A player illegally puts one or more cards into his or her hand…

Drawing extra cards. Game Loss.

The IPG under DEC requires there be no prior GPE that resulted in the extra card via the line “at the moment before he or she began the instruction or action that put a card into his or her hand, no other Game Play Error or Communication Policy Violation had been committed”

It is not clear if the word ‘action’ implies the actual motion of putting the card in hand, but we can easily see that it doesn't mean “the printed text ‘draw a card’” because that would be the instruction to do so, not the action of it. It's easily viable that the card was placed there by resolving scry improperly, it doesn't matter if no extra card should ever come from a scry. No extra cards should come from a Brainstorm, or come from creatures being killed in combat that don't say “Draw a card when this dies/etcetc,” and yet both of these scenarios are NOT DEC because they are GPEs and they're both just as abusably bad as this is. The reason they rule out DEC is because a GPE caused the card to be put there in the first place. This is the same kind of scenario, a GPE caused the card to be placed there. Scry instructs a player to handle and look at hidden information, and to place it in one of two locations. This isn't someone just grabbing a card and stuffing it into their hand willy-nilly, perhaps they brainfarted on what they were doing with the card on the table.

tl;dr The point is, the player was instructed to handle hidden information by the game, and resolved the handling incorrectly. Why can we rule out a GRV? We need to rule out the GRV in order to clear the DEC requirements. Furthermore, why would scenarios that result in DEC not ruled as DEC and ruled instead as GRVs? (i.e. brainstorm) Any reason aside from the sheer fact that it's easy to tell them to put 2 back on top then and there?

The root of what I'm trying to understand is why we auto-DEC some scenarios but can't DEC similar scenarios that have the same result, extra cards.

EDIT: I'm being petty, as the result of either infraction is a GL, I just want to find that line between GRV and DEC because it's apparently fuzzy enough to require listing specific DEC scenarios that aren't DEC.

Edited Justin Murphy (Sept. 13, 2014 04:30:07 AM)

I love the KPS's so much :)

Originally posted by Justin Murphy:

No extra cards should come from … creatures being killed in combat that don't say “Draw a card when this dies/etcetc,” and yet … these scenarios are NOT DEC

I'm interested where you got this from, because I've never heard of such a thing. I question whether or not this is, in fact the case, and if so, why?

Originally posted by Justin Murphy:

Furthermore, why would scenarios that result in DEC not ruled as DEC and ruled instead as GRVs? (i.e. brainstorm) Any reason aside from the sheer fact that it's easy to tell them to put 2 back on top then and there?

IPG
A player illegally puts one or more cards into his or her hand…

There's a slight distinction here. If a player draws 3 and doesn't put 2 cards back, the issue isn't that they drew 3 cards (that's exactly what brainstorm said to do), it's that they didn't put 2 back. Since the cards were drawn legally, it can't be DEC. Since it's a GPE that doesn't fit into any other category, it becomes a GRV.

Now if a player drew 4 off of a Brainstorm, regardless of what happened afterwords, it would become DEC, since the 4th card was drawn illegally.

My understanding of the exception clause at the beginning of DEC is that it applies to situations where either an illegal action lead to drawing cards (GRV), a misunderstanding between the players caused an illegal drawing of cards (CPV), or poor OOS causes cards to be drawn at an incorrect time. For example, if a player activates Chromatic Sphere or Jayemdae Tomb when a stony silence is in play: the first error was illegally activating an artifact, not drawing the card, so the error is not DEC.

GPE-DEC-game loss, on to the next game, pretty straightforward.

The ipg is written in a way that we will go through the infractions to see
which of them fits with what happened. If the situation does not fit with
a specific infraction, you move to the next one to see if that one applies.
That is why Game Rule Violation is one of the last on the list of Game Play
Errors. You go through the rest of the GPEs, and if the infraction is not
covered by the previous ones, it's most likely GRV.
The ipg defines Drawing Extra Cards as Illegally putting a card into the
player's hand. Also, there shouldn't be any game play error or
communication violation before starting the instruction that put the card
into the hand.

With these in mind, we start analysing the scenario:
What is the problem here?
Was the game state legal before the player put the card in the player's
hand?
Was there any confirmation from the opponent that lead our player to
believe that it was ok to draw that card?

It can be argued that the scry is being resolved incorrectly, so that the
grv would apply, but we should look carefully to the definition of game
rule violation, and we will see that it speaks about violations to the
comprehensive rules that are not covered by any other game play error. So,
to rule out GRV, we should be able to say “this does not fit into any other
infraction.”
Are we able to say that? Does the situation fit into the definition of any
other game play error, or we can rule out GRV?
El 14/09/2014 05:03, “Michael Warme” <forum-12486-18f0@apps.magicjudges.org>
escribió:

Suhas/Julio, quite helpful.

Lyle: It was mentioned earlier in this post.

Originally posted by Justin Murphy:

Lyle: It was mentioned earlier in this post.

Just read the thread. I couldn't find it. Can you be a bit more specific? Specifically regarding when a creature dies and the player just draws a card for no reason after the creature died, why is that not DEC, or where was it discussed earlier in this thread?

Apologies if this is too far off topic, but if this really is the case, I feel like I ought to know about it, because I've never heard of such a thing before. Posting this publicly in case someone else (other than Justin) could help me out as well.

Originally posted by Justin Murphy:

The players both can easily agree the card came from a scry.

But I would disagree on that. Card came from top of library. Scry effect don't move card from there, if player chooses to put that card on table, it's just for his sake of managing things but that card, from game point of view, is still at top. So we have there situation, when A plays a Temple, scrying 1, then drawing card from “virtual” top of his library. I would assume, that by this action (drawing), he finished resolution of a scry effect.
Therefore we have DEC there with nothing else than GL.

Originally posted by Justin Murphy:

It was mentioned earlier in this post.

In the post I think you're referencing (István Zoltán Fejér on Page 1), “dead creature going to hand instead of the proper zone” was used as an example of something that is known to be DEC. It's also given in the IPG as an example of DEC.

The player put a card into his hand for no good reason, he hadn't yet committed any other GPE at the moment before doing it (he was still in the middle of the scry, so far doing it “correctly”), and the opponent didn't confirm anything. It's DEC, and since the identity of the card isn't known to all players the penalty can't be downgraded to Warning.

Ashton has committed GPE-DEC. There is some temptation here to call this a GRV for not resolving scry correctly, and I can understand where that is coming from. It is important to remember, however, that most instances of DEC are really violations of SOME game rule. The first indication that anything incorrect has happened is Ashton adding the card to his hand. There was no preceding GPE or TE. Additionally Ashton did not seek or receive confirmation for the card he had drawn. Unfortunately for Ashton this means we have a by the book game loss for DEC.

Great work by Marc DeArmond for nailing it with some fantastic reasoning! Also, thank you for bringing up an excellent point (and oft overlooked), that players may in fact sideboard for this next game.

Additionally, thank you to Sal Cortez for bringing some alternate discussion points to light. Remember that even if you disagree with an answer there is still much to be learned from the alternate perspectives!

Thank you all for joining in and keep your eyes open for another great edition of knowledge pool!

Of course :) I learned a lot from this one!