Very interested by how divisive and complex this scenario is, love seeing all the different opinions and discussion.

I feel I'm in the same boat as Eli, here:

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

So here is the problem I have with DEC: we are claiming no GRV was committed prior to the second draw for failing to discard the first card. Was no GRV committed for failing to discard the second card? What's the difference?

As an L1 seeing lots of L2s in favor of DEC on this thread, can someone clarify this? Most on this thread seem to be quibbling over whether a GRV could have conceivably occurred before the DEC, but the beginning if the IPG 2.3 says "A player illegally puts one or more cards into his or her hand and". What makes the second card drawn by N illegal? He is legally entitled to draw that card, but he's done it at the wrong time, before fully resolving another trigger. To me, that looks like a GRV, no matter what player A could or could not have noticed before the error occurred.

I find when something is this intricate, it helps to break it down step by step.

He's performing some quite funky OoOS here with the announcement of the triggers, but I am disinclined to argue with that. So lets go one by one.

First Ascendancy trigger resolves, he draws a card. So far we are perfectly legal.
What should happen next? He should discard.
Did he? No.
OK, we have our infraction. GPE-GRV for incorrectly resolving the Ascendancy trigger. The fact that we only know he missed it because he drew for the second trigger isn't relevant to the infraction. He could not have committed the infraction without incorrectly resolving Ascendancy, because if it was correctly resolved he committed no infraction at all. Therefore before he can draw, Nathan HAS to forget to discard. Otherwise there's no infraction.

Alice is getting FtMGS.

Now, do we rewind? I don't believe the IPG supports a rewind. With the language around partial fixes, I think we have to partially fix this and have Nathan discard.

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 5:31 AM, Adam Zakreski
<forum-16820-007b@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> Jonathan Burgess
> To me that means the card as a whole. Not what the card is, i.e. the back
> not the front. His hand was empty before drawing the two cards and both can
> be put into the graveyard, the land and the card already in hand. To me that
> classifies it as being applicable for a penalty downgrade.
>
>
> How do you identify which was the legally drawn first and which was the
> illegally drawn second? Once they both hit the hand you are no longer able
> to identify which is which.


But do we care. We can correctly identify where 2 cards should be. I
know the verbage in DEC talks about a single card, but applying the
philosophy to 2 cards doesn't feel dangerous in this situation. We can
identify 2 cards that are in the wrong zone and easily fix them by
putting the land and card in hand into the graveyard.

DEC w/downgrade and FTMGS are what I'd rule.

> On Mar 16, 2015, at 1:36 PM, Théo CHENG <forum-16820-0b6b@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Am I missing something or…
>
> Nathan has drawn 2 cards with failing to discard twice, meaning he has 2 extra cards. The end result is 1 land played and 1 card in hand. Aren't those cards easily identifiable and subject to a possible downgrade?
>
>

And…



> On Mar 16, 2015, at 6:46 PM, Gareth Pye <forum-16820-0b6b@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
>
> DEC w/downgrade and FTMGS are what I'd rule.
>
>


Whether it was “draw draw” rather than “smear two cards off and lift them both to hand” doesn't matter, he still either put two in an empty hand (DEC-GL), or the second one placed there before he discarded the first so his hand wasn't empty.

Originally posted by 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.

For those of you who argue that the second card was not “illegally” drawn because he was entitled to a second draw that was on the stack, I have a follow-up question: why is the second bolded part written out?

Because if drawing a card from an instruction on the stack is covered by the “illegally” part, the second part doesn't have to be mentioned.

Edited Toby Hazes (March 17, 2015 01:51:21 AM)

The awkward part for me is that at the moment he draws the second card, it's not entirely clear what ‘zone’ those 2 cards are in.
Say instead of playing a land, he just puts those two cards in his graveyard, would that have been a problem? (What if it was legacy, where graveyard order matters? Does it make a difference if the exact same dexterity is used to shortcut 2 Ascendancy triggers or 2 straight mill triggers like Mesmeric Orb?)
If that's not a problem, then the playing of the land is the first time we know there is a problem. Because now it seems those two cards are seen as “hand” by Nathan. Which means that the second card is indeed drawn.

So the playing of the land is the first time we know something went wrong. The drawing of the second card is the first action that was actually wrong in retrospect. Even though in an alternate timeline the exact same action could've been okay.

DEC, no downgrade, as the second card is not uniquely identifiable from the first.

Edited Toby Hazes (March 17, 2015 02:24:04 AM)

Originally posted by Toby Hazes:

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.

For those of you who argue that the second card was not “illegally” drawn because he was entitled to a second draw that was on the stack, I have a follow-up question: why is the second bolded part written out?

Because if drawing a card from an instruction on the stack is covered by the “illegally” part, the second part doesn't have to be mentioned.

Toby, that's a good point, thank you. I'd always considered that to be a nod to OoOS, but then logically I guess that means things that aren't OoOS are “illegal.” I tried to give myself some other similar scenarios to reason out, and one I thought of is just the case of a Rummaging Goblin activation where the player draws first before discarding. I'm sure that would be DEC, which makes me reconsider my thoughts in this case (it's not quite the same thing, but close enough). And if this is DEC, I'd agree with those saying when the second card was drawn it was not identifiable, and therefore the penalty is GL.

I actually asked a L3 at Liverpool about the Rummaging Goblin scenario, as a couple of us L1s weren't sure whether drawing first, then discarding would be a GRV or DEC. He said it was definitely DEC.

For Rummaging Goblin, it depends on whether or not he tapped before drawing; if so, then there's the GRV of not paying for the ability before resolving it. If he just skips all the activation costs for that ability, it's DEC.

Now, back to our regular scenario…

d:^D

Uncle Scott did not make this any easier. Now I'm back to GRV. Can't wait to see the official answer.

Thank you everybody for the discussion on this scenario. This is the largest response we've ever had for a Knowledge Pool scenario hitting 100 replies with this post! This is a Gold scenario and long time readers will recognize that often means not only a higher level of difficulty, but also sometimes include situations where multiple infractions may seem to fit. Because of that, there's a lot of disagreement among KP readers, and it's quite understandable. Is it a Game Rule Violation (GRV) or Drawing Extra Cards (DEC)?

The philosophy that led to the addition of the “GRV immediately prior = not DEC” phrasing in the IPG was based on the idea that the opponent, if paying attention, had a chance to see something going wrong and stop it before the card was drawn. That's not the case here, and that's a critical part of philosophy. A fine technical analysis leads to a conclusion that “something went wrong” when Nathan took his (poorly ordered and resolved) actions, and supports the logic that there is some sort of GRV prior to the 2nd card draw.

However, the opponent isn't doing a precise analysis of every action; they're supposed to Maintain the Game State, and that requires them to look for something going wrong. Their first opportunity to notice that something went wrong? When that second card hit the hand.

What about the argument that he was supposed to draw that card, thus it's not “extra”? The definition of DEC begins “A player illegally puts one or more cards into his or her hand.” At the point where that 2nd card hit Nathan's hand, it was illegal to draw that card. (Or: don't let titles lead you astray, always read the Definition and Philosophy!)

So, here's our conclusion:

Nathan has committed Drawing Extra Cards (DEC) which carries a penalty of Game Loss. The first thing that went wrong is when Nathan drew a card at a point where it was illegal to do so. Since both cards were drawn into an empty hand, and it's minimal disruption to do so, the Head Judge may elect to downgrade the penalty to a Warning, and put both the land that Nathan played, and the card still in his hand, into the correct zone - the graveyard. Since Alice didn't point out that error immediately, she will receive Failure to Maintain Game State (FtMGS) and a Warning.

Thank you again everybody for your participation. Stay tuned for the next Knowledge Pool scenario!

In the case of a downgrade, I understand discarding the card out of Nathan's hand, but I don't understand the policy support for moving the land from Battlefield to Graveyard, or for downgrading in the first place.

For the downgrade, the second card should have been drawn into an empty hand, but it wasn't. If Alice had called us immediately after that second card was drawn, we couldn't just return it to the top of the deck, like we could had it been drawn into an empty hand, we'd have to return a random card.

Assuming we downgrade (or consider this a GRV, instead of DEC), moving the land directly to graveyard feels right, but I don't see how it's a supported fix.

Moreover no explanation was given about why OoOS (thus no DEC) cannot apply here. Why is the sequence (Bolt Bolt {empty hand} draw draw discard discard) not a legal OoOS here please?

Edited Loïc Hervier (March 17, 2015 10:30:14 PM)

Originally posted by IPG:

If the identity of the card was known to all players before being placed into the hand, or was placed into an empty hand,

I thought “the card” here referred only to any extra cards drawn, not to any cards drawn, so I also don't understand how

Since both cards were drawn into an empty hand,

applies here.

At the moment the illegal card was drawn, the hand wasn't empty as he
had already drawn for the first trigger. As none of the cards were
know to both players prior to the draw, I don't see how you can
downgrade this infraction. That both cards would have landed in the
graveyard due to the resolution of the triggers is irrelevant to the
penalty.

I'm okay(ish) with the proposed solution from a phylosophical point of
view but this is clearly a deviation and should be declared as such.