Reading the chain without slowing the game down
A practical order of operations for the moments when three things want to happen at once.
Most chain arguments are not rules disagreements. They are two players describing the same board in a different order. Fix the order and the disagreement usually disappears before a judge is called.
Say the board out loud
Before anything goes on the chain, name three things: whose turn it is, what is already on the chain, and what is waiting to trigger. If you and your opponent cannot say those three things the same way, stop there — you are not arguing about the rules yet.
- Whose turn, and whose priority.
- What is on the chain, bottom to top.
- What has triggered but has not been put on yet.
Resolve top down, one at a time
Take the top object, resolve it fully, then let both players act again. The most common mistake at kitchen tables is resolving two objects as a batch because they “go together”. They never go together.
If you cannot point at the object you are resolving, you are not resolving it. You are guessing.
When the board changes underneath
A destination, a target or a cost that was legal when the object went on the chain may not be legal by the time it resolves. That is fine and it is not a rules violation — the effect simply does as much as it still can, and the rest does nothing.
Practise this with the corner-case questions in the trainer. They look absurd, but the sequencing muscle they build is exactly the one you need at a real table.
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3 comments
The "say the board out loud" habit alone has saved me two judge calls this month. Worth adding that it also slows down opponents who are trying to rush you.
Agreed — and it is much harder to accuse someone of slow play when they are narrating rather than staring.
As a new player this was the first explanation of the chain that actually stuck. The three questions are going on a card in my deckbox.