Card Game: Fill hand or deal all cards?

[shnar]

At the beginning of the mission when you are supposed to deal the cards, do you fill the Troubleshooter's hand to the number of cards he/she is supposed to have? Or do you simply deal out that number of cards?

For example: A Red Troubleshooter has 3 cards left at the end of a mission. The next mission starts, after the cards are dealt, does she have 5 cards in her hand, or does she have 8 cards? (i.e. dealt a new 5 cards giving her 8, or simply filled her hand to a total of 5 cards)

The rulebook makes it seem like you're supposed to deal that number of cards, so that's how we played it. But then we started finishing missions really quickly, and people were getting a lot of cards (I had over 20 at one time). That's when we wondered if it meant to fill your hand instead of a fresh new 5+ cards.

Which leads to a followup question, if you deal fresh new cards, players can potentially have very big hands. What happens if you run out of cards? (Might be interesting to say that holding too many cards is treasonous, and at the mission debriefing, for every card you have more than your Troubleshooter is dealt, you get a Treason token. For example, a Red Troubleshooter that had 7 cards would get 2 Treason tokens (their hand size is only 5). This would add another frantic element to the game, so that TBs are desparate to get rid of cards before the debriefing)

-shnar

 

[PaulB]

A Troubleshooter keeps their existing cards and fills up. If they already have the same number of cards as their hand size allows, they get nothing.

Paul

 

[shnar]

Is there a cap to the number of cards you can have? I had 2 Secret Society cards, and so had 4 more cards than my original hand size. Can I do that?

-shnar

 

[MarkIV]

Below is one of the new rules I want to add in the expansion:

*NEW* -- Deal Cards phase: All players (including dead players) must discard their remaining Action cards at the end of the Card Play phase. They receive a new hand during the Deal Cards phase.

That said, there is no maximum limit to a hand size.

 

[shnar]

That's something we were thinking of, and we ended up playing that at the next card phase, you filled your hand to the number of cards you were supposed to have. If you happened to have more, so be it, you were able to keep them, but you took no new cards. This allowed you to take advantage of having more cards, but didn't make it so you would hoarde the cards (as was the case if you simply dealt out the number of cards at each cardphase).

-shnar

 

[PaulB]

I prefer the fill up to hand-size keeping existing cards - or just be stuck with your existing cards if already equal to hand-size. If you're stuck with a hand of cards, they're either odd, inappropriate or you're a hoarder... and it seems appropriate your Troubleshooter will go up against each new mission with the same heap of rubbish again and again until you use it.

An inadequately equipped Troubleshooter works best for me, compared to one who constantly gets fresh new equipment assigned by The Computer for every mission.

Paul