I came across an odd situation this past Friday at FNM, and I wanted to see how I could best handle it for the future.

Situation: I have three pods of Ixalan Booster Draft going, two tables of 8 and one table of 6. I get called over to the pod of 6 at the end of the second pack. A player had removed a Dragonskull Summit from his pack (maybe confusing it for a basic land to be removed), and there were two cards in a single set being passed to a player. I asked the players to count their cards they currently had. Two players had 28 cards selected, and four players had 27 cards selected. I asked each player to count again, and then also to look around on the floor or other areas where cards could have been misplaced. So, there should be four cards still to be picked, but there are only three cards still to be picked.

Possible Scenarios: -a manufacturer error and a pack is missing a card. -a player unintentionally misplaced a card. -a player intentionally took a card without the knowledge of the other players. Are there any other scenarios that could have led to this situation that I'm missing?

My solution: I assigned each player that currently had 27 cards a number between 1 and 4, then rolled a d6 to pick a player that would not receive another card. Then I rolled for each of the cards to randomly give them to the players who currently had 27 cards without revealing which cards they were to the rest of the players.

So, I wasn't sure if there is a better solution to a missing card in a Regular REL draft, and if anybody has any advice about what to do in that case.

There aren't really great fixes when something went wrong in a booster draft and it is only discovered much later - the damage is already done. The best you can do is find a fix that will be felt as fair by the players, and it seems like you did that.

That's why it's of most importance to educate players on how to avoid such mishaps in the future: count the number of cards they open in a pack and check quickly the content for any anomalies, zone draft, and count each card they pass and each card they receive - and call a judge if these numbers are different. That will both make it harder for a problem to happen, and if it does, it will allow you to fix it while it's still possible.

If you're judging and not playing, doing these kind of checks as well during the draft is also a good idea as long as you don't disturb the players - it sends the message it's an important part of the process.

- Emilien