Hello again. Welcome back to another exciting Silver-level Knowledge Pool scenario. As usual, L2+ judges should wait until their FNMs before they reply. The blog post can be found here: http://blogs.magicjudges.org/knowledgepool/2015/04/16/placement-effect/

At a local standard PPTQ you are the only judge, Anise is playing against Nutmeg. On Anise's turn, she draws a Temple of Malice and plays it, laying her hand down in a single stack next to her library. As she is scrying the top card, she sets it down on the table to think about it. Nutmeg notices that she actually put it directly on top of her hand. Anise calls a judge when this is pointed out. Nutmeg tells you "Judge, on my turn, I Thoughtseized her and wrote down everything” (he shows you his notes) “and I know she just drew that Temple.” What do you do?

Anise commited GPE-DEC, the penalty is a Game Loss. The card is considered drawn when it touches the other cards of the hand, which it clearly does.

The downgrade path in the IPG explicitly says, that the identity of the drawn card has to be known to all players before it was drawn, which was not the case. Unfortunatley we can not downgrade this penalty and have to issue the Game Loss. It is a nice gesture of Nutmeg to inform the Judge that Anise's hand was known, however we can not use this information for several reasons:
- It wouldn't change the fact that the card has to be known before it was drawn.
- Nutmeg could have made an error while recording Anise's hand.
- If we used the opponent's knowledge to downgrade the penalty in this case, it would incentivize players to lie to a Judge in the future.

Well, given Scott and Brian's responses on this thread I would have to say no infraction, no penalty. It is my understanding from their comments that “the card touched your hand” is not an appropriate metric to use when deciding if a card is drawn or not. My understanding is that the metric is more like, “the card was placed basically fully into a hand that is picked up off the table.”

Given that the card was placed on top of the hand that is resting on the table I would ask Anise to put it back on top (or bottom) of her library and move on.

A nice topical example!

The card is placed “directly on top of her hand” - this implies that it isn't a corner touching, it's formed part of the hand, and thus has been drawn. No GRV had been committed before this point, and although we can deduce the identity of the card, we cannot downgrade as it was not known before it was drawn.

GPE-DEC and a Game Loss. Explain the reason behind the severity and remind them to be more careful when thinking about scrys in future.

I would issue a GPE-DEC and downgrade to a warning. Both players can identify the cards physical location as the top card in the hand even if the face value isnt known to both players. Further to that the thoughtseize means that everycard in that zone is known to both players except the scryed card therefore it can be uniquely identified on two counts and therefore is known . The fix would be to remove the card from the hand and let the scry be completed.

It seems fitting that this is our KP scenario following what happened with Patrick Chapin at the Pro Tour.

I think this is clearly GPE - DEC with the penalty of a game loss for Anise. When the scryed card touches the other cards in her hand, however unintentionally, it's considered drawn. The downgrade clause only applies if the identity of the drawn card is known, not if the rest of the hand was known.

As a side note, I would explain the reasoning behind the ruling and say something to Anise like “I understand this is frustrating, and I know you weren't breaking the rules on purpose. But judges have to apply policy consistently to make sure that all tournaments are run fairly.”

GPE-DEC no downgrade because the identity of the card was not known beforehand.

Given the card has been placed into the hand this excuse still has potential for possible abuse.

DEC is harsh because if it isn't caught it creates a major advantage.

I would rule Game Play Error - Drawing Extra Cards and issue a game loss. In these scenarios we rule out cheating to save time not arguing over whether or not a player is cheating, but in this case we issue a game loss not because he ‘drew a card’ (I wouldn't consider the card drawn but it is in his hand when it shouldn't be, but that's an argument for another time) but because the possibility for advantage is very high. We can't rely on his opponent to have taken accurate notes, just as we can't rely on a judge standing behind him to verify the identity of the card.

In order for a card to be uniquely identifiable it has to have been revealed to both players before being drawn.

Before reading other responses -

Anise took a card from where it was supposed to be (her library), and put it into her hand. No game rule instructed her to do so, her opponent didn't say she could, and this is the first time the problem could be noticed. This will probably be GPE - DEC for Anise, with a penalty of Game Loss.

While it's kind of Nutmeg to offer her notes from Thoughtseize, we can't use them in this case. Anise's hand is currently a private zone, and we have to consider everything in that to be unknown. For that matter, even though the scry'd card *should* be the card on top of the stack that is Anise's hand, it's very dangerous to depend on this.

The only case I wouldn't consider this to be GPE - DEC is if the scry'd card was placed down such that it was touching the hand, but still obviously distinct.


After reading other responses -

There seems to be a consensus so far on GPE - DEC. It's worth remembering that while Game Loss is a severe penalty, there's a pretty big potential for abuse had Nutmeg not noticed where the scry'd card went.

reading the thread that Nathen linked, I don't believe that applies. The scenario in the thread, and what Scott was specifically referring to, was a situation where cards were technically in physical contact, but very clearly distinguishable.

This scenario, as described, has Anise's card is on top of a pile of other cards, in her hand. This sounds a lot more like it's no longer distinguishable.

We only have the description to go on, so it's hard to know “exactly how much” they are touching - but if I feel there's a reasonable opportunity to have performed slight-of-hand or otherwise mixed up the cards, then the card is in the hand.

Currently it's drawing extra cards, which is an automatic game loss. However since the contents of the hand were specifically known to both players both before and after the initial draw, I would say that it is easy to verify the card that was placed in hand.

GPE-DEC for certain, but I would consider downgrading it and placing the card back on top of the library. That being said, I'm looking forward to reading the conversation that will occur here regarding the potential to downgrade.

There's an interesting discussion here that I think is relevant, about a similar question I had a while back.

http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/11689/

For those saying because of the Thoughtseize the card is identifiable how would you handle it if the notes don't match the players hand?

This is certainly DEC and the normal penalty is a Game Loss.

At first I was going to make an argument for downgrading based on the fact that the card *should* be identifiable based on Nutmeg's notes. I was going to say that if the notes matched, downgrade, and if they don't, keep it at GL. The problem with doing this is the results of your ruling will validate/invalidate Nutmeg's notes. If he took incorrect notes, your keeping the penalty at GL would tell him that his notes are wrong which is giving away strategic information. Therefore, I don't think we can actually take Nutmeg's notes into account.

It's an unfortunate situation for Anise, but I'd keep the penalty at GL.

Edited Nicolas Wale (April 17, 2015 10:04:14 AM)

On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 12:15 AM, Nicolas Wale
<forum-17628-01c5@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> If he took incorrect notes, your keeping the penalty at GL would tell him
> that his notes are wrong which is giving away strategic information.


How much strategic information is relevant when the game has just been ended?

–
Gareth Pye
Level 2 MTG Judge, Melbourne, Australia
“Dear God, I would like to file a bug report”

Originally posted by Gareth Pye:

How much strategic information is relevant when the game has just been ended?

"

OK, sure, but the reverse case is that downgrading will confirm that his notes are correct.