Originally posted by Gediminas Usevičius:

Originally posted by yue xiao:

Why the backing up is not shuffling the two cards into the random part of the library?

IPG does not let to shuffle library when backing up if the library wasn't shuffled during the error.

Good catch indeed, but there's more to it.

IPG tell us:
"Shuffles are reversed by a single shuffle of the random portion of the library after the rest of the backup is complete. A card that became legally known to only one player after the error was committed is not considered random and is returned to the appropriate location after the shuffle has been completed.“

Annotated IPG further specify:

”How do we rewind through a shuffle? Shuffle again. How do we rewind through multiple shuffles? Just a single shuffle. Try not to get carried away. Remember to pay attention to known cards and if they are supposed to “survive” the shuffling. The last line, about cards that became legally known, applies to cards drawn that are put back. If they are legally drawn after the error, they are legally known by one of the players. Since exactly which card was drawn is probably lost, we are going to put back a card at random, and we don’t want to shuffle them away. This policy has an odd interaction with scry (which could also be legally known) which is likely unintended and will hopefully be fixed in the next policy update."

Judges, thank you for participating in this week's Knowledge Pool scenario. It seems everyone correctly identified that Alice committed a Game Rule Violation and Nicky committed Failure to Maintain Game State, and each player receives a warning. However, each solution proposed a different way to fix the error. In this particular case, though, we would need to back up in order to fix the error. We would return the two cards Alice scry'd back to the top of her deck in a random order and then reverse the entire process of casting Veteran Motorist to bring the card back to Alice’s hand. We do not limit this backup to the point where Alice can tap different lands but the Veteran Motorist remains on the stack and has to be cast.

Although those steps to fixing the error follow tournament policy, the Knowledge Pool team agreed that the game should not be backed up in this case because Alice had the opportunity to manipulate cards in her library. There was argument that backing up the error would just leave Alice wanting to recast Veteran Motorist to scry the two cards she knows about back to the bottom of her library. Despite the possibility Alice would follow the same line of play as before, there is risk that Alice could change her decision by choosing to not immediately re-play the Veteran Motorist, and still know the top two cards of her library.

That's all for today. We'll see you next time with a new scenario!

Thanks for your answer Eric.
I've a question: why don't we consider the scry action as an error resulting from casting the Motorist with wrong mana? If we'd consider this scenario like a GRV+LEC, we could still issue a single Warning, but we could shuffle the scried cards back into the library, and then the backup would be a safe one.
According to this article (https://blogs.magicjudges.org/articles/2015/08/31/handling-multiple-infractions/) this seems to be possible. Here an example we can find in it:

"Albert plays a Temple of Malady, however he already played a Forest earlier in the turn. He scrys and leaves the card on top.

Here we have two infractions, a GRV of playing multiple lands in a turn and a LEC when he scrys. When we’re fixing this situation we need to apply fixes for both of these offences. Clearly the land needs to go back to hand (a rewind, the fix for GRV) and we need to shuffle the random portion of the library (the fix for LEC). However, seeing the extra card was clearly caused by the original infraction of playing an extra land. Therefore we give a warning for GRV and not for LEC. This explains why we can apply an LEC fix when we’re giving a GRV warning. Intuitively it’s the correct way to fix a GRV which has resulted in seeing cards they should not, but it may not be obvious how that follows from the IPG."

Is the philosophy changed by then?
Thanks :)

Edited Jacopo Strati (March 28, 2017 03:49:08 PM)

Originally posted by Eric Paré:

We do not limit this backup to the point where Alice can tap different lands but the Veteran Motorist remains on the stack and has to be cast.

Wait, I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding this sentence, but do you mean that if we were to perform the backup the Veteran Motorist would had to be on the stack and the player would forcefully had to cast it? Am I missing something here?

Edited Miquel Àngel Moya (March 28, 2017 03:18:14 PM)

Originally posted by Miquel Àngel Moya:

Wait, I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding this sentence, but do you mean that if we were to perform the backup the Veteran Motorist would had to be on the stack and the player would forcefully had to cast it? Am I missing something here?

Eric is saying that we will not do a backup in that way, but we'll put the Motorist back in is owner's hand instead (if we decide to do a backup, obviously). :)

Edited Jacopo Strati (March 28, 2017 03:48:32 PM)

That was my conclussion after re-reading the sentence a few more times and putting it in context. That “but” left me confused for a while. That sounds more reasonable and in line with the policies : )

Okay, I understand now. Thank you for clarifying my error. However, I'm confused about whether we backup or not. I see the arguments for both sides… are we going to leave this at the discretion of the judge, or is there a consensus about what we do?

Although those steps to fixing the error follow tournament policy, the Knowledge Pool team agreed that the game should not be backed up in this case because Alice had the opportunity to manipulate cards in her library. There was argument that backing up the error would just leave Alice wanting to recast Veteran Motorist to scry the two cards she knows about back to the bottom of her library. Despite the possibility Alice would follow the same line of play as before, there is risk that Alice could change her decision by choosing to not immediately re-play the Veteran Motorist, and still know the top two cards of her library.

Backups are always at the discretion of the head judge, but the KP team posted the above on whether or not they would back up in this circumstance.

Edited Bryan Henning (March 28, 2017 04:59:08 PM)

For a bit more clarity.

The root cause here is paying the wrong mana for Motorist, so this is just GRV. The cards were looked at legally, so it is not LEC.

Our options are rewind and have Alice know the top two cards or don't rewind.

Personally, I prefer not rewinding, and on advice and discussion with several senior judges, this falls on the no-rewind side. If we do rewind, Alice has the option to not cast Motorist and play the game from that point knowing the top two cards of her library.

I'm going to close the thread here, if further discussion is desired, feel free to start a new thread in the Competitive REL forum.

Edited Joe Klopchic (March 28, 2017 06:13:59 PM)