Hello,

I'm having some troubles understanding something about the new DEC. I hope you'll be able to enlighten me.

So let's say I use the second ability of my Ajani, Mentor of Heroes. I forget to reveal the card and put it directly into my hand. Ok, judge call, it was unintetionnal so it's ruled as DEC and the judge tells me to reveal my hand so my opponent can chose a card to shuffle in my library.
As a player I'm unhappy about this and immediatly reveal my hand saying “But I have 3 creature cards in hand, the card I picked with Ajani cannot be illegal”.

The same goes for a Nissa, Sage Animist and a hand full of non-land cards.

How do we handle this? Why is this a DEC since all cards can be accounted for? And how is it fair (since I believe we're here to restablish fairness in matches)?

Originally posted by Àre Maturana:

Hello,

I'm having some troubles understanding something about the new DEC. I hope you'll be able to enlighten me.

So let's say I use the second ability of my Ajani, Mentor of Heroes. I forget to reveal the card and put it directly into my hand. Ok, judge call, it was unintetionnal so it's ruled as DEC and the judge tells me to reveal my hand so my opponent can chose a card to shuffle in my library.
As a player I'm unhappy about this and immediatly reveal my hand saying “But I have 3 creature cards in hand, the card I picked with Ajani cannot be illegal”.

The same goes for a Nissa, Sage Animist and a hand full of non-land cards.

How do we handle this? Why is this a DEC since all cards can be accounted for? And how is it fair (since I believe we're here to establish fairness in matches)?

Which creature did they draw off of Ajani? Which card did they draw off of Nissa? Compared to previous policy, this is leagues better than just losing.

Even if it's able to be proven beyond any doubt that they didn't draw something improperly, there's still damage to the game-state here. Just because a judge got called this time, doesn't mean it'll be noticed & a judge is called every time. Plus, policy docs can only do so much before it becomes overly complicated and unwieldy. Is this worth an extra paragraph for a downgrade clause that every competitive judge needs to learn?

I think taking the line of “this policy is better than the previous policy” is a losing argument, we need to prove the policy on it's own merit, not just because what we had before was worse.

As for the above examples, as far as I understand it the fix attached to the infraction has to be sufficient as to discourage people doing this on purpose. The idea that your opponent gets to choose the best card in your hand is harsh enough that people won't do this on purpose.

You're right in saying that in these cases it's impossible that you made an illegal choice, however you still hid information from your opponent, and in some cases that can be just as powerful. Shuffling in a random card from that set might seem like a good fix, but I'm not sure that it properly de-incentivizes the upside of doing this.

Another aspect of policy that often geTs overlooked is that we want the same penalties to work the same way based on what the players *did*. If you look at all the game play error infractions, they are based on what the player did. Cthe penalties are based on what they did. There isn't a lottery for “well, you did this bad thing, but since everything in your hand is of the proper type, you get a lesser penalt.,this is your lucky day”. The dude one table over could do the exact same thing, but have an instant in his hand, and suddenly he's wondering “but I *did* the same thing…why do I get a harsher penalty”

I'd like to point out with reference to the examples which card you failed to reveal can be important information for your opponent, if you reveal a card your opponent knows that your game plan up until that moment did not involve that card.

'

Originally posted by Bryan Prillaman:

“well, you did this bad thing, but since everything in your hand is of the proper type, you get a lesser penalty,this is your lucky day”

The problem here is that we already do this to some degree when a player has no cards, so we've set the precedent that what you did is to some degree mitigated by the status of your hand.

I agree with Thomas that we have to make an argument for the remedy that stands on its own merits and not based on how bad the previous ruling was.

For me what gets missed in this discussion is that the remedy is trying to achieve two things here:
1) Fix the game state
2) Encourage correct play (and discourage cheating)

I actually think the ‘free thoughtseize’ should be listed as a penalty not a fix/remedy with the exceptions listed as downgrades.

*post deleted as not applicable to this thread*

Edited Brian Schenck (Oct. 19, 2015 07:53:47 AM)

Originally posted by Brian Schenck:

Still, I do agree that in light of the change to DEC, perhaps the remedy for IDaSoG could use a reevaluation. Or perhaps an evaluation of whether we need IDaSoG at all as a separate infraction.

IDaSoG it is right now more harsh than DEC. What's more it encourages to not point out your own IDaSoG until you make a game action. If you mull to 6 and draw 7, play a land and point out DEC, you get warning and they “thoughtseize” you. You still end up with 5 cards and 1 on the table. If you IDaSoG you end with 5 with high chance of another mulligan. Even if they get your best card it is better than losing two cards at random (better to get a pre game thoughtseize than hymn to tourach).

Marc Shotter
The problem here is that we already do this to some degree when a player has no cards, so we've set the precedent that what you did is to some degree mitigated by the status of your hand.

It is not precedent. If the hand is empy, and a card is put directly into hand we still know the identity of the card. If an extra card touches other cards in hand you can't say which one it was. What Gareth said is very important. Information what you had in hand before DEC is very important but we lose it, so “thoughtseize” fix it a bit for oponent. What's more DEC player do not loses a game on the spot, which is huge.

Edited Jarosław Pokrzywa (Oct. 19, 2015 05:57:03 AM)

I made a similar (if not the same) post on this topic about a week ago c:

http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/21704/

I think this just got hijacked towards the IDaSoG issue with the new DEC- which isn't what this post was about at all.

I was talking about the Ajani / Nissa situation with all creatures / nonland cards in hand (respectively), as well as not being happy with the new thoughtseize fix.

I think I'm okay with it now, having had a couple weeks to think about it. It's unpleasant, but then again that is the price to pay for not paying attention at a comp rel event.

Edited Sal Cortez (Oct. 19, 2015 06:11:38 AM)

Sal - I meant the two before yours :) I'm also fine with the new DEC ruling - as you say comp rel demands a higher level of play.

Jaroslaw - I agree, but I was commenting on Brian's remark that players doing the same thing should get the same penalty - in both cases a player failed to reveal the card they drew, but we do apply different fixes based on other factors.

Brian - the fact that we're not just trying to fix the game state was my point - I'm not sure that putting the game state right and “offsetting any kind of impact to the game as a result of the error that was made” look all that different in a lot of cases.

Some of the fixes/remedies do look very much like we're trying to set the game state right - all the GRV remedies, LaEC, detrimental trigger fixes in MT, and the exceptions that allow a backup in DEC all seem to be trying to put the game state as it should have been.

DEC thoughtsieze, IDaSoG and non-detrimental MT all feel like they're not interested in the game state, but are penalizing poor play. The first two in particular feel like they exist to highlight easy to miss errors that gain a player a potentially massive advantage and so come with a significant penalty to encourage players to pay special attention and to discourage cheating.

The same issue came up with the old DEC. Where I can prove after the event that what I did was legal, is there the potential for enough abuse/advantage that we need this harsh a penalty? I take on board the comment from Gareth and agree the information matters, but given you need to then reveal additional information (the rest of your hand) does that mitigate the advantage enough that we don't require the harsher remedy - this is after all actually a card they were (had they but revealed it) entitled to draw.

Could this exception be added to DEC (this wont be the perfect wording obviously, but hopefully enough for a working discussion):

“Where a player has drawn a card that they were required to reveal and no cards have since been removed from that hand, if that player's hand only contains cards that would have been legal according to the conditions of that draw have them reveal their hand to their opponent, assess a warning and have the players continue playing.”

<<edited for clarity>>

Edited Marc Shotter (Oct. 19, 2015 07:08:51 AM)

Originally posted by Marc Shotter:

Sal - I meant the two before yours :) I'm also fine with the new DEC ruling - as you say comp rel demands a higher level of play.

Mea culpa. I have deleted the offending post.

I've got a follow up question:

“If the cards were drawn as part of the legal resolution of an illegally played instruction (…) a backup may be considered or the game state left as-is.”

Now, if I activate Ajani, Mentor of Heroes in my first main, reveal and put 1 card in my hand, all fine and correct. But then, after a long and complicated Combat Phase, in my second main phase I activate Ajani, Mentor of Heroes again (no cheating)…

Does this fall under the quoted criteria "illegally played instruction"? This would mean we ether do a back up or leave the game state as-is. Have I understood this correctly?

cheers

Juergen - I believe that is exactly the type of situation that exception is designed to cover.