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Competitive REL » Post: Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Jan. 31, 2016 05:12:05 AM

Matthew Johnson
Judge (Level 3 (UK Magic Officials))

United Kingdom, Ireland, and South Africa

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

You're not going to like this answer, but it just does. If you draw without
revealing for Dark Confidant's trigger, then you have failed to lose life
equal to that card's CMC.

Sure, I understand that, but how does the wording of the infraction differentiate these two? Much as we'd like to we can't just say ‘oh, I’d like to treat these two differently' if the wording is the same.

IPG 2.4
… his or her opponent selects a number of cards equal to the number of excess or unverified cards …

Is the card drawn from Matter Reshaper not an ‘unverified card’?

Jan. 31, 2016 06:42:17 AM

Dan Collins
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 5 (Judge Foundry))

USA - Northeast

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Matter Reshaper does not *require* you to verify any characteristics of the
card before putting it into hand (although you can if you want the added
bonus of putting it into play).

Dark Confidant *requires* you to verify the card's CMC before putting it
into hand. Therefore, the card is “unverified” if it has not been revealed.

Feb. 6, 2016 02:24:43 PM

Fabrizio Curato
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

Italy and Malta

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

So…The unverified card if matters only for the purpose of pure “information” (give to the opponent the information on the identity of card without any other implication) then it is not an extra card /unverified and the fix is "show entire hand because (like we did in the past) we can't swear 100% that it was THAT card drawn.
To me seems fair fix that per se has a little panality (let the opponent know your entire hand).

Maybe the ipg must be tweaked a bit more :)

Feb. 7, 2016 03:26:00 PM

Matt Cooper
Judge (Level 1 (Judge Academy))

USA - Northeast

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Originally posted by Fabrizio Curato:

Maybe the ipg must be tweaked a bit more :)

The issue is that this is in corner-case land and we can't tailor the IPG for every single corner case. If we found an optimal fix for each scenario that could possibly come up in Magic, that document would be a millionfold the length of the Comprehensive Rules.

Feb. 7, 2016 04:12:14 PM

Jakob Kruse
Judge (Uncertified)

German-speaking countries

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

By failing to reveal for Keranos, you've lost the chance to trigger those
abilities, but gained no advantage other than the identity of the card
being unknown to your opponent.

By failing to reveal for Dark Confidant, you've saved yourself a few points
of damage. Removing a card from hand “corrects” the error.
Let's say the board is only my Keranos and my opponent's Leyline of Sanctity. I drew a nonland card for the turn without revealing, thus “missing” my triggers – that saved me a few points of damage like in the Dark Confidant case, right? So there should be more to differentiate the two rulings.

Sorry for taking the case one corner further ;)

Feb. 7, 2016 06:10:37 PM

Eli Meyer
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

USA - Northeast

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Originally posted by Jakob Kruse:

So there should be more to differentiate the two rulings.

Sorry for taking the case one corner further ;)
Please re-read Matt's comment immediately above yours :-)

Feb. 8, 2016 10:30:50 AM

Scott Marshall
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 4 (Judge Foundry)), Hall of Fame

USA - Northwest

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Originally posted by Jakob Kruse:

I drew a nonland card for the turn without revealing, thus “missing” my triggers – that saved me a few points of damage like in the Dark Confidant case, right?
So, you *knew* about that trigger, but cleverly avoided taking damage, eh?

We don't need to tweak policy or philosophy, to differentiate the rulings, just because you managed to push a corner case further into the corner - so far that it's likely Cheating!

While I agree with Matt's statement, it isn't critical for this discussion - there's a deeper disconnect here. What Dan said is all we need; the policy refers to excess or unverified cards. Further, the real problem here isn't policy - it's the odd ability and wording of Keranos.

d:^D

Feb. 8, 2016 03:05:18 PM

Jakob Kruse
Judge (Uncertified)

German-speaking countries

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

So, you *knew* about that trigger, but cleverly avoided taking damage, eh?

I didn't say missing the reveal was intentional – which should be cheating in the Dark Confidant case as well.

What I was getting at was the odd case where Keranos' reveal is in fact needed for a similar kind of verification. I'll agree though that this is very narrow and not worth too much headache :)

Edited Jakob Kruse (Feb. 8, 2016 03:05:39 PM)

Feb. 16, 2016 01:59:03 PM

Jose Miño
Judge (Uncertified)

Hispanic America - South

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

The error probably “cannot be corrected by only publicly available information”, and - as far as we can tell from the original scenario - this was done “without {the} opponent's permission”.

So, the player reveals their hand, and the opponent selects zero cards - there are no “excess or unverified” cards in this example. Since no cards are being returned to the library, no shuffle is required.

In the next link http://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2016/01/25/the-hidden-corners-of-hce/ Toby speaks of Dark Confidant.
Darck Confidant has a trigger ability same that Matter Reshaper, in these two case a card goes to the hand without matter that card is, the error is not revealing the card.

In his publication Toby tells the fix is the player reveals their hand, and the opponent selects a card, This card is returned to library and shuffled into the random portion.
He explain “it’s important to understand that HCE may leave players “down” a card, and this is acceptable due to the nature of their error.”

¿why the solution is different if the situation are similars?

Feb. 16, 2016 02:05:55 PM

Dan Collins
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 5 (Judge Foundry))

USA - Northeast

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Originally posted by Jose Miño:

Scott Marshall
The error probably “cannot be corrected by only publicly available information”, and - as far as we can tell from the original scenario - this was done “without {the} opponent's permission”.

So, the player reveals their hand, and the opponent selects zero cards - there are no “excess or unverified” cards in this example. Since no cards are being returned to the library, no shuffle is required.

In the next link http://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2016/01/25/the-hidden-corners-of-hce/ Toby speaks of Dark Confidant.
Darck Confidant has a trigger ability same that Matter Reshaper, in these two case a card goes to the hand without matter that card is, the error is not revealing the card.

In his publication Toby tells the fix is the player reveals their hand, and the opponent selects a card, This card is returned to library and shuffled into the random portion.
He explain “it’s important to understand that HCE may leave players “down” a card, and this is acceptable due to the nature of their error.”

¿why the solution is different if the situation are similars?

This very question was discussed previously in this thread, ending just two posts ago. Please read through the thread, and if you still have any specific questions after doing so, we can discuss that.

Feb. 16, 2016 02:18:03 PM

Scott Marshall
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 4 (Judge Foundry)), Hall of Fame

USA - Northwest

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

There's a key difference between Matter Reshaper and Dark Confidant.

The wording of the Remedy: “opponent selects a number of cards equal to the number of excess or unverified cards”.

For Dark Confidant, there are aspects of the card that have to be verified - namely, the CMC.

For Matter Reshaper, the characteristics are irrelevant, putting it in hand is always allowed.

d:^D

March 2, 2016 07:42:05 PM

Ben Ku
Judge (Uncertified)

USA - Southeast

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Okay, so I know I'm a lowly L1, but saying that the “key difference” is that Dark Confidant “has to be verified” and Matter Reshaper does not, doesn't sit right with me.

Both cards have a rider based on the CMC of the card and while Matter Reshaper's contains a “may” rider, I would think in both cases, the card's properties must be verified before the rest of the steps can be resolved (may or not). If the verification was truely irrelevant in the Matter Reshaper case, then wouldn't it be written “look at the top card of your library. You may put this card into the battlefield if it's CMC is 3 or less. Otherwise, put that card into your hand.”

The whole reason why this is a HCE is because part of the resolution is to disclose the identity of the drawn card to the opponent. Revealing the hand does not fix the “nature of the error” as even by revealing the hand, the opponent still has no knowledge of the identity of the drawn card. The opponent might really want to know if the bomb in their hand was the saving grace they just drew or if they've been sitting on it all game and just looking at the hand does not restore that information which seems like the whole point of the shuffle-away-their-best-card fix. Previously this would have been a game loss, obviously something we want to heavily discourage, so I don't think this should be an exception because the information isn't being used by a later portion of the card.

So while the characteristics may be irrelevant, it still seems to me that the “unverified cards” count should still be 1 since there's still a card whose identity can't be verified.

March 3, 2016 06:14:05 AM

Mats Törnros
Judge (Uncertified)

Europe - North

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Originally posted by Ben Ku:

The whole reason why this is a HCE is because part of the resolution is to disclose the identity of the drawn card to the opponent. Revealing the hand does not fix the “nature of the error” as even by revealing the hand, the opponent still has no knowledge of the identity of the drawn card. The opponent might really want to know if the bomb in their hand was the saving grace they just drew or if they've been sitting on it all game and just looking at the hand does not restore that information which seems like the whole point of the shuffle-away-their-best-card fix. Previously this would have been a game loss, obviously something we want to heavily discourage, so I don't think this should be an exception because the information isn't being used by a later portion of the card.

So while the characteristics may be irrelevant, it still seems to me that the “unverified cards” count should still be 1 since there's still a card whose identity can't be verified.

This was not a game loss previously. Failure to Reveal was only a game loss if the reveal was necessary to prove that the action taken (putting it into your hand) was legal, but putting the card in the hand is legal regardless of which card it is. Verification in this case does not refer to verifying the card's identity, only its characteristics.

You are right that it's theoretically a slight advantage that the opponent doesn't know what card you drew this turn, but the advantage that gives is extremely minor. In almost any situation the penalty of revealing your entire hand will more than negate the advantage gained, and a warning is a penalty in itself. The potential for abuse is just so small that there's no need for more severe penalties like the Thoughtseize fix.

March 3, 2016 03:19:19 PM

Ben Ku
Judge (Uncertified)

USA - Southeast

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

So what you're saying is that we should be considering the advantage gained from the error and potential for abuse in how we do fixes?

If verification only cares about characteristics, does that mean that we would not shuffle a card away for a Dark Confidant if the hand is full of lands (since the characteristic can be verified by looking at the hand) or if the hand is full of enchantments for the Idyllic Tutor example in the AIPG?

If that is the case, then the IPG should be updated to clearly state that characteristics are what need to be verified and not the card's identity. And if that is the case, could I not just cover the card and only reveal the characteristic portion to satisfy that requirement? If not, I'm very confused as to why we are interpreting “unverified” to mean only characteristics in this case but not in the others.

Both Dark Confidant and Matter Reshaper have parts of the card that care about CMC, both have an action that says to reveal the card to the opponent, in both cases the card is gotten regardless of the value of the characteristic, and the issue in both cases is the failure to reveal.

Further, if there is a hand full of lands, the characteristic is irrelevant in both cases, however, Toby's article and the IPG seem to indicate that even with a hand full of lands, a card should be shuffled away in the Dark Confidant case as the punishment for failure to reveal.

March 4, 2016 02:27:50 PM

Scott Marshall
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 4 (Judge Foundry)), Hall of Fame

USA - Northwest

Matter Reshaper w/o revealing (yet another HCE thread)

Ben, I'll repeat / rephrase to try and explain.

Dark Confidant requires that you lose life - how much? well, we can't verify that with publicly available information.

Matter Reshaper only cares about the mana cost if you try to put it on the battlefield; you can always put it in hand, regardless of the mana cost; there's no verification involved in that action. It is neither an excess, nor an unverified card.

Perhaps if you think about a variation of the Matter Reshaper mistake: I look at the top card of my library and put it on the battlefield - only, it's a Thought-Knot Seer. We can easily verify that this is a GRV, using publicly available information, and (back up if necessary, then) put that card in hand instead.

d:^D