Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Uncertainty about cards in hand

losjackal

Technical Administrator
There's some interesting discussion on social media today about what is considered a "broken game state", and when the penalty of Game Loss should be invoked. Imagine these at a Tier 2 Regionals event.

1. The primary situation was a player accidentally played Colress as their second supporter for the turn, and placed their hand on top of their deck. Then the mistake was caught. The player thought he had 4-5 cards in his hand, and the opponent agreed, it could have been 4 or 5 cards. How would you handle it?

Similar situations of "not sure what was in the hand":

2. While under Item lock, player accidentally plays Computer Search, searching for an card and putting into hand, shuffling deck.

3. Accidentally drawing an extra card and having it get mixed into the hand.

 
There's some interesting discussion on social media today about what is considered a "broken game state", and when the penalty of Game Loss should be invoked. Imagine these at a Tier 2 Regionals event.

1. The primary situation was a player accidentally played Colress as their second supporter for the turn, and placed their hand on top of their deck. Then the mistake was caught. The player thought he had 4-5 cards in his hand, and the opponent agreed, it could have been 4 or 5 cards. How would you handle it?


It can be a challenge and take a little extra time, but the best way I've found to address "how many cards should I have" questions are to calculate based on a recent, known state. Early in the game, this might be the 7 original cards drawn (-1 active pokemon, +1 card for turn, -1 energy, etc.) it might also be an N, Shauna, Bianca, Colress, Bicycle or similar draw card. It isn't always possible, but if players have been attending to their game (and not spending their opponent's turn watching the games next to them :) ) then you can often find agreement about number of cards.

In this situation as well, if there were too many recent plays to accurately calculate hand-size (and masters do play lots of cards, quickly) you could also ask the player who put their hand on the deck what the cards were that he remembered. If a check of the top 4-5 cards (by the judge) revealed that the cards he could remember were number 3, 4 and 5 - I would be inclined to allow a hand size of 5 to be retrieved.

Either way, the player has earned a penalty for playing a second supporter. If this was assessed as a Game-Play Major, the starting penalty for a Tier 2 event is Prize Loss.

2. While under Item lock, player accidentally plays Computer Search, searching for an card and putting into hand, shuffling deck.

This situation is very different than above. The player has essentially searched and suffled his deck without the use of a (valid) card effect. These are both clearly Game-Play Severe errors and the starting penalty for any event is a Game Loss.

3. Accidentally drawing an extra card and having it get mixed into the hand.

Drawing an extra card is a Game-Play Minor error, with minor penalties depending on Tier - the fix is what gets to be more challenging. One card has to be replaced on the top of the deck to be drawn next - since it was drawn in error. I would begin by removing any "known" cards from the players hand. (If they played a Korrina, Professor's Letter, Dowsing Machine or other card that reveals cards that go into the hand - but only since the last hand-shuffle was played.) Then I would hold the players remaining hand facing me, mix up the cards myself and instruct the player to indicate one card to remove from their hand. That card would be revealed and placed back on top of the deck.
 
1. I mostly agree with Fincastle here. There are so many cards which set the hand size to a certain amount that it is often pretty easy to determine the hand size prior to the error. However, if I can fix the game state to the exact correct one, I would never go above a Warning for first offense because why should I change the game state when their was no damage to it?
2. I have to disagree here: Severe is usually when another zone got mixed up with the deck which is not the case here. I would phrase this as "Playing an item card when an effect prevents its use" which sound similar to "Using an ability when a card prevents its use" which would be Major, so the starting penalty would be Prize Card. I would also add a Warning to the Seismitoad player (going up from a Caution because I want to report this). I mean that guy puts the effect into place and then watches you playing the CPU search, discarding two cards and searching your deck to step in exactly at the point where a judge cannot rewind it? Every time, when a game-play error is caused by an effect brought into effect by the opponent I would be vary careful going to Game Loss, as I do not want to reward players with a game win for falling asleep or playing the "waiting game". So, my starting point here would be Prize Loss - Warning and letting the CPU Search player keep the card (because unless some special cases, as having one card on the hand after playing CPU search, there is no fix possible). I know this sounds crazy, but in the end it is both players responsibility to keep up with the game state and I hate making precedence cases which support shenanigans.
3. In the case, that cards have been drawn and added to already existing cards on the hand, I would agree with the procedure.
 
The penalty guidelines describe the game state as "irreversibly confused" for GPE: Major and "irreparably [broken]" (technically "irreparably breaks the game state"). I may be reading more into that than I should, but I think those four words show the difference between Minor (Caution/Warning), Major (Warning/PL), and Severe (Game Loss). Conversely, this could be obvious to everyone already, but I've never seen it posted before so I'll take the chance.

The way I interpret the guidelines, a confused game state isn't necessarily the exact state the game is meant to be in, but a state that is close enough that the game can continue. A broken game state however, isn't in a state where game play can continue at all. Reversing a game state means bringing it back to the (near) exact state it's meant to be in, while repairing a game state means bringing it from the state it's in to a state that can be played (and preferrably closer to where it's meant to be). I would, however, also take into account the description under Minor saying those errors can "usually be fixed with little effort", and go for Major even if I could completely reverse the error, if it took much more than "little effort" to do so. And of course, sometimes you just need to make a judgement call.

For these cases, I would call them
1) If I could easily verify what the hand was (e.g. the cards are off-center compared to the deck, the players agree on what the hand is), I would toss this into Minor. If I know four cards go into the hand for sure and the fifth is uncertain, I would make a call on whether to give the player the fifth card, and go for Major in either case.
2) If I know which card was chosen (e.g. player revealed out of habit, player has only one card, opponent has been watching the cards in their hand etc), then shuffle that back in and move the discarded cards back into the hand, going for Major. If not, then it's Severe (in part due to the potential to game such a ruling).
3) This one has a standard response, doesn't it? If I recall correctly, if you know what card it is, return it (Minor). If not, pick a random card and return it (Major).
 
This situation is very different than above. The player has essentially searched and suffled his deck without the use of a (valid) card effect. These are both clearly Game-Play Severe errors and the starting penalty for any event is a Game Loss.

You may want to take a quick look back at 7.1.2 (GPE - Major) before you say shuffling without the use of a card effect is 7.1.3 (GPE - Severe). Regarding the item use, it's not nearly as clear as shuffling (as that's written in black and white), but it's pretty obvious that it's not nearly on the same level as those infractions described in 7.1.3, and, as Glumanda says, VERY similar to one described in 7.1.2. I think you're way off here.

Otherwise, I mostly agree with you, assuming both players agree. If either player disagrees or is significantly unsure, you're pretty much stuck with 7.1.3.

The only other thing I disagree with is letting the player have an involvement in selecting which card is pulled from the extra card scenario. Either way, a single card is still initially 7.1.1 (GPE - Minor).
 
There's some interesting discussion on social media today about what is considered a "broken game state", and when the penalty of Game Loss should be invoked. Imagine these at a Tier 2 Regionals event.


A a judge can repair the gamestate back to what it was originally was to allow play to continue, lets call this a"fixable game state", this is solved with a warning.

A judge can repair the gamestate almost to what it was and penalty of prize loss or multi-prize loss can be issued to offset an advantage gained, lets call this a "semi-broken game state"

A judge can not repair the gamestate to what it was and/or the only penalty to be issued that offsets advantage gained is game loss, lets call this a "broken gamestate"

Your scenarios

1- Fixable (with conditions)
2- Broken
3- Semi-Broken

1- Ask the player to name all cards in hand, if he or she is able to do this, a judge has proven the deck is not shuffled, put the cards back into players hand. Warning
2- Computer Search allows the player to search for any card, it is likely that this card is a card that could tilt the match into their favor, we don't know which card it is, Game Loss
3- Player draws extra card, the card could of help them or it could not of helped them. Take random card out of hand, put on top of deck. This card taken away could of not hurt them or could of hurt them. Schrödinger's cat. Game state is repaired, kind of. Prize Loss.
 
In general it is a Prize Loss if the messed up game state will self repair in one or two turns, or a Game Loss if there is no prospect of the game state repairing itself in a few turns. In the specific case of drawing an extra card the game state corrects almost perfectly when the next card is drawn so that one is a Warning.

"Repair" does not mean that the game progresses exactly as it might without the error. Rather repair means that the eventual outcome is most likely unchanged. There is so much shuffle and draw in pokemon that mix ups between deck and hand do far less damage than in other games that slowly take cards in order from the deck.

So just picking 2) as it is the closest to an exception to what I posted above. The shuffle is a PL. But once the searched card hits the hand unless you can establish precisely the card that was put into the hand that game is over. CPU search is inherently game changing even if it does little to what would normally be looked upon as the game state (such as the number of cards in hand). If you suspect shenanigans then it is a double game loss. Judge duties do not include ensuring that every game can continue when players mess up.
 
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760 its solid enough
i have one... they are brave cards recomended gigabyte's OCed version ...
Regards,
 
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