During a game, a player sets down their hand to look at their sideboard. Then they put down their sideboard … on top of their hand. (As always, assume honest accident.) If those cards were from any zone in the current game, this would clearly be HCE. In game one, we can use the decklist to determine what cards should go back to the board. What about games two and three? Does HCE apply to sideboards? Can we use its fix? If not, what do we do instead?

Moved to the Competitive REL forum.

Go on and discuss!

Not keeping sideboard clearly separate from the deck you're playing (or the cards in your hand) is not a HCE but a Deck/Deck List Problem.

Even in game one, there is a too large possibility of abuse to rule it as an HCE.

This reads exactly like example 5 from Deck/Decklist problem. So, that's what I would issue.

The first potential problem I see with making this fall under HCE for game one is that it opens up the potential for a cheat of opportunity when a player has forgotten to de-sideboard after the last match. When that illegal card shows up outside of your opening hand you just add your sideboard to your hand and turn a game loss into a warning.

Quinten, I'm impressed by your reasoning. You not only point out what the correct ruling is, but also excatly why we should not want this to be anything else. Nice job!

I don't think that cheat is as worthwhile as it may appear. Do you think you're likely to win a game where you had your hand replaced by sideboard cards that do nothing against your opponent? If it's later in the game and you only have one card or something maybe less so, but suddenly having all your lands Thoughtseized on turn 2 doesn't sound like something you can come back from most of the time.

Of course, it won't always be like that, and it's kind of moot anyway because of the quoted section in D/DLP. This should clearly be D/DLP.

Sent from my iPad

Is there any scope to say that the top 15 cards are the sideboard and the rest are in the hand, or do we still go with the “they're touching therefore they're indistinguishable”?

Originally posted by Edward Bell:

Is there any scope to say that the top 15 cards are the sideboard and the rest are in the hand, or do we still go with the “they're touching therefore they're indistinguishable”?

Currently players may have less than 15 cards in SB after sideboarding…
Therefore we can't say the top 15 are SB…maybe 14 or less

Originally posted by La Miao:

Edward Bell
Is there any scope to say that the top 15 cards are the sideboard and the rest are in the hand, or do we still go with the “they're touching therefore they're indistinguishable”?

Currently players may have less than 15 cards in SB after sideboarding…
Therefore we can't say the top 15 are SB…maybe 14 or less

We can't do any of that. The hand is not an ordered zone, and we don't treat as such, even when fixing dexterity errors. Once a card has touched the cards that constitute the player's hand, they are all considered indistinguishable from the others.

Edited Isaac King (May 10, 2016 08:20:26 AM)

It happened last week end during BOM Annecy. :D
During a Vintage event, AP casted Timetwister and shuffled back his hand and his graveyard into his sideboard (it was face down, near his deck). This happened during Game 1.
Some judges discussed if it could be possible to use the decklist to “derive” the main deck cards and separate them from the sideboard, but this would definitively create those problems Quentin spoke about. :D
I totally agree on a D/DLP that brings a GL with it. :)