Welcome back to the Knowledge Pool! This week we have another Silver scenario, so L2s should wait until Friday to jump into the discussion. Enjoy!

You're the head judge of a Modern PPTQ, where Ace and Niño are playing their match. At the beginning of this turn, Ace untapped, put a counter on his AEther Vial, then picked up the top card of his library and looked at it. Thinking for a bit, Ace put that card face down next to his AEther Vial. After finishing thinking, Ace takes the new top card of his library and adds it to his hand. Niño immediately calls for a judge, and explains the situation. What do you do?

Ace commited a GPE-HCE, its true he didnt put the first card on his hand but he looked at it, so that card is considered draw. It falls under GPE-HCE because that player has more cards in his hand than can be accounted for. There is no set of cards making the error because the card that makes the error its already on his hand so the face down card is put on his hand to make the fix, his opponent chooses what card must be shuffled back into the random portion of his library. Ace have a warning for GPE-HCE, Niño immediately calls for a judge so he recieve no sanction.


EDIT: thinking about it, the face down card was a correct draw. So leave it outside the fix. And the opponent take 1 without that card on the set.

Edited Carlos A. González (May 31, 2017 07:04:58 PM)

GPE - HCE for Ace. We need to select the card that Ace should not have drawn, so we reveal his hand – leaving the first drawn card on the table – and Nino will pick the extra card that should not have been drawn. That card gets shuffled into the random portion of the library (or returned to its location if its location was known, such as with a scry) and Ace will “draw” the card that was left on the table next to the Aether Vial, since this was the card he was supposed to draw.

Ace has committed GPE-HCE and will receive a warning. There's an argument to be made that, since the IPG says that cards can't be between sets, the first card drawn is still on top of the Library as it hasn't touched the rest of his hand. However, that section specifically says that "there is no in-between state and any card that has not yet been seen is a part of the previous set." This means that Ace actually has two sets of cards that comprise his hand. Since the excess card is in the larger of the two sets, we reveal that set of cards to his opponent who picks one to shuffle into Ace's library. I would personally ask Ace to unify his hand into one cohesive unit, though this isn't necessarily required as long as he and his opponent can easily understand what is happening in the gamestate.

I would also investigate for cheating as AP could have done this specifically to get a shuffle and potentially remove some chaffe cards from his hand.

Originally posted by Bryon Boyes:

I would also investigate for cheating as AP could have done this specifically to get a shuffle and potentially remove some chaffe cards from his hand.

For the Knowledge Pool, we assume that there was no cheating (because if cheating is involved, it becomes a trivial question ;) )
Of course, in the real world you'd always perform at least a cursory investigation, on any situation.

1) We need a “Like” button - I would use it a ton on here!

2) I think this is GPE - HCE because it wasn't an accidentally revealed card or stuck to the previous draw or anything like that. It was however a card only known to one player in a hidden set both before and after.

HCE also says to fix using the smallest set possible.

I would have the player reveal the single card drawn and shuffle it back into the library. This is the least disruptive fix to me.

Originally posted by Bryon Boyes:

I would have the player reveal the single card drawn and shuffle it back into the library. This is the least disruptive fix to me.

That isn't the set that contains the problem, however. Both players can confirm that is the card that should have been drawn for turn and therefore should be in the hand, the problem lies with the rest of the hand. Using the smallest set would be nice but we have to perform the fix on the set that contains the Excess as per the IPG

I think it is an HCE that Ace committed. And he would get a warning. I would reveal the set (Ace's hand, but do not include the card he put face down next to his AEther Vial in this case) and let Niño choose one card to shuffle into Ace's library.

Thanks everyone for participating this week, lets take a look at our solution.

There are two ways to interpret this situation.

First, its possible to consider the face-down card near the AEther Vial as not being drawn, and the only drawn card to be the other card, thus making this a Game Rules Violation or even Looking at Extra Cards.

Second, we consider the face-down card near the AEther Vial as drawn, thus making the second drawn card an excess card in the scope of Hidden Card Error.

Ace looked at a card during his draw step, but then didn't add it to his hand. Its pretty clear that that card was drawn, so we side with Hidden Card Error. We should apply the HCE fix on the smallest possible set of cards, and since the first card is clearly still separate, it won't be included in that set. Carlos A. González was the first to point this out, and several others have indicated the necessity of not including the known-to-be-drawn card in the set we apply the HCE fix to.

Ace receives a warning for Hidden Card Error. Have Ace reveal his hand, but not the single card face-down near AEther Vial. Niño chooses one of those cards as an excess card and it is shuffled into the unknown portion of Ace's library.