How do you deal with players not knowing the rules?

Yup have to agree with Boris and Wedge, they were 1)inexperienced,2) in collusion, or 3)or not paying attention when it was pointed out to the player. The first can be corrected with just reading updates/rules. The second has to be penalized by the judge, the last well we cant do anything about that.

TorranceCircle wrote:

Did all five players not know the rule for theft of vitae verse allies?

The inexperienced player probably didn't know the rule, since he is still quite new in general and has only started playing Thaumaturgy decks very recently. The other players at the table have all been playing for several years, so they should have known the rule, but all claimed afterwards to have been unaware or unsure of it. Why no-one thought to call the judge as a result is far less clear, but it didn't happen.

Since I was not at the table in question, I can't comment on how the actual conversation at the table went down. Certainly the new player believed, after talking to the table, that theft did not work against allies. Whether this was because one player misled him (intentionally or not) and no-one else was paying attention and pointed out the error, or the entire table got it wrong, I can't say. Either way, there was a significant rules screw-up that may very well have cost a player a game win and we didn't pick it up until far too late.

What I'm looking for is any ideas for helping prevent a repeat. Currently, the best I've come up with is "Tell players they really, really should always call the judge" and "Tell players to please, please read the rulebook and know how your cards are supposed to work". Neither of these looks likely to actually help, unfortunately.

Having more people acting as judges and not involved in the tournament to pick up things like this would obviously help, but our players numbers are not high enough that we can comfortably have 2 or 3 of our more experienced players sit out on a regular basis.

I don't know who does the judge thing, but in some circumstance judge being more friendly and more easy to contact can go a long way to make people call them more. Of course, it may be already the case here.

this is hindsight and all that, but Theft of Vitae should've been printed as "steal blood or life" a long time ago.

it's the only mechanic in the game where blood and life seem to be interchangeable, while every other card that specifies blood only refers to vampire blood.

Cryptic Mission...

No:

Cryptic Mission


+1 stealth action.
Burn 1 blood on a vampire, or do 1 unpreventable damage to any ally or retainer.
As above, and the acting vampire gains 1 blood from the blood bank.

Cryptic mission has two different effects, one against vampires and one against allies. They turn out to be very similar but both are described on the card and when it says "blood", it means vampire blood only, not blood or life.