Since I started judging, there has always been a disparity between how Drawing Extra Cards is handled at Regular REL versus Competitive REL. Before the recent IPG change that disparity was easy to understand, as Game Losses are not really a thing we are handing out with any regularity at Regular REL. I had a situation come up last week where a player was dissatisfied with a fix that was applied, and raised general concerns with similar such fixes involving removing random cards from the hand. The situation was as follows:

Nathan is playing Jeskai Ascendancy combo and casts a Dig Through Time on Amy's end step with four cards remaining in hand. While looking at the top 7, those cards end up joining Nathan's hand. He then calls me over and explains what happened. I rule that what we're going to do is, effectively, randomly reassemble the top 7 cards from the 11 cards, as Nathan had not yet made any choices and so we have 7 cards on the top of the library and 4 in hand. Nathan combos off on his turn.

Amy wanted to randomly select what the 6 cards would be for Nathan's hand post Dig. The argument from Amy here was that, if Nathan needed three cards that were not in his hand to safely combo off, he has basically no chance of ending up with those three cards post Dig and has to rely on a topdeck. If he sees the three cards on his Dig, his mistake had a greater likelihood of setting him up for the win than playing legally. Amy continued to argue that just because a judge rules out cheating does not necessarily mean the players are satisfied that their opponent did not obtain an unfair advantage, even if the player believes it was an honest mistake and there was no intent to cheat.

Understanding that sometimes there is no ideal fix, there are still questions from Amy's concern that I wanted to raise to the community:

1. Was the fix applied incorrectly here? Or do we somehow assume once cards from the top of the library touch a player's hand during a Dig that selections have been made and there are also simultaneously 5 extra cards in that player's hand?

2. Is there any merit to considering applying the new DEC fix from the IPG at Regular REL to assuage such concerns from players?

3. Similar concerns exist for rapid misplays at any REL where an illegally cast spell (such as a Brainstorm cast for U with a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben on the battlefield) results in cards entering a player's hand that should not have if all plays had been legal. Here, even at Comp REL, we either backup by removing random cards or do nothing, and both solutions raise the exact same concern as the above scenario. What can we do to assuage the player's concerns about unfair advantage obtained from an illegal play, even after a fix is applied?

Hmm… interesting questions!

1. Was the fix applied incorrectly here? Or do we somehow assume once cards from the top of the library touch a player's hand during a Dig that selections have been made and there are also simultaneously 5 extra cards in that player's hand?

I think there's policy support for doing it either way - a function of the JAR fitting on a single sheet of paper. It feels significantly more disruptive to apply Amy's fix - when casting Dig Through Time, you're getting the ability to select from a pool of cards that's generally bigger than your hand, and to add to it. Most of those cards won't be helpful to you, but a few might be. To just randomly generate a hand out of an entire Dig plus what was there before sounds a lot more disruptive to the game than giving Nathan four random cards, and having him select two from the other seven. While Amy is correct that he could almost certainly assemble a three-card combo, that seems like a pretty corner case compared to having to shuffle away cards he's been holding for some time.

2. Is there any merit to considering applying the new DEC fix from the IPG at Regular REL to assuage such concerns from players?

I would not do this under any circumstances. The new DEC fix at Comp is massively more punitive - it only feels like a softer version of policy because we went from “You lose the game” to “You probably lose the game, but maybe not.” The Regular REL fix gets the game back to where it would have been (in most cases) after a card draw or two. And you still have DQ as a tool for if a player tries to take advantage of the more permissive policy and cheats.

3. Similar concerns exist for rapid misplays at any REL where an illegally cast spell (such as a Brainstorm cast for U with a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben on the battlefield) results in cards entering a player's hand that should not have if all plays had been legal. Here, even at Comp REL, we either backup by removing random cards or do nothing, and both solutions raise the exact same concern as the above scenario. What can we do to assuage the player's concerns about unfair advantage obtained from an illegal play, even after a fix is applied?

In most cases, the opponent has a chance to say something to prevent an illegal play (like Thalia Brainstorm). In this case, they probably don't, but this isn't a typical case, and the JAR can't cover as much in order to be brief. Sometimes, a player will end up in better shape after an error, and while that should make a judge spend a little more energy investigating cheating than a player who ends up worse off, it's still just a thing that can happen. Remind the player to be more careful, and keep an eye on players who routinely make errors that end up working out in their favor - if they keep gaining advantages from their mistakes, it's possible that something more sinister is going on.

Hi! I was that L3.

That should be the fix at Competitive REL. As John Brian mentioned above,
at Regular REL things are different. At Regular REL there is a lot more
flexibility to do things like the fix that Jacob did, as the policy doc is
not as rigid.

In short, the IPG is not the JAR, treat Competitive and Regular
differently, like you have been all along.


—
Rob McKenzie
Magic Judge Level III
Minnesota

Originally posted by John Brian McCarthy:

Sometimes, a player will end up in better shape after an error, and while that should make a judge spend a little more energy investigating cheating than a player who ends up worse off, it's still just a thing that can happen. Remind the player to be more careful, and keep an eye on players who routinely make errors that end up working out in their favor - if they keep gaining advantages from their mistakes, it's possible that something more sinister is going on.

All excellent points.

Thank you for the responses and guidance so far! There is still one question from the OP left unanswered, being

Jacob Milicic
What can we do to assuage the player's concerns about unfair advantage obtained from an illegal play, even after a fix is applied?

Since we accept that sometimes undue advantage will be gained, even with nothing sinister going on, from applying a fix to a situation to which there is no ideal fix, are there any suggestions for how best to communicate these ideas to the other player such that their concerns about their current and future games are lessened?

I'm pretty sure I understand this sequence of events. I think I have an alternative to the fix as stated that perhaps both players could agree to.

Dig allows Nathan to pick two cards. Since the concern of shenanigans is real, why not do the following? Of the eleven cards, have Nathan select two to keep. Then of the remaining 9 cards, randomly choose 4. Have him place the remaining cards at the bottom of the Library in any order.

This fix gives him the effect, but still penalizes him somewhat for the action. Have them play on from there but advise Nathan to be more careful.

I see Amy in this situation being satisfied with the solution. Is this an acceptable way to resolve this?

Well, the JAR gives you a lot of leeway in this: If a player accidentally breaks a rule, use the remedies described below and your common sense as guidance to make the best ruling you can. This feels like an incredibly niche and specific improvisation, but hey, if it feels fair to all parties involved, go ahead!
The downside of this is that if a similar situation happens again somewhere else, people will not get the same solution and may be disappointed. Therefor I would personally prefer a more standard solution, that other judges could apply as well.