Remove one unrevealed Order Marker at random?

[AMIS]

Wow...interesting discussion.
I never even thought of the word random being such a huge part of the rules for the Mind Flayer that's why I went number 5. I guess 6 is probably best but if you're truly looking for random, pull out the old D&D dice and roll a d4. If it's past round 1 and you roll a 1...it's still random and simply takes away from the value of the card or it forces you to use the Mind Flayer earlier and come up with a new strategy. That's why this game is so awesome.

[Astroking112]

I've always played those sorts of powers by Option #5, and the only times that I've seen them at tournaments that's what I expected. That said, if I was using the unit and the other player didn't know (or forgot) that there was an OM removal power in play, then I'd have absolutely no problem with them shuffling/moving their OMs on the same cards to be placed more randomly. I also have no problem with shifting my own figures a bit so that opponents can go where they want to without denial, though, which I know was a contentious topic.

If I was playing anywhere else instead of hosting, then I'd play the power however the host wanted. Option #6 is probably the best answer in that regard, but I generally talk through powers/cards that the other players have never seen before the game anyway and make sure they know what each card can do and what will happen if it succeeds, so I've never seen anyone have an issue with Option #5 at my house before.

[IAmBatman]

1-4 are all adding mechanics to the game that are not on the card or in the rulebook. Falls under “do what the card says, not what it doesn’t say.” Problem, of course, is it says to do something that is impossible without additional mechanics.

This leads me to believe #5 is correct and the card has poor word choice (“random” should be “without looking”).

[vegietarian18]

Don't have anything new to the debate here, just wanted to share that as a somewhat direct result of this thread, I played Mindflayer at Scapecon 2022. In my reverse match against @Sir Heroscape , playing all MacDirks, I lined up all of my order markers on the MacDirk Warriors in reverse order X 3 2 1, instead of the more subconscious 1 2 3 X. Sir H won initiative, psionic blasted a low defense MacDirk, and then stole my OMX trying to steal my 1. The Macdirks then mobbed the Mindflayer and killed him, knocking off an OM on the reverse side.

Basically my point is whatever the end ruling is, it's relevant, especially in Main Event style games where Mindflayer and Spiders are viable.

[IAmBatman]

Sounds like you did #5.

[Sir Heroscape]

Yes, I agree with #5. the placing of OM's is part of before rolling for initiative and is strategic and shouldn't be "messed with" because the position of those OM's changes also as you take turns. i.e. if I see he's taken OM1 and OM2 right next to each other, I might assume OM3 is in order.

[Knight of Scape]

I still think that if you're trying to strategize based on how your opponent has placed their OMs, you're going explicitly against what the card tells you to do: pick an OM randomly.

~KoS, who could believe that "random" actually meant "without looking", but isn't inclined toward that interpretation when actually picking an OM randomly, like the card says to, is easy to do, and feels infinitely more fair.

[IAmBatman]

Originally Posted by Knight of Scape

~KoS, who could believe that "random" actually meant "without looking", but isn't inclined toward that interpretation when actually picking an OM randomly, like the card says to, is easy to do, and feels infinitely more fair.

*Is* it easy to do? If I look at how Order Markers are arranged, my brain processes what I think is the likely placement in microseconds. How do I then "randomly" select one without bringing in any mechanisms beyond what's laid out in the power text?

[Knight of Scape]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

*Is* it easy to do? If I look at how Order Markers are arranged, my brain processes what I think is the likely placement in microseconds. How do I then "randomly" select one without bringing in any mechanisms beyond what's laid out in the power text?

Having the opponent shuffle the OMs and rolling a die are both very easy methods that have already been brought up in this thread. I don't see why the card text has to explicitly specify the method of random selection, because the method of random selection doesn't matter.

As another example, there are scenarios in the BftU rulebook that tell you to use a "random" glyph. They don't tell you how to select this glyph, so to do this you'd have to use some mechanism beyond what the rules tell you. I don't think that this means that you're just supposed to pick any face down glyph you like, even if you know exactly what it is from last game. I think the designers expect you to provide your own method of randomness, such as the extraordinarily simple algorithm of "shuffle up the glyphs face down until you don't know which is which, and then pick an arbitrary one" (as with OMs, you could argue that rolling a die is technically more random than shuffling, but I'd only bother with it if another player specifically requested it).

Obviously I can't get inside the designer's heads. Clearly there are people here who think that "random" means "without looking", and maybe that's indeed what the designers meant, and the power is just phrased poorly. Without talking to the designers, it's impossible to know one way or the other. But I don't buy the idea that because they didn't tell use exactly how to carry out the random selection, they couldn't possibly have meant "random" when they said "random".

~KoS, noting that he doesn't have anything against players just picking an OM without rolling/shuffling if both players feel that is "sufficiently random". There are, after all, lots of ways that we often violate the letter of the rules for convenience, e.g. not placing all the wound markers on a hero who is destroyed. The issue is when a player insists they have a right to strategically choose the OM to remove, against an opponent's desire to make the selection truly random.

[Sir Heroscape]

I think at the end of the day, TD's will just have to decide the ruling for each event. Not sure there can be only 1 correct interpretation here.

[Tornado]

There can be, only one...
Interpretation.

[Sir Heroscape]

I don't think the ODs' intention was to select the OM with a truly Randomized method. I'm pretty sure they used that verbiage to indicate that the opponent is not able to see the OM's and must select one "at random"...even though technically, it's not truly random. Had they intended a truly random selection I feel like they would have been a lot more descriptive on the process required for removing the OM's