by Angrist
hobb3 wrote:
I think that Jeremy should have lost a game immediately once the judges found out that he played an ice as an agenda/asset. Illegal move = instant loss. The other guy would be an overall winner.
Although this may have been the case, it's not always so clear cut. Sometimes judges veer in the completely opposite direction because of the power they have over the game. For example, in an MTG national championships in Japan a few years ago, one player won a game. Right after it finished, a random person in the crowd said an illegal play/game state had happened in the game. The judges ended up recreating the game state retroactively and making the players play through the game (after they agreed to) and the player who won that game lost it and then the whole match because he was so psychologically disorientated from the judges' ruling. In other words random crap happens sometimes, in this case a person in the crowd, who should have no bearing on the game whatsoever, ended up changing the result of the game because judges' decisions can be erratic in obscure situations.
To reply to your comment, it is clear that in the game both players were quite informal and they were sometimes taking back moves (within reason) - like one player realizing he took a tag after what he did and then changing what he did so that he didn't take the tag. They did other stuff like retroactively triggering a card after forgetting to an action later (like forgetting to put a counter on something, then pointing it out and then doing so later on). So, because the games and judges were pretty informal during the tournament (not just in the finals but in other games), I don't think they could have awarded a game loss for installing that piece of ice in the place of an agenda. The judges clearly wanted for the game to go on and not have the finals and whole tournament decided by a play error and hence judge's ruling.