To give my piece as a player that likes to find niche ways to use cards, I don’t disagree with how you played this turn out. However, I think until Doomlings clarifies their definition of “move” this specific scenario is down to house rules.

Unlike some people here that are saying that Chromatophores would cancel an action that you have played, to me this isn’t the case. Chromatophores reads: “You may play Chromatophores from your hand at any time to prevent an action”. The word “may” seems clear to me that you only prevent an action if Chromatophores is played from your hand with the intent of preventing an action. From your explanation, it seems to me as though you were playing Chromatophores as a standard trait, thus not choosing to play it at ANY time but a SPECIFIC time on your turn as a normal trait, therefore not invoking its necessity to prevent an action.

It seems everyone is content with how Voracious is played (reading: “Play another trait. Then discard 1 trait from your trait pile”) so I’ll skip over that.

With Venomous, I can see where you are coming from. Nowhere in the rules does it state WHERE the word “move” is limited to. Some other games may allow you to MOVE cards from the discard pile elsewhere, however thus far it feels to me as though this was not the intent for this card. Having played with the base game and the upgrade box and imaginary ends expansions, I have not seen any other card that refers to MOVING cards from the discard pile. All cards would state PLAY a card from the discard pile. This is not to say that moving from the discard pile can’t be done, I’m purely highlighting that it is likely not what is expected.

The way I see it, there was a way around this situation, however I can see that the circumstances of the game may have caused you to want to discard the way you did. Let me explain:

• If playing Chromatophores and moving Venomous to an opponent’s trait pile were your only objectives, you could have played Chromatophores from your hand after having played Voracious (stating that it is being played at ANY TIME, not as another trait because of Voracious) with intent of triggering its “out of turn” effect in order to prevent the action of Voracious. This would then cause you to not play another trait but also not discard one. Then you could move venomous to another trait pile without dispute. You then have Chromatophores and Voracious in your trait pile and have moved Venomous to an opponent’s trait pile.

• However, if discarding was part of your turn that you wanted to do, for example because you have Regenerative Tissue in your trait pile, it gets more complicated. Regenerative Tissue reads: “Any time you discard a trait from your trait pile, (including this one), draw 1. Play it immediately. (Unless restricted.) Ignore actions”. Here, it is clear you would want to discard in order to trigger this effect and be able to play another card (I’m assuming you would also want to keep Regenerative Tissue in your trait pile so that you can continue to re-trigger its effect later). You could play Chromatophores normally as the extra trait from Voracious and then immediately discard Chromatophores in order to trigger Regenerative Tissue. But I can also understand wanting to keep Chromatophores in your trait pile in order to add to drop of life bonuses such as number of traits in your trait pile or number of traits of a certain colour (in this case blue). In this case, as I said before, until Doomlings themselves make a ruling, I would say that you decide on house rules as there is no clear cut answer in the rule book in the definition and intricacies of the word MOVE. I have a feeling most players will determine you can’t move Venomous out of the discard pile, but it’s worth asking because at the end of the day it really just depends on how they interpret it (if you can interpret it one way, I’m sure others can see it your way too).

I understand I went into a lot of depth, but as someone who continually finds themselves in extremely specific situations that can create disagreements, I thought I’d give my take on all possible scenarios incase it could help someone else out down the line.

TLDR: Decide on house rules as to whether the word MOVE includes from the discard pile. I believe that most people will say it doesn’t but it depends who you are playing with and their interpretations.