I have two modules where setup involves placing a set of randomly drawn ‘treasure’ counters in different hexes on the map. Players ‘discover’ them by moving into the appropriate hex and Unmasking the card there. The treasure is added face-down to the stack of the discovering player. The discovery only happens once; by taking the treasure, the hex is left empty and no replacement is drawn, so you can quickly tell which areas have been searched and which ones still have goodies left.
Right now, the treasure counters are in a deck set for random draw. At game start, the players manually draw them facedown from the deck and place them on the map in marked hexes. Pretty straightforward. However, this means that the face-down goodies are lying there for players to peek at, possibly for several turns.
What I’d like to do is prevent players from being able to unmask or peek at the pre-placed treasures and go ‘shopping’ for the one they’d like.
I thought instead of drawing treasures at game start, perhaps a set of dummy counters could be placed in the treasure hexes as At-Start Stacks. The player would use a menu command on the dummy to replace it with a random draw from the treasure deck (Replace with Other). Also, this would be nice because players would have one less step to take at game start. Treasures wouldn’t actually be drawn until they’re needed. However, I’m not sure that Replace with Other would fit the bill here; apparently the replacement needs to be a specific counter, not a deck draw.
I also thought of simply having a Report trait report on all Unmasks and Peeks at the treasures, to keep players honest. But this might get spammy, since the players may be carrying around many face-down treasures after pickup, and may need to unmask or peek at them routinely in the course of the game as a reminder.
Any thoughts on how to resolve this?