While I understand the logic, I don’t think you should be asking a player “would you have run the server”? It’s hard to know; you played a whole turn of the game assuming that the installed card was an upgrade! Instead, as a TO, you could ask yourself, “if the OP installed trashing Eve, would a reasonable player maybe have run the server?” If the answer is yes, that’s good enough to, at the very least, try to rewind to the start of the runners turn or give the runner the agenda, and at worst call it a game loss.
I made a ruling in the SSCI where @Calimsha was playing against an opponent who installed a Melange, but OCTGN bugged out and the install didn’t register on Calimsha’s screen. After the runner took their turn, I made the ruling that Calimsha lose $2 ($1 for the click to run and $1 to trash) and the corp lose $7 from the Melange hit and restart their turn. While this situation was somewhat different in that no one actually did anything illegal, it shows a way you can rewind this sort of situation. Granted, not as much time had passed, but still, I think that your goal when anything goes on thats in some way illegal, your best bet is to rewind the game state if possible back to when the game state was legal, try to set the game state in such a way that what’s going on afterwards is legal, and if someone was at fault, make sure that they are in a strictly worse position than they were in if they didn’t fuck up.
If this were happening in a store championship or something, I would have thought about rewinding things back to the start of the runners turn, both players randomly put drawn cards back on top of their deck, the corp without looking at the cards in their hand or the card they put back, credit totals reset, the vitruvius installed and the eve trashed. The punishment for fucking up, in this case, is that the runner knows where your agenda is now.
This is why we’re making rules. TOs shouldn’t have to deal with figuring all of this out on their own and players shouldn’t have to worry about what’s going to happen when they answer a question like, “would you have run the server,” or otherwise having a ruling made that is wildly different than a ruling some other TO might have made.
Thanks for your comments everyone. I’ve had an opportunity to speak to the head judge on the phone now to discuss the situation.
We have realised there was a breakdown in communication over the situation. My scenario in the original post was correct - I trashed the BBG myself and left Eve in the server. The judge made an initial ruling, went away and came back 30 seconds later when I was already into my next turn to ask a question which I misinterpreted - it was not worded in such a clear-cut way as in @Gabriel’s post. He asked what I thought was something like “What have you done since then?”, which confused me and I said something like “I’ve clicked for cards”, thinking he was referring to my current turn and “then” was his ruling from 30 secs back. But I think what he must have meant was something more like “what would you have done since then?” (with “then” referring to the altered game state of a trashed Eve). I would absolutely have run the server had the known Eve been legitimately trashed and would have said such had the question been asked directly as “would you have run the server given the new information?”. But there we are, partially my fault for not asking for clarification.
My exact play would have been to click for $4 from Armitage and run the server for a net cost of $1 (using stealth) on click 3. This would have left me with enough money to steal an NAPD or Director Haas if that’s what it had been, or clear a tag if it was a snare.
But anyway, I’m happy to put this one to bed. I didn’t set out to upset anybody and I certainly don’t want a witch hunt against TOs. I’m really grateful to them for organising the event (and the Ouroboros Cup side-event) and really appreciate the judge taking the time to call me to discuss the situation. I fully appreciate (and endorse) his philosophy that he would prefer to repair the game state and let the game continue than hand out GLs; it’s just a shame that we’ve had a misunderstanding in this particular case.
What I really wanted from this discussion was to establish what people’s views are on an appropriate resolution to the situation. Maybe it is a GL at Nationals or Worlds or whatever, but how do you handle the same situation if it happens at a GNK or just a casual event? Is there any leeway if the offending player is inexperienced?
Hopefully FFG will be keeping an eye on this and bearing it in mind. We really need a framework for TOs to follow if adjusting the game state is the way we want to go.
Regarding the alt art, card, @Mousechan and @Gabriel are correct: I did not call a judge over but I did explain to my opponent that I wasn’t aware of that card as a promo and suspected it wasn’t legit. The deck was sleeved and it’s a card I know intimately well so I didn’t mind him playing it. I don’t think he gained any advantage from it and it didn’t impact the game. Without wishing my opponent any disrespect I don’t think he was a serious enough player to be deliberately trying to cheat with a weighted card or anything like that; he just seemed like a guy who thinks he’s picked up a rare promo on ebay and decided to play it. I just wanted to get on and play the game. Having already had the judge over in the first game it just looks like sour grapes if I try to extract a win via a deck-check. I won the game anyway so no harm done.
I think this thread has run its course now. Can we please lock it @SneakySly?