As Journey to Nyx pre-release is coming, I want to discuss the correct remedy for a shuffle effect when Quarry Colossus is in play.

Quarry Colossus 5WW
Creature - Giant 5/6 (Uncommon)
When Quarry Colossus enters the battlefield, put target creature into its owner's library just beneath the top X cards of that library, where X is the number of Plains you control.

If the remedy of a situation requires a shuffle, judges are expected to ask the players if there are portions of the library that are known. Typically this only involves the top or the bottom cards of the library; however, the next set introduces Quarry Colossus, which puts a known card in between randomized sections of the library. The first time this effect was introduced was Unexpectedly Absent from Commander 2013, but I doubt judges had to deal with that card much at the time.

If I have to shuffle a player's library because of a GPE, and I see that his opponent with a Quarry Colossus in play, I will ask both players the name of the creature Colossus targeted, the value of X at the time, and how many cards have been drawn (or moved) from the top of that library since before performing my remedy. My question to the community is what do I do if the players forgot the value of X or how many cards have been drawn?

If the Colossus exiled a Phalanx Leader, and I see 5 plains under the Colossus's controller, what I will do is check the top 5 cards for Phalanx Leader. If Phalanx Leader is the 3rd card, I'll perform the shuffle and put it back as the 3rd card from the top without telling either players that Phalanx Leader is at the 3rd card as they already forgot how far below Phalanx Leader was. Please let me know if you guys agree with this approach.

Also, what if there are multiple Phalanx Leader in the top 5 cards? What do we do then?

Edited Terrence Cheung (April 20, 2014 09:19:28 PM)

First of all, just want to throw out there that Enigma Sphinx got there before Commander 2013. ;)

Secondly, I'd contend an easier approach is probably better. My understanding of the LEC fix's philosophy is that the library needs to be randomized, and by looking at the card, it's become somewhat unrandomized. However, you don't need to shuffle everything together to rerandomize it, just most of it.

Get a rough idea of what the X was (your idea of checking the current plains count isn't bad - adding 3 or 4 on top of that just to be safe would not be a terrible idea, either), and count out that many cards from the top. Put these cards aside. if one of the cards on the top of that region was the one revealed by mistake, shuffle it and the rest of the library together. Take the top card of the newly shuffled region, put it back on top of that stack you set aside, and put that section back on top of the library and have the players continue.

Of course there are a number of variables here, most importantly why exactly the shuffle needs to happen, but I'm inclined to say that this would be easier than trying to hide where you put that card back from the players.

Quarry Colossus is easy: “what creature was targeted?”, and “have you drawn X cards since then?”. Then find that creature in the top few cards, note its position, shuffle the random portion and put that creature back.

Long-Term Plans, now that's a fun one… :)

I guess I missed Enigma Sphinx and Long-Term Plans, thanks for the input. =)

Aric, your method is nice and I agree that it will be sufficient for most scenarios; however, if you only shuffle the accidentally revealed card to bottom portion of the libary, the player can argue that you are taking away the small percentage that the card can land back on top (or next few cards). For example, there should be around 25 cards in the library on t7 of a limited match, if you shuffle an accidentally revealed card back in, the chance of it landing on top again is 4%. If you only shuffle it into the bottom 20 cards, the chance of it landing on the top is 0%. If the revealed card was a Divine Verdict, then difference of 4% and 0% can potentially give an advantage to a player.

It's worth noting that while we do try to maximize customer service and maintaining the most correct state possible in these sort of situations, my understanding of our philosophy is that the player still messed up, so it's ultimately on them if they lose their tucked card to a shuffle fix. It's a hard lesson, but hopefully one that sticks with them: Play carefully.

Edited Rebecca Lawrence (April 21, 2014 11:13:01 AM)

I don't agree that it is the best customer service to just shuffle the card away. It is easy to find the card in the library, even without knowing how many draw steps have occurred, because we can just look for how many cards are on top of the card in question. Scott's answer of course is the best fix, as for corners, that is why we shuffle the whole library. Percentages aside, random is random.

Long-Term Plans, now that's a fun one… :)

Now i'm curious, what would be the appropriate approach for this situation? We cant ask for the card which was searched for because only one player knows the identity of it. So we stick with the “How much cards were drawn?”

For something like Long-Term Plans, you can just ask that player (away from the table, if they prefer). Hopefully, they won't decide that's an opportunity to name something else (i.e., their long-term plans have changed - pun intended!). The odds of that paying off are so slim, I'm not worried about it - if they name a different card, it has to be one of the top 3 cards…

I guess I can just retract my previous statement - Long-Term Plans won't be a problem, either.

d:^D

That makes sense, unless they havent forgett about their plans :)
Thank you!

Just to clarify: if they say they named card X, and it's not in the top 4…we're having a very different discussion about infractions, right?

There's a few possibilities there - they forgot already (seems unlikely, sure … but never say never); there's an error of manual dexterity (it has to be the 3rd card down, not even the 4th, so if it's #4 or #5, clumsiness is believable.

Or, they're just taking a gamble that the card they would rather have, instead of the one they actually named, is somehow in the top 3. That's why I said it's a slim possibility that they'd try a cheat like that.

In all those examples - and probably others you might come up with - yes, you're investigating to see what you believe just happened.