This really happened.

This past Saturday, at the PreRelease, i cracked open what was eventually described as a “Broken” Rav tournament pack.

It’s contents? Among other things, 2 copies of:

-Last Gasp
-Galvanic Arc
-Disembowel
-Thoughtpicker Witch
-Peel from reality

Even more strange, these copies were back-to-back and one after another. I was shocked and pleased at the same time. Surely, i stand a good chance with these pulls. It was as if the WOTC gods had deemed me worthy for the good fortune of pulling, in essence, six “kill” spells. All in a set with a R/B shock land.

However, soon after i opened the pack, a judge came by to ask if any of us opened Rav duplicates. I raised my hand, and he wrote down my pulls. Minutes later, he returned, took all of my Rav cards away and gave me a new tournament pack.

My question here is: who, if anyone, is at fault, or better yet, how is a player to feel when a situtation such as this one occurs. True, the pack was ridiculous, but is not luck a primary in this format? The pulls definately define one’s success, take the Jitte for example. While that’s an extreme case, i still feel there are similarities here.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Aaron

As much as it might suck to hear someone else say it, this is one of those cases where it’s obviously a print run/collation error and not simply opening better cards.  I’ve seen people open double of crazy cards, but those were always foils in the Rav pack.  When a player gets a pack that puts him at an unfair advantage because of an error, it’s certainly within the judge’s ability to substitute another pack in its place.

Yeah.

After consideration, this is just a print run crazy mess up. Still sucks though.

Thanks,

Aaron

There was a similar issue at the Guildpact Prerelease that I read about.

I believe it was in Milwaukee. Many (but not all) of the Tourny packs there had rares instead of basic land!

In that case, the players were given replacement Tourny packs for the competition, but were allowed to keep the original packs for themselves.

Sweet deal.

The problem with getting old is that the things which used to be easy are now hard, and the things which used to be hard are now soft.

Many moons ago, I was in a game store when someone opened a pack of Revised (which was the current set) that had all rares.  Turns out, every pack in the box had all rares.  It sold out in about thirty seconds, and I was still about eight people back in the line, so I didn’t get one.  :(

The problem with opening the duplicates is that unless a judge watched you open the duplicates and they are not foil, you can be accused for cheating so easily. It’s one of the things they have to do.

"Some have said there is no subtlety to destruction. You know what? They’re dead.” -Jaya Ballard, task mage