Quote:
Originally Posted by Knight of Scape
As I understand it, the question is basically about what happens if your opponent wasn't thinking about your OM removing power and just placed his OMs on a particular card in numerical order with the X last.
My personal feeling is that not letting the opponent shuffle the OMs in this scenario would be a pretty jerk move, since the only way it makes a difference is if you think that you can get a non-random OM (e.g. one that's not the X) by preventing your opponent from shuffling, in which case you're trying to go against the card's specification of a "random" OM.
On the other hand, if your opponent is keeping your OM removal power in mind when placing their OMs and shuffles their order at the start of the round, it seems like a waste of time to roll a die or make them shuffle again. Basically, if your opponent feels the need to shuffle the OMs to make your selection "random", and they express this before you've chosen an OM to remove, let them shuffle, otherwise, just pick an OM.
~KoS, noting that even in math it can be hard to use the word "random" unambiguously (technically a selection where there's a 99% chance of picking the leftmost OM is random, it just doesn't follow a uniform distribution)
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I agree 100% with this. Basically option 5 would be my ideal choice, but if people do not keep the power/glyph in mind and to prevent other person removing order markers using this knowledge to their advantage to remove "random" and instead "watch like a hawk" to try to determine order placement, I allow people to "shuffle" order markers or I guess force opponent to roll a die to ensure random. For instance if you notice they just rotated their markers from last round and didn't actually move them around, you can know for sure which order markers is which - which is why I go with option 3 or 4 to allow people to randomize in case they forgot to do during initial placement.
Maybe also I am too lazy for option 1 as I don't want to have to roll a die or shuffle order markers every time if it is not necessary to keep the effective randomness as people can effectively "randomize" their order markers when they place them initially, so going with option 1 would be redundant. I do note that with an infinite brain people are incapable of placing markers scientifically randomly on initial placement even if they shuffle them, but rather only "arbitrarily" (your mind has an indefinite reason as to where markers are placed) but is a close approximation to random and IMHO is matching the customary definition of random as used in most games - if you are irked that this "customary random" is not really random than I can see why you chose option 1, but IMHO is negligible and not worth the extra time and effort.
But again if people forget to "randomize" (AKA arbitrarily place) initial placement I feel like I am cheating if I pay attention and don't let them randomize. Gencon ruing basically says this is not cheating as it treats participants as experienced players who must remember all powers that may come up and people must "pay the penalty" if they forget rules, similar to having to remembering Engagement Strike and as soon as your hand comes off a figure you just moved next to a Nakita Agent you get struck at Gencon and most tournaments, and if you forget to randomize your order markers you allow our opponent to take advantage of that. However I and most people are lenient at home games or tournaments with newbies to let them redo moves on Engagement Strike and randomize order markers when it matters.