Forgetting mandatory effects

During the EC a player I went with was cautioned for not reminding a player of his Leandro's card text ability. This seems really odd to me, that it's punishing the wrong player.

How is a forgotten "environmental" effect supposed to be handled? Examples include Leandro, Arika, contesting, Antediluvian Awakening, Tryphosa, Meddling of Semsith, Blood Awakening, Veil of Darkness, Smiling Jack, Anarch Revolt, Dragonbound, etc, etc. There are plenty.

The way I see it is that it's the players' own responsibility to remember all effects he/she needs to resolve, but this caution puts the responsibility on other players around the table.

It is everyone's responsibility to remember global effects.
No one is ever exempt from being aware of game state.

See also: LSJ 01-12-2002

>So whose responsibility is it to remember the Army of Rats or Egothha he has in play?

The table's. Typically the onus falls on the controller of the effect or the "beneficiary" of the effect, for obvious reasons.

Obviously if anyone sees something being forgotten this person would have to remind the player before the game state is too confused. I'm talking more of who is supposed to actively think about it.

For instance, I use other players' untap phases, master phases (unless I have a sudden/wash), influence phases and discard phases to think about my turn or my strategy for the game. Even if I think about what other players are doing I try to get in to the other players head, not observe their rule-adherence. If I am cheating by not scrutinizing every players every move, I believe my play would suffer from it and that tables will more often time out (since the rules would make 5 players think the same things a lot of the time).

>So whose responsibility is it to remember the Army of Rats or Egothha he has in play?

The table's. Typically the onus falls on the controller of the effect or the "beneficiary" of the effect, for obvious reasons.

"for obvious reasons." this seems flawed. It's not obvious to me.
Obviously the beneficiary are benefiting from their effect being resolved, this person has an interest in it happening, we won't need a rule to control this. We would on the other hand need a rule which makes not resolving a detrimental effect and claiming to have forgotten it, since there is no impetus for a player not to abuse this if it wasn't punishable. Basically, worst case scenario, this ruling would be punishing a player for an unintended mistake and not punish a player for premeditated cheating.

This is of course for detrimental mandatory effects. Most beneficial effects are not mandatory (they have a "may" in there). A few beneficial effects are mandatory, like Nahum Enosh and The Rack, but they're much fewer. "The controller" and "the beneficiary" can be different players. Does "the table" have a responsibility to remind a player of The Rack, and are all four players given a caution if it has been forgotten?

Xaddam wrote:

>So whose responsibility is it to remember the Army of Rats or Egothha he has in play?

The table's. Typically the onus falls on the controller of the effect or the "beneficiary" of the effect, for obvious reasons.

"for obvious reasons." this seems flawed. It's not obvious to me.

I think it makes sense.

Typically the beneficiary (or the owner of the card) has the card in front of them (and if it's in their deck, they've probably had more time to look at and read the card then the other players).

Between the 5 players, the one player with Egothha or Army of Rats right in front of them, is the one who has a greater responsibility to remember it. For everyone else, it could be one (of many) cards across the table that they can't see clearly.

Obviously if anyone sees something being forgotten this person would have to remind the player before the game state is too confused. I'm talking more of who is supposed to actively think about it.

Another issue that potentially complicates this, is if a third party (not playing in the game, and not a judge or official) notices something.

If it is super obvious (someone playing with the old card text or playing with a banned card) then it seems easier for them to point it out. But if it's a subtler issue, it might be something that would be better to privately tell the judge and have him do something about it, rather than get involved directly. Getting involved means you could easily accidentally provide too much information (reminding someone of something that's actually optional, like Edge pool or hunting ground blood, and giving them an advantage).

A rule like this would encourage cheating. Say I have a Meddling of Semsith played with me as the Methuselah who is not allowed to replace cards during minion phases. I would be encouraged to replace cards even if it's not allowed since I won't be punished from doing so and obviously replacing cards is good for me. (If I would like to cheat I should of course try my best to not be caught, etc, etc, etc, of course.)

There is a rule against a certain cheat. In a more Machiavellian sense the only thing to dissuade me from using that cheat would be the threat of punishment, if the punishment is misplaced to someone else, why shouldn't I cheat?