Player A has possibility storm and casts a creature. Both players watch as player A exiles cards, and they both fail to notice a creature. Player A then puts some other creature on the stack. Upon picking up the exiled pile, player A notices the other creature and calls for the judge/rules advisor/me.

What is the correct fix? In that moment, I let player A play the first creature and shuffle all the other exiled cards to the bottom, including the other creature, but I'm not sure if that was correct.

Edited Mart Leuvering (March 26, 2014 05:49:08 AM)

Everything up to revealing additional cards past the creature was correct. Why not shuffle the “extra” cards away, then put the cards revealed up to the first creature on the bottom in a Random order?

You'd want to pay attention to cards already on the bottom from previous Possibility Storms (if possible) and separate them, but that's going to be difficult without looking at them (they're random down there!) unless players can somehow agree on how many.

That's how I'd handle it. There's a lot of library manipulation going on there, and getting everything right is going to be difficult. Do your best, and they'll understand!

A rule of thumb you can use when there is some mystery amount of known cards on the bottom of the library is to take the amount the players think is there and add 5 or so more :)

Sounds reasonable. If you wanted to get more complicated, you could set the rightfully-exiled cards aside and shuffle the wrongfully-exiled cards and the wrongly-cast creature into the unknown part of the library, and then resume resolving Possibility Storm by casting the correct creature and then putting the other cards on the bottom. That's probably the most effective backup, and it's in line with the JAR's fix for looking at extra cards.

Originally posted by Kim Warren:

A rule of thumb you can use when there is some mystery amount of known cards on the bottom of the library is to take the amount the players think is there and add 5 or so more :)

Interesting idea… sort of a catch-all if they underestimate the true value, and immaterial to the game because it's random anyways?

Originally posted by Evan Cherry:

You'd want to pay attention to cards already on the bottom from previous Possibility Storms (if possible) and separate them, but that's going to be difficult without looking at them (they're random down there!) unless players can somehow agree on how many.

That's how I'd handle it. There's a lot of library manipulation going on there, and getting everything right is going to be difficult. Do your best, and they'll understand!

I can agree on how difficult it is to determine an exact number of cards known at the bottom of the library if that group of cards was randomized after being revealed and before being tucked underneath.

I'm a die-hard Living End player in modern. There's been so many times that I accidentally saw extra cards in my deck while I already know a good chunk of cards at the bottom but in a random order thanks to the cascade ability.

As a result, the judge at the event would often have trouble figuring out how many cards I know at the bottom of the library when s/he's trying to randomize the unknown portion. To help out with this, I request to the judge that I'd like to speak to him or her away from the table so i can say which cards I remember seeing while resolving the cascade and how many of each one I saw. The judge can then return to the table, look through the bottom of my library and use the information I gave to determine how many cards were known. The judge can also confirm that number of cards with the opponent to see if the opponent agrees before setting those known cards to the side and shuffling what's unknown.

It's not perfect, but it's the best solution I've came up with. I'm interested in knowing other ways to handle a Looking at Extra Cards problem where a player knows the cards at the bottom of the library in a random order.

(Edited for clarity.)

Edited Eric Paré (March 26, 2014 07:40:28 AM)

For determining which cards on the bottom of the library are there due to possibility storm, and which aren't, would it be acceptable to:

* Look at the bottom of the player's library
* with both player's assistance, separate out groups of cards that correspond to previous invocations of the Storm
* shuffle those piles individually, then use those as the semi-known, semi-random ‘bottom of the library’
* shuffle the wrongly revealed cards into the library.

With possibility storm in play, I think it would in general be very difficult to know how many cards are ‘known’ on the bottom of the library, since most players wouldn't pay attention to every single revealed card that goes by.

This might be a case for a judgement call, picking some number of cards as the ‘known’ bottom of library, and shuffling the rest of the library, even if some of those cards shouldn't be shuffled. I'm not sure whether to err on the side of leaving too many on the bottom, or too few on the bottom.

Without taking this thread completely off topic, Kim's suggestion seems a lot simpler and easier to manage, why attempt a more complicated process that probably takes more time and arguably harder to explain to the players and other judges.

Cheers all!