Board state and rulings on failing to maintain it.

So happened on our weekly lackey games today. Player C plays Political Stranglehold, it passes and players A, C, D, E gain pool from it. Play continues normally, and after a full round has passed, player A notices that he didn't take the pool he would have gained from the Political Stranglehold. At this point, he was very close to being ousted, and there had been made deals between players A, C and D to keep him in table, a situation that would not have happened if his pool would have been correctly marked.

This lead to a bit confusing situation, as it was unclear to us how this situation should be handled. I think that as the game has been going on for so long already, take back is hard, and the pool is lost, as the player forgot to take it, but is this the correct way to handle the situation?

Taking back would be the optimal way to deal with the problem, but as everyone had already played a turn or two after the said action, the impact of the mistake was huge, and taking back would really disrupt the game.

Poltical stranglehold's pool gain is not optional, so even if people have made decisions based on incorrect information, the gamestate should be set to its correct position.

d-mohn wrote:

Poltical stranglehold's pool gain is not optional, so even if people have made decisions based on incorrect information, the gamestate should be set to its correct position.

The Judges' Guide explains that things are more nuanced than that. www.vekn.net/judges-guide See section 200, near the end.

If you can rewind, you do rewind. If too much has happened since then to rewind, it's judge's discretion as to whether things are left alone or whether things are corrected in some manner.



The pool total being wrong for a period of time (which might be many actions and many cards played, even if just one or two turns) can have had significant positive and negative effects, such as putting the player in range / out of range of Parity Shift, Foreshadowing Destruction etc. For someone playing Parity Shift, it may have changed their decision on how much pool to spend to put themself in range e.g. playing an expensive master card, or not pulling pool back with Villein etc.

In any given circumstance, a judge might decide that a game state correction reflecting such issues might or might not be more appropriate.

The Judges' Guide was the reason I asked this question. As it is really difficult to define when the game has progressed too far. So I would love other opinions on this.

In this case, as I already said, the game had progressed for over a full round, so everyone had made actions, and there had been made deals to keep the player who forgot to take the pool from PS in the game. Deals that would have been unnecessary if the pool was correctly marked.

These deals included a cross table Banishment and couple of rushes to basically destroy the game for player E. At which point the player A notices that he indeed did forget to take the pool from the PS. If the pool would have been correctly marked, player E might not have even tried to oust player A at that point of the game.

So I would like to know how you would rule the mistake in this scenario? As I said on the first post, I personally would say that the pool is lost, as this has the least impact on the game. But are there any other ways to look at the problem?

so players C D E gain pool,A forgot to gain and other be blind to remind him how him not gain pool too,well by me players C D E need to burn pool gained from Political Stranglehold and then game be fair for all.
I always say how is fair play on first place,if people dont respect each other that is generaly bad for game.
In this situation every player see how much pool need to gain his oponents,if everyone not gain pool game cannot continue,pool need to take all players in same time
you have log,so you just wait to every player take pool before you continue,I dont want to say what conclusion I have about players who play this game,so next time if people want fair game-be fair with each other. you need judge decision? no tnx,not deserve judge

Igor, your answer doesn't really answer anything. Its not fair for everyone to burn the pool from everybody, just because one player forgot to take it. Even though this specific game was played online, this could as well happen in normal physical game, where you don't have logs or have the information presented in as clear way as it is in Lackey.

Also, we were playing with friends, using Discord to communicate, so we didn't really pay attention to the logs. In the heat of the game, it is very humane to forget something like this, which is why the problem occurred in the first place. And as I said, at that point, when we noticed the mistake after the game had progressed so far, the question arise that what should be done now. This has nothing to do with disrespect.

In normal situation I would not even ask for other opinions, as we dealt the situation in game, by just leaving the game state as it was. But the European Championship is coming, and some of the players are going to be judges there, so we want to be as prepared as we can be.