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View Poll Results: How do you interpret the word "random" in these situations
Players MUST always roll a dice or shuffle the order markers and without either player looking 7 13.21%
Owner MUST shuffle/rearrange OMs but can look before the player chooses which he/she removes 0 0%
Owner CAN shuffle/rearrange OMs and can look before the player chooses, but is not required 11 20.75%
Owner CAN rearrange OMs but MUST do while looking before the player chooses, but is not required 1 1.89%
Owner CANNOT shuffle/rearrange OMs before the player chooses. OMs must be placed strategically 23 43.40%
Depends on who you play with and mood players are in, but can be decided differently each game 11 20.75%
Voters: 53. You may not vote on this poll

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  #1  
Old February 4th, 2021, 01:03 PM
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Re: Remove one unrevealed Order Marker at random?

Quote:
Originally Posted by lefton4ya View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Knight of Scape View Post
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)
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.
Sorry for the long quote but I also agree to all of this to a degree, which is why I chose option 1. My choice of option 1 would work to randomize the choice of order marker whether the opponent shuffled / strategically placed their order markers or not. If the opponent did not shuffle markers then this additional protection of rolling a die is not redundant. In the case of option 1 no one is punished if they forgot to shuffle their order markers but those that do are given an extra level of security/redundancy (Order markers are not reveled when removed by a power of glyph only when taking a turn so even after an order marker is removed the number of that marker is still unrevealed so this information stays hidden).

In a Gencon tournament where rules are taken to the most serious degree of strict for this game I can see the reasoning to allow players to be penalized for not shuffling their markers or making their marker placement patterns easy to identify. But it is this same serious degree of strict that tells me to play to the card in the terms that "random" means as random as possible (by means of shuffling or more convenient rolling a die to add an additional level of random / redundancy). My reasoning falls back on the comparison of the Fyorlag Spiders vs any other unit having an order marker removal power. The Fyorlag Spiders' power is comparably much harder to come by, needing a full squad of spiders (with very limited survivability) to enter engagement with the same unit and rolling a 16 or higher (25% chance) to remove an order marker. I believe this level of difficulty to remove a marker warrants the omission of the word "random" from this power, ergo, if you can pull this power off take whatever order marker you want whether you figured out your opponents' marker placing habits or they just moved a couple from last round and can pull off that numbered marker.

On the flip side in not as serious a tourney environment (anything other than Gencon in this case) I would be much more lenient on the rulings as the less serious tone of the day would allow for a softer touch when regarding rulings. In these cases I personally would still randomize my choice by rolling a die as to not give myself a competitive edge over my opponent regardless of event type and seriousness. This is just my personal take to follow the random rule as directed by the cards.

Keep doing what you're doing, but do it better. ~Self

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Old February 4th, 2021, 03:43 PM
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Re: Remove one unrevealed Order Marker at random?

Totally agree with that line of logic and with die rolling. I definitely watch OM placement and make decisions based off it. If I can deduce your OM placement because you simply set them back up, then I'm going to pick the one I want. Die rolling is fair in my case
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