During a competitive REL game, which I was the head judge, the active player (“Adam”) activated the ability of his Erebos, God of the Dead on his turn after his draw step. The non-active player (“Neil”) played a Notion Thief in response to the activation of the Erebos. The problem is Adam still drew a card from his Erebos when Neil was supposed to draw a card instead via Notion Thief. The illegally drawn card was put into Adam’s hand with the others and it was not possible for Neil to identify which card it was.

I investigated the situation at the table with the help of another judge. Both players agreed that Adam drew his card right after he finished paying the costs for activating Erebos’s ability and he did not wait to confirm the card draw with Neil. Adam said he didn’t think it could be possible for Neil to stop the card draw and that’s why he went right to drawing the card after activating Erebos’s ability.

Neil told us he quickly tapped his lands and put his Notion Thief on the table the moment Adam indicated he was activating the ability so he could draw the card instead of Adam. Adam could not confirm exactly when the Notion Thief appeared on the table because, according to him, he wasn’t paying attention to what Neil was doing while he was in the process of activating Erebos's ability and drawing his card.

Adam pointed out that he didn’t hear Neil say anything to him to indicate a response to the ability on the stack. While investigating further, we determined that Neil didn’t verbally communicate with Adam to get his attention that Notion Thief was in play before he would attempt to draw his card.

My colleague and I further discussed this situation away from the match. We identified the infraction as GPE-DEC. Even though the standard penalty for drawing any extra cards is a game loss, we agreed that deviation from that penalty was appropriate because Neil did not communicate his response to Adam’s ability. Neil should have made a reasonable effort to gain Adam’s attention beyond just tapping lands and putting a card on the table without saying anything and hoping that Adam would simply look up and see it. That being said, issuing a game loss here could create the idea that a player could get away with winning a game by “sneaking” in responses to card draws, waiting for the opponent to draw a card illegally, and then go: “Yes. It worked. Judge!” For all we know, that could have been Neil's intent to include Notion Thief in his deck to try and win games this way.

Upon returning to the table to give my ruling, I explained to both players that the DEC penalty was being downgraded to a warning. I also backed up the game to before the card was illegally drawn (including returning a random card to the top of Adam’s deck) and had Neil draw a card from the Erebos instead. I explained to Neil that he needs to communicate with his opponents when he’s playing cards so his opponents become aware of any changes in the game state before proceeding with their plays.

Does anyone also feel that deviation from the standard penalty for DEC was appropriate in this case to eliminate the possibility of players playing “Gotcha!” to win games or should the penalty have remained a game loss for DEC?

Hi Eric. Ok, I know I am a Level 1, but I am sure others may agree with what I am about to say.

The IPG states “The Head Judge may not deviate from this guide’s procedures except in significant and exceptional circumstances or a situation that has no applicable philosophy for guidance. Significant and exceptional circumstances are rare—a table collapses, a booster contains cards from a different set, etc.”

I have always been told and have seen Uncle Scott say that we have to be consistent in our rulings and that is why we have the IPG. While yes you as Head Judge do have final say over the rulings and what happens in your event, I feel that this situation has failed to meet the criteria for deviating from the normal ruling for DEC.

I feel it also does not meet the only exception that the DEC infraction area of the IPG gives for downgrading the offense. “ If the identity of the card was known to all players before being placed into the hand, and the card can be returned to the correct zone with minimal disruption, do so and downgrade the penalty to a Warning.”

I would love to hear from Scott Marshall on this one.

My concern then from all this is that HJ's will now not be consistent in rulings when it comes to DEC infractions. I mention this because I have 2 Comp. REL events coming up over the next month and a half where I will be the HJ with other judges.

I too would love to hear the official answer to this but lets keep something in mind: this is a corner case and although all learning experiences are good learning experiences, lets be careful when extrapolating the results of specific corner cases to normal within-policy situations. Elliot, I would be surprised if you encounter a scenario in your next events where you will be able to apply what we learn from this.

My original thought was to agree with the deviation, but upon a bit more thinking I'm going to disagree. Here's why:

Adam could have avoided this whole situation by simply saying to himself “Well, I don't THINK Neil can respond to this, but let's be safe about it and not get ourselves a GL” and asking Neil for responses. That way, in order for your “gotcha” to happen, Neil would say “no responses” and then, as Adam goes to draw his card, Neil sneaks in his Notion Thief. Then the onus is on Neil to prove why he's not getting a GRV for playing a card without having priority (of course, in this case I would stray away from giving Adam the appropriate FtMGS, since Neil is being sketchy). If Adam is not executing proper communication by confirming potential GL penalties with his opponent, then sometimes he gets a GL, and that's his penalty for sloppy play.

This issue has already been discussed and resolved in another context, and with more pun to boot. Hasty play should not lead to a DEC; it's a GRV for playing too fast.

Originally posted by Sean Hunt:

This issue has already been discussed and resolved in another context, and with more pun to boot. Hasty play should not lead to a DEC; it's a GRV for playing too fast.

I disagree that the two situations are similar enough to be classed as the same. The previously discussed situation the first visible thing wrong is the player has attacked his opponent before being in the attack step (we have a previous GRV) here the first visible thing wrong with the game state is the player has drawn an extra card which means this one does fall squarely into DEC. I also disagree with a deviation in this situation, it's Adam's responsibility to pay attention to what his opponent is doing just as much as it is Neil's to communicate his responce

Even if you reject that argument, I'd say this situation is the result of Adam resolving objects on the stack in an incorrect order (he incorrectly resolved Erebos's ability before Notion Thief because he wasn't aware Notion Thief had been cast in the first place); DEC explicitly does not apply to such cases, so that would again leave this as a GRV.

It sounds to me like you actually concluded that there was a prior GRV of failing to announce the casting of Notion Thief. And I would agree with that assessment. (So I wouldn't agree with a deviation, but I would agree with the Warning and Rewind.)

One thing to consider is who here is doing an unexpected thing. Adam is using an on-board effect. Neil is planning to respond to that effect in a very unexpected way. Therefore, since Neil has the secret plan, the burden is on him to be vigilant so that he can disrupt the “expected” flow of the game at the appropriate time.

For comparison, think of a situation where a player wants to cast instants on his opponent's upkeep. If the player just says “pass” and his opponent untaps and draws without explicit priority passes, has the opponent commited DEC?

Is wanting to respond to your opponent drawing an extra card really that unexpected? Isn't also unexpected for a player to use a draw effect in their own turn? Even more so in their own draw step.

It seems like both players agree that Adam jumped the gun here. When you jump the gun and draw cards that you aren't supposed to draw, that's DEC, at least in my opinion.

@Joshua: I disagree with that assessment. In general, if a player wants to cast a spell in his opponent's upkeep, he (or at least I, and most of the people I've played against) will say something like “go, I have effects on your upkeep”, or, the instant the opponent goes to untap his cards, says “wait, I have effects in your upkeep”.

The comparison between that and a draw step draw is unfair for a couple reasons:

1) The draw step draw does not use the stack. Therefore it is more reasonable to not expect responses to that.

2) If the player just says “pass” with no further communication, he has not requested priority. I believe it is a shortcut (although I don't havea quote for this) to shortcut through the upkeep unless there's an upkeep trigger or a player specifically requests priority. In the cases where a player requests priority, I (personal anecdote incoming) have never seen this issue come up, mainly because it takes a nonzero amount of time to untap one's permanents, and in that nonzero amount of time the word “wait” can be said.

@Callum: I think your argument is a bit of a stretch. I'd say that resolving things in the wrong order and resolving in an unexpected order are different things.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

In general, if a player wants to cast a spell in his opponent's upkeep, he (or at least I, and most of the people I've played against) will say something like “go, I have effects on your upkeep”, or, the instant the opponent goes to untap his cards, says “wait, I have effects in your upkeep”.

You are actually agreeing with me. What you are saying is that it is typical for a player to be vigilant and take pre-emptive action when we wants to disrupt the normal flow of the game.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

1) The draw step draw does not use the stack. Therefore it is more reasonable to not expect responses to that.

While the draw itself does not use the stack, there are priority passes that have been skipped during the upkeep that technically exist but are often skipped when they aren't expected to matter. Likewise, it is very rare in standard for an opponent to respond to an Erebos activation, so the priority passes that technically exist are often skipped because they aren't expected to matter. (Erebos decks don't often run counterspells, so the value in responding to the ability is generally quite small compared to waiting for potential extra information revealed by playing the card or activating Erebos again.)

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

I believe it is a shortcut (although I don't havea quote for this) to shortcut through the upkeep unless there's an upkeep trigger or a player specifically requests priority.

This shortcut does not actually exist.

Justin Turner
It seems like both players agree that Adam jumped the gun here. When you jump the gun and draw cards that you aren't supposed to draw, that's DEC, at least in my opinion.

I think this is a somewhat dangerous line of logic, since perceptions of what constitutes jumping the gun may vary significantly between players. And the same player may even feel identical objectively measured periods of time are jumping the gun when he is thinking about a response and a perfectly reasonable pause for response when he has nothing to do.

Originally posted by Joshua Feingold:

I think this is a somewhat dangerous line of logic, since perceptions of what constitutes jumping the gun may vary significantly between players. And the same player may even feel identical objectively measured periods of time are jumping the gun when he is thinking about a response and a perfectly reasonable pause for response when he has nothing to do.

I think the opposite is a dangerous line of logic when we are talking about consistent enforcement of policies and procedures. If we add a nebulous timing element to game play errors, we lose consistency. The player playing sloppily or too fast is not a reason to deviate as prescribed in the IPG. We can take a look at maybe changing the IPG after the fact, however we should all be ruling by the letter of the policy documents to ensure consistent enforcement at events until a change is made.

But the player disrupting the flow of the game is Adam not Neil and a response to Erebos is not rare enough to not give your opponent a chance to respond before drawing.

Originally posted by Sean Hunt:

This issue has already been discussed and resolved in another context, and with more pun to boot. Hasty play should not lead to a DEC; it's a GRV for playing too fast.

To GP Atlantic City last January, I had a situation where a player had just finished combat when the opponent untapped and drew his card for the turn. Without ever confirming the player had finished with his turn. Clear instance of the opponent jumping the gun, but was important to note that the opponent untapped and drew… So, the first thing that went wrong was the untapping at the wrong time.

Scott can correct me if I'm wrong on the exact details, but I will recall his question to me after I brought the situation to his attention: What if the player had drawn first, then untapped, as so many are want to do and we even allow with a bit of OOoS?

My answer then, and is now, I would rule DEC. While it is true that the player did “play too quickly”, the first time we have any clue that this is happening and something is going wrong is the actual physical action in question. Which is the player drawing the card. Yes, the underlying “cause” of this happening is the same (too quickly playing), but the actual error in and of itself, is the card draw. The player shouldn't have just resolved the ability or otherwise taken the action.

In the earlier scenario, we do have some other things going wrong, such as the windmill slam of the creature, tapping it, then getting to damage. The argument could be made that it's DEC, but with so many other things that happened incorrectly prior to the drawn card… There's ample evidence that other GRVs happened before the DEC. Here, there really is no other evidence that any other GRV happened prior to the player putting a card into his hand. (I do not see the “incorrect order” clause applying here; the player resolved the ability without waiting for the opponent to confirm the ability resolved.)

Now, Joshua's point does merit consideration, as we might certainly get into a situation where a player draws his card for the turn and the opponent had a response. So, I think it is worth reflecting on before making an assessment of infraction in either direction. But, in situations where the “sloppiness” results in a situation where there could be significant potential for advantage as a result, it needs to be treated seriously.

It may seem an unfortunate lesson to learn here, but I think “Adam” does need to slow down a bit before just playing the game in a vacuum. A bit more clear communication and interaction with the opponent in the game would have done a lot to head off this problem.