Tonight's Final Table

At the tournament I hosted tonight we had a fairly big oops come up.

A turn and a half later, the players caught that a card had been incorrectly played which resulted in a player having been ousted. It was far enough after, time wise, that the ousted player had scooped his cards and shuffled them back into his deck and no one could remember anywhere near enough of the details.

After conferring with another Prince who was not seated at the table, I ruled to take the 6 pool and VP from the offending player and resume time from the point of discovery.

Has anyone else encountered something like this and have any insight?

This was the least unfair solution I could come up with given the circumstances.

Such situations are always awful. There is not much you can do once the ousted player has removed and shuffled his cards.

It is probably the best to resume playing and take away the VP and the 6 pool from the offending player, like you did.
If it was an honest mistake, give a warning. If not - disqualification.
Just my opinion. B)

I've been on the receiving end of that, being ousted by a card that couldn't have been played. I didn't catch it at the time, and it was actually the guy that made the misplay that alerted the judge after the game. It was a totally genuine mistake. The ruling was that too much time had passed to rewind/change anything so the result stood. I was gutted as it dropped me out of the final, but I agreed with the ruling. It'll teach me to read my opponent's cards fully in future.

It was truly a genuine mistake. I absolutely hated doing that to the player but as I said, it was the least unfair thing to do given the circumstances.

MalkavianPrank wrote:

At the tournament I hosted tonight we had a fairly big oops come up.

A turn and a half later, the players caught that a card had been incorrectly played which resulted in a player having been ousted. It was far enough after, time wise, that the ousted player had scooped his cards and shuffled them back into his deck and no one could remember anywhere near enough of the details.

After conferring with another Prince who was not seated at the table, I ruled to take the 6 pool and VP from the offending player and resume time from the point of discovery.

Has anyone else encountered something like this and have any insight?

This was the least unfair solution I could come up with given the circumstances.

The player who had expended all his resources up to that point to oust his prey got NOTHING in return for his efforts, it was ALL taken away from him. This seems to be massive overkill and a general apology to the rest of the table, which should never be a reason to make a ruling.

Rulings should be made only when absolutely necessary and with the least amount of intrusion and corruption into the game state.

Since the game had progressed far enough forward and SO MANY decisions have been made that were based on the incorrect play, trying to go back in time and fixing ANYTHING is going to corrupt the game so much that I'd have just given the players a stern warning about how they are responsible for the actions of all the other players at the table, and that this was only an accident but it had a large consequence, so please watch closer next time.


Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas
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What you did was fine, although a warning would be good in addition to the removal of his VP and 6 pool. Judges have a fair amount of leeway in making their decisions so as long as you are well-versed in rules and errata, you will generally be fine. This isn't to say that you can't consult with other judges or players.