Many dedicated card games such as Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic the Gathering have their card text written in a very specific way. In Yu-Gi-Oh this is called "Problem Solving Card Text (PSCT)" which serves the purpose to write cards in such a way that they are concise, easy to comprehend in a way that it does not bring up many questions on how cards interact with other cards. Having such a thing is a necessity in huge card games. 100 % Orange Juice is also no stranger to the concept of PSCT. PSCT contains the following attributes:

• There is a general rulebook (here the tutorial) that explains general game mechanics.
  
• General Mechanics are never written on the cards. Example: no boost card will ever tell you, that you can only play it before moving, as this is covered by the rules.
  
• Each "Game mechanic" is indicated by a keyword like "Target" or "Challenge". If a card text mentions this word, the mechanic is used.
  
• The inverse is also true: if the mechanic is not mentioned in the card text, it is not used.
  
• Lastly, if a card's mechanic's contradict the general game mechanics, the card is treated as an exception to the rule. The last thing rarely happens, but even 100 % Orange juice is no stranger to the concept. Military Sora's Hyper is a boost card but the card says it can also be used in battle, therefore you can use it in battle!

The Following Sections will explain a few examples and solve some confusing rulings regarding specific words.

Disclaimer: all images are taken from the Orange Juice wiki[100orangejuice.gamepedia.com]
Also "Problem Solving Card Text" is not an official term for 100 % orange juice, I just adopted it because I needed to give it a name.

One would assume that these 2 are the same, however they are not. For most part you do not see the difference, but there are some:

Healing and restoring hp increase your hp by a specified number/limit up to your maximum hp.
It is further important to mention, that restoring and healing appear to be the same thing, despite being different words.

Gaining HP adds the HP to your current HP (without having a cap)

The only cards/effects that allow you to gain HP are the traps spread by Krila's Hyper or shop effects in Bounty Hunt Mode can trigger this. These effects also bypass Kiriko's passive.


Speaking of Kiriko, for the very same reason, portable pudding also does not fail when used by kiriko, since "Resetting HP to max" is not "Healing".

Like before, these 3 terms do not mean the same. If a card like Solid Witch protects you from one, do not assume it protects you from the other 2.



Cards like Gamble and Sealed Guardian can still affect a player with Solid Witch active.

The Dealer Role's passive Role Perk gives you a bonus card every time you draw a card.
However, passionate research Excavates and takes cards to the hand. This is not the same as drawing and thus does not give you a bonus card.



Furthermore, x2 panels are treated as different panels as opposed to their regular counterparts.
This means, if you use Demand and happen to land on a x2 panel, you will only obtain 2 cards of opposed to the regular 3 cards you usually would as a dealer. This applies to both natural x2 panels as well as x2 panels from Miracle Mixer/Event.

The Characters Cuties gain 2 stacks of "events crashed" if they play of the god is activated and pulls a card they did not play before. This is because the card actually is a different card activate However, Nath does not get 2 stacks of extention but only 1 - this is because the card "transforms" into a different card and therefore stays only 1 card. Sadly the Card text use the same word despite working differently



Nath however also gains a stack, if an opponent uses a battle card versus her.
Furthermore, Kiriko only gets 1 stack of her passive when she uses it.

Prior to version 3.9.3. The word "Challenge" was used to refer to optional battles that players can initiate when meeting other players on the field. However, this word was also used occasionally on Card Text, indicating that this battle would qualify as a "Challenge". Such an example is the old version of Islay's Hyper Rival as it can be seen in her trailer.


Version 3.9.3 instead changed this. Since this version, only optional battles when meeting on the field are referred to as "Challenge" and since then, all instances of "Challenge" on card texts are removed and are replaced by a different term, such as this:



The term targeting also got some clarification. In an previous update it was defined as "all effects, that open the targeting UI are treated as effects that target" (see below).


This update re-confirmed this notion by stating that co-op bosses never target by default as they do not open the window and "just know" who to hit. In general, "Target" works like it does in "Yu-Gi-Oh" in terms of card text. If the Card mentions the word "target" it will target, otherwise it does not.

Anyways. This update therefore brought a couple of interesting rule changes to the table. Noteworthy ones for Normal Mode are:

• Iru now does not use her passive anymore when using cards like Gentleman's Battle. The behavior was quite inconsistent to figure out beforehand but now is pretty straight forward.
  
• Islay and Chris now initiate a battle when they walk into Flying Castles Hyper, as the hyper enforces a battle and thus does not qualify as "Challenge" anymore.

Cuties Hyper Special Stage also received an updated text, which better clarified how the card works. The previous version mentioned "cannot be challenged or targeted by boost cards", which left 2 possible interpretations in "cannot be challenged or targeted | by boost cards" or "cannot be challenged | or targeted by boost cards." The new version of the text clarifies it means the latter of the two. The card itself however should still be functionally identical.



Like before, Live Mode protects you from Challenges and targeting boost effects such as Long Distance Shot and most panel effects, but not from effects that do not target or effects of traps placed on panels.

This means it is still possible to force cuties into combat by using traps that force fights or by using Ambush. The previous logic used to "explain" why Assault works in live mode is because the word "challenge" is not used in the effect text and thus the mechanic is not used. Now with the clarification on the mechanic, this is now a lot more obvious and intuitive for people who do not play any trading card games.

This is the maximum complexity of PSCT that you will likely need for this game.

This little card seems to have a very unique effect that seems simple on the surface. what could possibly be hard or confusing about it?



you cannot gain stars, neither by koing players, nor from star panels nor card effects like special stage

well. there are a few things worth talking about. First of all: Steal effects.
Cards like Dark Side of Business and ubiqutous have their effects effectively negated



One may think that you can still use the cards to make the opponent lose stars, but this is not the case (and this is something OJ's PSCT does not cover).

In contrast to that, effects that include losing and gaining stars work as you would expect. The losing part of the effect applies, while the gaining effect is negated. a very good example on it working is "For the future of the toystore"



However, what is a "lose, then gain" type of effect is not always obvious by card text.

Both big bang bell and Exchange fall under that category. Exchange is especially hilarious, because it leaves both the setter and victim with 0 stars when triggered under unpaid work.



And going out of lines from all the rules i mentioned earlier, dying to pirate crew members during unpaid work was completely free during testing (version 2.9.8). this leads to me having the conclusion that the passive is in fact a steal effect and not "lose, then gain", similar to how quick restoration does not do what it says. Teotoratta's Hyper "Beast Witch" joins that club as well



Something that is further worth talking about is, that unpaid work has its effect modified for coop play. it instead will prevent players from losing stars. due to the changed effect, all interactions need to be retested for coop and will be updated once it is done.

*Note: due to update 3.9.3. redefining the term challenging, this section needs to be retested. an update will happen once it is done.

Well, This is not really a case of "complex PSCT understanding" but more of a case of "a term is defined in an unintuitive way" type of thing.

Flying Castle's Passive says "Cannot Counter-Attack" and "is immune to battle cards".



The second effect actually means that other players are disabled from using battle cards in battles involving it. Also the term Counter-Attack is not defined in an intuitive way.

Most people would assume, that flying Counter-Attacking means going second in battle.
However, this is wrong! There are Circumstances when flying Castle can fight back!

These include the following:

• Immovable Object is active.
  
• Flying Castle is using Whimsical Windmill.
  
• If flying Castle walks the Trap Cards "Invasion" and "Flying Pirate"
  
• If Castle steps on a boss panel in co-op (as non attacker)

Here is a breakdown as to why these effects allow flying castle to fight back.


The first one falls down to the "Properties" of PSCT I mentioned at the start. The card effect overwrites the characters passive. This is not a case of "Card effect overwriting a gameplay mechanic" but "Card Effect overwriting another Card effect".


This second is an effect which makes you initiate a battle and thus makes castle not"on the counter-attack" despite going second.


The 3rd in 4th element in the above list can be grouped together as NPC battles.


While it is nowhere officially stated (to my knowledge), but the general ruling seems to be that castle is allowed to counter-attack when going second versus NPC battles.

On the other hand, all instances in which a player character initiates a battle versus Flying Castle, castle is disabled from counter-attacking. This holds true for challenges when meeting on the field as well as all card effects that initiate a player battle. All of them, except when Sherry is initiating the battle, as she has to go second. If a battle is initiated versus Castle and he has to go first, it still gets the first attack. The only other instance where this can be relevant is Attacker Castle in Co-Op


This leads me to the conclusion that the correct definition of "being on the Counter-Attack" by OJ standard is:

"Go 2nd in a battle initiated by another player." instead of just "Go 2nd in battle".

This section has been retested in Version 3.9.3 after its initial testing in version 2.9.5. And despite its changes and clarification of the challenge rules, nothing did change for castle.

The Card text of the cards used by the boss is written in a substancially different way than the player's cards. The players cards are all exclusively written from the first person perspective of the person who uses it/triggers the effect (in case of a trap).

However, co-op boss cards are written as if the events are told by a 3rd person. Each side (you, the enemies) is declared by a specific moniker in the card text.

These are the following:

• Players: This means the player side, aka you and your allies.
  
• Enemies: This is the boss and his allies.
  
• Boss: The Boss and only the boss.
  
• Minions: The minions the boss spawns (aka, seagulls in summer beast and chicken in Haruo and Ropochi). Technically, this does not specify minions of a side, so if you ll ever be able to get minions as player (like pirate minions in bounty hunt mode). However, this has no relevance on the game in its current state.

An example card where this MAY be confusing on first attempt is the "Group up" card that Big the Haruo can use. If you would read it like a normal card, you would assume that you would get grouped up. However, Haruo and his minions group up when using it.

However, if no side is specified who uses an an effect, the "first person" approach still applies like in the example below.



These cards are very rare among the co-op boss cards.

I mentioned a few examples in my guide about cards which have wrong or misleading wording.

These are not all of them. A person who helped me with testing several interactions made a compendium of these. Feel free to check it out if it interests you. *(Link is here)[docs.google.com]

I ultimate feel putting this in goes over the scope of what this guide is intended to do and to be and rather belongs to a separate place.

*A lot of these issues have been fixed. Praise Fruitbat for actually getting around doing this (even though it took a while)

@Radio / WaluigiRadio from FruitbatFactory pointed out that Kiriko is compatible with Quick Restoration. Furthermore he pointed out to me, that Extension only gives 1 stack of her passive to Kiriko when she uses it. I originally did not think of that scenario. Thank you very much.

cocapoda pointed out a mistake in the original guide, in which I mentioned that Extension gives 2 stacks of her passive to Nath. This has been fixed. Thank you very much.

Update from 2020/06/11:

Added the section about Co-Op cards that the boss uses.

Update 2020/06/14
Fixed a typo and clarified that Quick restoration is a "gain" effect. Thanks to WindowsGuyJim pointing it out since I actually forgot to mention that the card is mistranslated.

Update 2020/06/19
Added a disclaimer about the challenge "rule" not being 100 % accurate for Co-Op Boss cards after experiencing some exceptions myself and being reported by several people (cuties and tsih interactions).

Update 2020/07/11

SomeGuy712x pointed out to me that the Demand interaction I originally stated was not correct (anymore?). Updated the interaction to how it works in patch status 2.9.7

Update 2020/08/25

Added an (unfinished) section about unpaid work after request of P3R as VC15

Update 2020/08/26

Minor update in section "Unpaid work"

Update 2020/08/28

Linked a further guide to a compendium of mistranslated or unclear cards for those who want to read more on the topic.

quick update on 2020/11/26:

The quick restoration fix with kiriko was fixed in update 3.1 (i think it was 3.1), so the part that menti0oned it not working properly was removed.

Update 2021/12/18:
Version 3.9.3 changed / clarified the terms "Target" and "Challenge". This requires the section about targeting and challenging to be rewritten. This makes the compendium link very outdated by now, but i will leave it there anyways for people who are interested on how things used to be.
TODO: The Flying Castle section

Update 2021/12/20:
Improved the "Targeting and Challenge" Section of the Guide and rechecked the entire Flying Castle Section of the Guide. I received some help from JINZOOOOOO in the process of setting it up.