I guess there is 2 different scenarios.

1) If we asume Anna didn´t play the land in her upkeep (because players don´t usually do that) but consider she just messed up during the draw step/mainphase:

Putting the land into play from the top of her libary and gaining 1 life is perfectly fine and no GRV, it´s just a shortcut for drawing the land in her draw step and playing it during her mainphase, noone would care much about revealing the top card of her libary after that, it would be just normal OoOS.
After gaining the life, the first GPE that occured was to move on and not reveal the top card of the libary and instead draw an extra card. Before drawing that extra card there was no GPE, considering that the OoOS: draw land, play it, gain life, then reveal top card is fine, instead of revealing the top card Anne just drew it. Therefor it should be a GPE - DEC with a GL. Take note that the opponent has little to no chance to interfer here, because it all looks fine untill Anna drew the extra card, no FtmGS.

2) Some more thoughts - when did the first GPE occur? If Anna says she played the land in her upkeep, this would be a GPE-GRV, followed by a GPE-GRV: not revealing the top card of her libary until she finally went on with her normal turn by drawing. Now we don´t have a DEC anymore. Rewinding the game here seems ok. Return a random card on top of the libary, return the land on top of that and substract 1 life, then let Anna proceed with her turn. This would be 2 Infractions. One for playing a land in the upkeep and one for not revealing the top card of her libary. Therefor GPE-GRV and a warning *2.

I think the question about where she drew this is interesting but I'd kind of ignored it because of the OP statement

Originally posted by Patrick Vorbroker:

While watching the match, you see Anna untap, play the revealed land from the top of her library, and draw for her turn.

In reality I think you'd need to speak with her to understand where she thought she was in her turn, I don;t think we can assume in either direction.

It seems there are two interpretations of events floating around right now.

1 - Anna used Courser's ability to play a land from the top of her library, but did so during her upkeep.
2 - Anna drew a land from top of library, then played that exact land, then drew another card, despite no game instruction telling her to do so.

I don't think 2) is a reasonable interpretation. The land never touched her hand - it went from the top of the library to the battlefield. Thus, it wasn't drawn. Also, Anna did not think of this sequence of events as ‘draw a land, play a land, draw a card’, or else I would have a hard time believing she completely forgot that you only draw one card per turn. Anna thought of this sequence as ‘use courser’s ability, draw card for turn', but did not stop to consider that that sequence of events meant she would be playing things with incorrect timing.

I think, even though the error of not revealing before she draws, this still would not change it from DEC because the failure to reveal did not cause her to draw the extra card. I don't think it is a root cause of her drawing the extra card, but a separate error entirely. She committed two infractions one after another, separately, and the one with the heavier penalty is the DEC and thus is the one we apply.

Originally posted by Sal Cortez:

I think, even though the error of not revealing before she draws, this still would not change it from DEC because the failure to reveal did not cause her to draw the extra card. I don't think it is a root cause of her drawing the extra card, but a separate error entirely. She committed two infractions one after another, separately, and the one with the heavier penalty is the DEC and thus is the one we apply.

I agree completely here. While she did play a land at a time that she couldn't, the card draw was not directly caused by that game rule violation. This is a Game Loss as it is not possible to verify the identity of the card.

I believe Anna gets a GPE-GRV for playing a land in her upkeep. Then a second GPE-GRV for breaking the rule courser sets up. Assuming there are no fetch lands in play have Anna return a card at random from to the library and then return the land she played to the top of the library and fix the life totals. We are now in the upkeep step and Anna has priority.

I do not think this is DEC because I do not think she illegally put a card in her hand. She drew a card during her draw step and due to a strange circumstance had not have it previously revealed.

Edited Walker Metyko (Feb. 27, 2015 06:26:33 PM)

Originally posted by Rich Marin:

I agree completely here. While she did play a land at a time that she couldn't, the card draw was not directly caused by that game rule violation. This is a Game Loss as it is not possible to verify the identity of the card.

Note that the policy preventing DEC from applying if there is a GRV before does not state that the GRV has to be the cause of the extra card being drawn. It just says:

IPG
A player illegally puts one or more cards into his or her hand and, at the moment before he or she began the instruction or action that put a card into his or her hand, no other Game Rule Violation or Communication Policy Violation had been committed, and the error was not the result of resolving objects on the stack in an incorrect order.

So even if not revealing to Courser wasn't the cause of the player drawing extra cards, it still happened before the card draw, and thus the card draw isn't a game loss.

Before reading other responses: I would give Alice 2 GRVs: One for incorrect OOS (playing a land and then drawing a card) and one for failure to reveal (the top card of her library before drawing it), assuming she didn't reveal it (the situation doesn't say she did, so I'm assuming she didn't). I do not believe these two penalties are related or came as a result of a single event; even in OOS you are still required to reveal for Courser.

I would also be inclined to back up the game here:

1) Depending on whether Alice revealed the card from the top of her deck before drawing it, I would return either the revealed card or a random card from Alice's hand to the top of her deck, face-down.

2) Alice would lose 1 life.

3) Alice would put the land from the battlefield on top of her deck.

4) The game would be rewound to Alice's draw step, immediately before she has drawn her card for the turn; as neither player seemed to intend to do anything during Alice's upkeep, I want to minimize the chance of the “random card put back on top” changing that, so we're going to skip Alice's upkeep step in this case (one might say it has already been skipped).

I would also be sure to give the players a time extension for the length of the call ;-)

After reading other responses: I think this is correct, but just to be clear, what I called “incorrect OOS” is what everyone else is calling “playing a land in one's upkeep”. To me, it's not clear that she didn't try to skip her draw step, play a land, then go back to draw step (and hence do her phases out of order, hence Out of Order Sequencing), nor am I sure the difference is material, so I'm going to call it OOS, done incorrectly.

EDIT: After thinking about it a bit more, I think it is materially relevant that this be considered playing a land in the upkeep, rather than OOS. If it is considered OOS, firstly, I believe this is a CPV, not a GRV. If it is considered playing a land in the upkeep, I believe it is only 1 GRV, for playing a land at the wrong time. If the land had not been played at the wrong time, then the top card of the deck would not havechanged before the unrevealed card was drawn, and hence a revealed card would have been drawn as required; I don't think delving into “would the next card have been revealed?” Is a relevant discussion to be had.

Thus I'm going to go with a single GRV for playing a land during the upkeep, and consider the failure to reveal as the same root cause.

Edited Lyle Waldman (March 1, 2015 02:19:47 PM)

The easiest way to approach the Problem seems to say Anna played a land in her Upkeep. But what if she says it was a brainfart and she made a stupid OoOS playing the land then drawing her Card for the turn being in the mainphae. I do not understand why it is more likely she intended to Play the land in the upkeep than to believe she played it in her mainphase and just messed up to draw first. If you would just ask her “what Phase are we in?” after she played the land and drew the Card, I would believe the answer could very well be “Pre Combat Mainphase, I already played a land”.

Edited Thomas Ludwig (March 1, 2015 06:51:37 PM)

Originally posted by Thomas Ludwig:

The easiest way to approach the Problem seems to say Anna played a land in her Upkeep. But what if she says it was a brainfart and she made a stupid OoOS playing the land then drawing her Card for the turn being in the mainphae. I do not understand why it is more likely she intended to Play the land in the upkeep than to believe she played it in her mainphase and just messed up to draw first. If you would just ask her “what Phase are we in?” after she played the land and drew the Card, I would believe the answer could very well be “Pre Combat Mainphase, I already played a land”.

I could be wrong, but I believe this falls into Uncle Scott's list of Problems We Don't Care About (TM). It seems like something that will probably never come up, because “what phase are we in?” is probably not a question worth asking when investigating this scenario, except insofar as determining how far we would have to rewind in the case that a rewind is issued (and consequently to help determine the viability of such a rewind).

I don´t think that´s sth we can´t care about, this time at least. ;)

My line of thought, after thinking it over again:

You can´t play lands in your upkeep. If you play a land you believe you are in one of your mainphases.
Anna untaped and played a land. So she went to her mainphase w/o drawing a card for the turn. That seems like the mistake that has happened, “not drawing a card for your turn in the draw step”.

Anything wrong about that?

Afterwards of course she drew a card for her turn, but we are already in the mainphase and she already missed drawing her card for the turn.

Now in this scenario the land came from top of her libary and not from her hand, but why does that change everything and now we are in the upkeep and she played a land in her upkeep? I don´t understand that.

Originally posted by Thomas Ludwig:

I don´t think that´s sth we can´t care about, this time at least. ;)

My line of thought, after thinking it over again:

You can´t play lands in your upkeep. If you play a land you believe you are in one of your mainphases.
Anna untaped and played a land. So she went to her mainphase w/o drawing a card for the turn. That seems like the mistake that has happened, “not drawing a card for your turn in the draw step”.

Anything wrong about that?

Afterwards of course she drew a card for her turn, but we are already in the mainphase and she already missed drawing her card for the turn.

Now in this scenario the land came from top of her libary and not from her hand, but why does that change everything and now we are in the upkeep and she played a land in her upkeep? I don´t understand that.

I don't believe that changes the penalty. I believe that the penalty in that case would be a GRV for skipping the draw in the draw phase, which would be considered the root cause of everything that came afterwards.

Of course, I answered differently on this 3 posts ago, so if someone would like to sanity check me on this that would be cool.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

Thomas Ludwig
I don´t think that´s sth we can´t care about, this time at least. ;)

My line of thought, after thinking it over again:

You can´t play lands in your upkeep. If you play a land you believe you are in one of your mainphases.
Anna untaped and played a land. So she went to her mainphase w/o drawing a card for the turn. That seems like the mistake that has happened, “not drawing a card for your turn in the draw step”.

Anything wrong about that?

Afterwards of course she drew a card for her turn, but we are already in the mainphase and she already missed drawing her card for the turn.

Now in this scenario the land came from top of her libary and not from her hand, but why does that change everything and now we are in the upkeep and she played a land in her upkeep? I don´t understand that.

I don't believe that changes the penalty. I believe that the penalty in that case would be a GRV for skipping the draw in the draw phase, which would be considered the root cause of everything that came afterwards.

Of course, I answered differently on this 3 posts ago, so if someone would like to sanity check me on this that would be cool.

If you believe AP skipped his draw step, the card he drew after playing a land would be GPE-DEC and would result in a game loss? I don't believe that the GRV commited when AP skipped his draw step can be considered the root cause for the card drawn after playing a land. He skipped a draw, played a land, then illegaly drew a card.

In any case, I would still tend to treat the situation as if AP played a land during his upkeep, but I'm open to new ideas.

Given that it's monday, I'll throw in:

This is a GPE-GRV - warning. A mistake occurred during the player's upkeep, and it doesn't fit into any other category. If the player properly revealed their drawn card, I'd most likely rewind. If the card wasn't revealed, I would not rewind.

Originally posted by Nicolas Mihajlovic-Gendron:

If you believe AP skipped his draw step, the card he drew after playing a land would be GPE-DEC and would result in a game loss? I don't believe that the GRV commited when AP skipped his draw step can be considered the root cause for the card drawn after playing a land. He skipped a draw, played a land, then illegaly drew a card.

In any case, I would still tend to treat the situation as if AP played a land during his upkeep, but I'm open to new ideas.

If she skipped her draw step, then she committed a GRV prior to drawing the extra card, so the infraction cannot be DEC. It doesn't matter whether skipping the draw step was or was not the “root cause for the card drawn,” all that matters is that she had already committed a GRV before drawing the extra card.

So, in this case, it doesn't really matter whether we decide that the player skipped her draw step, played a land in her main phase, then drew for her turn; or played a land during her upkeep and then drew for her turn. In both cases the infraction is a GRV (and the GRV happens prior to the card draw so we don't run into DEC). The justification changes what we write on the slip, but from the standpoint of the infraction, penalty, and fix, it's the same either way.

I personally would request a backup in this situation, regardless of whether the card was revealed or not. If it was, we can do a clean backup by putting the most recent card back on top, then the land (and adjusting the life totals accordingly) and have the player start their draw step correctly. If the card wasn't revealed, it's a bit messier because we have to take a random card from Anna's hand to undo the card draw, but I feel like that is less damaging to the game state than letting Anna keep the extra card she drew as a result of clearing a land off the top before drawing.