BRONZE

Hey Judges,

This scenario actually happened at Pro Tour San Diego, enjoy!

Anthony and Nadine are playing in a block constructed Pro Tour. Anthony has Ral Zarek on 8 counters and activates Ral Zarek's -7 ultimate ability. Anthony proposes rolling 5 d6 and using odd numbers for extra turns. Nadine agrees. Anthony rolls the 5 dice, which hit the die that was on Ral Zarek showing 1, and all 6 dice end up in a jumble in the middle of the play area. Nadine calls for a judge and asks you which dice count for extra turns. How do you fix their issue?

Assuming the one die that was on Ral was not uniquely identifiable (was a different color from the rest or was a d8 or something like that) I would instruct the players to re-roll, and suggest they remove any other dice from the area they are rolling in, or roll off to the side. No warnings issued since there were no infractions. Even in the case that Anthony had rolled all ones, you could make a point saying that he should get 5 extra turns, but I would still say to re-roll since the dice are no longer uniquely identifiable.

If both players agree which die was the one on Ral, I remove that die and count the rest, but if they don't agree (and I would anticipate that they don't if they called a judge) then I see no solution other than a reroll.

I agree with Nocholas that no penalty is needed here; no infractions have occurred.

I agree that no penalty is warranted. Both players (presumably?) agree on Ral's loyalty after the ability is used (1), and it was simply bad luck (or bad aim, for which we also do not penalize) that caused the five dice Anthony was rolling to hit the one die he was using to track Ral's loyalty. I would reset the game to have a die on Ral showing 1 and suggest that Anthony roll the five dice he's using for Ral's ability one at a time, setting each aside showing its result after it's rolled.

Do any of you judges feel that any investigation maybe required to ensure that nothing fishy was going on? And if so what kind of questions would you ask?

I may be over thinking this, but it seems to me that a reroll would qualify as a backup in this scenario. Is it permissible to perform a backup if no infraction occurred?

While the instinct to investigate anything that may be fishy is good,
I think it is important to do a gut check before going down that road.
Is this something that causes an advantage to the player who caused
it? This is especially important because this is the type of situation
players usually handle by themselves and we want to encourage calling
a judge.

I think it is important to note that when things move outside the
broad guidelines of the documents, the Head Judge needs to be
consulted. This also ties into encouraging judge calls. Even when
something is simple, it may be good to give the players the impression
that you had to think about it a bit or consult another judge. It
gives them validation for calling a judge.

Lastly, and most importantly, always make sure that you are not
fitting the situation to the penalty as opposed to the other way
around. This is incredibly important. Never make the tempting flip of
asking “is a GL warranted” as opposed to “is this an infraction in the
MIPG?” The penalty considerations_after_, not before, you try to
figure out what infraction occurred.

Originally posted by Abeed Bendall:

Do any of you judges feel that any investigation maybe required to ensure that nothing fishy was going on? And if so what kind of questions would you ask?

I really don't. I don't know how relevant this is, but I used to play Warhammer, and in that game, it is extremely common for large numbers of dice to be rolled simultaneously, and occasionally, scenarios exactly like this one occur, where dice that are marking information are mixed in with dice that are determining random outcomes. Not once in 10 years of playing that game did I ever hear of that kind of mistake being used for something fishy. And for what it's worth, the remedy there was always just to reroll the dice.

Obviously none of that matters here, except it hones my instinct that a simple reroll here is the least disruptive solution, and that this kind of scenario is not a terribly suspect place to raise flags for cheating.

There is just so little advantage to be gained here, and my personal experience tells me that this is a very simple scenario and, as such, I'm highly likely to not feel it necessary to investigate further.

Originally posted by Aric Parkinson:

I may be over thinking this, but it seems to me that a reroll would qualify as a backup in this scenario. Is it permissible to perform a backup if no infraction occurred?

I don't think a reroll is a backup here, since arguably the roll never truly occurred, or at least wasn't completed, as its result is unknowable (except in the corner case of every die being odd). So having Anthony roll again isn't a reroll or a backup, and the situation doesn't even merit a warning (except maybe an informal one to remind the players to be more careful about where they throw dice!).

Originally posted by Daniel Pareja:

I don't think a reroll is a backup here, since arguably the roll never truly occurred, or at least wasn't completed, as its result is unknowable (except in the corner case of every die being odd).

Would the decision be different if both players actually agreed on which dice was the one on Ral Zarek despite it having be mixed up with the other 5?

If they agreed which dice were which, I don't see a reason to do anything other than caution them to roll more carefully. And maybe thank them for calling me over to make sure of something they weren't sure of.

When they don't agree, I don't see it as much different from if you rolled, and some of the dice got caught between table separators and ended up standing on a corner… you rolled, but didn't get a deterministic result.

I think we'd just re-roll any dice that aren't agreed upon. (since it's not explicitly called out in the IPG, it seems like a place to exercise judgement). Sure, there's a small amount of room for one player or the other to try to force re-rolls that may not actually be necessary, but I don't think that small amount of room warrants spending much time on an investigation with a roll that started out squirrelly to begin with, and I think randomness leads to it not being to terribly exploitable.

If both players agree which dice were rolled then why are we involved at all?

Originally posted by Andrew Teo:

Daniel Pareja
I don't think a reroll is a backup here, since arguably the roll never truly occurred, or at least wasn't completed, as its result is unknowable (except in the corner case of every die being odd).

Would the decision be different if both players actually agreed on which dice was the one on Ral Zarek despite it having be mixed up with the other 5?

As Adam noted, if the players agree on which of the six dice was the one on Ral, then they just take the other five as being the roll for Ral's ultimate. Presumably a judge would only be called in the case of an actual dispute; there is none if they agree.

As for not rerolling those dice that the players agree were part of the roll for Ral's ultimate, I agree with Chris. Don't reroll dice whose results aren't disputed.

This doesn't seem at all like a penalty needing to be warranted. It doesn't fit anything in the MIPG barring cheating, which I'd doubt is the case here.

I'm assuming I'm being called because there's a disagreement over which die were rolled and which one was tracking Ral's loyalty. If they agreed on any specific die being rolled as it actually being rolled, I'd have them set it aside and have them just reroll the unclear ones.

Congrats to everyone in the thread that correctly identified that there is no infraction here, Aric Parkinson asked if it's permissible to backup without issuing a rewind. Well, this isn't really a backup, just a ”redo“. The lesson here is something that Jacob Faturechi pointed out. Sometimes things happen that the documents give you zero guidance for. You just need to fix the situation in a manner fair to both players and get them back playing magic. Another solution which I didn't see in this thread that was brought up on the PT floor was to line up the 6 jumbled up dice, roll a SEVENTH D6 and then take that die out of the lineup of the 6 jumbled dice, making the other 5 count for Ral. Both ways are fine because they are random and not arbitrary. Stay tuned for a new scenario tomorrow!