Hello judges! Welcome back to the Knowledge Pool. This week we have Silver scenario, so L2 judges should wait until Saturday before they reply.

Blog post for the scenario

You are the Head Judge of a Modern PPTQ. Anthony controls Ajani, Mentor of Heroes. After combat he activates its second ability, looks at the top four cards of his library for some seconds. Finally he says “I'll take the creature,” and puts one card into his hand without revealing and the rest on the bottom of his library.
Norman stops him and says, “Hey, you should have revealed me that card. Judge!”
When you get to the table, they tell you what happened, and Anthony shows you his hand with a Scavenging Ooze and a Windswept Heath, and tells you he picked the Ooze with Ajani's ability.

What do you do?

This is a perfect example of a GPE- HCE.

I would start asking if Norman has already seen part of anthony's hand
(with a gitaxian probe, for example).
Reveal Anthony's hand and ask him to choose a card from the set that he
hasn't seen yet to be the unrevealed card. If the card chosen is not a
creature (namely Windswept Heath), then shuffle it back in the unknown part
of the library.

The penalty is a Warning for Anthony, but this is the tricky part.

If further investigation points out that Anthony did what he did to draw
the land that turn - say that Norman proves that his opponent had the Ooze
on his hand last turn with a sidenote after a toughtseize - then, we are
walking the eerie lands of UC-Cheating, and the penalty is a DQ.



On Friday, 8 April 2016, David Larrea <forum-26133-4938@apps.magicjudges.org>
wrote:

This is GPE-HCE and I would handle it as such. If I believe that the error may have been intentional, I would investigate further, but for the purposes here I will assume all errors were accidental.

Specifically I would ask AP to reveal his or her hand and tell NAP that they are going to select which card was put there as the activation of Arjani. If NAP selects the creature as the card added, we would accept the hand as is and move on. If NAP selects the land as the card added, we would shuffle it back into the unknown portion of the library (the other cards moved to the bottom with Arjani will stay there along with other known cards). I would make sure that NAP understands that they are choosing which card is the “extra” and that they understand what will happen based on whether the selected card is legal or not.

Regardless of which option is selected by NAP I would issue AP a warning and instruct them to be more careful.

Edited Bryan Henning (April 8, 2016 09:14:22 AM)

So to start us off, we're dealing with an error pertaining to a set of cards that were unjustly hidden, sounds like a GPE-HCE to me.

I'd start with asking Norm(NAP) if he had any prior knowledge about what was in Anthony(AP)'s hand. If he knows what the mystery card before Ajani was activated is, then I feel confident in backing this up, taking the unknown card, and the bottom three (properly reconstructing the set to the point before the error was made,) and resolving Ajani's ability properly

(based on the first paragraph under “additional Remedy” in IPG 2.3 “In cases where the infraction was immediately followed by moving a card from the affected set to a known location, such as by discarding, putting cards on top of the library, or playing a land, a simple backup to the point just after the error may be performed.”)

Here we get to the dangerous zone of ‘interpretation-land“

If Norm(NAP) had no clue on what was in Anthony(AP)’s hand, then we would reveal Andy(AP)'s hand to Norm(NAP) and allow him to choose one previously-unknown card to be treated as an unrevealed card for any required actions, take the three bottomed cards, add the chosen card to that set, then properly resolve Ajani's ability. Reading the second-to-last paragraph under Additional Remedies (IPG 2.3) about 10 times, this SEEMS to be what the policy suggests, the hand is the set that contains unrevealed cards in this case, and besides that one unrevealed card, this is easily backed up by taking the other three we KNOW the location of, and re-constructing the set in question (to the best of our ability) and letting Andy properly resolve his ability.

(Paragraph in question from IPG 2.3 ”If the error involves one or more cards that were supposed to be revealed, the player reveals the set of cards that contains the unrevealed cards and his or her opponent chooses that many previously-unknown cards. Treat those as the unrevealed cards for any required actions. If the cards chosen would not legally be in the set as a result, they are treated as excess cards.")

This lets Andy still get his ability, Norm see all related cards (+1) and lets the game progress with not too much disruption overall.

Of course I'd also point out that Andy is lucky as this used to be a game loss, group chuckle, issue the warning, tell him to be more careful, and be on my merry way.

Edited Gregory Titov (April 9, 2016 05:01:55 AM)

Okay, so, the simple part is this is the GPE - HCE. Now we have the fun part

In a HCE we reveal the hidden zone containing the errant cards.
Question: Which set of cards (hand or the four looked at) are errant
Answer: Hand, he was allowed to look at those four and put one in hand.

So we reveal his hand. Now we see the two cards. One of which is the unrevealed card (Sidenote if the opponent has seen the hand in any sense that doesn't change what we do. We can not base on player notes as maybe information was forgotten or mistaken. - it only matters if the looked at cards were revealed)

According to the IPG 2.3
“If the error involves one or more cards that were supposed to be revealed, the player reveals the set of cards that contains the unrevealed cards and his or her opponent chooses that many previously-unknown cards. Treat those as the unrevealed cards for any required actions. If the cards chosen would not legally be in the set as a result, they are treated as excess cards.”

The important part here is the last two sentences. NAP is choosing what is considered the excess card. If the creature is chosen, we stop, give AP a warning, and do nothing else. If the land is chosen we place it on the bottom with the other 3 (in APs choice) and we treat it as such it was as if he failed to find. We do not give AP a chance to redo the action of looking at the top as it was already completed and not where the error lies.

GPE: HCE with a Warning for Anthony.

For the remedy I'd check if Norman was aware of any of the cards in Anthony's hand, but assuming he is not I would have Anthony reveal his hand and have Norman select one of the cards in Anthony's hand as the unrevealed card. If he chooses the Ooze then Anthony keeps the cards. If he chooses the land then we shuffle that card into the library preserving any known cards. Play on and please be more careful.

The relevant text from the IPG:

Originally posted by HCE:

If the error involves one or more cards that were supposed to be revealed, the player reveals the set of cards that contains the unrevealed cards and his or her opponent chooses that many previously-unknown cards. Treat those as the unrevealed cards for any required actions. If the cards chosen would not legally be in the set as a result, they are treated as excess cards.

Excess cards are returned to the correct zone. If that zone is the library, they should be shuffled into the random portion. The p

Edited Marc Shotter (April 11, 2016 08:46:44 AM)

Greetings Judges, let's find out the solution!
Anthony has commited GPE-HCE. He has placed a card in his hand from a hidden set of cards without revealing to verify the legality of the action.

This paragraph of latest IPG should help us to find the fix for this scenario:

If the error involves one or more cards that were supposed to be revealed, the player reveals the set of cards that contains the unrevealed cards and his or her opponent chooses that many previously-unknown cards. Treat those as the unrevealed cards for any required actions. If the cards chosen would not legally be in the set as a result, they are treated as excess cards.

Since there is no information about previously known cards in the scenario, we will ask Norman to choose a card from Anthony's hand and treat it like the one Anthony selected.
If Norman chooses the Ooze, there nothing else to do. But if he chooses the Fetchland, then we have to apply the next text to put that card in the appropriate zone.

Excess cards are returned to the correct zone. If that zone is the library, they should be shuffled into the random portion. The player does not repeat the instruction or partial instruction (if any) that caused the infraction.

The correct zone is the library, and even that card would have been placed in bottom of the library had Ajani's ability been resolved correctly, IPG instructs us to shuffle it into the random portion of the library. That card wasn't part of the set that went to the bottom (unless Anthony is cheating), so it's simply treated as an excess card.

Thanks for participating and hope to see you in our next scenario.

I have been wondering something for a while now. Is there ever a scenario where this warning gets upgraded to a game loss? Let's say AP reveals a hand full of land. There is no longer any doubt that he may have gotten a creature from the top. Following the ipg, we just give a warning, but why then is there an upgrade for morphing a nonmorph? (Assuming no morph cards in hand). They both seem like the AP is just rolling the dice and hoping not to get caught. I know there are cases where this can be done on accident and thats why this doest get you dq'd. But is there a philosophical difference? Ap reveals a hand full of creatures- no prob we can follow the steps. Same for a mix of creatures and land. Hand full of land?! Come on.

For me more than an upgrade is a DQ for Cheating on a hand full of lands…

2016-04-20 11:03 GMT-03:00 Patrick Gibbs <

Originally posted by Patrick Gibbs:

ollowing the ipg, we just give a warning, but why then is there an upgrade for morphing a nonmorph? (Assuming no morph cards in hand). They both seem like the AP is just rolling the dice and hoping not to get caught.

As Jose said, what you've described here isn't an upgrade to a harsher penalty–this is straight-up cheating. If you believe this is what occurred, the player should be disqualified.