Welcome back to this week's Knowledge Pool! This week we have a Gold scenario, so everyone is welcome to join in the discussion right away.

Andrew is playing against Nadine in a Standard PPTQ. During Andrew's turn he says, “Oath?” tapping a Forest while holding out an Oath of Nissa. Nadine lets it resolve and Andrew draws three cards, and discards an Island and a Forest. Andrew realizes that he resolved his trigger incorrectly and calls for a judge, explaining that he thought he was playing an Oath of Jace. What do you do?

Edited Brandon Welch (April 5, 2017 07:25:59 PM)

Assuming we've investigated for cheating…

I would treat this as a Hidden Card Error, and from there attempt to recreate a set from which Andrew can properly resolve and Oath of Nissa trigger. In this case, a rewind of returning the known Island and Forest to the hand, then having Nadine construct the three card “Oath Pile” from the existing cards in Andrew's hand. From there we can then properly resolve the Oath of Nissa. Issue a GPE-Hidden Card Error to Andrew.

Downsides from this approach are that Nadine now has information on cards in certain portions of Andrew's library that they shouldn't, but I see this as acceptable.

Edited Kent Hays (April 11, 2017 10:35:01 PM)

What mana was paid for Oath of Nissa? I'm curious to know if he paid (G) or (2)(U) for Oath of Jace.

Edited Megan McGuire (April 5, 2017 07:21:59 PM)

Originally posted by Megan Holden:

What mana was paid for Oath of Nissa? I'm curious to know if he paid (G) or (2)(U) for Oath of Jace.

I went ahead and added the tapping of a Forest, as he is actually casting Oath of Nissa. Though he got the 2 mixed up once it has resolved.

Edited Brandon Welch (April 5, 2017 07:30:54 PM)

GPE - HCE -Warning. We have 3 drawn cards, the identity of which are not public knowledge. We then discarded two cards when we were not supposed to which would be a GRV on its own but the card draw happened first

I believe the fix would be to return the discarded lands to hand and then show NAP the hand, NAP selects the 3 cards drawn and we return them to the the library and randomize the unknown portion thereof. Oath of Nissa's trigger is still on the stack

Since Oath of Nissa was correctly and legally cast, I think this falls under an HCE rather than a GRV. Andrew's hand now contains excess cards. To apply the HCE remedy, we can return the two discard cards to the affected set (Andrew's hand) before applying the rest of the remedy. I am going to assume Nadine did not know the contents of Andrew's hand or the top of his library prior to the error.

The tricky part of this is deciding the “correct location” to which the excess cards should be returned. While it might be argued that the excess cards should be shuffled into the random portion of the library (followed by correctly resolving the Oath trigger), I believe this option is potentially abusable. For example, if Andrew's hand contains all lands, he would get to shuffle away 3 lands and look at three new cards for the Oath trigger. Even if we do not suspect Andrew of cheating to intentionally gain this advantage, this remedy would still be to his benefit. EDIT: An even simpler (and more plausible) example of this kind of potential abuse: Andrew has Saheeli Rai in play and needs to find a Felidar Guardian to complete his combo and win the game. Andrew commits the error described above, and his hand does not contain Felidar Guardian. We shuffle away three excess cards as part of the HCE remedy, and Andrew gets to look at 3 new cards. He finds a Felidar Guardian in these cards and wins the game. Now Andrew has benefited tremendously from his own error. Intuitively, this feels wrong.

I believe the “correct location” for the cards is the top of the library, where Andrew is allowed to look at them while resolving the Oath trigger. So, to remedy this HCE, I would instruct Andrew to reveal his hand to Nadine (don't forget that the discarded cards should be returned to the hand first), and then instruct Nadine to choose 3 cards (the excess cards). I would then have Andrew resolve the Oath trigger using those three cards (which are technically on the top of his library while he is looking at them). He should make a legal selection of one of the cards (if possible) and then put the remaining cards on the bottom of his library in any order. Andrew receives a warning for HCE.

Edited Edward Bryn Pitt (April 5, 2017 10:02:53 PM)

Originally posted by Bryn Pitt:

The tricky part of this is deciding the “correct location” to which the excess cards should be returned. While it might be argued that the excess cards should be shuffled into the random portion of the library (followed by correctly resolving the Oath trigger), I believe this option is potentially abusable. For example, if Andrew's hand contains all lands, he would get to shuffle away 3 lands and look at three new cards for the Oath trigger. Even if we do not suspect Andrew of cheating to intentionally gain this advantage, this remedy would still be to his benefit.

I believe the “correct location” for the cards is the top of the library, where Andrew is allowed to look at them while resolving the Oath trigger. So, to remedy this HCE, I would instruct Andrew to reveal his hand to Nadine (don't forget that the discarded cards should be returned to the hand first), and then instruct Nadine to choose 3 cards (the excess cards). I would then have Andrew resolve the Oath trigger using those three cards (which are technically on the top of his library while he is looking at them). He should make a legal selection of one of the cards (if possible) and then put the remaining cards on the bottom of his library in any order. Andrew receives a warning for HCE.

While I agree the correct fix is to reveal the hand to NAP and allow for selection of the three cards, doesn't putting them back to the top of the library still lead to possible abuse? NAP could select three cards which are not legal targets for Oath of Nissa (enchantments, instants, etc) and force those cards to be used to resolve the trigger.

I believe shuffling away the cards to be the best, and perhaps appropriate, fix. There's not really a way to resolve the issue that couldn't be deemed “abusable” or “beneficial” to either player. But that's we have the IPG to guide our rulings and fixes and we serve as impartial arbiters of the game.

Originally posted by Kimberly McDonald:

Originally posted by Bryn Pitt:

The tricky part of this is deciding the “correct location” to which the excess cards should be returned. While it might be argued that the excess cards should be shuffled into the random portion of the library (followed by correctly resolving the Oath trigger), I believe this option is potentially abusable. For example, if Andrew's hand contains all lands, he would get to shuffle away 3 lands and look at three new cards for the Oath trigger. Even if we do not suspect Andrew of cheating to intentionally gain this advantage, this remedy would still be to his benefit.

I believe the “correct location” for the cards is the top of the library, where Andrew is allowed to look at them while resolving the Oath trigger. So, to remedy this HCE, I would instruct Andrew to reveal his hand to Nadine (don't forget that the discarded cards should be returned to the hand first), and then instruct Nadine to choose 3 cards (the excess cards). I would then have Andrew resolve the Oath trigger using those three cards (which are technically on the top of his library while he is looking at them). He should make a legal selection of one of the cards (if possible) and then put the remaining cards on the bottom of his library in any order. Andrew receives a warning for HCE.

While I agree the correct fix is to reveal the hand to NAP and allow for selection of the three cards, doesn't putting them back to the top of the library still lead to possible abuse? NAP could select three cards which are not legal targets for Oath of Nissa (enchantments, instants, etc) and force those cards to be used to resolve the trigger.

I believe shuffling away the cards to be the best, and perhaps appropriate, fix. There's not really a way to resolve the issue that couldn't be deemed “abusable” or “beneficial” to either player. But that's we have the IPG to guide our rulings and fixes and we serve as impartial arbiters of the game.

I don't have any philosophical objection to NAP gaining an advantage from the application of the remedy. The remedy does not exist to punish the AP (the player committing the infraction in this case), but it is designed to resolve the issue with minimal opportunity for abuse by the player committing the infraction. A side effect of that is that the remedy may provide a large advantage to the opponent. The classic example of this is an HCE where a player fails to reveal the card they searched for with Sylvan Scrying. The opponent could choose a creature during the HCE remedy (which would not have been a legal choice with Sylvan Scrying). This would mean the creature would be shuffled back into the library and the player would have to go find a land from their library. While unfortunate for the player who committed the infraction, the fact remains that the remedy only occurred because the player committed the infraction in the first place. In a recent tournament report, I actually discussed a situation very similar to this (involving Attune with Aether) that came up at my last PPTQ.

The remedy for HCE is particularly harsh in this way, but is a great improvement from the previous policy (of simply issuing a Game Loss). If NAP does gain an advantage from the remedy, hopefully it will help teach AP to be more careful in the future.

Edited Edward Bryn Pitt (April 5, 2017 09:46:45 PM)

I agree 100% with Bryn's solution: HCE to Andrew, reveal his hand to Nadine. Nadine will choose three cards, which will then be the set being reviewed by Andrew. He will then make a legal choice to complete the resolution of Oath of Nissa's ability, if possible, and then place the 2 (or possibly 3, if no legal choice is available) remaining cards on the bottom of his library.

I would also go over the entirety of the fix before having Andrew take any of the actions. It's always beneficial to instruct the player in this case to hold off on just revealing their hand until they understand the full sequence of events that are associated with this penalty, in case they would like to appeal.

I also agree with Bryn's handling of the fix. for a similar discussion, see these threads.

The relevant section if the IPG reads:

Excess cards are returned to the correct location. If that location is the library, they should be shuffled into the random portion unless the owner previously knew the identity of the card/cards illegally moved; that many cards, chosen by the opponent, are returned to the top of the library instead. For example, if a player playing with Sphinx of Jwar Isle illegally draws a card, that card should be returned to the top of the library.

bolded for emphasis.

The main question in applying the fix turns on whether the currently resolving Oath trigger counts as “previously knowing the identity of the cards.” Based on the considerations of not giving AP a free shuffle and that the excess cards are from a known position (which both players can verify), I think we can treat the ability of Oath (allowing AP to look at the top three cards) as creating “previously known information,” that should be considered when applying the fix.

So my ruling would be: GPE - HCE - Warning to Andrew, FtMGS - Warning to Nadine. For the fix, perform a simple backup putting the 2 discarded cards back into Andrew's hand, then have Andrew reveal his hand so Nadine can select the three excess cards. The three cards are returned to the top of Andrew's library, and we then instruct Andrew to resolve his Oath trigger correctly.

That's all the time we have folks! Bryn was the first to point out the correct infraction and fix.

Andrew will be receiving a warning for Hidden Card Error, since he performed an error that can't use public information to correct. The root problem is him adding 3 excessive cards into a set, which is his hand. Conveniently both oath cards use a set of 3 as part of resolving the trigger. Reverse the 2 cards discarded back to hand as their identity is now public. Then have Andrew reveal his hand to Nadine, where she will pick 3 excessive cards to be moved to their correct location. This correct location will be the Oath of Nissa set, which then the trigger will be resolved correctly.

I know people posted some really good links, but I want to link this one. When moving cards from one set to their correct location, you may create another set from the picked cards to resolve a spell normally.

Just a little nitpicking.

Andrew: why the ftmg? as far as I know thats still for GRVs only. Even if its not, havet enough time really went by for a ftmg? sounds like AP resolva the trigger pretty fast and realised direktly after.

Edited Jakob Lernhage (April 11, 2017 08:44:21 AM)

My reasoning was that, since AP called a judge on themselves, NAP had enough time to realize that something had gone wrong and had (unintentionally) allowed the error to persist further than it needed to. FtMGS can be applied to any GPE (except Missed Trigger, of course), though of course the most common is GRV.

I have a meta question about this kp : why is this gold instead of silver? My interprétation Was that gold scenarios were intended to focus on the spirit of the ipg rather than just “find the error, find the infraction and sanction, fix the error”.

Hi Gilles,

When we at Knowledge Pool are creating scenarios, we try to hit our difficulty targets as best we can. We don't always hit the mark (sometimes the projected difficulty ends up generating more discussion than we expected, and sometimes things fall short and we realize after the discussion that our projected difficulty wasn't correct).


Thank you for the feedback!