Another way to put Mark/Scott's post: both players know that there's two mana in the mana pool; that's publicly available information–it's on the card! The opponent also has an opportunity to ask for clarification before/as the AP draws the card.

Trying to apply HCE to this has some pretty awful results. NAP has an incentive to not communicate clearly with their opponent, since the HCE results in a direct benefit to them, and it disrupts the game pretty substantially. There's no counter-balance that we can employ; they're just taking advantage of our (not) policy.

Applying GRV here properly results in a penalty for AP, which is a bad thing for them, and doesn't further disrupt the game. After all, it was accidental. Don't forget, if players are intentionally drawing for the information before announcing the colored mana, they're cheating. We have a very clear, and very strong path to resolve any angle-shooting here. It's an easy mistake to make, and a clear example of why infraction tracking exists at competitive.

Edited Chase Culpon (April 17, 2018 04:44:33 PM)

Originally posted by Chase Culpon:

Another way to put Mark/Scott's post: both players know that there's two mana in the mana pool; that's publicly available information–it's on the card! The opponent also has an opportunity to ask for clarification before/as the AP draws the card.

Trying to apply HCE to this has some pretty awful results. NAP has an incentive to not communicate clearly with their opponent, since the HCE results in a direct benefit to them, and it disrupts the game pretty substantially. There's no counter-balance that we can employ; they're just taking advantage of our (not) policy.

I wouldn't put the burden of miscommunication on NAP.

Maybe I don't read correctly your post … do you expect the following?

AP: “cast manamorphose”
NAP: "ok, which colors?"

That's too much to ask with respect to NAP.

If the opponent acknowledged the draw a card such as “Manamorphose, Draw my card”, “Sure” I'm likely to rule it as a GRV, if it wasn't acknowledged I'd rule it an HCE

Originally posted by Francesco Scialpi:

I wouldn't put the burden of miscommunication on NAP.

Maybe I don't read correctly your post … do you expect the following?

AP: “cast manamorphose”
NAP: “ok, which colors?”

That's too much to ask with respect to NAP.

As written, yes, that's too much to ask. However, if NAP is interjecting upon seeing AP reach for the top card of their library, I think it's not too much.

We're not putting the burden of miscommunication with NAP—we're preventing NAP from angle-shooting. I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect NAP to try to stop AP from drawing before naming colours if they really want to avoid AP getting an advantage. It's better than allowing NAP to not communicate in order to gain an advantage (via an HCE fix).

Expecting NAP to prevent the premature draw is not realistic and not something we expect in any other situation. For example, in the case of resolving rummaging (discard then draw) as looting (draw then discard), we don't expect NAP to stop the draw and say “Wait, you have to discard first.”

Also, treating this situation as a GRV provides a very strong incentive to deliberately “forget” to name the colors, as there's minimal downside (a Warning) and a significant potential advantage (learning what the additional card is and using that information to guide the choice of colors). Yes, of course, that's Cheating, but it's difficult for a judge to assess.

Whether this falls into the category of HCE depends on whether we view the error as “failure to name a color” (which is correctable with only publicly available information) or “failure to name a color before seeing the additional card” (which is not).

The bigger point I'm trying to make is if you have two different options centered around a hairline distinction, philosophically you should lean towards the option that doesn't disrupt the game more IMO. I can be wrong, but we seem to have L3s on both sides on this one, so I think ‘hairline’ is a reasonable way to put it ;)

Communicating via forum posts is tricky–I'm not trying to say NAP has an obligation or a responsibility to ask for mana here. But, if it's a super tight, important match, they can totally participate in the game they're playing.

Systems that discourage communication and encourage angle-shooting or ‘gotchas’ via tournament policy is something to get away from IMO, it's fundamentally not the game that people came to play. I'd take the difficulty of the investigation over turning tournament magic into unhinged (everyone doing their best to not communicatey).

Edited Chase Culpon (April 16, 2018 10:54:54 PM)

Originally posted by Steven Zwanger:

Expecting NAP to prevent the premature draw is not realistic and not something we expect in any other situation. For example, in the case of resolving rummaging (discard then draw) as looting (draw then discard), we don't expect NAP to stop the draw and say “Wait, you have to discard first.”

Also, treating this situation as a GRV provides a very strong incentive to deliberately “forget” to name the colors, as there's minimal downside (a Warning) and a significant potential advantage (learning what the additional card is and using that information to guide the choice of colors). Yes, of course, that's Cheating, but it's difficult for a judge to assess.

Whether this falls into the category of HCE depends on whether we view the error as “failure to name a color” (which is correctable with only publicly available information) or “failure to name a color before seeing the additional card” (which is not).

I agree with Steven's analysis.

Originally posted by Mikey Elwell:

If the opponent acknowledged the draw a card such as “Manamorphose, Draw my card”, “Sure” I'm likely to rule it as a GRV, if it wasn't acknowledged I'd rule it an HCE

This is what I would do too.
In the unlikely event of AP saying “Manamorphe” - NAP says it resolves - AP “Ok can I draw” and NAP says “sure”, this would be a GRV, fixing it by naming colors.

But I'm pretty sure it will always end up in AP drawing immediatly and, like Steven says, this is not correctable by public only information. Thus leading to the HCE thoughtseize fix, AP chooses the color combination, and they draw a card.

Expecting NAP to prevent the premature draw is not realistic and not something we expect in any other situation. For example, in the case of resolving rummaging (discard then draw) as looting (draw then discard), we don't expect NAP to stop the draw and say “Wait, you have to discard first.”

Agree, but with those situations we also had some interesting rulings. Back when DEC was still a game loss, drawing before discarding with Rummaging Goblin was not DEC, even though the first time the opponent could notice something was wrong was basically drawing a card.

So if we treat it like looting vs rummaging philosophically, simply drawing prematurely, I could see an argument for HCE with no additional remedy beyond announcing the colors of mana.

Additional Remedy
…
If the error put cards into a set prematurely and other operations involving cards in the set should have been performed first, the player reveals the set of cards that contains the excess and his or her opponent chooses a number of previously-unknown cards. Put those cards aside until the point at which they should have been legally added, then return them to the set.
…
If a set affected by the error contains more cards than it is supposed to contain, the player reveals the set of cards that contain the excess and his or her opponent chooses a number of previously unknown-cards sufficient to reduce the set to the correct size. These 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.

The first paragraph is for the rummaging situation. A card was put into the hand prematurely, something else with the hand should be done first, so we apply that fix.
With the Manamorphose a card was also put in the hand prematurely, but we don't have to do something else with the hand, so we don't have to apply this fix.
As for the second paragraph, both in the rummaging and in the manamorphose case the set doesn't contain more cards than it's supposed to contain, there's only prematurely movement of cards that were supposed to move, so we also don't apply this fix.

Edited Toby Hazes (April 17, 2018 05:06:55 AM)

I wholeheartedly support the points Chase made, above! It's true that we can't expect the opponent to prevent the card draw, before it happens - but it is a possible, and far better, outcome.

This is not a new discussion, and it crops up every few years or so - I guess the lifespan of the community's collective memory about things like this is similar to the average lifespan of a new L1 judge (based on Zohar Finkel's excellent article, anyway)? :D

Anyway, we realize that the ‘O’fficial solution provided by Mark Brown (thanks, buddy!) isn't ideal, but it is the correct one. This is a situation where some investigation is critical (“so, how'd that happen?”), but once we're satisfied that it's an honest mistake, we stick to policy and have them name the colors now. We also record the GRV and include the card name & error description - esp. important at larger events, like a GP! - so we may notice if they're repeating this “error” - i.e., if maybe it isn't an honest mistake.

d:^D

Hi

i am only a magic-judge in training, so forgive me if i seem like an idiot

but could one potential fix be for the NAP to pick the colours of mana instead?

this negates any chance the AP was doing it intentionally, drawing to gain any advantage if the choices of mana were to matter, and with the outcome that he is very unlikely to do it again give than the NAP will probably choose the wrong colour of mana for him?

Andy, we've always tried to avoid “in-game” fixes like that, because it creates a great deal of variance in how things get fixed. Also, we don't create policy (infraction, penalty, or remedy) for specific cards, much less specific errors with a specific card - if the IPG covered all scenarios, it'd be ginormous (and never get completed).

And, in my view anyway, that would be too severe for such an easy mistake.

As for the idea of negating advantage from doing it intentionally, that's why we track penalties and upgrade after 3 GRVs (2 TEs).

d:^D

There isn't a fix for this. It's like the rummaging goblin issue (which I don't think has changed) here :

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2016/01/25/the-hidden-corners-of-hce/

If it's cheating, you're not dealing with a GPE. If it's not cheating, there isn't a fix.

If we're treating this as a GRV, that makes Predict, a card that actually sees some Legacy play, into “Draw 2 cards” once every few events (or more often if the player encounters a different set of judges each time), with no recourse for the opponent.

Also, if this discussion happens every few years, then presumably the last one happened before we had the tool of HCE. We didn't have such a fix available when Manamorphose or Predict were printed and had to make do with the options then in place; now that we have the concept of HCE, I think the situation ought to be revisited, since HCE is a better fit philosophically as well as being a valid match mechanically.

I'm not sure Predict is the same - the drawing the cards is reliant upon naming the card - revealing a card too early is easy to fix and deal with.

My issue with calling this HCE is that there is no reliance upon the mana chosen as to whether the cards are drawn or not. The card draw is perfectly legal so punishing the player for drawing a card that they are entitled to seems excessive.

Other instances where you are supposed to discard a card before drawing a card look similar to this, but I don't see the exact comparison. In that instance you are adding a card to a set that because of this mistake you are now going to be interacting with to determine a card to discard. The fact that the order changes the set you need to choose a card from is what in my mind makes the 2 very different.