I think the frustration comes from Fixer not being able to help himself with the card, outside of overdrive the only benefit he gains from Salvage yard is the ability to skip his own turn to help others with Grease gun, or recover destroyed cards, which is external to himself.
Basically Fixer is a support character that looks like he isn't. He has pretty great card draw with toolbox, and recovery with salvage yard, and the other heroes who match that draw or recovery power all have ways to use those cards, Fixer doesn't even drop cards in hand by replacing tools. Heroes that have internal ways to build their hands up, Omni, Tachyon, Bunker, Haka, Wraith, Tempest, Fanatic, Unity, Nightmist, Chrono Ranger, Scholar all have ways to either play more cards in a aturn or discard/destroy their cards themselves.
Fixer does not. It can be frustrating to have a huge hand with no purpose to it. DW Fixer solves that problem for those people, as you are destroying cards, using toolbox to hunt for more cards to destroy, and Salvage yard to bring them back for another round of destruction.
I have definitely had games when I got Salvage Yard early and it wasn't useful, and that is indeed frustrating, knowing that you've got a potential power card but no way to actualize it. When your teammates among them will get back perhaps three cards from the Yard, you really don't want to play it yourself if you get nothing out of it (at least if you're fairly selfish like me).
Yes. This is essentially what I was trying to convey. I misspoke about a few of the characters' discard/destruction and recovery abilities, but DW Fixer is very much more proactive than reactive. It isn't so much that having his cards in the trash is a tactical advantage as it is a more proactive way to utilize his hand than swapping out Tools with more backups than you might know what to do with.
And yes, Grease Gun is the card that classic Fixer can use Salvage Yard to recover equipment without reacting to villain/environment(/occasionally hero) destruction.
I sat down to add the info about upside down cards not having keywords or text to the FAQ, but got hung up on this:
Game Play: At the start of the villain turn, if there are (H) cards under the Safe House, flip Spite's villain character card. If not, flip a drug card face up.
If they have no game text when upside down, then they're not "drug" cards, so this won't work. Of course, we all know what's meant, but I don't want to add anything to the FAQ which is just a general understanding. So I'm still holding out for an official explanation. My assumption is that it was a mistake to have said "flip a drug card face up" and it should actually say something else like "flip a face down card face up" (which opens up the possibility of other cards in the future being face down which aren't drug cards...). In any case, I'm keeping this out of the FAQ unless we get something official.
By the way, if you have trouble pasting in the comment box, I think there's a workaround. Try using Ctrl+V, that's the method most likely to work. If that fails, try a right-click and copy, and it'll make you go through an extra box since it doesn't like to go directly from the clipboard; some security thing. Maybe that's been FUBARed, though.
Yeah, apparently cards that refer to keywords on cards that are upside down (in play or in the deck) have an implied "wink wink, nudge nudge Know what I mean?"
Ah, the glory that is Sentinels and its refusal to comply to a standardized ruling system.
At the start of the game remember, you search through the deck, remove all 5 drug cards, and play them facedown. It is addressing the players directly, tellign them that these 5 facedown cards are drugs and an exception to standard play. They are being labled as drug cards outside of the context of their keyword now. Now that their keyword is not the only thing labeling those facedown cards as drug cards, it is no longer an issue to satisfy the Gameplay text.
Foote, when you're asked to find the Drug cards, they're still Drug cards because they still have their card text. As soon as they get played face down, they lose the card text, so they're nothing. The stuff about the cards addressing the players directly is kind of made up by you, so I can't put it in the FAQ.
Personally, I'm not comfortable with my cards addressing me directly. How am I supposed to tell the difference between the cards talking to me and rest of the voices I hear in my head normally? Confusing.
Just by the fact that it says to flip a drug face up is addressing that 1) There are drug cards in play and 2) they must be face down (or how could they flip up), its pretty clear that someway or another, those facedown cards with no text are still considered drugs. Its an explicit exception to the normal rule. How would you make it less confusing?
The original question was whether the face down drug cards could be destroyed by end of days or set back on top of the deck with into the stratosphere.
The answer is yes, they can. If destroyed their text that puts them into play when they would go to the trash sends them to play.
As for rules, I think it is best to just let this sit as an exception. I don't think there are any questions at all about how to play it in game, and without a gameplay question there is no current need for extrapolation.
We have an exception for Fowl cards in Matriarch's deck. We know how to play the deck, and whether new wording or rulings make it work that way naturally we know how to play the deck, and so the rest really doesn't matter.
I'm with Foote on this one. Spiff has the right attitude in that this answer ought not to be carved into the eternal stone of his FAQ, but it falls perfectly within the purview of SOTM's common-sensical approach, so it's quite good enough for me.
I also agree that common sense will get people through this just fine. I was just fishing for some official clarity on the issue because I'd like to include it in the FAQ if I could.
Fowl cards contain text that when a fowl card enters play you play the top card of the villain deck.
Hairtrigger reflexes deals any villain target 1 damage upon entering play. That means if Hairtrigger is in play you can destroy the fowl card before the card's text is activated (under the old ruling of card order to resolve simultaneous effects it should always stop fowl from playing more, under the new one it would be players choice whther to let more cards into play or not.)
We had a response from Christopher that yes, that is how the rulings would play it, but that that isn't the way it should work. Hence the exception I mentioned, which correlates to the upside down cards not having keywords but still being drugs for the new Spite card.
The Fowl issue has been fixed, the new cards have moved the text to the Matriarchs card, so whether they are destroyed or not the response of playing the top card of the villain deck goes through.
Other changes that have been made include fixing Darken the Sky's art, and sadly doing away with Checmical Explosions. Alas, the Rook City environment deck's language was not fixed; Tony Taurus still says "immune to damage from heroes" and "the villain character card".