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

Enjoy!

Albus and Norbert are playing Modern in the semifinals of an RPTQ you’re judging. Norbert goes first, playing a Verdant Catacombs. Albus draws and plays a tapped Celestial Colonnade. At the and of Albus’s turn, Norbert sacrifices the Verdant Catacombs. He looks through his deck twice, then calls you over because his singleton Overgrown Tomb is missing, making his current deck only 59 cards. He ends up finding it under his chair. What do you do?

It sounds like a pretty textbook Deck Problem. Since Norbert found the error themselves, and none of the upgrades are applicable, it is just a Warning.

Verify that they have 59 cards to make sure none others are missing and, if you want to be especially thorough, you can check their decklist to make sure it is meant to be there.

But otherwise, shuffle the Overgrown Tomb into their library and back up to when Verdant Catacomb's ability was put on the stack. Have them do the search again. They are not forced to find the Tomb with the search.

There is very little, if any, advantage to be gained here and it was caught early enough.

The first thing I would do would be to count the cards in the deck, hand, and battlefield to verify the amount. I would pull the deck list to verify the Overgrown Tomb belongs in the deck before taking the player's word it does. I would also count and verify the sideboard quickly to make sure the card was not in there and the player forgot to de-sideboard.

I agree with Callum about the resolution of issue and penalty. If all checks out, I would issue the player a Deck Problem Warning penalty. I would not upgrade due to the player calling it as soon as he noticed his deck had an issue and being early in the match. If the investigation findings are he discovered it under his chair, it was an issue with this round and not previous rounds as most players move locations between rounds.

Edited CoriAnn Theroux (March 19, 2018 10:39:38 AM)

I have a question for CoriAnn and Callum.

Upgrade: If an incorrect card becomes or is about to become visible to an opponent (for example due to it being revealed or put into a graveyard) or is discovered by a judge, the penalty is a Game Loss.

Is the Overgrown Tomb about to be revealed or not?

It has yet to be revealed as the player has not yet made his choice for the search. Unless the player has made an announcement to his opponent about which card is missing, I would not make the opponent aware of which card is in question. It also isn’t an incorrect card as it is a missing card.

Thanks for the responses this week.

Callum was correct right away.

Norbert receives a Warning for Deck Problem. The missing card wasn't discovered during the presentation period, nor was it about to be revealed to an opponent. Return the Overgrown Tomb to Norbert's deck, and then he completes resolving Verdant Catacombs' ability. Notably, he can find the Overgrown Tomb.