Kismet's Shaky Arm card is supposed to played "...in front of the hero with the most cards in play". Do Jinx cards from Kismet (or any other card from villains or environments) count towards "cards in play" for a hero? Also, does Chrono Ranger's bounties count towards his cards in play even if they're next to a non-hero target?
Is there any fundamental/important difference between "in front of" and "next to"? I've noticed that different wording on boutnies and jinx cards. I've also read that there is also something along the lines of "place in the villain/hero/environment play area", any difference there?
I only have the base set and Shattered Timelines now, if there is something in Rook City and/or Infernal Relics that clarified this...I missed it.
When counting a hero's cards in play, you will only cound that hero's character card and the cards from thier deck. That would include cards such as Bounties, even though they are next to a non-hero.
If you play an ongoing or equipment card, it is now "in play". It doesn't matter where it is (ie it could be a Compounded Bow out in front of you or a By Any Means on that bad guy over there), it's still your card, belonging to you. If you become incapacitated, for example, that card will go away just like all the rest of your cards. Therefore, any card from your deck which you have put into play, regardless of where you put it (if it was a card that could be played against someone else), counts as "one of your cards in play". Conversely, if a villain (eg Kismet or Plague Rat) plays one of their cards on you, it's still their card which they have in play.
Basically, a card from a deck will always belong to that deck, regardless of who it's played against. So you can't have, for example, Freedom-6 Tempest use his base power to destroy that Jinx that just got put in front of him, because it isn't his to destroy.
To pick the obligatory nit, one-shots would probably also count as "cards in play" while they're still resolving...if you played a hero card such as Fanatic's Brutal Censure ("Fanatic deals one target 2 radiant damage. You may draw a card", and the 1 fire damage triggered effects which resulted in a villain card being played, and that card was Scattered Mind, the one-shot might still count, since it doesn't trash itself until after you draw your card (or choose not to). I can't think of a way for this to come up when playing against Kismet, nor am I entirely certain it can happen at all, but there's precedent for similar things - Akana in the Tomb of Anubis plays an environment card whenever a villain target is destroyed, so if there were a card (let's call it Anaka) in a future Environment which did exactly the reverse (and the Environment contained at least one Target), you could conceivably be fighting Kismet in that Environment (the "Womb of Hathor", perhaps?), blow up an environment target with Brutal Censure, and Anaka would put Kismet's top villain card into play, which could conceivably be Scattered Mind. So in that case, Brutal Censure could still count as a card in play, even though it won't be in play as soon as "the stack" clears and the unwritten final line of "text" on all One-Shots, "put this card into the trash", occurs.
A situation I can think of where one-shots would matter with Kismet is if she has any one-shot Jinxes in which she deals damage. I don't know her deck well enough to know whether she does, but if so, she'd get the damage bonus for it if her Talisman was on its front side (ie, in front of her) because it's a Jinx "in play" until it's finished resolving. That's how I understand it, anyway - I seem to recall it coming up on here once, ages ago.
Ditto for Omnitron the Device, and to a lesser extent Voss the Thorathian. (Odd, isn't it, that none of the later villains had such keywords? I for one am immensely sad that Plague Rat isn't a Rat for purposes of Pike Industrial Complex.)
