fungus reads:  You control these Fungoid stacks, each of which is
   considered to be one token for purposes of play, e.g. taking
   consolation, going into the cone, etc.  When your total force is
   counted in a challenge, however, each token in each stack counts
   separately as one of your tokens.

   We decided that since there were two tokens on the planet before the
   results were known, and there were still two tokens ("for purposes of
   play" -- since we weren't counting totals in a challenge, the three
   tokens only count as two), we chose to say that no "new" tokens had
   really landed on the planet, and thus the Terrorist bomb did not go
   off.

We are not performing a count here.  We are observing the arrival of new
tokens.  Whether or not the resulting adhered stack is considered one
token the new tokens *did* arrive so the bomb should go off.

   This upset poor Terrorist (phaedrus@halcyon.com) a bit, since this
   was his last bomb, but I had little pity for him, since I managed to
   blow up his other two bombs on my first two challenges.  We did the
   cheesy thing, of course, and never set off his bomb, so he never got
   to plant new ones :-) (It was a 3-power game, and he was Dictator, so
   he got plenty of chances to get back at us for our attitude.)

I find this more than a little disturbing.  After cheating him out of
one use of his power you cheat him out of the entirety of it.  I'm sure
glad I don't play with you guys.  At the very least you should have
allowed him to designate a new planet if you are going to treat him this
way.

   What do the rest of you think?  Is Fungus just screwed anytime he's
   challenged on a bombed planet?  Or was this interpretation
   reasonable?

Fungus clearly has a weakness against Terrorist.  He is as you say "just
screwed".

Am I the only one who has noticed that Fungus seems to come up in more
than its share of rules interpretation problems?

dex

Organization: Doctoral student, Mathematics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA