Hi everyone!

Here's a situation reported to me by a player:

"Alex casts a Surgical Extraction on a Serum Vision in Niobe's graveyard. After he has searched in her graveyard and hand, while he's looking Niobe's library, Alex puts all the counterspells he finds on the bottom of her deck. Then give it back to Niobe.
Niobe calls you immediatly, explaining what happened.

What would you do? Infractions? Penalties? Fixes?

BONUS VARIANT: When you ask Alex why he did that, he answers you “I really suffer that kind of cards. Doing in this way, she won't be able to find a counterspell so easly, even if she shuffles a lot!”

Edited Jacopo Strati (March 30, 2015 05:10:18 PM)

Alex has *attempted* to cheat, but has done so incompetently. In the IPG, I can find no justification for attempted Cheating to be ruled as actual Cheating. However, he has re-ordered Niobe's library, and Surgical Extraction does not tell Alex to do that, so I guess we could pull him up on GPE:GRV. I don't know if this is a stretch or not, but I would consider this Unwanted Behaviour, and I would want some sort of penalty recorded here.

Since Surgical Extraction specifies that Niobe has to shuffle her library, the order of cards that Alex gives her is irrelevant. I would certainly have a word with Alex and tell him not do anything like this again - I would definitely use the words “attempted cheating” in any talk I had with him.

Fix? Just make sure Niobe properly shuffles her library.

BONUS VARIANT: The more I think about it, the more I think this can actually be called Cheating. If we accept that a GRV was applicable in the previous case, then Alex has just admitted that a rule has been broken, and this was done deliberately for an attempt to gain advantage.

I would have a stern talk with Alex and it would be quite hard for him to convince me that he was not cheating… although a bad cheat since alex' shuffling should undo the sorting but if he saw that alex is not properly shuffling previously and he didn't call attention to that than that by itself is close to being cheating.

From the annotated IPG under TE - Insufficient Shuffling:

Manipulating a deck prior to insufficient shuffling is a Warning if done unintentionally, and USC—Cheating if done intentionally.

So I would DQ Alex for USC - Cheating.

Originally posted by Jacopo Strati:

"Alex casts a Surgical Extraction on a Serum Vision in Niobe's graveyard. After he has searched in her graveyard and hand, while he's looking Niobe's library, Alex puts all the counterspells he finds on the bottom of her deck. Then give it back to Niobe.
Niobe calls you immediatly, explaining you what happened.

What would you do? Infractions? Penalties? Fixes?

BONUS VARIANT: When you ask Alex why he did that, he answers you “I really suffer that kind of cards. Doing in this way, she won't be able to find a counterspell so easly, even if she shuffles a lot!”

Players who search their own libraries, for example off of a fetch land activation, or due to a tutor effect, frequently reorder their libraries, when they pull two or three cards that they are thinking about to the top. This is, if we want to be technical, a GRV, but I have never seen us care about that, nor do I think we should actually care. Because there is a shuffle coming right afterwards, there is absolutely no harm in doing this.

So, if we allow this behavior when a player is searching his or her own library, is there any reason to disallow, or wanting to disallow, it when a player does it with an opponent's library?

Originally posted by Espen Skarsbø Olsen:

Manipulating a deck prior to insufficient shuffling is a Warning if done unintentionally, and USC—Cheating if done intentionally.

But there's no shuffling at all, so we don't have TE-IS. We are called by Niobe when he receives his deck back and he's 1st player to shuffle it.

Technically, Alex hasn't broken any rules, as Niobe must shuffle her library and then present it to Alex for a cut/shuffle before we can assess whether there is insufficient randomisation.

However, where there could be a problem is if he's trying to represent that Surgical Extraction allows him to shuffle, but not Niobe. This way, he believes he can successfully stack the deck.

It's quite often to see the player casting Extraction also shuffling the deck afterwards before returning it. In this situation I'd be interested to know if any extractions have resolved this match, and if so, who did the shuffling. If it turned out that Alex did all the shuffling, and Niobe none, then perhaps we might have grounds for a more serious discussion. Perhaps.

Ultimately I expect I'll just very clearly explain that attempting to manipulate somebody's deck is cheating. The only reason that Alex isn't getting DQed is that players are not prevented from reordering cards in libraries while searching them. So he has failed to actually break any rules.

In the end it's analogous to a player who stacks his deck land/spell/spell/repeat, “to avoid mana problems” and then shuffles so thoroughly that the deck is random and he hasn't achieved anything. He has intended to basically cheat, but hasn't actually cheated.

Originally posted by Bartłomiej Wieszok:

But there's no shuffling at all, so we don't have TE-IS. We are called by Niobe when he receives his deck back and he's 1st player to shuffle it.

Sorry, for some reason I thought that Alex had to shuffle after searching Niobes library. So the question then is if intentionally reordering an opponents library before any shuffling is an infraction.

For those of you calling this or reordering while fetching a GRV, could you point to any game rules being broken? Reordering before a shuffle isn't against the game rules as I can see. A good shuffle is supposed to randomize the library regardless of the starting point.

It doesn't feel good, but I can't see that the MTR or any CR has been broken here.

Edit: Found the rule disallowing reordering the library while searching it.

Edited Espen Skarsbø Olsen (March 30, 2015 02:34:51 PM)

My justification for GRV is that Surgical Extraction does not allow the library to be reordered in any way before it's owner shuffles it, so Alex has incorrectly resolved it. It's a bit of a stretch, I admit, but it's the only thing I can think of that Alex can be guilty of.

Mark, while in most cases reordering a library while searching is irrelevant, I can't find anything in the CR to say it's allowed, either. Have I missed something?

If the GRV is incorrect, then Alex also cannot be guilty of cheating.

Found the rule.

400.5. The order of objects in a library, in a graveyard, or on the stack can’t be changed except when effects or rules allow it. The same is true for objects arranged in face-down piles in other zones. Other objects in other zones can be arranged however their owners wish, although who controls those objects, whether they’re tapped or flipped, and what other objects are attached to them must remain clear to all players.

So, intentionally breaking a rule and trying to gain advantage from it, is the definition of cheating. This allows for USC - Cheating to be applied here.

In the meanwhile almost all the things I wanted to point out, have been pointed out :)

Regarding cheating:
Calling this cheating or not depends on your investigation.
Things I would investigate:
- Why did Alex rearrange the cards?
- How did Niobe shuffle her library in previous situations (during the game when an effect asked for shuffling)?
- Is this the first time in this match Alex resolved a Surgical Extraction? If not, how did he do it previously?

If the first answer is like in the bonus variant, I'd DQ Alex instantly for USC-Cheating.
If he answers something like “I just wanted to know how many and which counters are still in her library”, and furthermore Niobe always shuffles her library very well, then I'd issue Alex a Warning for GPE-GRV with the following explanation:

“Strictly by rules you are not allowed to rearrange Niobe's library. I don't mind if you're doing it, as long as you're telling her afterwards, that you stacked/manipulated her library and she needs to shuffle it thoroughly. If you don't say anything, it's easy to abuse this situation and then it becomes cheating.”

Originally posted by Espen Skarsbø Olsen:

400.5. The order of objects in a library, in a graveyard, or on the stack can’t be changed except when effects or rules allow it. The same is true for objects arranged in face-down piles in other zones. Other objects in other zones can be arranged however their owners wish, although who controls those objects, whether they’re tapped or flipped, and what other objects are attached to them must remain clear to all players.

I don't believe this rule applies here. You are rearranging cards in a library while you are searching it, right before a shuffle. That is not changing order of any object, since after the shuffle the order will be just random. This rule is saying you can't just pick up your library and rearrange cards as you like.

Originally posted by Renato Spinelli:

I don't believe this rule applies here. You are rearranging cards in a library while you are searching it, right before a shuffle. That is not changing order of any object, since after the shuffle the order will be just random. This rule is saying you can't just pick up your library and rearrange cards as you like.

400.5 does apply.
When searching any ordered zone (and finding) you're just allowed to extract the card(s). The rest of the zone has to remain unchanged. If we follow instructions on Surgical Extraction in order written: First Alex performs his search, then exiles cards, then Niobe shuffles her library.

CR 701.15a
To search for a card in a zone, look at all cards in that zone (even if it’s a hidden zone) and find a card that matches the given description.

The Keyword Action “Search” doesn't include any instruction to shuffle or rearrange cards, therfore you're not allowed to do so.

The fact that it doesn't matter most of the time (as the cards get shuffled right afterwards) doesn't change the rule. And as we can see in this scenario, it actually does matter.

Originally posted by Oliver Tremel:

And as we can see in this scenario, it actually does matter.

How, exactly, does it matter in this scenario? The library will get shuffled (by Niobe) right after Alex is finished handling the library. So, how does it matter more in this scenario than in any other case where a player changes the order of cards in the library before that library gets shuffled?

Originally posted by Oliver Tremel:

If the first answer is like in the bonus variant, I'd DQ Alex instantly for USC-Cheating.

Did he try to gain an advantage? Obviously. He openly admits that.
Did he break the game rules? Technically, yes. But I find it hard to go with this answer, because millions of players are breaking the game rules in the exact same way every day, and we don't care about it.
And, most importantly, did he know he was breaking the rules? Very probably not. Practically every player does it when tutoring, and no judge has ever forbidden them from doing it, so can we really realistically expect the average player to be aware that technically, they are not allowed to do that?

While you are be reordering before a shuffle in this case, the only reason the deck is being shuffling is because Surgical Extraction told you to. So far tutor effects have been regularly stuck together with shuffle effects, but that isn't actually a game rule. It happens to be a design choice attached to tutors. A tutor could be printed that doesn't require a shuffle.

There has been no direction that allows you to reorder your opponent's library, therefore any reordering is no different from if you just grabbed their library when they cracked a fetchland and clumped all the land together. It should be returned exactly as it was minus the cards that were searched up. At the very least, this gets a GRV with a cheating investigation.