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

Annie is playing against Nick at a Modern PPTQ. Annie plays Oath of Nissa, it resolves, and she picks up the top 3 cards of her library and thinks for a few seconds. Finally, she says “I’ll take the creature,” and puts one card into her hand and the rest on the bottom of her library.

Nick stops Annie and says, “You should have revealed that card. Judge!”

When you get to the table, they tell you what happened, and Annie shows you her hand with a Scavenging Ooze and a Pithing Needle, and tells you she picked the Ooze with the Oath ability.

What do you do?

Edited Joe Klopchic (May 9, 2018 09:47:57 AM)

This sounds like a text-book HCE. The fix would be for Annie to reveal her hand to Norman. Normal picks a previously unknown card from the two, which is considered the “card that should have been revealed”.

The set of 3 cards is then reconstructed by taking the bottom two cards of Annie's library, and adding the chosen card to them, then having Annie choose (and reveal) an appropriate card from among them, put that card into her hand (if it's a creature, planeswalker or land) and the other two on the bottom of the library.

I guess if Norman picks the Scavenging Ooze as the card-that-should-have-been-revealed, we can skip the whole “recreate the set and reperform the action”, since Scavenging Ooze is a legal card to pick with Oath of Nissa.

Annie receives a warning for Hidden Card Error, and Norman receives no penalty.

I am on the same thought as Morten. I also think Annie could be lying and saying she picked the ooze so she can hide the pithing needle.

As a reminder, Knowledge Pool scenarios contain all the relevant information you'll need.

You should always investigate and ask questions at a real event, but here in the Pool assume that players are being honest with their responses

Originally posted by Joe Klopchic:

Norman stops Annie and says, “You should have revealed that card. Judge!”

I guess it's not important things for judging.
But I want to know you wanna mean ‘spectator’ stops playing? or just mistake? :)

Thank you in advance. :)

Thanks everyone for the responses this week.

Morten and Tommy are correct here. This is a Hidden Card Error.

HCE gives us this guidance:

If the error involves one or more cards that were supposed to be revealed, the player reveals the set of cards that contains the unrevealed cards and their opponent chooses that many previously unknown cards. Treat those as the cards that were ‘revealed’ and return them to the set that was being selected from; the player then reperforms the action.

This gives us excellent guidance on what to do, which is exactly what Morten's answer said.

Annie receives a Warning for Hidden Card Error. Have Annie reveal her hand, and Nick chooses a card, treat that card as the ‘revealed’ card. Return the card to the previous set, which is now that card plus the bottom two cards of Annie's library. Annie repeats the action, choosing a creature, land or planeswalker from among the three cards if possible, revealing it and putting it into her hand.