Hi all,

At my modern FNM, I got called at a table with this situation:

Alan ( playing storm ) ends his turn with 8 cards in hand. The error is not caught until the end of Nolan's next turn when resolving the “discard at random” part of a flashbacked Desperate Ravings as there are now 10 cards in hand (8 in hand + 2 drawn by the spell).

Both players cannot confirm which cards where the two drawn by the Ravings. Alan being a regular at the store with no known shady play history, I détermined this as a honest mistake.

How would you remedy to that situation ?



On my part, based on the current situation, I ruled that Alan finish resolving the Desperate Ravings, then discard an extra card at Random to bring back Alan's hand back to a legal 8 cards. Both players agreed to this remedy and I reminded Alan to be more careful keeping tabs on his hand size.

Edit : Fixed a detail and a calculation error: Flashbacked Ravings draws two cards, but make discard only one at random, not two so Alan starts his next turn with a legal 8 card hand, not 7. My apologies.

Edited David Lachance-Poitras (April 21, 2015 09:12:32 AM)

Hi!! It seems like a really nice fix. I was wondering if “first discard one card, then discard one random card due to Desperate Ravings” could be more appropriate. From JAR:

If the error involved a player forgetting to draw or discard cards, have them perform the appropriate action now.

Now is now. Yeah, it's a really bad moment to acknowledge this kind of things, in the middle of a Desperate Ravings, but…

Given its regular, you've a much wider choice of actions available. What you decided sounds pretty good to me. Good job there.

An alternative could be to ask him which of the cards he definitely remembers having last turn and choosing one to discard. It requires more player honesty than your fix though and might just be harder. But it's an option.

If this were Comp REL the fix would be to immediately choose and discard. You could do that to.

But you decided on a fair solution, which the players were also happy with, and that's what counts ad a Correct ruling at FNM :)

The random discard doesn't sound optimal to me. What if it was a card the player had been keeping in hand, waiting for the right time to play it? I think I would simply require Alan to choose and discard to the right number of cards, after resolving the Desperate Ravings. Yes, Alan gets a slight advantage here, but we've already established that it was an honest mistake. It was the responsibility of both players to ensure that Alan discarded down to 7 at the end of his turn.

Still, at Regular, I reckon the most important thing is coming up with a fix that both players are happy with, and you achieved that. :-)

If they have a card they don't want to risk discarding would they be playing Desperate Ravings?

Thanks for the comments and constructive criticism !

I agree that this fix was not an ideal one. If the two players had been able to clearly identify the two cards drawn as part of the spell's effect, the remedy could have been way easier to do in my opinion : put the two cards drawn aside, have Alan discard down to 7, then put those two cards back in hand and finish resolving the Ravings by discarding one card at Random.

The issue with this alternate solution is that Alan had seen 2 extra cards which could influence what he would discard, and giving him a slight edge in the game, especially considering the deck he plays (Storm). So, in the end, its hard to tell what would have been the better fix that would be fair for both players.


On the same subject, how such a situation would have been handled in competitive REL ? I guess there is a GRV/FtMGS involved in there but is the game state damaged enough to warrant a game loss or what would have been the remedy in this case ?

Originally posted by David Lachance-Poitras:

On the same subject, how such a situation would have been handled in competitive REL ? I guess there is a GRV/FtMGS involved in there but is the game state damaged enough to warrant a game loss or what would have been the remedy in this case ?

Where in any policy document does it mention damaged game states?

Do any of the partial fixes for a while GRV apply here?

There is no mention of it and it is normal as I was using some terms I personally use to describe what I consider to be a state in the game where an error causes disruption to the normal flow and integrity of the game and, therefore, becomes “damaged”.

Is there a better term I can use to describe this ?

Edited David Lachance-Poitras (April 21, 2015 07:43:44 PM)

If the players both agreed and you were comfortable then this is fine as a resolution for Regular.

I probably would have suggested discard one card now, then finish resolving ravings with the random discards. the randomness of the correct discard feels punitive and likely to make the game worse than it would have been.

Originally posted by David Lachance-Poitras:

There is no mention of it and it is normal as I was using some terms I personally use to describe what I consider to be a state in the game where an error causes disruption to the normal flow and integrity of the game and, therefore, becomes “damaged”.

Is there a better term I can use to describe this ?

I meant to reply to this some time ago and completely forgot. Hope you all don't mind me reanimating this thread as I think it raises an important point.

Most errors will result in the game state becoming “damaged”. Some will even result in it becoming “damaged beyond repair”. Once upon a time, this used to wind up with the responsible player being issued with a Game Loss for something we called Procedural Error Severe. This is no longer a part of the Infraction Procedure Guide. (I believe it is still a thing in some other card games.)

If a player has committed an infraction, deal with that infraction in line with the IPG. Upgrading or assessing a different penalty because of a perceived level of “damagedness” of the game state is not in line with the IPG.

…And as this forum is about Regular REL, please remember not to apply the IPG. However, the JAR also doesn't really include a clause to allow a different penalty due to a perception of level of damage to the game state :)

I realise that this dicsussion strayed into talking about the situation at Competitive REL, but felt that leaving this disclaimer for people who skipped to the end would be wise.

Edited Kim Warren (June 9, 2015 01:21:04 PM)