A friend and I were playing a game at our local game store and had the following situation come up. My opponent had activated all his models and I had 2 Silent Ones(not in range or LOS of any enemies) still left. One had been hurt and the other hadn't. My deck had 3 cards left in it. I realized that I could, and probably should, use the healing ability on the undamaged one first if I beleived there were more cards that didn't hit the TN for the spell than there were cards that did. I posited that I should know which 3 cards were left in my deck because I had seen every card that went to my discard pile and every card in my hand. By process of elimination, I would know the contents of my deck. Our local henchman who was sitting nearby painting agreed so in order to save time he looked at the three cards left in my deck and told me what they were in order of highest value to lowest value. It proved that my guess had been correct and that two of the three cards would not allow my Silent Ones to hit their TN. With this information, I decided to activate my undamaged one first and as expected it failed it's cast attempt. This made the odds better for my undamaged one who then attempted and passed.
It was only today that I was talking to another player at our FLGS that he brought up the rule that players may not look at discard piles. I had never read the rule and to me, as a Magic judge, it seemed ridiculous. The way I have always played games, and how most rule systems work, is that any information that was ever publicly revealed and never had a chance to be changed was public knowledge that must freely revealed when inquired about. This friend argued that the spirit of this rule was so that card counting was harder. The problem with that logic is that it still isn't impossible as was evidenced by my initial feeling that only one of my 3 cards would hit my TN.
Prior to this conversation, I had been contemplating making checklists of decks and laminating them so I could use a dry erase marker and know which cards were left in both my and my opponents(minus their hand of course) decks so as to make more informed decisions and to avoid having to ask bystanders what was left in my deck. I'm now a little hesitant to as I feel I would be breaking the spirit of a rule, no matter how ill-conceived it may be.
I checked the forums and really only found this topic: http://wyrd-games.net/community/topic/72619-public-information/
While that does skim this discussion a bit, it doesn't really give me the answer I'm looking for. Help would be greatly appreciated.
