Secret decklist

jhattara wrote:

This game is not Magic. We do not need rules for everything. Use common sense.

For example, if you read the rules like devil reads the bible, you can not place the Rack under the vampire it supplies the blood to, because the Rack in reality is not attached to that vampire. However, in most cases the Rack is placed as it would be attached directly to that vampire.

Which would be incorrect and I would (as both player and/or judge) tell the player to correct it. It might not be the most important thing, but it's still better to follow rules and card text than to move away from it.
I'd say that it's rather you who "read the rules like the devil reads the bible" when assuming that anything not explicitly prohibited is automatically allowed. Do note that in this case, having things on top of other cards (without rules or card text allowing it) goes against rulings by LSJ (and common sense, imo).

jhattara wrote:

Same for Edge. You can place the Edge on top of something as a reminder. As long as it doesn't obscure anything and it cannot be mistaken for something it is not.

How are the rules and rulings unclear? Apparently we do need rules for certain things, and in this case we even have them. The edge has nothing to do on top of cards, thus it should not be put there.

henrik wrote:

jhattara wrote:

This game is not Magic. We do not need rules for everything. Use common sense.

For example, if you read the rules like devil reads the bible, you can not place the Rack under the vampire it supplies the blood to, because the Rack in reality is not attached to that vampire. However, in most cases the Rack is placed as it would be attached directly to that vampire.

Which would be incorrect and I would (as both player and/or judge) tell the player to correct it. It might not be the most important thing, but it's still better to follow rules and card text than to move away from it.

How do you place 40+ cards on Una without placing any of them on each other?

jhattara wrote:

I know that in the strictest sense of the rules it would be incorrect. But regulating where attached cards and non-attached but related cards exactly should be is useless. Only thing that matters is that people playing the game know with a single glance what is happening.

One good example for this are Imbued. When playing Imbued I usually have 2 or 3 stacks of cards, one with the Imbued and the non-mobile attachments, one with tapping attachments (Powers) and convictions. If I'd have all those in a single stack I'd be stalling the game, because I'd have to handle the whole pile of cards every single time I'm doing something with them. Same goes for other decks that use huge amounts of attached cards, especially if some of the attached cards are going to burn, move or tap regularly.

I've never had a judge question my habit of not putting attached cards directly under the card they are attached to (because everyone in the game knows they are) or stacking for example my master locations, as they were attached to each other (because everyone in the game knows they are not). And in my experience both are general practices, although explicitly declared non-kosher by Scott.

Just play the game. Don't complain about semantics, if there are no problems.

I agree totally with your reasoning JHattara, except in the following :

Cards that can be stolen (like Rack can), should never be put UNDER other cards. I am very sensitive about that, and insist in our playgroup to follow that. I have seen rack go overlooked because people have put it "on" (or rather under) their vampire, when it is clearly not the place for it to be, but rather in front of everybody, at the table, so that everybody can easily see it, and decide weather to take the action or not.

jhattara wrote:

I know that in the strictest sense of the rules it would be incorrect. But regulating where attached cards and non-attached but related cards exactly should be is useless. Only thing that matters is that people playing the game know with a single glance what is happening.

And such glancing becomes harder when putting things on cards that shouldn't be there, or stacking cards that shouldn't be stacked.

jhattara wrote:

One good example for this are Imbued. When playing Imbued I usually have 2 or 3 stacks of cards, one with the Imbued and the non-mobile attachments, one with tapping attachments (Powers) and convictions. If I'd have all those in a single stack I'd be stalling the game, because I'd have to handle the whole pile of cards every single time I'm doing something with them. Same goes for other decks that use huge amounts of attached cards, especially if some of the attached cards are going to burn, move or tap regularly.

I don't see how this is relevant. Those are cards that should be placed on imbueds and the way you describe it, they are indeed placed on the imbueds. Having more than one stack, for clarity, doesn't hurt.
Having the edge on a card does nothing for clarity, rather the opposite.

jhattara wrote:

I've never had a judge question my habit of not putting attached cards directly under the card they are attached to (because everyone in the game knows they are) or stacking for example my master locations, as they were attached to each other (because everyone in the game knows they are not). And in my experience both are general practices, although explicitly declared non-kosher by Scott.

Putting card X under card Y (with Y being fully visible while X is halfcovered, usually having only the card name and part of the art visible) is the card game definition of putting card X on card Y. I don't see the need to debate this here.

Putting cards, counters or other things on cards, counters or other things except when the rules tells you to, is against the rules. It's as simple as that. Whether this is heavily enforced by judges or other players is irrelevant.
I've seen and heard of people doing all sorts of things that they thought was clear, general practice.
Having blood counters above vampires instead of on the card.
Having vampires rotated 180 degrees to indicate torpor instead of moving them to a different place in you play area.
Doing things like that is wrong, and if you're called on it you should stop. Putting the edge on cards is another of those things. It's not where it should be. If the edge was supposed to be on a card, the rules would tell you to put it there.

jhattara wrote:

Just play the game. Don't complain about semantics, if there are no problems.

Sure. The problem I found here though, was people suggesting that illegal placement of objects was actually well withing the rules. Since it isn't so, I tried to explain.
I understand that many of us are doing some things out of habit, like placing cards on each other in certain ways etc. In our playgroup we did that with events, locations, masters in play for a long time. We've stopped that, since it's not a good way to play. It might give you some space, but you have to pay for that space with more often missing cards in play.
Except for stacking multiple copies of the same card on each other there are no reason to put cards on each other unless the rules tells you to do so. Of course, I'd separate the stack of multiple copies of the same card if I was told.