I have a question in regards to the contents of packs and possible cheating. Is it possible to get two of the same uncommon in a single pack, specifically Born of the Gods? I have an accusation by a player that another player was using two of the same Born of the Gods uncommon in the JOU prerelease. If true, is it possible to get that result from a single pack?

Apologies if this is the wrong forum.

Edit: The store owner wants to talk to the player tonight, so the sooner i could get an answer the better.

Edited Ian Groombridge (April 26, 2014 02:34:45 PM)

It is possible, however unlikely. All kinds of oddities can occur with packaging. This is one reason why it is generally a good idea to make sure players know to make a judge aware of any unusual packs. While it is highly unlikely that a duplicated Uncommon might occur in a booster (presuming one is not foil) there is always some non-zero chance. You have to make a judgment call here to decide whether you think the player might be adding cards to his or her pool or not.

You'll need to talk with the player and if your able to find them someone who was around the player during deck contruction

Moved to Regular REL.

If we're talking about the sealed prerelease packs, I have personally seen examples of strange print runs leading to incidents like this at previous (I believe Dragon's Maze) prereleases.

Ignoring obvious question paths (is one foil, for example), have a chat with the player. Ask to see the rest of the cards, find the Born of the Gods ones. Make sure there's a rare, three uncommons, and eleven commons.

This is Regular REL, and a prerelease no less. Gunning for the player's blood right off the bat isn't a great stance to take. Level with the player about how it looks unusual and strange, and inform them that you're just trying to cover all your bases.

Remember that there is a good chance that the player didn't even notice
this happened. When building a draft pool I crack all the packs at the
start, as instructed, then quickly sort into colour piles. By the stage
that I'm looking at which card is which at all I've destroyed the pack
structure and I'm not familiar enough with which cards are from which set
to immediately notice that a duplicated card is from the set I have a
single pack of.

Also a player, my brother in law, across from me this weekend opened a pack
with a duplicate (non foil) common in it, so things like this do happen.

I opened a booster with a weird sequence myself the other day. A string of commons was followed directly with the same string, in the exact same order. And I'm talking 4 cards here.
It was from a Journey into Nyx fatpack by the way.

Edited Mart Leuvering (May 9, 2014 06:20:40 PM)

It is entirely possible that the pack was at fault here, not the player. I was at an M12 draft once where our own Evan Cherry opened M11 cards in an M12 pack. Oddities exist and they can be quite strange. I agree that further questioning should happen.

I have personally seen 2 of the same uncommon opened in a pack. The counts were correct, 3 uncommons, 1 rare, etc…

Looks like we've stopped answering, and just added our own examples of a known phenomenon… time to wrap this one up.

Yes, oddities can occur; it'd be great if players always noticed them and called a judge, but not noticing is possible, too. Investigate and decide what you believe has really happened.