Hello

I also join the “complains”. Intentions of the tweak were noble, but I think the final execution missed a bit.

If I am trying to understand the general philisophy of the policy in its current iteration, is that we try to fix as much fairly towards the direction of the organic game as possible. For that, the HCE now does exactly what the fix was missing, the player gets to actually get the card he was supposed to get. If there is a difference with the start of the game, well, I am now a bit lost about the place we want to be.

At the start of the game, it presents no harm I believe. However if it is during the game, well, the player may be tempted to wait with this card in hand with the possibility of it being useful and only call when he wants to cycle it, so the new IPG fix seems OK to me here.

As Markus said, it adds 1 extra case, but as missed trigger abilities have many, 2 cases should be manageable here and it looks cleaner to me.

A player after hearing about this change asked me about a scenario he could find himself in. He runs 3 Force of Will in the main and 1 in the side. The 3 in the main deck are of the original art, while the one in the sideboard is from Eternal Masters. This is to help facilitate with de-sideboarding so that he knows what goes where.

If during game 1 the Eternal Masters Force of Will is drawn and he immediately calls a judge on himself and explains the situation, it makes sense to me that (as the head judge) we could follow the new downgrade here provided that we do a quick look through the deck to make sure this is indeed the case. Thoughts?

Originally posted by Mark Johnson:

If during game 1 the Eternal Masters Force of Will is drawn and he immediately calls a judge on himself and explains the situation, it makes sense to me that (as the head judge) we could follow the new downgrade here provided that we do a quick look through the deck to make sure this is indeed the case. Thoughts?

Policy doesn't currently, nor do I believe should, treat printings of the same card with different art as “different”.

Originally posted by Jeff S Higgins:

Originally posted by Mark Johnson:

If during game 1 the Eternal Masters Force of Will is drawn and he immediately calls a judge on himself and explains the situation, it makes sense to me that (as the head judge) we could follow the new downgrade here provided that we do a quick look through the deck to make sure this is indeed the case. Thoughts?

Policy doesn't currently, nor do I believe should, treat printings of the same card with different art as “different”.

I concur with Jeff – we shouldn't try to downgrade for different copies of the same card, because we will quickly get into the weeds. Cards might be distinguishable by:
-set
-wear and tear
-art alterations
-foil/not
-misprint
etc
and any of these may be (nearly) impossible for a judge to… errr…. judge. So we're left just needing to take the player's word for it when they say “this is the SB copy,” which is clearly problematic.