Reverting Errored Game States

The Game State can be affected by illegal actions, missed triggers, or other infractions that might occur in a game. The Game State is often reversible in the sense that if an illegal play or action took place to create an errored Game State, actions can be retraced with any applied effects reverted to go back in the game to a point where the Game State was correct. If the errored Game State cannot be easily reverted or if the new Game State resulted in a significant change in the information available to either player, corrective procedures should be applied.

Reverting game states should only be used when the errored Game State did not result in a significant change of information available to either player and is optimal when there is no change in any such information. Often this is when there were few resolved effects or player actions taken. Simple reversals will just require the last action taken or the current action to be reversed to the point before that action was taken. Game State errors involving random or unknown elements are not considered simple and should rarely be opted for. Game States should be reverted (if possible) if the present Game State was caused by illegal action, even if an opponent gains knowledge of previously private or private information.

Head Judges or any judges authorized by a Head Judge may allow reverting game states. When a game state is reverted, every action taken and resolved effect is reversed in time order from most recent to the oldest. Everything that is reversed is to be reversed as it had originally resolved or was performed without any derivation or deviation. If a reversal involved a card unknown to a player but not the other (such as a card drawn), a random card out of possible cards is chosen for that step.

E.g. Reversing a single card drawn would require the owner of those cards to randomly select a card from whichever zone that card was drawn into and place it back to where it was drawn from. If knowledge is gained as to the order of cards in a section of the Main Deck, that section is shuffled into the randomized part of the deck if those cards were not drawn. If known-ordered cards were drawn, they would be returned to the Main Deck in the order they originally were.

If an errored Game State can be reverted to repair the integrity of the game, a warning for Failure to Maintain Game State suffices. The infraction penalty should only be a Game Loss if being upgraded from prior Failure to Maintain Game State infractions.