So today at FNM (or rather last night?) I had a situation where a player failed to reveal the top card of his library from a Nissa + and put it directly into his hand. I looked into his hand and saw there were two non-land cards there. He had already showed his opponent that there were no lands in his hand, and although the new policy states that we should have his opponent shuffle a card from his hand into his library I felt this would be more damaging to the game than simply leaving it as it was. Both players were fine with it and they continued playing.

Well, sort of. The other player was Vicente, our local L2 and my mentor, and we have been discussing why I chose not to apply the DEC fix.

First off, of course, assuming no cheating.

In DEC (Drawing Extra Cards), we discourage players from gaining an advantage from having an extra card they shouldn't have by taking away a card of their opponent's choice. In essence, we are taking away more than they might have gained; not only do they lose that extra card but their opponent gets to pick it.

With FTR (Failure to Reveal), their opponent gets information as well as ensuring the card fits certain criteria (being a non-land card) before the player gets to put it into their hand. We fix this by taking a card and, in a way, the opponent gets more information than they would have gotten normally.

My reasoning was that taking a card away from AP for FTR felt too severe for this situation. We have the same fix for both of these situations, yet in DEC the player would gain one thing they wouldn't gain in FTR, the extra card in hand. I was reluctant to take a card from the player as it was clear they would have drawn the card no matter which one was on top as both cards in their hand were non-land cards. Taking away a card for such a simple mistake seemed to damage the game more than fix it, especially when a simple reveal of the hand was enough to clear things up. With the ability, the player is going to get something; either a card in hand or a card in play. With this fix, they get nothing, in fact they lose far more than any advantage they may have gained. Again, assuming no cheating.

Vicente made a point by asking if I were to do anything differently if it were Comp REL, or if one of the two cards in the player's hand was a land. I would apply policy as per the IPG at comp, but I would still feel iffy about it. He also pointed out that we were not sure if the player was entitled to having the card put into their hand in the first place and had no way of verifying the legality of doing so, which is why we apply the DEC fix. We cannot take the cards in hand into account. This situation might be clear cut, but future situations may not be, and we should apply policy consistently.

I understand this and agree with it, but this fix for FTR still just doesn't feel right. We had a very interesting discussion, there were other very good points raised, more than I'll go into, but I did have an interesting alternative fix.

And to clarify, my problem is only with effects that reveal the top of the library, then put it into your hand if the card is ___ or else do ___ with that card.

Currently we have the opponent pick a card and shuffle it into the library.

What if instead the player reveals their hand, then a random card is placed back on top of the library and the player ‘reveals’ it and checks if the card fits the criteria of the ability (being non-land) and continues resolving the ability.

In the article by Toby Elliott he mentions that in this situation we do not repeat the ability by trying again with the next card. This is clearly so that a player doesn't get a ‘redo’ if they don't like what the top card is. Perhaps my fix has the same problem, just with a smaller margin of error. Perhaps there is no real fair way to fix this situation, and we cannot afford to give the player the benefit of the doubt.

I just wanted to get some other opinions from other judges, or perhaps someone can help me feel better about applying this fix with less guilt. Granted it is better than giving the player a game loss, not that it's saying much.

Sal, here's a “feel-good” for you to consider: before this latest update to IPG, that error was upgraded to a Game Loss.

While it's often fine to find a fix that best fits the situation ***AT REGULAR REL***, at Comp REL, you are correct in following policy.

If a player is unhappy that their opponent gets to choose which card they lose, you can gently remind them that, just last week, it's the whole game that they'd lose, not just one card. I've also used phrases like “this is why it's so critical to pay close attention to the game, and avoid costly errors.” Not an accusation, hopefully not even taken as confrontational, but still emphasizes that this remedy is to correct their mistake.

Another phrasing that might help: “Because stuff happens, we have these set remedies defined to repair the game state in a way that is as fair to both players as is possible, depending on the error.”

d:^D

By applying different criteria (can we verify that the card was legally drawn?) and using this to affect our outcome means that we do not have a consistent outcome from the infraction.

One of the purposes of infractions is to educate the player and thus discourage the error from taking place again. Is merely revealing one's hand sufficient deterrent? I could see an argument that players with nonlands in hand could exploit the “reveal and verify remedy” by intentionally “forgetting” to reveal on the off chance that their opponent didn't notice, as there would be a decent profit-risk margin.
By using the DEC fix, this is a strong deterrent that encourages players to play correctly and not cheat, which we want from our policy.

Will their be feelbads if the players has 2 nonlands in hand? Yes, but as Scott says, we have strategies to minimise that during the ruling.