AP activates Oracle of Dust and draws a card. At this point, the players realize that NAP no longer had any exiled cards to process. They call me. AP shows me his hand of two cards and explains that one of them was drawn as part of the looting and that he still has to discard. He says he was holding Swamp and drew Grave Birthing.

I conclude that it's an honest mistake, nothing shady going on, so I should try to fix it. I decide against simply letting AP put back the card he said he drew because (though I trust him) neither I nor NAP can verify his claim. So I have AP put back a random card and shuffle his library. (The random card turns out to be Swamp, so he did essentially end up getting a loot out of it.)

Both players were happy with the fix but I'm still wondering if this was the optimal solution. Thoughts?

Why shuffle? Can you imagine why I would not shuffle?

d:^D

Based on the situation as described I'm fine with shuffling away the Grave Birthing. One thing we can also do is ask what the player did on their last turn. If they had the 3 mana open it's quite likely they would have cycled the Grave Birthing at some point before now if they had it, which means it's far more likely that they had just the Swamp before they drew. Or they would have just cast the spell instead of activating the Oracle's ability.

I mean, unless they didn't have any black mana.

Trying to second guess a players strategic thinking is asking for trouble - put a card back at random is the most straight forward fix, and it can be applied to more complex versions of this situation too.

I wouldn't shuffle

The shuffle presents some incentive to cheat - the player gets a 50/50 chance to keep the good card drawn and shuffle away the bad one from the hand, additionally if both cards are bad they get to shuffle the second away and a chance to pull a better card next turn.

After thinking on it for a second I think I see how this is kinda sticky… if they end up with the birthing in hand, then they cast it and get a loot now. If they didn't have birthing before they get a lot of value here.

Best poooosssible thing does seem to be plop a card back on top at random and let the game run it's course. No shuffle because that just looks to make things even more shaky.

You know what I like to do? Occasionally re-read the entire JAR. It's only 2 pages, so it's not that much work… but it helps a lot when answering questions like these!

A player accidentally draws has more cards than he or she was supposed to
If the identity of the card(s) were known to all players, return them to their proper location. Otherwise, determine how many extra cards have been drawn, take that many cards at random from the player’s hand and place them on top of the library. Don't shuffle the library after doing this!

So, the reason we don't shuffle, is because the JAR explicitly instructs us not to do so. And it does so for good reason: in general, shuffling away a card from a player's hand does severe damage to the game state, while leaving a card on top that is already known (and that the player will draw during their next draw anyway) is much less damaging. Yes, there are plenty of situations where this doesn't hold, but in general, it's the easiest and cleanest fix.

The “correct” fix is clearly to put a random card back on top, as per JAR. I'd probably apply the “deviate like hell” principle and put the grave birthing back on top, because there is basically no reasonably conceivable scenario starting from here where the player is better off with the swamp in hand than the grave birthing–Basically, it's so blatantly not in AP's favor to keep the swamp that I believe him, it's regular REL so there's nothing serious at stake, and it feels like the “most kosher” way to have the game progress the way it organically should have. Would I ever advocate this as a general solution? No, that's what we have policy *for*. But I'm probably too Laissez-faire with regular REL; I just want players to play “clean” games and have fun. Cutthroat rules enforcement is for serious formats and events, like competitive REL events and commander games.

Edited Michael Warme (Nov. 5, 2015 01:28:54 AM)

Originally posted by Michael Warme:

The “correct” fix is clearly to put a random card back on top, as per JAR. I'd probably apply the “deviate like hell” principle and put the grave birthing back on top, because there is basically no reasonably conceivable scenario starting from here where the player is better off with the swamp in hand than the grave birthing.

Michael,

What if AP has an Archers' Parapet in play, no black mana, and NAP is at 1 life?

The point is, it is a really slippery slope trying to use the game state to determine what to do in cases like this. We have rules documents for a reason, and “deviate like hell” is almost never the correct answer. Deviations from the rules should be saved for extreme circumstances, not situations where personal opinion gets in the way of the rules.

You can never go wrong by following the rulebook, it is really easy to go wrong by trying to deviate from it!

Edited Joe Brooks (Nov. 5, 2015 03:03:55 AM)

Originally posted by Joe Brooks:

and “deviate like hell” is almost never the correct answer

Arguably, the phrase is fine, but the punctuation is lacking:
Deviate? Like Hell!

d:^D

I always understood the Regular REL sentence The “Deviate like Hell” as “The JAR is only two pages long and could only cover 99% of the situations. If you feel you're in the remaining 1%, you will not be able to apply it. In this case, use your own judgement. That means you'll be more likely to deviate than in Competitive REL, and we have your back if you have to do so”.

It could have been interpreted in the sense “If you don't like the JAR, don't use it”, but I don't think that ever been the intent. Start with the JAR, check if what you're about to do makes sense, if so, apply it. I think we're in a situation in which it indeed makes sense, so deviation is needed.

- Emilien