Scenario:

Player A is playing a dredge deck and has 2 nether shadows in his graveyard with one more creature above them and passes turn to his opponent. Player B during their turn ask to see Player A's graveyard. Player A presents it to him but ask him to keep it in order. Player B spends some time looking through it and before giving it back to Player A pulls some cards to the front that he may try to get rid of later on, I.E. Glossary Grave Troll, Ichorid or maybe even Nether Shadow. Player A calls for a judge.

My question here is since Player A specifically stated to Player B to not rearrange the graveyard as to keep track of the number of creature on top of nether shadow so he could activate it's trigger, and player B has gained an advantage by delaying when these creatures could possibly come out would it constitute cheating.

Graveyard order in eternal formats is still important because of cards like Nether Shadow, Death Spark, Phyrexian Furnace, etc. so rearranging graveyard order is not allowed by any player in those formats. This would be a GRV weather or not the player explicitly stated not to rearrange the order of the yard. Of course you do want to investigate cheating, asking player B why they rearranged the graveyard is important. If they did it so their opponent could not return their Nether Shadow and they knew they could not do so then yes, this is a case of UC - Cheating. Short of that if the player was unaware of the rules then we want to try and reconstruct the graveyard as best as possible by asking both players to confirm the original order.

I should also mention that in Modern, Standard, and (newer) limited formats graveyard order is not important thus this would not be a GRV and would just be an issue between the players not respecting each others wishes. They should try and be nice and we can help them come to an agreement, but short of that there is no other action for us.

A Cheating infraction would always be determined after an investigation. It will require asking certain questions to the player, including such questions as “Why did you change the order of these cards?” and “Did you know this was not permitted by the rules?”

Remember that the definition of Unsporting Conduct — Cheating requires the following two things to be true:

• The player must be attempting to gain advantage from his or her action.
  
• The player must be aware that he or she is doing something illegal.
  

Could it constitute cheating? Yes, any action that violates the rules could be used in a certain scenario to purposely gain an unfair advantage. Does it constitute cheating? Only an investigation can determine that.

However, this scenario involves, at a minimum, a Game Play Error — Game Rule Violation infraction.

Originally posted by Nicola DiPasquale:

I should also mention that in Modern, Standard, and (newer) limited formats graveyard order is not important thus this would not be a GRV and would just be an issue between the players not respecting each others wishes. They should try and be nice and we can help them come to an agreement, but short of that there is no other action for us.

I would have to disagree with you here. Players in those formats are allowed to reorder their own graveyards, but opponents may never do so.

Since in this scenario it was the opponent that reorderd the graveyard, even in newer formats that player would have commited a GRV.

Chris, pretend I'm on a plane and the slow wi-fi doesn't allow me to search (OK, I *am* on a plane…): can you quote the rule or policy that allows a player to rearrange graveyard order in an Eternal format?

d:^D

Edit: misunderstood, I had the formats backwards when reading your post; still, if someone wishes to disagree with a previous post, it's always a “best practice” to quote policy/rules. :)

Edited Scott Marshall (March 6, 2015 12:20:48 PM)

I think we have muddled the issue. Here is what I thought was going on:

Markus: What do we do when an opponent reorders a graveyard in an Eternal
format where it matters?
Nicola: Penalize and try to restore, but if the format is not Eternal,
there is no infraction
Cris: Even in non-Eternal formats, where you can reorder your own
graveyard, there is no allowance to reorder an opponent's graveyard.

Let me know if I missed something important.

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

Dominick: Thats exactly what I said in my post. That in any format players may not reorder their opponent's graveyards.

Per Scott Marshall asking for rules quotes, I'd be happy to:

From the MTG comprehensive rulebook:

“404.2. Each graveyard is kept in a single face-up pile. A player can examine the cards in any graveyard at any time but normally can't change their order. Additional rules applying to sanctioned tournaments may allow a player to change the order of cards in his or her graveyard.”

From the MTG Tournament rules:

“3.14 Graveyard Order
In formats involving only cards from Urza’s Saga™ and later, players may change the order of their graveyard at any time. A player may not change the order of an opponent’s graveyard.”

So we know that the tournament rules will trump the comprehensive rules, it allows players to reorder their own graveyard if they are playing in a format that only involves cards from urza's saga or later. However it doesn't allow a player to reorder their opponents graveyard. So the opponent would have violated a rule in the CR.

In this case it would at minimum be a GRV no matter what format is being played.

Edited Cris Plyler (March 6, 2015 12:39:47 PM)

Thanks, Cris (sorry about misspelling your name before!) - that's exactly what I wanted.

So, now that we have a clear statement about policy - yes, it's a GRV for the opponent, in any format - let's get to the really fun part: can we fix this?? how?

d:^D

Refering to tournaments where GY order doesn't matter. I received a message about this and was questioned whether I would actually give an official warning if this situation came up? Even though a GRV has been committed, I don't believe I would for the first offence. I would explain to the player that doing so is incorrect and violates the rules of the game and not do it again.

The question is has the game state been disrupted? Not really. Has a player gained an advantage? I guess it would be possible, but I can't think of any way offhand. So as to the fix, I guess we could back it up and attempt to reorder the GY to its proper state, but it seems to me that for this case it would be pointless. So I'd leave the game state as is.


As to the original question scenario where GY state does matter, if feasable back up and put the GY in it's original order. If players can't remember the state it was in leave it as is (this is assuming no cheating).

Thanks everyone I have certainly learned a lot of new information from this post that I can now use. We have just recently gotten into Legacy and Modern play at my LGS and I fill like this information will come in handy for me especially with my dredge deck lol.

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

yes, it's a GRV for the opponent, in any format

Is this still a GRV under the new IPG, which now says, “If a player violates the Magic Tournament Rules in a way that is not covered by one of the infractions listed below, the judge should explain the appropriate procedure to the player, but not issue a penalty” (§3, opening paragraph).

The GRV is for breaking the rule in the Comp Rules (400.5) not the one in the MTR

Oops, I see, the ruling was primarily based on CR 404, not MTR 3.14 – now it all makes (more) sense ;-).

Originally posted by Cris Plyler:

Refering to tournaments where GY order doesn't matter. I guess we could back it up and attempt to reorder the GY to its proper state, but it seems to me that for this case it would be pointless. So I'd leave the game state as is.

In a format where it doesn't matter, the player is free to rearrange their own graveyard anyway. If they care, they can fix it themselves. :)