Amy controls a creature she cast face down, which trades in combat with another 2/2. Rather than putting it in the graveyard, she absentmindedly puts it into her hand (without revealing it). When the players call a judge, Amy shows you her hand, which contains Glacial Stalker and Island. What do you do?

As an additional wrinkle to this scenario, let's say that Amy has already been issued two GRV's in the tournament, but no DEC's. Does this affect your decision? What if she had two DEC's, but no GRV's?

This is a DEC, which according to the new IPG is a warning with the
additional remedy of revealing Amy's hand to her opponent, who then chooses
which card goes to the graveyard. I'm not betting on the Island being
chosen. It seems like the new DEC was written with this sort of situation
in mind.

Originally posted by Dominick Riesland:

who then chooses which card goes to the graveyard

hmmm???

The card was put in the wrong zone (hand instead of graveyard), and as such
we must apply that fix as well.

Dominick Riesland, aka Rabbitball
Creator of the Cosmversal Grimoire
“As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then
their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to
destroy.”
– Christopher Dawson

Her opponent chooses one card, and the card will be shuffled into the random portion of the library.

As for David's additional wrinkle, i don't see how see how this would influence my decision. She didn't recieve a warning in the same catergory, therefore there is no upgrade path to a Game Loss. And applying a harsher penalty just because a player plays sloppy?

Edit: i need some coffee before i answer any questions. And a reread of the IPG :/
Edit 2: after a sip of coffee… my answer doesn't really change. I can see why it's tempting to put the card into the graveyard, but the current version of the IPG only supports a shuffle into the library.

Edited Auzmyn Oberweger (July 15, 2015 12:45:35 AM)

I hope we are meant to put the a card of the opponents choice into the
appropriate zone, not just blindly shuffle it back into the library.

Originally posted by Gareth Pye:

I hope we are meant to put the a card of the opponents choice into the
appropriate zone, not just blindly shuffle it back into the library.

This! I'm a sucker for following the documents, but this seems like a corner case scenario that allows for a much cleaner fix. If the hand contains 2 morph creatures there's not much else we can do though.

Originally posted by Dominick Riesland:

The card was put in the wrong zone (hand instead of graveyard), and as such we must apply that fix as well.

Gareth Pye
I hope we are meant to put the a card of the opponents choice into the appropriate zone, not just blindly shuffle it back into the library.

What Significant & Exceptional circumstances do you see, to justify deviating from the IPG?

I like the original question, is this a GRV or DEC, and what do we do about it - but I'm not going to support “take this part of DEC's remedy, and this part of GRV's remedy, and invent a new remedy”.

d:^D

Does it matter if this face down card was a Manifest or a Morph? If it's a Morph don't we have an upgradeable GRV because the opponent never had the opportunity to verify legality?

I can't imagine NAP to say “please show me your morph before you accidentally put it into your hand” so there is really no opportunity for the opponent to verify.

Since the creature was “cast face down” I'm assuming we're looking at a GRV - Game Loss.

Mark I feel you may have missed this failing to reveal a morph is not a game loss and hasn't been for a while now.

Nope. Fully aware of this. As explained in Toby's post.

When you think about the player actions surrounding the times at which morphs don’t get revealed, who controls the flow of the game? At the end of the game, it’s the loser – they are the one who acknowledges the game ending first: “yep, you got me”. It’s also the same for bouncing a morph – the opponent is initiating the action (there’s a corner where you’re bouncing your own morph, but that’s unusual enough that it’s going to draw everyone’s attention). Since the opponent controls the flow of the game at the time, it seems reasonable to put some burden on them as well. Thus, we’re going to update the appropriate Game Rule Violation paragraph in the IPG to read:

An error that an opponent can’t verify the legality of should have its penalty upgraded. These errors involve hidden information, such as misplaying the morph ability or failing to reveal a card to prove that a choice made was a legal one. If the information was ever in a position where opponents had the opportunity to verify the legality (such as on top of the library, as the only card in hand, or on the battlefield at the end of the game), do not upgrade the penalty and reveal the information if possible.

This doesn't fit either of these situations. In this case there is no opportunity for the opponent to verify the legality of the play. There is no reasonable expectation that a player should randomly pick up a morph in the middle of their turn therefore there is no reasonable expectation that a player should request it to be revealed when it should be going to the graveyard. This is actually closer to the corner case where you're bouncing your own morph and picking it up so quickly your opponent has no chance to respond which seems to me to be a solid upgrade.

I'd rule GPE-DEC - this is specifically stated as an example of this infraction:

D. A player puts a creature with lethal damage on it into her hand instead of her graveyard.

Additionally because DEC applies the GPE-GRV for failing to reveal the Morph is not assessed (nor do we use it's default fixes):

<<GRV>> handles violations of the Comprehensive Rules that are not covered by the other Game Play
Errors

We therefore apply the DEC fix of having Amy reveal her hand and her opponent selecting a card to be shuffled back into her library.

Her previous penalties don't impact my ruling - in the case of two prior GRVs nothing more happens, in the case of two prior DECs the penalty is upgraded to a game loss.

I hides a bit further in the corner but I think its interesting if she reveals Glacial Crasher and Island (and is able to convince that she didn't deliberately cheat - i.e. genuinely thought it was the other card). In this case I think I'm applying an upgraded GRV.

Edited Marc Shotter (July 15, 2015 11:15:47 AM)

Another judge once impressed upon me the idea that GRV is supposed to be a leftover category - that (generally) something ends up as a GRV because it doesn't fall into a more specific category.

One of the examples of DEC from the new IPG is still “A player puts a creature with lethal damage on it into her hand instead of her graveyard” - which fits. So I'd rule that this is DEC, not GRV.

Awkwardly, the fix for DEC now tells us that a card from Amy's hand now gets shuffled back in. This is really uncomfortable because some part of us is shouting that we know what zone this card “should” go to, and since the new DEC remedy involves revealing Amy's hand we don't have to worry about information leaks…

…but I can't say this looks exceptional, and I can't find a reason within the IPG to not apply the remedy it details for DEC. This sounds like an area where we could give feedback with the hope of amending the IPG (if needed and possible), but in the meantime we do what it says.

As for the wrinkle: The prior penalties wouldn't change my ruling here (other than telling me whether I need to upgrade or not), but I would want to check to see what they were - and speak with the judges that issued them, to make sure that, if this scenario came up with this player before, that it is being handled consistently across the floor.

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 1:02 AM, Scott Marshall
<forum-19728-9279@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> Gareth Pye
> I hope we are meant to put the a card of the opponents choice into the
> appropriate zone, not just blindly shuffle it back into the library.
>
> What Significant & Exceptional circumstances do you see, to justify
> deviating from the IPG?
>
> I like the original question, is this a GRV or DEC, and what do we do about
> it - but I'm not going to support “take this part of DEC's remedy, and this
> part of GRV's remedy, and invent a new remedy”.

I really don't like that the fix for putting a card into the wrong
zone is to put a card into a different wrong zone. This may feel like
a very small corner case but I can see other places where it would
apply than just with morph/manifest. It is probably more common with a
Strategic Planning type effect and sticky sleeves.

Are these instructions part of the Remedy or the Penalty? If it is
meant to be Remedy returning the game to the best approximation of the
correctly played game should be the aim. If it is part of the Penalty
then returning the cards to where they are least accessible sounds
better.

I understand that impartiality and consistency are generated by having
the simplest IPG that is possible. It's just that changing:
“Those cards are shuffled into the random portion of the deck.”
To be:
“Those cards are placed into the correct zone, the deck if unknown. If
cards are placed into the deck then shuffle the random portion of the
deck.”
Doesn't feel like an unacceptable level of complexity.

These procedures do not, and should not, take into account the game being played, the current situation that the game is in, or who will benefit strategically from the procedure associated with a penalty. While it is tempting to try to “fix” game situations, the danger of missing a subtle detail or showing favoritism to a player (even unintentionally) makes it a bad idea.

I would point out the “Remedy” has a couple of different meanings to it. But to consider that part of the infraction as a “repairing” of the game state to what we perceive is ideal, nearly universally involves inserting some level of our judgment into the situation. Which, no matter how simple it may be, still introduces a level of risk that is likely not perceived as ideal by the writers of the MIPG. It seems to me that aside from determining any kind of infraction, the “Additional Remedy” of every penalty in the MIPG has been written to reduce as much of our involvement making such a judgment about “repairing” the game. That's simply not where our judgment is appropriately applied.

We investigate, assess the situation, and identify the infraction; proceeding per the MIPG so as to reduce any claim of bias, favoritism, or even deviating from those procedures per policy. I strongly suspect that should the infraction need to address some kind of incorrect zone change for DEC involving an unknown card, as we do still have some time to observe this before Tarkir rotates out, then that will be proven true with time and observation at events.

Yes, sometimes the policies in the MIPG might produce what seem to be “counter intuitive” results, but I think that's because we feel too strongly about a “repair” or “correct” outcome when players make honest mistakes. As much as it might pain me on some level, perhaps what we need to do is reconsider and foster a different attitude about those policies and procedures.