Level Two - Lesson 13

Master Event Document - Gameplay Disruptions Overview

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Hello there!

Welcome back to the level two lessons for the Star Wars™: Unlimited Judge Program!

As always, I’m your host Jonah, and this lesson will be the first to start exploring specific infractions within the Master Event Document, beginning with the varieties of Gameplay Disruption: Missed Mandatory Abilities, Missed Game Steps and Inaccurate Gameplay. While Card Manipulation Error falls into this category, we’ll be talking about it in a separate lesson, as it is handled somewhat differently.

As always with policy, this is an area that is continually being refined, and will grow and evolve as play also continues to evolve. This does make it a bit of a challenge to both learn and teach, so this is likely a lesson that will similarly evolve over time.

What Are Gameplay Disruptions?

Gameplay disruptions are aptly named. When a player’s actions accidentally disrupt the natural and accurate flow of the game, they have committed a gameplay disruption. This is generally caused by players messing up the execution of an action or being unaware of game rules to the fullest extent.

If you believe that a player’s actions are intentional, you should alert the Head Judge (if you’re a Floor Judge) and then the Head Judge should proceed with an investigation. Investigations will be covered briefly in a future level two lesson.

When a gameplay disruption has been committed, it is our responsibility as judges to remedy the situation as best as possible, and get the game as close as we can to a natural gamestate, as though the error had not occurred.

Fundamental Remedies

Oftentimes, perfectly repairing the gamestate is not possible, because a player has taken an action and revealed information that we can not take back, or decisions have been made. However, we have several tools in our toolkit that we can use to address these situations.

First is known as “resolve now”. This isn’t using the phrase “resolve” as the comprehensive rules does, as it can be used to address errors that aren’t resolving cards or abilities. For example, if an incorrect amount of damage was marked on a unit that was attacked, adding the appropriate number of counters isn’t “resolving” an ability, but fits under the “resolve now” umbrella.

Second is “rewinding” or “backing-up”. This is where the judge works with the players to determine everything that has happened since the error, and then works with the players to undo each of those actions, so that the game is back to the state it was in before the error was made. Play resumes from that point, which means that players are allowed to make different decisions than they did in the original timeline. This is both a restriction that makes rewinding difficult, but also a feature, that can allow games to play out more naturally.

Finally, judges can leave the gamestate as is. In rare circumstances, both resolving now or rewinding to the point of error can be more disruptive to the gamestate than simply continuing to play without performing any remedy. Leaving the game as is should not be common, and judges should strive to find solutions that address the underlying issue.

Resolve Now

Resolving now can handle a lot of errors that crop up - if damage is incorrectly marked, adding or removing counters can address the issue. If a card should have changed zones but didn’t, simply moving it now can remedy that. If the incorrect number of resources were exhausted to play a card, exhausting or readying additional resources as appropriate can handle the situation.

However, changing the gamestate in the middle of things can make it so that what was a good decision is no longer a good decision.

For example, if a player forget to place an experience token on a unit due to misresolving a triggered ability, then their opponent attacks that unit, the additional damage and HP may result in an attack that was going to defeat an enemy unit without losing a friendly unit turn into an attack that causes the player to lose a unit without defeating an enemy unit, which is almost certainly a play they wouldn’t have made.

Similarly, if you just exhaust an additional resource, a player may now no longer have the necessary resources to finish their line of play.

You also want to make sure that you’re wholly addressing the error. If a player forgot to add an experience token to a unit, and has since attacked with that unit, you may also need to add damage to whatever the unit attacked.

Notably, if you have to adjust more than one thing, that’s a good sign that resolving now might not be the best fix for the situation. Furthermore, if resolving something now causes a player to say “well, if that’s the case, I would want to take different actions” that’s another good sign that resolving now might not be ideal.

Backing Up

We’re going to take a full lesson to dig into backing up because rewinding can be very complicated and very damaging. Everything that has happened since the error must be undone, so that we can keep the game in a natural gamestate.

Let’s say a player attacked a base with a Sentinel in play, then the non-active player attacked back, an event was played defeating a unit, initiative claimed and then the game proceeds to regroup, and it’s not until after regroup, that the active player realizes that their opponent had a sentinel in play.

The rewind here would be as follows:

  1. Both players exhaust resources until they’re in the state they were at the end of the regroup phase.
    1. We want to ensure that players have access to the correct resources.
  2. Both players select a resource at random from their resource zone and return it to hand (assuming both players played a card as a resource)
    1. We select a card at random because the identities of the cards chosen were hidden information and we have no way of confirming what cards had been played this phase.
  3. Both players take two cards at random from their hand and put them on top of their deck - but do not shuffle them in.
    1. Again, we select random cards because we can’t confirm which cards were drawn
    2. The cards are placed on top of the deck and not shuffled into the deck because the cards may be cards that the player has had in their hand since the beginning of the game and has built their strategy around them. Shuffling them in is very disruptive, and the players drawing the cards was legal, so it doesn’t need to be changed.
  4. The initiative is unclaimed and returns to the player who previously had it
  5. The event is unplayed, returned to it’s owner’s hand and the appropriate resources are readied.
  6. The unit that NAP attacked with is readied, and damage is removed from it and the target of the attack
    1. If any triggers were resolved as a consequence of the attack they are undone as well
  7. The unit that AP attacked with is readied, damage is removed from it and the base
  8. The game resumes with the AP taking their next action, which may or may not be an attack.

There are many reasons why you wouldn’t want to perform this rewind:

It is important to take into consideration the consequences of a rewind before performing it. You can also see why, with this example, we’re going to spend some more time talking about rewinds, and the consequences of them in a dedicated lesson.

If you’re considering rewinding through cards going from one hidden zone to another (deck, hand, and resource), that random factor is a good reason to consider not rewinding. However, keep in mind that cards put back in the deck during rewinds are put back on top of the deck, and so players are likely to access them very quickly.

But that access isn’t guaranteed, and players with search effects may choose to bypass those cards if they are cards that have less value at this point in the game. Notably, this issue is somewhat mitigated in Star Wars: Unlimited compared to other TCGs, because a player can always choose to resource a card that is suboptimal in a given situation, and so the opportunity to shuffle away bad cards is less impactful.

Leave As Is

That brings us to door number three - leave as is.

In the above situation, “resolving now” doesn’t really make sense. We’re not going to handwave the attack and say “you actually attacked the sentinel, let’s add damage to your unit and the sentinel and remove it from the base”.

Not only is that not a choice the player would have made, but the choices that came after - the attack from NAP and playing the event may have been made differently if the active player had attacked the Sentinel.

We’ve also discussed why the situation above isn’t a great candidate for a rewind.

When neither rewinding or resolving now look good, a judge should consider leaving the game as is. It may feel uncomfortable to not address the game, but it it is important to remember that it is the shared responsibility of both players to ensure that the game state is accurate. The non-active player could have and should have pointed out that their unit had sentinel and that the attack was illegal at the time of the attack.

Determining the Fix

Some fixes are going to be clear and obvious, and you can quickly determine if a rewind is correct or if simply resolving now makes the most sense.

However, you’ll often have to use your judgment, which can result in inconsistency. We’ll take some time in a future lesson to go over many specific examples, but we’ll also touch on some in this lesson to help align you with best practices.

When fixing an error, don’t begin by determining the fix, and then figuring out which infraction offers you that fix - determine what went wrong, which will tell you which infraction the player committed, and from there, you’ll be able to determine the fix.

Furthermore, the remedy is not supposed to be punitive. The entire purpose of the remedy is to get the game back on track and mitigate potential advantage from accidentally making the error. The penalty itself, which we discussed in the previous lesson, is the only aspect of an infraction that should be punitive at all. Do not select a fix because it is disadvantageous to the player who made the error, and you feel that they need a punitive fix for the lesson to stick.

You can take into account which player is disadvantaged more by your remedy - if rewinding provides a slight disadvantage to the player who committed the error, but resolving now provides a slight disadvantage to their opponent, leaning in favor of mitigating advantage toward the player who made the error is a better practice that giving that player an advantage - if we did that, it would incentivize players to make errors, or at the very least, not disincentivize them.

Applying the Remedy

When you’ve determined how you’re going to address the situation, explain it to both players, but don’t have them do anything - especially if the fix involves cards being revealed or going from one hidden zone to another. A player may, after hearing your fix, want to appeal, and if cards have already changed zones, it makes it that much more difficult to undo it.

Furthermore, part way through your explanation of the remedy, a player may say “what about the Superlaser Blast my opponent played?” which throws a wrench in your plans, and the fix is no longer ideal. If you’ve already started to execute on the remedy, you have to undo that as well, which against draws the game further away from where it’s supposed to be.

So, take your time to explain it to both players, ensure that they both understand what the fix is and why you’re applying it, that neither of them have anything to add and that they’re both as satisfied with the outcome as is possible.

Once everyone is on the same page, then you go back to the start of your explanation and go through the process again, this time with players taking actions. You’ll want to oversee the fix, especially if you’re performing the rewind, not just tell the players what it is and leave them to their own devices. This allows you to ensure that not only is the fix executed correctly, but if something goes wrong, you’re there to immediately correct it.

Missed Mandatory Actions

The first subcategory of Gameplay Disruptions is Missed Mandatory Actions - MMAs. This is a broad category that covers missing any ability entirely or when an ability is resolved when it shouldn’t.

This most frequently will be a player missing triggers (When Played, When Defeated, and On Attack being the most common conditions) or resolving them when they shouldn’t.

A lot of the time, especially if they are caught quickly, Missed Mandatory Actions are good candidates for resolving now - you can put an experience token on something or deal a point of damage.

Missed Game Steps

Missed Game Steps are when a player misses something laid out in the comprehensive rules that applies to game structure - readying resources, drawing cards for regroup being the two most common game steps.

Inaccurate Gameplay

Inaccurate Gameplay is another very broad category. Resolving something at the correct time, but resolving it incorrectly, is inaccurate gameplay.

Examples include paying the incorrect cost for a card, making an illegal attack, or claiming the initiative when another player has already done so.

Inaccurate Gameplay is frequently best resolved with a rewind - if a player’s action is illegal, they need to choose a new action to take, and that shouldn’t happen out of sequence - it should occur when they were supposed to take the action.

Card Manipulation Errors

Card Manipulation Errors - when a player looks at cards that they shouldn’t or draws cards when they shouldn’t, are also gameplay disruptions. However, because they involve an error involving hidden information by their very nature, they don’t generally fall into situations where resolving now or rewinding are practical solutions. Consequently, they have their own fixes, which we’ll be covering in a future lesson.

Repeated Infractions

If a player repeats the infraction, the severity of the penalty escalates from one penalty point to two. It doesn’t need to be the exact same infraction - a player who misses a trigger (A Missed Mandatory Ability) can receive a second Missed Mandatory Ability for not drawing a card off of Heroic Sacrifice - which would upgrade.

However, not drawing a card for the regroup phase would be a Missed Game Step, which upgrades separately.

Root Causes

It’s important to look at the root cause when evaluating a gameplay disruption. We aren’t issuing multiple penalties - especially for legally completing actions that are based on an illegal action.

For example, the active player plays Mission Briefing for two resources instead of three - that’s illegal. However, the cards they drew were legal. Once they had played the card, resolving the card is the correct and legal thing to do.

In a similar way, if a player makes an illegal attack, and then resolves an on-attack trigger, or a when defeated trigger occurs, players should not be infracted for these later actions - the y occurred legally, even if the root cause was illegal.

Furthermore, if a player commits multiple infractions in a batch of actions, we focus on the initial action and don’t issue multiple penalties. For example, if a player makes an illegal attack and then forgets to resolve an on-attack trigger, we would most likely simply rewind the attack, and issue a minor gameplay disruption.

Reciprocal Infractions

We discussed earlier the idea that both players are responsible for any infractions that occur, which can be taken into account when applying remedies and using our judgment to best rectify the situation.

Whenever a player commits an infraction, if their opponent doesn’t catch the infraction immediately, that is something that we, as judges, want to be aware of.

A player allowing their opponent to take an illegal action that advantages the player, falls into the same category of cheating as that player taking an illegal action themselves and not calling a judge. That is to say, if a player is aware the game state is illegal, gained an advantage from it, knew that they were not allowed to ignore and then ignores it anyway, that player should be investigated for cheating.

Because this is a potentially serious infraction, if a player commits an error and their opponent doesn’t say anything, we want to make note of it. The vast majority of the time we’ll give the player a tracking penalty - it is worth zero penalty points, and does not upgrade, but let’s us know situations where the player has let their opponent make an error.

Frequently, the player doesn’t call for a judge because they didn’t notice or the error is disadvantageous to them, and so it’s not even possible for it to be cheating.

However, sometimes the player is responsible for the game rule that their opponent broke. With a card like Regional Governor, which says that their opponents can’t play a card of a specific name, or Sentinels, which govern what attacks are legal and not, the player now has an active role in their opponent making the error.

Consequently, if a player controls an object that is creating the game rule that their opponent broke, they receive a warning penalty and one penalty point, which escalates as per usual.

The reason behind this is two-fold - first, it is harder to expect their opponents to be aware of every game rule modifying effect on another player’s cards, as opposed to expecting them to understand their own cards and the fundamental game rules. Second, we don’t want to incentivize players to let their opponents miss card-generated game rules. If these penalties didn’t escalate, a malicious player could play cards that create these rules, and then wait until their opponents make errors because of them and aggressively call for judges, hoping to get their opponents with penalties. If they similarly receive a penalty, however, they are incentivized to ensure that their opponent is aware of the game rule modifying cards, and keep the game as accurate as possible.

We discussed back-ups in passing in this lesson, but our next lesson will truly explore them and help you develop a baseline sense of when it is correct to rewind and when you shouldn’t, and should look to other remedies instead. If you’re watching this on YouTube, and you want more level two lessons in your feed, go ahead and subscribe. Join us Tuesdays and Fridays on twitch.tv/swu_judges for live broadcasts covering the content of these lessons as they are released, and join the Star Wars: Unlimited Judge Program Discord to join the community in discussion of this and much, much more.

As always, good luck, and have fun.

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