However, if the only supporter there is Engineer’s Adjustments, then the player has the option to fail the Portrait, whether or not they are holding an energy. The fact that they fail the portrait instead of using Engineer’s is NOT an assertion that they have no energy in their hand.
Except that is the only reason they are allowed to fail to use a Supporter, as per the rules. You can't just play
Engineer's Adjustments and then say "I have no Energy" in order to discard it. You know, as has been ruled:
Compendium BW said:
Q. If I don't discard an energy, can I play "Engineer's Adjustments"?
A. No. You must be able to discard an energy to play the card. (HS:Unleashed FAQ; May 13, 2010 PUI Rules Team
It’s an invocation of private knowledge. I don’t have to disclose to you whether I have any energy, so I can use card effects as if I do not.
Better start linking to the actual rules, because seriously, you're making this up or grossly misunderstanding the rules. Your hand is private knowledge
until an effect requires you reveal your hand; then you have to reveal it.
It is completely legitimate for me to Super Scoop Up a Pokémon, N for 1, and fail a Poké Ball. Of course I must have a Pokémon in my deck, but I can act as if I don’t because it isn’t public knowledge.
I shall assume you are using Super-Scoop Up on an Evolution, since otherwise it would be possible to lack a Pokemon in your deck. :wink: Your presumptions are incorrect: the deck is not private knowledge, but always considered to be in an unknown state of randomized flux. I surmise this is actually a very simple concept: having to demonstrate your deck lacked a card you searched for would be very time consuming. Instead of simply printing search cards so that you could search a select "no cards", someone decided to invent this "deck is not known" nonsense, over-complicating the matter.
If you have read this thread, you do know that I have made it quite clear I consider the reasoning behind why search cards can fail
to be flawed and the only reason I have resigned myself to it is... I don't speak Japanese. This is a carry over Japanese ruling, apparently, so it does me no good to bring it to the local powers-that-be. The best I can do is make appeals to other players, in the hopes of generating a large enough group that suddenly, it is worth pointing out to the Japanese that "In English, these rules don't make sense."
It’s also legitimate for me to act as if I don’t have an energy card in my hand when I do. They could fail the Portrait and immediately attach an energy! There’s nothing wrong with that.
No, it isn't. Literally against the rules, like the one I gave above.
Playing a supporter and Portraiting one are not the same! Portrait merely “uses the effect” of a supporter.
This was established by past rulings, not you. :nonono: The reason it comes up is your argument, like many bad arguments, keeps providing grounds that at least require discussing to make sure they don't apply to the Supporters themselves.
That’s using a power to no effect, not removing a card from your hand to no effect. In fact, activating Portrait has already generated an effect by revealing your opponent’s hand.
At which point you should have stopped and asked yourself "Maybe I am not understanding what Otaku is saying? Or others for that matter: your argument is similar to some previous ones that were already discussed, though I think it may be different enough that even proponents of "take the opponent's word for it" would be confused or worried.
Of course there’s no option; you must use a supporter. However, consider what would happen if their only supporter were a twins and you were ahead. There would be no legal target and the power would end without the selection of a target.
No, the Power would attempt to select Twins, resulting in a game state check to see if you would be allowed to activate the effect. Assuming the player using Portrait has equal to or more Prizes than his/her opponent, this check is made so that
both players know it. In many TCGs, this would be called "fizzle"; as much of the effect as could be resolved was resolved, and when nothing more could be done the effect terminates.
The same thing would happen if there were an Engineer’s Adjustments. You are the only one who knows your hand, so you can either show your energy and activate the supporter, or withhold the information and thus eliminate a legal target for portrait.
No, because that would be cheating; if you have the Energy, you must use it.
You were absolutely right when you said,
...other effects that depend on the contents of your hand require you verify those contents in some manner.
Those cards all depend on the fact that
you know your hand.
No, most require you show your opponent the card in question, or your hand. You see, it has already been established:
Compendium BW said:
Q. Dark Dragonite's Pokémon Power does not have the "you cannot use this Power if your bench is already full" text like most other Bench-building powers and attacks do. Does this mean that by using Dark Dragonite you can bypass the normal five-Pokémon limit to your bench?
A. C'mon. That's silly. There isn't room to put the reminder text on every single card. The rule is the bench can only have 5 max (EVER). (April 27, 2000 WotC Chat Q43)
It is recognized that contingency text for every situation cannot fit on a card, or even to cover general principles that are thought self-evident. So far, the cards in question have the relevant text, but the situation with Portrait is not standard procedure. While I think better wording or design can eliminate this problem in the future, here it seems odd to assume that while other cards require verification, not this one.
You use a Lass, you have to show your hand. Yes, it is part of the text, but it is part of the text because without it you could easily cheat and ignore the effect until you'd drawn enough cards to claim the Trainers you didn't shuffle back into the deck were recent draws.
Thus, you know if you are playing a card to no effect, which is of course illegal. Think about it the other way: you can always act as if you don’t have an energy, and not play the Engineer’s from your hand. If you portrait, you have a choice between choosing engineer’s and using it, or failing the portrait due to a lack of a legal target. (I would argue you can choose engineer’s and subsequently deny that you’re holding an energy, even if you are, but I’ll just argue the easier case) If you can act as if you have no energy and thus not play Engineer’s, why can’t you fail the Portrait since your opponent doesn’t know if you have an energy?
Because you just initiated an effect that must resolve to the full, legal extent, and that requires verifying that you do or do not have an Energy in hand. If you have any Energy, you must play one as per the effect. If you do not, then you must prove it. Like I said, it is as if a player already has played Engineer's Adjustments and now must prove that it was a goof.
Also, there is a reason that they don’t print cards with text like “your opponent chooses an energy card from their hand and discards it”; because they wouldn’t do anything since neither I nor the game are privy to my opponent’s hand.
At the very least, there is Lass, which forces both players to reveal their hands and shuffle the Trainers there back into their respective decks. Knowing that the hand is otherwise private knowledge, yes the text was included here, so that a player couldn't accidentally (or intentionally) miss shuffling a Trainer in. Given the official ruling as well as extrapolation from rulings other than the ability to fail deck searches, Portrait lacks such a clause because of how rarely it would come into play.
Any card which discards a particular sort of card from their hand explicitly says in its text to look at the opponent’s hand, precisely in order to avoid the portrait/ engineer situation. Why?
Because they aren't an effect copying the effect of another card that normally couldn't be in this situation.
Because it would allow the opponent to decide whether or not to trigger the effect. So they all temporarily make the opponent’s hand public knowledge. The smeargle situation doesn’t require a hand reveal. You can’t just invent card text in order to make the effect like all similar effects in the past.
As outlined above, there is a limit to the amount of text that a card may be printed with, and some text can indeed be assumed to be there. Compare this to inventing meta-rulings, as you have been doing. Note that the reason others have said a judge needed to be called over was to preserve the secrecy of the contents of an opponent's hand. It isn't because a player can play this card while "failing" to meet the to-play requirements.
If there were a supporter which said “your opponents discards an energy card from his/ her hand and draws three cards” the opponent could decide whether to discard and draw three or do nothing.
Nope. The effect isn't optional in that wording. Either the card needs an errata so that it was option or it should have included a clause allowing you to see your opponent's hand. This would require errata or a judge be called over to verify.
The reason Smeargle is so confusing is because normally the person holding the Engineer’s puts it on the table knowing they have the energy to use it. In this case, the holder of the Engineer’s has no idea whether the potential user has the energy to use it. Thus, a unique situation arises in which I can fail portrait because one of the card effects either has or doesn’t have a legal target, at the discretion of him who holds the hand which may or may not have energy.
I really wish I could explain this in person. It’s incredibly difficult to articulate.
You're explaining it okay, your logic is just flawed. You've brought up old arguments except now its okay to cheat. Your ideas run contrary to the spirit of the game... except that foolish ruling about deck searches. At this rate people are going to think I put you up to posting this: this is the exact kind of rules lawyer-ing I was worried about. Despite the fact both players have a responsibility to maintain the game state and ensure cards are correctly played, you are putting forth an argument that one play may deceive another since a player's hand is private knowledge unless an effect reveals it.
