Welcome to a continuation of our Tournament Tuesday’s JAR Series! To jog your memories from last week, the JAR (or Judging At Regular) is the document that we use for Regular Rules Enforcement Level (or REL) events; the IPG is put aside for these events since they’re more casual and relaxed, with a bigger emphasis on community and fun and learning. As such, they have a more lax rules document; the JAR is only two pages long, and can be summed up as ‘how to fix things that will break’. We’ve already covered forgetting your triggers on accident, seeing cards you shouldn’t have seen, and drawing more cards than you should have. As far as actual game errors, that only leaves one category: “Everything else”.
For every error in actual gameplay (tournament stuff like having a 30 card deck or illegal cards notwithstanding; that’s next week!) that isn’t covered by the topics we’ve already gone over, you look to this category. For example, a card is in the wrong zone, or an Aura is attached to something it can’t be attached to, or any other rule having been broken by mistake or neglect. The way we approach these is very cut-and-dry, since they’ll be the lion’s share of errors you see at Regular REL: “Fix it and move on”. If there’s anything outright illegal still happening (like you have Pacifism on a Knight of Infamy, or there’s a Runeclaw Bear still on board right after someone resolved a Mutilate that should have killed it), you fix that.
It’s also possible to rewind the game in certain situations; if the error is caught quickly enough, and it’s easy enough to back things up, do so. For example, if I make an error and cast Supreme Verdict by tapping three Islands and one Plains (which is illegal!) and we catch it pretty much right away, we can just back up to immediately before I cast the spell and there’s no harm done. A turn or two down the line, however, too much time has passed to rewind because too much has changed. It’s up to the judge whether or not to rewind the game, remember!
Join us next week for our next entry into the JAR Series: Having illegal, insufficient, or someone else’s cards in your deck!
Today’s Tournament Tip was written by Trevor Nunez