Upper Deck Entertainment Forums

is this legal to do?i have put it up in the other forum asnd people are saying that it is legal.i have a judge that has been a judge judge for a long time tell me that it is not legal to do.

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Lvl 1 judge
Lvl 1 t/o
Lvl 1 p/m
Lvl 1 demo

It's perfectly legal to do.

You just need to make sure you start off with the correct amount of cards in your side deck and end up with the correct amount of cards in your side deck.

You are not required to tell your opponent how many cards you sided in or out, just that you're going to side in or out.

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Simon Key

Player Management Level 4
WoW TCG Rules Knowledge Level 2
WoW Minis Rules Knowledge Level 2
Huntik TCG Rules Knowledge Level 1
Tournament Organizer Level 1
UDE Forums Moderator

Explain what smoke screening is? I have never heard of it and if I did it may have been this without knowing it.

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UDE & Bandai T/O & Judge

'Smokescreening' is the process when Side Decking where you combine your entire Side Deck with your deck.  Shuffle, then proceed to pull out the correct number of cards to put back into your Side Deck.

This makes it very difficult for your opponent to know just how many cards you sided in or out, or even if you sided any at all!....lol.

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Simon Key

Player Management Level 4
WoW TCG Rules Knowledge Level 2
WoW Minis Rules Knowledge Level 2
Huntik TCG Rules Knowledge Level 1
Tournament Organizer Level 1
UDE Forums Moderator

Since I know what it means, no that is not legal. I doesn't even sound close to it at no means. They decide what to take out from main deck then show the amount of those cards for the amount in side they exchanged. Thanks for defining smoke screening.

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UDE & Bandai T/O & Judge

Yes, it is perfectly legal.

Let's take Yugioh for example.  You have a 42 card deck.  Your Side Deck is 15 cards.
You decide to Side Deck between game 1 and game 2.
You add your entire Side Deck to your Deck, so now you have 57 cards total.
You shuffle.
Now you remove 15 cards from your Deck, making you have a 42 card Main Deck and a 15 card Side Deck.
You have successfully completed Side Decking and your opponent has no clue how many cards you sided in or out.  For all they know, you took out the exact same 15 cards you put in.
All that matters is that you started off with 15 cards in your Side Deck, and you ended with 15 cards in your Side Deck.

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Simon Key

Player Management Level 4
WoW TCG Rules Knowledge Level 2
WoW Minis Rules Knowledge Level 2
Huntik TCG Rules Knowledge Level 1
Tournament Organizer Level 1
UDE Forums Moderator

It is completly legal provided they end up with the correct number of cards in the side deck afterward, in yugioh's case, 15.

Ultimately you are not changing the number of cards in your deck and the rules do not state that you have to tell your opponent how many cards you are sidedecking, just that you need to comfirm your sidedeck still has 15 cards afterward.

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Go Player ~ 22 Kyu

Just to reinforce, I have been judging for quite some time and all levels of events, this is perfectly acceptable to do as long as when you present your deck for cutting both it and your side deck are legal.

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WoW RK2
VS RK2
PM LV2
Specialist LV2 (formerly demo team)
TO LV1

I nice trick I've picked up over the years from players is to put the sidedeck cards in upside down, then go through card by card and put them in two piles. That way if you want to side in nothing, you just pull out the 15 cards that are upside down and your set, otherwise you just correct the rotation on the other cards

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Your Friendly Neighbourhood Canadian Judge!
YGO RK L3
VS RK L2
WoW RK L1
PM L2

See I would think this just allowed your opponent the chance to add more or less cards to his deck. The thing is does he have more cards hidden within his side deck in or out of sleeves? If you allow him to add his whole side deck to hi main deck and he needs one other card, well he just succeded. This goes with players adding facedown traps and spells to there hand while you think they are reading the card. What I mean they let the face down card come in contact with their hand. Now we have a lot of young kids playing this game and easy to convince the child that they are doing this correct. But like you said it is legal and allows players to do this way.

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UDE & Bandai T/O & Judge

That's a different issue entirely, and should be adressed as a deck checking or cheating problem. This can be easily resolved by informing people they should not keep extra cards with their sidedeck and effectively enforcing that when you do random checks. Players generally understand this, because there is a potential to cheat.

But smokescreening is perfectly legal, and as far as I know an age-old practice among experienced duelists. Seems like every match report you read on metagame has something in it about one of the players smokescreening.

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As stated, this is cheating and would be caught during deck checks. In fact I had to DQ a player because he did have extra cards in the sleeves of his deck.

If you as a player suspect that a player has added cards to their deck (via extra cards with his side deck) then you may call a judge and ask them to confirm the number of cards in the deck and side deck. This does not require a full deck check unless the count does not match the deck list.

As a judge if you see that happening you may choose to deck check that table instead of a random table.

Also most players that do this, count out the side deck before AND after to prevent people from thinking they are adding cards. Not all do but the wisest ones do. [;->

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WoW RK2
VS RK2
PM LV2
Specialist LV2 (formerly demo team)
TO LV1

993860:

is this legal to do?i have put it up in the other forum asnd people are saying that it is legal.i have a judge that has been a judge judge for a long time tell me that it is not legal to do.

Hello,

Just to reiterate (since there was at least one incorrect post on this thread), it is perfectly legal to conceal the number of cards you plan to exchange between your deck and side deck after game one by shuffling your entire side deck into your main deck and then pulling out 15 cards.

Players that have any concerns regarding their opponent "sneaking" extra cards into their deck should just ask to count out the 15 side deck cards when they come out of the deck box (before they are shuffled into the main deck). It's also a good idea to count out the cards that are pulled out after side decking to ensure that the side deck is still at 15 cards.

 

Take care,

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Alex Charsky
Judge Manager
Upper Deck