Surreal Memoir and Graveyard order (RoE spoiler)

[Zappa]

I was wondering how you'd go about keeping track of graveyard order when you play Surreal Memoir. Specially when you have a big pile of instants in your grave and you have some cards that cares about the order as well.

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=103671&d=1270095044

I know you can write down the graveyard order, but when you play this a lot, it looks like it can drain the game time quite a bit.

[cdr]

I was wondering how you'd go about keeping track of graveyard order when you play Surreal Memoir. Specially when you have a big pile of instants in your grave and you have some cards that cares about the order as well.

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=103671&d=1270095044

I know you can write down the graveyard order, but when you play this a lot, it looks like it can drain the game time quite a bit.

There's ways of choosing a random card without physically moving cards around. You're not allowed to change the order of your graveyard at all in eternal formats.

[Zappa]

You've kinda like left me hanging here. Could you like maybe share some something on how you can accomplish this, I can think of maybe using dices as a representation but kinda falls short as well. That's why I asked it here since I don't know how to go about it, so some advice or ideas would be nice. Thank you.

[jrsthethird]

Possibilities:

1. Write down order of cards before choosing.
2. Roll a die and assign a number to each card.
3. Count the cards, get a random number app on your smartphone, count the number of legal targets (call it X), and then have your app choose a number between 1 and X. Do this in plain sight of your opponent, and be willing to let him examine the app to make sure it's not biased.
4. Call a judge and ask for an appropriate method.

[Malchar]

Faster but riskier: You can pick up the graveyard, turn it upside down and fan it out (so no one can see what the cards are). Then your opponent picks a card out. Then carefully turn the pile face up again, un-fan it, and put it back.

[cdr]

Faster but riskier: You can pick up the graveyard, turn it upside down and fan it out (so no one can see what the cards are). Then your opponent picks a card out. Then carefully turn the pile face up again, un-fan it, and put it back.

I don't recommend that outside of casual games. Not only is it liable to mess up the order, it's not random.

I do recommend dice, and I don't see any difficulty in using dice. Roll a die and count that many instants down.

[Nihil Credo]

Faster but riskier: You can pick up the graveyard, turn it upside down and fan it out (so no one can see what the cards are). Then your opponent picks a card out. Then carefully turn the pile face up again, un-fan it, and put it back.
If I were a judge I would never allow this, since the opponent could very easily remember which spells had been cast earlier or later. Even if they aren't sure, they almost certainly have a vague idea of where to "aim".

A smartphone with a random number generators is probably the best method to handle a large number of possible targets. Another one that works well is rolling 'percentile' dice, i.e. you roll two distinct dice (or the same one twice) and take the value [(Result of the first die - 1)*(Number of faces)]+(Result of the second die - 1).

If you don't want to have to explain the above to your opponent, and don't have a smartphone, you can prepare beforehand by taking a piece of paper or cardboard, cutting it into identical squares, and writing on each the numbers from 1 to whatever you need. Show them to your opponent, remove the ones above the maximum number of targets, turn the rest face down, shuffle, and let your opponent pick one.

[Zappa]

Hm, thanks, looks like the dice is most practical way to do this. As I dont have that kind of phone :P Guess will just have to be creative with some dice.

[verf]

You could always put a copy of all the instant cards in your deck in different colored sleeves before the game starts. Then when you cast this spell search through those cards and set out the ones that match the cards in your graveyard. Shuffle and choose.

[Forbiddian]

Smart phones shouldn't be legal during a match. There are pretty easy ways to tamper with the generators, access excessive notes or outside help secretly, etc. etc.


But for starving college students without iPhones, you can just roll dice.


You could roll a 20-sided die (plenty of people have them). If you have more than 20 instants in your yard (wtf?) then you could group the instants by pairs.

Say you have 21 instants. Pair them off, roll the dice. If you roll >11, reroll. Take that pair (or singleton). Roll the dice. If it's 1-10, then take the lower instant, 11-20, take the higher instant.

If you rolled the singleton, then rolled 11-20, reroll everything. Everything has the same probability to get picked. Quick SRS that works pretty efficiently for up to 400 instants.