Spite was destroying environment targets every turn so at the end the environment deck only had entry points with no room for them thus spinning in an infinite loop. So I just told him to dump em in the trash and shuffle the environment deck so we can play a card and get on with it. I don't believe this actually needs an official ruling (Rule lawers will probably say otherwise) but a forum consençus by experienced players would be nice.
Hahaha hilarious. Rules Lawer here. Idk, I woulda done exactly what you did.
/shrug
I've been wondering what would happen in that case - if the environment deck has only Entry Points remaining - you'd end up just playing Entry Point after Entry Point, reshuffling the deck constantly. It hasn't come up yet for us but if it did I suppose I'd just go "sod it", chuck all the Entry Points in the trash, and shuffle the whole deck like you did :).
If it was worded "play the top card of the environment deck, then shuffle this card back into the environment deck" it would work better.
Thats a nice unofficial solution. I think I'll steal it.
I pointed out the possible infinite loop in the playtest (through other playtesters as I was not one then) and after changing once, the wording reverted back to this, I can only assume it is intentional... for some mysterious reason we do not yet now.
Aside from fixing the loop, the only thing I can think of offhand that would change by doing it as Play-Then-Shuffle is that it could let players benefit from their stacking the deck slightly more. In a normal game, where you have more than just Entry Point in the deck---if you had used some effect to put a harmful card on the bottom of the environment deck, shuffling Entry Point into the deck first means that card you buried could potentially get shuffled to the top and be played by Entry Point. With an erratum to Play-Then-Shuffle, you'd get one last bit of benefit from your deck-stacking before the shuffle. Can anyone think of anything else that would change?
Even then not a lot of cards allow you to control the top two cards of an environment deck (only one in Visionnary's deck or deck stacking with Parse though I fail to see why you would put an entry point on top instead of leaving it buried as the bottom card so even the situation you mentionned is an extreme corner case.
The other advantage to play-then-shuffle is that you'll only have to shuffle once. (I mean, technically you would shuffle the entry points in one at a time, but really?)
I agree not many cards let you manipulate the environment deck, and that it's not that likely to come up often. I also agree that it would probably make more sense for Entry Point to play first, shuffle second—that's why I was thinking whether there was any scenario it would change, and wondeirng if there were more common scenarios others could think of. I enjoy coming up with the weird situation where these distinctions matter, having playtested other games.
That said, and for the sake of exercising those muscles a bit more, I wouldn't call the example an extreme corner case. Firstly, because if there are no Rooms out, Entry Point isn't dangerous, so there's really no reason not to put it on top—if you're deciding which card goes on top and which goes on the bottom, for example, Frost's Cryo Chamber hurts you directly. Depending on who the heroes and illains are, it's actually reasonably likely I'd put the Room on the bottom and Entry Point on top, to let it harmlessly shuffle itself back into the deck. Also, you're assuming the Entry Point was put on top, but that's only if the deck was manipulated this round—it's easy to imagine that I put something helpful on top in a previous round, and now, one or more rounds later, the Entry Point comes up while a card I buried is still on the bottom. For another example, maybe Ra put some helpful Rooms on the bottom on the environment deck with Excavation, and Entry Point with no Room lets them cycle back into play sooner than they might otherwise have done, so if you shuffle Entry Point ahead of playing the new card, you can potentially get to one of the cards Ra recycled right away, and/or in a different order than you arranged them.
Unusual cases, sure, but I don't think they're too convoluted, and for the purposes of discussing errata even just the fact that they exist is worth knowing.
Agreed I was just making note that what was a danger to be affected was in the case of precog the other card you put on top meaning it changed little and if we go the excavation way well then if they are in the position they were put on the bottom of the deck it's extremely thin deck by that point meaning you would have shuffled and pretty much stumbled on one of the cards you reintroduced. All in all while I do agree with you that the change bears minor influence in possible context it still happens in much more limited circonstance than playing Spite in that environment wich pulls out the infinite loop almost every game. Thus I believe the change of text only brings opportunity for crafty players to find use in it while not beaing game breaking at all.
Don't worry I'm not posing those message as hate to yours actually quite the opposite I'just like to bring arguments on whatever side seems convenient to have a debate or see more deeply in the situation. Your defense of those cases in all in your honnor.
Even without infinite loops, Entry Point is just annoying. With four copies in the deck, you very often have to reshuffle three or four times in a row before you find a card that isn't an Entry Point. Since it's guaranteed that if one Entry Point fails, so will any others which replace it, there's really no excuse for enabling them to chain (although if you somehow played two Environment decks at once, it'd be sort of fitting for Surprise Shopping Trip to go off a bunch of times while you're resolving this, as Fright Train is kinda doing the same thing on Entry Point that Spite is doing on SST). I think I will end up houseruling this to be less of a nuisance.
I've pointed to the weirdness of the Wrest the Mind ruling quite often, and this is another case. How can Entry Point even continue to resolve after it's been shuffled into the deck? The more I think about it, the more I wonder why SOTM bothers having rules at all, if the ultimate resolution is always supposed to just come down to "do whatever you think is the most fun".