I'm curious how others would have ruled on this one. Today at a PPTQ a player got distracted a bit and accidently put 4 lands from the battlefield into their hand. I asked the players if they remember off hand what lands they were and they couldn't remember. However when I looked at that players hand he only had 4 lands in hand (and 3 non-land cards) and both players did agree that the player put 4 land cards into his hand. My ruling was a GPE-DEC with a downgrade to a warning since the extra cards in hand were easily identifiable and I simply had the player return the lands to the battlefield.

Anybody else have a different ruling they'd give?

Was this a long game? Were the lands returned to their hand Scry lands or, say, Radiant Fountain? If the player had returned lands to their hand that would have some benefit when being played again, it would definitely raise a red flag.

How did they say they got distracted? Who first noticed it and who called the judge?

The players were using dice for their life counters, but the table was getting bumped and I made a comment asking about that. The player asked me for a sheet of paper and a pen which I got for him. He was getting ready to tap his lands to cast a spell and for some reason put them face down (maybe to indicate that those were the lands he was going to use to cast his spell), then he put is hand on top of them at a different angle so it was clear which were which so he could fold the paper and make it a managable size. He picked up his hand and land and started shuffling them together and both myself and the player noticed after he started doing that.

I'm convinced this was indeed an accident.

The rules for DEC state:

If the identity of the card was known to all players before being placed into the hand, or was placed into an empty hand, and the card can be returned to the correct zone with minimal disruption, do so and downgrade the penalty to a Warning.

So the question is - does it matter that the players don't actually know but rather had the ability to know? I mean it's likely that the opponent could try remember the last four land drops, but are they now obligated to do so?

That you are able to fix it immediately gives the opponent the knowledge that the player now has three spells in hand (probably better than a Game Loss though). To be honest I don't like that the resolution (and potentially the penalty) was dependent on there being no lands in the players hand - this screams inconsistency.

I feel that the answer to my first line of questioning (as a judge policy) will depend on whether we give a game loss or not - not whether we can identify the lands from the players hand.

The identity of face-up cards on the Battlefield is considered known to all players in the Game. Give the infracting player a downgraded DEC, a Warning. Then fix the game state by returning the “drawn” lands back to the Battlefield.

Originally posted by Espen Skarsbø Olsen:

The identity of face-up cards on the Battlefield is considered known to all players in the Game. Give the infracting player a downgraded DEC, a Warning. Then fix the game state by returning the “drawn” lands back to the Battlefield.

But the players admitted they didn't know what the lands are (even though they could've known).

And if there was a fifth land in the players hand - what do you do then?

You try to fix the game state as, ask different types of questions (in the case of “drawing” 4 lands and having one in hand, to help with memory, like do you know what card you had in the hand before “drawing” the other 4 lands?) to determine what cards where in play.

The players not remembering is not relevant to the penalty, only that the cards where in a position where the identity was known to both players.

In the actual case that Cris stated the fix is easy. Both players agree on 4 lands being on the Battlefield, and the player has 4 lands in hand. Put them back on the Battlefield, game state is now fixed.

and the card can be returned to the correct zone with minimal disruption

I think this very small section of text might not be getting the attention it deserves. If both players agree on the lands returned then I agree disruption is minimal, if they don't we could figure it out by trying to figure out scry effects, life gains, losses and fetches, we could do so by looking at the contents of the players hand but these sound very disruptive to me

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

I think this very small section of text might not be getting the attention it deserves. If both players agree on the lands returned then I agree disruption is minimal, if they don't we could figure it out by trying to figure out scry effects, life gains, losses and fetches, we could do so by looking at the contents of the players hand but these sound very disruptive to me

I believe the intention of that clause is intended to mean minimal disruption to the game state, not to the players themselves. Having a judge look at the cards in a players hand or ask questions about scry effects, life gain / loss, etc isn't disruptive at all to the game state. Also, in this case, the error was noticed before any actions were taken, so returning the lands to play (assuming you can determine which ones were in play) isn't disruptive at all.

Originally posted by Edward Bell:

If the identity of the card was known to all players before being placed into the hand

That phrase does apply in this case. The lands were in a public zone, visible to all players - and thus, the identity was known. It doesn't matter that the players weren't paying close attention to public zones, or might have forgotten.

d;^D