Welcome back to the Knowledge Pool. This week we have another Silver scenario. L2s should wait until Friday to join in.

Adelaide is playing in a Standard PPTQ, and casts Jadelight Ranger, which resolves. They point out the explore trigger, and it resolves. They set their hand face-down in front of them, and pick up the top card of their deck to look at. As they do, the second card in their deck flicks off the top of the deck, and slides into their hand, still face down. The players don't touch anything and call for a judge. What do you do?

Assuming none of the players had any chance at all to look at the flicked card, there is no infraction to be had here. Since none of the players have touched anything, I assume it is easy to know which card is the card “in excess”. place it back on the library. Keep playing. It is important for this to even be an option that both players agree that there was absolutely no chance for any players to see the card.

Assuming any of the player even had a chance of seeing the front face of the card, we now have a GPE-LCE on our hands. The fact if they actually saw the card is irrelevant as the IPG states : "A player takes an action that may have enabled them to see the faces of cards in a deck that they were not entitled to see.“ Keep the card that is currently being ”explored“ apart and shuffle the ”excess“ card into the random portion of the library. Once again, since the players have not touched anything, the ”excess" card should be easily differentiable from the rest of their face down hand. Award them a Warning for GPE-LEC and remind them to be more careful.

If, for some reason, the players can't agree on which card is the card in excess, it is still NOT a Hidden Card error. Simply for the fact that the IPG states “This infraction does not apply to simple dexterity errors, such as when a card being pulled off the library sticks to another card and is seen or knocked off the library.”

Edit : I assumed that the “they” in the scenario specifically referred to Adelaide, otherwise it would imply that both players are setting their hand face down and that both players are exploring… which is totally not right.

Edited Maxime Emond (March 8, 2018 08:56:58 AM)

Originally posted by Maxime Emond:

If, for some reason, the players can't agree on which card is the card in excess, it is still NOT a Hidden Card error. Simply for the fact that the IPG states “This infraction does not apply to simple dexterity errors, such as when a card being pulled off the library sticks to another card and is seen or knocked off the library.”

Hello Maxime!
I have two questions in regards to this:

1. What is your proposed fix for this situation?
   
2. Are you suggesting that there is no case of a dexterity error resulting in a HCE? If I draw for the turn and two cards stick together, and both enter my hand, for example?
   

Hi Chris,

1. In the situation, if both players would not agree on which card is in excess we would first have to access if the “extra” card had any potential of being seen. This will impact the possible fix we could apply on this case.

Assuming both players agree that the card could not have been seen : in the (extreme?) case where we cannot identify the card that was knocked onto the player's hand (let's assumed is slid perfectly into the face down hand in a way we can't identify which one it is), then we can ask Adelaide (away from the table) what are the cards she remember having in her hand. From there, we can set aside those cards and return a random card from the remaining candidates back to the library.

Assuming the card could have been seen, we have no choice than to return a card at random from Adelaide's hand to the top of the library and then asking her to shuffle her library.

The reason I'm going with those proposed fix is because the “thoughtseize fix” is only available to us if we rule this as a HCE. For this specific scenario, I stand by my assertion that this should not be ruled as a HCE for 2 reasons. One, it is a dexterity error that has knocked a card off the library and two, the IPG states :
“This infraction does not apply to simple dexterity errors, such as when a card being pulled off the library sticks to another card and is seen or knocked off the library. The cards themselves must be part of a distinct set intended by the player.”
In this case, I think it is fair to say that Adelaide did not intend the flicked off card to actually land in her hand. Since the “extra” card is not a distinct set intended by the player, I think (although I might be mistaken) that this should not be considered as a HCE.

2. No, If my wording has made me suggest this, then I have ill expressed myself. The are cases where a dexterity error can lead to a HCE infraction. Your example shows a perfect situation where a dexterity error leads to a HCE. But I think the point to consider here is that, in your example, the player actually intended to draw a card. So they are part of a “distinct set intended by the player”.

Edit : After discovering the AIPG, I can see where I erred in stating this should not be a HCE. In the remote case where we cant make out which card from the hand is the “excess” card, it has to be treated as a HCE, with a thoughtseize fix and the card will go back on top of the library, below the card currently being explored, ad then shuffled into the library. but for the rest of my initial post, I stand by my assertions and fixes.

Edited Maxime Emond (March 8, 2018 12:01:10 PM)

When the HCE rules say that the card needs to be part of a set intended by the player, this means that the set is one intended to exist by the player rather than that the player intended to put the additional cards into the set. There is a difference between a set and a random pile of cards knocked off the top of a library. The random cards are not a set. That is what the rules are getting at.

Thanks everyone for the responses this week.

Lets start with Looking at Extra Cards.

Cards are considered to be in a library until they touch cards in another hidden set. Once those cards have joined another hidden set, the infraction is handled as a Hidden Card Error or Game Rule Violation.

This eliminates LEC as an option. The card isn't distinguishable, so we can't call this LEC. If it was obvious what the card was, we could.

We're left with Hidden Card Error vs Game Rule Violation. If HCE applies, then its not a GRV, so we look there next. Here are the requirements.

A player commits an error in the game that cannot be corrected by only publicly available information
and does so without his or her opponent’s permission.

This is certainly true. We don't know which card in Adelaide's hand is the extra one, so we can't fix it.

This infraction only applies when a card whose identity is known to only one player is in a hidden set of
cards both before and after the error.

Still true. The hand is face-down, and the 2nd card of the library was not known.

This infraction does not apply to simple dexterity errors, such as when a card being pulled off the library
sticks to another card and is seen or knocked off the library. The cards themselves must be part of a
distinct set intended by the player.

Here we run into some resistance. Was this a simple dexterity error? It seems as much, but for a simple dexterity error, it has caused a not-so-simple problem.

Plus, a bit from the philiosophy section of Hidden Card Error

Though the game state cannot be reversed to the ‘correct’ state, this error can be mitigated by giving the opponent sufficient knowledge and ability to offset the error so that it is less likely to generate advantage.

This is our goal here. The game is somewhat broken, and we need to mitigate the potential for advantage so that players can't attempt such a maneuver to get more chances at drawing what they need.

The ruling is therefore:

Adelaide receives a warning for Hidden Card Error. Have the opponent look at Adelaide's hand, and shuffle a card of the opponent's choice into Adelaide's library.