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Competitive REL » Post: Uniquely Unidentifiable

Uniquely Unidentifiable

Aug. 5, 2014 02:30:05 PM

Sal Cortez
Judge (Level 1 (Judge Academy))

USA - Pacific West

Uniquely Unidentifiable

Consider the following scenario;

Player A has Keranos in play, and has just untapped for his turn. He reveals the top card, it is a Magma Spray. He says to his opponent “3 to you” puts the card in his hand and they both record the life lost on paper. Player N also writes down the Magma Spray. Player A then draws a card.

Realizing immediately his mistake, he calls a judge on himself. The judge rules it a DEC and issues a GL. Player N then stops the judge, saying that he knows every card in Player A's hand, including the Magma Spray, all except for the last card drawn. This unknown card would be the extra card drawn, and is thus uniquely identifiable in that it is uniquely unknown.

Of course, exclude the possibility of cheating :)


So would you be comfortable downgrading this from a GL to a W?

Aug. 5, 2014 02:42:29 PM

Michael Sell
Judge (Level 1 (Judge Foundry))

USA - Midatlantic

Uniquely Unidentifiable

Personally, I would be comfortable with this (in that, if the players had sorted that out without calling me and told me about it later or something) because it's logical and keeps the game moving, but the policy doesn't support it.

The IPG section on Drawing Extra Cards says the “identity of the card” must be “known to all players before being placed into the hand” for a downgrade.

It's very sporting of N to want A to not receive a Game Loss penalty here, but I'd hate to let that go when there are other players in N's position who aren't writing down the cards off of Keranos, or other times when A is casting the cards that get revealed and has other unknown cards in hand. It puts us in a position where we're making a ruling that we will likely have to make differently in the future.

Now, what I will do is check to make sure A has actually “drawn” the extra card, because I like seeing if there's an out. If he grabs the card but stops himself (or N stops him) before the card has touched the others in his hand, it would be Looking at Extra Cards, instead.

Aug. 5, 2014 02:43:51 PM

Casey Brefka
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy)), Scorekeeper

USA - South Central

Uniquely Unidentifiable

I would not. There is no guarantee that player N accurately remembers the contents of Player A's hand. In addition, “uniquely identifiable” is being applied incorrectly - that's only for information that should have been revealed, but was not (i.e. a Worldly Tutor putting a creature on top that was not revealed). To downgrade DEC, the identity of the card incorrectly drawn must be known to all players before it enters the hand. That is not true about the drawn card in this situation, so I would not downgrade.

Aug. 5, 2014 02:44:20 PM

Louis Annino
Judge (Uncertified)

USA - Northeast

Uniquely Unidentifiable

From the IPG on Drawing Extra Cards: “ If the identity of the card was known to all players before being placed into the hand, and the card can be returned to the correct zone with minimal disruption, do so and downgrade the penalty to a Warning.”

According to the situation you presented, the identity of the card is not known to all players and so this would still be a Game Loss. The identity of a card is its name, not simply that it is “not magma spray”.

Aug. 5, 2014 04:15:53 PM

Bryan Prillaman
Judge (Level 5 (Judge Foundry))

USA - Southeast

Uniquely Unidentifiable

I'm gonna take an opportunity to plug the Annotated IPG. http://wiki.magicjudges.org/en/w/Annotated_IPG/

Its a sentence by sentence breakdown of the IPG and goes into more detailed explanation of the policy doc for the express purpose of being a resource for questions like this. (And does answer this question) You can find the breakdown for DEC here: http://wiki.magicjudges.org/en/w/Annotated_IPG/Drawing_Extra_Cards

-bryan

“The Annotated IPG, settling Internet arguments since 2014, ask for it by name”

Aug. 5, 2014 05:44:51 PM

Sal Cortez
Judge (Level 1 (Judge Academy))

USA - Pacific West

Uniquely Unidentifiable

Thanks!

Aug. 5, 2014 06:00:03 PM

Tobias Rolle
Judge (Uncertified)

German-speaking countries

Uniquely Unidentifiable

Originally posted by Louis Annino:

From the IPG on Drawing Extra Cards: “ If the identity of the card was known to all players before being placed into the hand, and the card can be returned to the correct zone with minimal disruption, do so and downgrade the penalty to a Warning.”

According to the situation you presented, the identity of the card is not known to all players and so this would still be a Game Loss. The identity of a card is its name, not simply that it is “not magma spray”.

I understand your point. However, if a player has zero cards in hand, and commits a DEC and ends up with one card in hand, is the drawn card not uniquely identifiable? If “identity known to all players” means that all players have to know the name, than this situation can not be downgraded. But the identity of the physical card is known to all players: It's the only card in the player's hand. Could I downgrade in this case?

Aug. 5, 2014 06:13:58 PM

Christian Genz
Judge (Level 2 (UK Magic Officials)), Scorekeeper

United Kingdom, Ireland, and South Africa

Uniquely Unidentifiable

Originally posted by Tobias Rolle:

I understand your point. However, if a player has zero cards in hand, and commits a DEC and ends up with one card in hand, is the drawn card not uniquely identifiable? If “identity known to all players” means that all players have to know the name, than this situation can not be downgraded. But the identity of the physical card is known to all players: It's the only card in the player's hand. Could I downgrade in this case?
No you should not downgrade. This is actually quite exactly the old Domri Rade question. (http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/4642/)

Edited Christian Genz (Aug. 5, 2014 06:14:27 PM)

Aug. 5, 2014 09:41:50 PM

Rebecca Lawrence
Judge (Uncertified)

USA - Midatlantic

Uniquely Unidentifiable

Do note that there are two different circumstances at play here - the Domri Rade situation is an upgraded GRV, where we are able to dodge the game loss if we can uniquely identify the card that was illegally manipulated (which a hellbent player ending up with a single errant card can achieve), while this is a DEC, which demands that the explicit identity of the card must be known before it is placed in the hand illegally in order to achieve a downgrade.

Edited Rebecca Lawrence (Aug. 5, 2014 09:42:27 PM)

Aug. 30, 2014 09:57:24 AM

Roger Dunn
Judge (Level 1 (Judge Academy))

USA - Pacific Northwest

Uniquely Unidentifiable

The players in this situation seem to be playing friendly with one another. How about we add this to the situation? Player A, knowing the rules of tournament Magic, knows that it is not against the rules to reveal his hand to player B. At that point, with his written list in hand, player A and player B now both can uniquely identify the card that had been drawn extra. Could we then downgrade to a Warning and instruct the players to continue playing?

Aug. 30, 2014 02:33:56 PM

Ryan Hoffman
Judge (Uncertified), Scorekeeper

USA - South Central

Uniquely Unidentifiable

"I'm gonna take an opportunity to plug the Annotated IPG. http://wiki.magicjudges.org/en/w/Annotated_IPG/"


This link doesnt seem to take me to anything. Instead, I find “There is currently no text in this page.” Bryan?

Aug. 30, 2014 02:43:41 PM

Adam Cetnerowski
Judge (Uncertified)

Europe - Central

Uniquely Unidentifiable

Try: http://wiki.magicjudges.org/en/w/Annotated_IPG




On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 9:34 PM, Ryan Hoffman <
forum-11689-5f2c@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

> "I'm gonna take an opportunity to plug the Annotated IPG.
> http://wiki.magicjudges.org/en/w/Annotated_IPG/"
>
>
>
> This link doesnt seem to take me to anything. Instead, I find “There is
> currently no text in this page.” Bryan?
>
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Adam Cetnerowski
Gdansk, Poland

Aug. 30, 2014 03:35:27 PM

Ryan Hoffman
Judge (Uncertified), Scorekeeper

USA - South Central

Uniquely Unidentifiable

Try: http://wiki.magicjudges.org/en/w/Annotated_IPG

This one works fine, thanks!

Aug. 30, 2014 04:56:16 PM

Bryan Prillaman
Judge (Level 5 (Judge Foundry))

USA - Southeast

Uniquely Unidentifiable

http://wiki.magicjudges.org/en/w/Annotated_IPG

Is the correct link. No “/” at the end of the link.

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Aug. 31, 2014 04:55:43 AM

Milan Majerčík
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy)), Scorekeeper

Europe - Central

Uniquely Unidentifiable

Originally posted by Roger Dunn:

The players in this situation seem to be playing friendly with one another. How about we add this to the situation? Player A, knowing the rules of tournament Magic, knows that it is not against the rules to reveal his hand to player B. At that point, with his written list in hand, player A and player B now both can uniquely identify the card that had been drawn extra. Could we then downgrade to a Warning and instruct the players to continue playing?

Hi Roger!

Interesting question. Even though this solution looks OK, it will not prevent the player from getting a Game Loss, I think.

IPG reads:
IPG
If the identity of the card was known to all players before being placed into the hand, and the card can be returned to the correct zone with minimal disruption, do so and downgrade the penalty to a Warning.

And still, we would have to base the identification of the cards (and the possibility of downgrade) on the card names noted by Player B.