Hey, Judges! We have another great Knowledge Pool Silver Scenario for you.

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/knowledgepool/?p=658

Albert is a local tournament grinder in his area. He is playing his favorite mono green deck in a local PTQ and is having a great success with it. During Round 6 of the PTQ, Albert's opponent calls for a Judge. Upon arrival he asks to speak with you away from the table. After walking away from the table, he says, “Judge, I think my opponent is cheating. All of his lands are foils and he doesn't have any other foils that I've seen. Isn't there a percentage of the deck that needs to be foil or something?”

What do you tell the player in response to his allegation of his opponent cheating because of not having enough different foil cards in his deck?

After explaining to this player that foils are not inherently marked cards and there is no special number of foils you have to play for your deck to be legal, the player says, “But judge, you have GOT to see THESE foils… I could skateboard in them!” You walk back to the table with the player, and you can clearly see that the foil Forests, both in play and in Albert's deck, are in fact warped to the point that you can see where they are in the deck.

How would you handle this situation?

Well, it seems like these cards are clearly marked…

What we can be certain of is that this Player commited TE-Marked Cards. If I am not Headjudge, this is as far as I go alone and involve the HJ, or at least my Teamlead (if it is a GP or something).

If I am HJ, I will ask the player if he has any knowledge about any position of any cards in his library (through, e.g., Submerge). If he has, I keep that in mind and ask the player for his library.

The next thing to figure out is wether or not there is a pattern in his Marked Cards. His opponent claimed that only and all of his Lands were foil, but he most likely has not seen the entire Deck, which is why I proceed to a Deckcheck right now. For this, I will involve a second Judge (the FJ that took the call, or, if I took it myself for whatever reason, the closest floorjudge that is not handling a call) just to have a second opinion, which is, in my opinion, very important whenever checking for marked cards.

We will then (out of sight of the players, obviously) Deckcheck for the marked cards. If indeed only and all of his Lands are marked (note that I said marked, not foil, which might be a difference, since maybe not all of his foils are marked, and maybe not all of his foils are lands), or very close to this, and they are as warped as described in the scenario, I will start a brief investigation, as in, trying to figure out if he a) noticed some of his cards are distinguishable from others and b) knows that this is not allowed.

If I believe that he did notice, and did not call a Judge on himself, he will have to give a very convincing explanation to why he thought this is not against the rules.

In the end, I will either DQ the player for Cheating - Fraud, give him a Gameloss for TE - Marked Cards with a by-the-book upgrade for the pattern of the marked cards, or give him a Warning for TE - Marked Cards.

In the second and third case, the player will have to switch out any marked cards, and the match will get an appropriate time extension. If it is only Basic Lands that are involved (which is most likely at least mostly the case, considering he plays mono-green), this should not be much of a problem to finish in an acceptable timeframe.
In the third case, I will shuffle the library of the player after switching out/'unmarking' all marked cards, except for known cards, which get put back in their appropriate place after randomizing the library.
In any case, I will explain to both the player that commited the infraction and his opponent that while foils are legal to play with and there is no minimum number of foils/nonfoils that need to played in a mixed foil/nonfoil deck, it still is the players responsibility to make sure their deck has no marked cards, as in cards that are distinguishable from other cards without looking at their face-up side.



As for the opponent, when he originally accused his opponent of cheating, I will tell him that playing with foils is legal and that accusing his opponent of cheating is a serious accusation. I will also thank him for calling me over because he thought something is wrong, and will tell him that I will check if his opponent commited an Infraction (I will probably even tell him that this might be marked cards, which is not automatically cheating, so that he has a more appropriate term to use should he encounter something like this again, since he can tell the judge ‘i think my opponent has marked cards’ instead of ‘i think my opponent is cheating because…’).
Since he tells me that his opponent plays seemingly only foil forests/lands and no other foils, I will most likely ask him if he thinks he can distinguish the foils/forests/lands from the other cards of his opponent before he plays them before he needs to tell me ‘but you have to look at THESE foils, I could skateboard on them’, because, esp on a REL competetive tournament, I wish to make the player feel that I take his request seriously.
Based on the description of the situation, I feel that ‘I’ have not really done that if he a) asks me away from the table to b) accuse his opponent of cheating because c) he points out that his opponent seems to have a pattern of potentially marked cards. Especially c), to me, is a HUGE red flag that needs to be looked at anyways, and unless I'm thinking that the player that called me is angleshooting, I want to make him feel that his opinion/observation matters. If I think he is angleshooting, I need to talk to him about it anyways…


Wall-of-text done, I hope its not too much of a pain to read, sorry for any bad grammar/spelling you might have encountered :).

His cards are indeed clearly marked, it's visibly noticeable. There is also a system in which cards that are marked, which makes the situation a bit more complex as Albert now has an advantage. The question now is if he is aware of this advantage.

In the presumption that Albert is indeed only a local player, more of accidentally playing this PTQ, we can presume he is not really aware of the subtle differences between regular and competitive play. So we should approach this with trying to educate Albert.

I think we still need to be cautious and still try and find out why Albert is doing this, ask him questions if he is aware of the fact that the bends of his lands are giving more away than they should.

The HJ should be informed at this point as he has the power to upgrade warning (for TE - Marked Cards) to a game loss.

As now both players are aware of the issue, the integrity of the game is compromised (both can gain advantage of it). A game loss will be issued if I was the HJ. As the fix can be simply done by replacing the foil forests with forests out of the land box of the LGS I would let him do this and continue the game.

Thank you everyone for your comments. This scenario was created in order to create discussion about marked cards. The key points of this scenario were: the cards were marked in a noticeable pattern and also to remind us that foils are not inherently marked.
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IPG Sections of Note:
3.8. Tournament Error — Marked Cards

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The Original Scenario can be found at the top of this thread.
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The Answer:
Since the player was not cheating, the infraction is Tournament Error -
Marked Cards, because ”A player’s cards are marked or oriented in a way
that could potentially give an advantage to that player.“ The normal
penalty for this is a Warning. The head judge has the option to upgrade
this penalty to a Game Loss because of the potential for abuse if the
player or his opponent noticed that it was possible to know where the land
cards are in the deck, as this ”would clearly compromise the integrity of
the game.“ We will ask Albert to replace the marked cards with unmarked
versions, and might offer to help him to locate replacements if possible.
He should be issued a Game Loss for an upgraded TE-Marked Cards penalty, to
be applied in the current game, or if completed, a subsequent game of the current round, or, if all games for
this round are over, it is applied to the first game of his next round
match. We should also note that if wishes to replace his lands with unmarked foils we should allow him to do so as foils are not inherently marked simply because they are foils.

Edited Benjamin McDole (May 1, 2013 12:27:51 PM)