Welcome back to the Knowledge Pool! This week we have a Silver scenario, which means we would like L2+ judges to wait until Friday before adding their contributions to the discussion.

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/knowledgepool/?p=1038

Abby is in playing a Sealed Grand Prix trial, which you are head judging. Abby has four cards in her hand and casts Courser of Kruphix. She reveals a Charging Badger on top of her library. She then casts Divination, drawing the Charging Badger and the next card on top of her library. She then reveals the new top card of her library, which is an Island. At this point, her opponent Nora stops the game and calls you to the table, saying Abby didn't reveal the second card she drew from Divination.

What do you do?

Edited Joshua Feingold (April 16, 2014 08:31:45 PM)

Abby committed a Game Play Error. Although it involved drawing cards, it's a GRV, not DEC–the problem was her failure to reveal the second card she drew.

The error was caught immediately and backing up is relatively simple, so I'd attempt to rewind the game state. Set the Charging Badger aside and randomize Abby's remaining three cards, then put one of the three on top of the library and Abby reveals and draws it. (Or, less precisely, Abby reveals one of the three cards at random.) The revealed Island stays on top of library. Abby and Nora can play on at this point.

As for penalties, Abby gets a Warning for her GRV. I don't think a FtMGS Warning is appropriate for Nora since expecting her to intervene before Abby can put the second card in her hand is asking a bit much.

Edited Bradley Morin (April 16, 2014 10:31:19 PM)

Looks like a GRV for Abby for failing to reveal a card that should have been revealed. I'd explain to Abby that each draw is considered a separate action, so really with a card like Divination you are going to “draw a card, then draw a card” not “draw two cards”. This means that in between each the following card should be revealed. I don't believe that an upgrade is justifiable here because the card draw was legal, we just can't verify which card she drew. This would have only been an upgrade if it said something like "Look at the top card of your library, if it's a land, then reveal it and put it into your hand. So Abby gets a warning.

The appropriate fix for this could get some pretty odd glares. There is no partial fix so backing up is the best option. This means taking a single random card from Abby's hand and putting in on top of the top of the library to be revealed before the second draw is the correct option. There's a chance that the Charging Badger will be put back, there's also a chance that one of the other cards she had in her hand will be returned. I don't see any justification in the IPG for removing the Charging Badger from being one of the options of the random card to be returned. In a similar situation I wouldn't ask if cards like Gitaxian Probe or Thoughtseize had been recently used and set aside the cards that the player can remember. Play would continue from the second card being revealed and then drawn.

It looks for me like a GPE-GRV from Abby, she needs to show every card from a multiple card drawing source if the first card on her library is revealed do everyone. Since her opponent points out the error immediately there is no need for FtMGS.

For the fix a rewind the point right before Divination resolves looks good to me. The drawn Charging Badger will be put away and a random card will be chosen from the rest of Abby's hand cards. The chosen card and the Charging Badger will be put on the top of the library and the game goes on with drawing (and this time revealing the cards to Nora).

About the random chosen card: if Nora is able to name the three cards in Abby's hand aside from the two she was drawing before( because of a cards effect like Duress or Thoughtseize) wouldn't it be possible to identify the unrevealed card and put that one back at the library with the Charging Badger on the top of it?

It appears you're right, Marc, that the IPG doesn't support setting aside the Charging Badger when undoing Abby's second draw. If we go by the book, then, allowing the Charging Badger to be one of the cards returned to the library would seem to be correct.

I would be unhappy to carry out that solution, though, and I would be even more unhappy with that solution if I were Nora. The point of rewinding is to attempt to repair the game state–and undoing Nora's second draw by returning the Charging Badger results in an impossible game state.
Although it doesn't apply to this situation, there is precedent in the IPG for “legally known” information about cards in a hidden zone–namely, remedying a L@EC infraction when some of the library is non-random.

I'm new at this so I suppose the safe bet is just, “Do it by the book, dummy.” On the other hand, it's impossible for a document to anticipate all possible problems.

Thinking about René's solution, if we had to rewind to the point where Divination was cast (say Abby payed GGG for Divination) but Abby also failed to reveal the second card she drew, then it's actually impossible to strictly apply the remedy prescribed by the IPG; the procedure would be
1) Undo the second card drawn from Divination: randomize Abby's hand and place one card from her hand on top of her library.
2) Undo the first card drawn from Divination: the identity of the first card is known to both players, so we return Charging Badger…but of course there's a 25% chance we already took Charging Badger out of Abby's hand. Error, program crash.
Deviation from the letter of the IPG is necessary if we're rewinding Divination entirely; I'm comfortable saying deviation from the letter of the IPG is appropriate if we're only rewinding the second draw from Divination.

(Edited, clarified the last section.)

Edited Bradley Morin (April 17, 2014 12:29:41 AM)

That's an interesting point that the IPG doesn't support setting aside the known Card. If we determine two random cards including the Charging Badger in her hand it's possible that Nora gets more information then he normally would get (assuming we put both cards on the library an neither of them is Charging Badger)? And if we only determine one random card and the Charging Badger is one of the possible cards the opponent might get less information at all?

I don't see any reason not to choose the random card we put back from the set of possible cards it could be, excluding the Badger. The IPG doesn't detail how to back up every specific situation, it leaves it up to the human actually at the table to figure out the best way to get back to the original game state. In this case, we need to recognize that, of the four cards presently in A's hand, only 3 could have been the second card drawn. This is no different from using information from an earlier Thoughtsieze or Probe to make the most accurate backup possible given the information both players had access to.

Edited Dan Collins (April 17, 2014 04:58:50 AM)

So it's a GPE: GRV for A. The question is, what is the penalty, and what is the fix?

For the penalty: The normal penalty is a Warning. The upgrade to a GL only happens when the opponent cannot verify the legality of an action. That's not the case here, so no upgrade.

For the fix: Ideally, we'd like to know if N knew the content of some or all of A's hand before the Divination, and reveal and unknown card to N. However, it's not clear to me if the IPG supports this - it just says if the identity of the card is not known, a random card is returned instead. How does this apply to a hand where N partially knows the contents? Is it applicable to pick a random card *from the cards unknown to N*, and put it on top of A library? What if N knows a particular card is in A's hand and A just drew another copy with different artwork?

Personally that's how I would interpret the IPG in this case. I would check whether both players agree with the contents of any of A's hand. I would put those aside. I would then get A to put a random card of those left on top of her library, reveal it, and draw it.

Like the rest, I'm going with GRV/Warning, and no FtMGS. Since each card draw is a separate action, drawing the last one without revealing it was the GRV, so I'd rewind to that point by just putting a card at random back on top of the library, where it would be revealed. Then let the game resume from there.

The scenario doesn't say anything about hand knowledge, so it's not a concern for us. Also, the IPG doesn't specify that the point of error has to be a place where a player has priority, just that we have to rewind all game actions until just before that point. And multiple card draws are handled separately, so I think this falls under “game action” just fine.

There is a risk of not enough cards being revealed, as Charging Badger may be the random card. But consistency of our fix is more important than us trying to ensure a perfectly “fixed” game state.

It looks to me like a Warning: GPE-GRV for Abby for not revealing between draw actions. I also think that there's no reason to upgrade, since the legality of the draw was never in question. Since nothing has happened since, I think a backup is reasonable since there's no partial fix. I I'd have her reverse the draw by putting back one random card and the badger, then go through the divination properly this time, revealing the top before drawing.
No GPE-FtMGS for Nora, since this was caught immediately.

Edited Emma Bareis (April 17, 2014 09:28:42 AM)

GPE - GRV for AP (formerly GRV - Failure to Reveal), no penalty for NAP, because expecting NAP to maintain the game state here is asking too much. Set aside the Charging Badger and reveal another random card from AP's hand to NAP.

Before reading other responses:

Abby was supposed to reveal the top card of her library before drawing, but did not. She's committed a Game Play Error - Game Rule Violation, which carries a warning. While this particular error does include hidden information, there's not much potential for abuse, and the GRV doesn't involve the opponent being unable to confirm the legality of an action, so there's no need to upgrade.

The fix is to either rewind to the point of the error, or leave the game state as-is. I would say that the point of error occurred in the middle of Divination's resolution, when Abby drew the 2nd card without revealing, and that this isn't too complicated to rewind. The rewind would be to pick a random card from Abby's hand, put it on the top of the deck and reveal it, and then draw that card.

One deviation I would consider - given that a charging badger was *just* seen to be drawn, I would consider removing 1 charging badger from hand before picking a random card to return to top of deck. This *feels* like the right fix, but I'm not sure it's supported by the rules.


After reading other responses:

GPE - GRV with Warning for Abby is agreed on, and the nature of the rewind is generally agreed on. It's still a point of contention whether we're justified in setting aside the known charging badger before rewinding, or not.

If I were to rewind to before Divination (in a similar but different situation), I'd be very tempted to make sure that Charging Badger was the top card of the deck.

So without reading the previous replies….

The situation seems like A mistakenly did not understand that “Draw X” effects are split up into X separate draw effects. If that is the case, A has committed a GPE: GRV by not revealing each draw due to the static ability of Courser of Kruphix. A receives a warning, and N has not committed any infraction by appropriately calling a judge. Unfortunately a rewind is not possible as the un-revealed card is no longer uniquely identifiable. I would leave the game state as is, explain how “Draw X” effects work in magic to A, and caution A to play more carefully.

Of course, I would ask a few casual questions to see how much A understands about how these rules work and I would investigate to see if the infraction has been committed before in previous games. If there seems to be a possibility that A was trying to cheat, I would talk to previous opponents and check to see if A had any previous warnings in the GPT thus far. If, after a thorough investigation, I am reasonably sure A knowingly did not reveal the second card to gain an advantage, A will be disqualified for UC: Cheating.

Edit: Hmmmm… After reading the other replies, it seems that the consensus is that a rewind is possible… I guess I can get on board with that. In that case, setting aside the charging badger feels right…. but I am uneasy about this fix in general (hence why I didn't think it would be possible). My vote, I guess, if we go by the book, is that we shouldn't set aside the badger.

Edited Richard Vo (April 19, 2014 02:14:57 PM)

Good work to everyone this week who correctly identified the penalty and infraction for this situation. It is indeed a Warning for a Game Rules Violation for Abby with no penalty for Nora.

IPG 2.5 states

An error that an opponent can’t verify the legality of should have its penalty upgraded. These errors involve misplaying hidden information, such as the morph ability or failing to reveal a card to prove that a choice made was legal.

Although not revealing the second card drawn with Divination does involve an error with hidden information, this information is not required to “verify the legality” of drawing that card. Thus, we do not upgrade here and treat the error as we would any other ordinary GRV.

This leaves us to determine what is the appropriate fix, if any. In this case, the error occurred when the top card of Abby's library was not revealed prior to drawing the second card for Divination. No partial fixes apply here, so we are left to determine whether a rewind makes sense. We actually have a split opinion among the judges on the Knowledge Pool team this week, so I will be presenting explanations for both performing the rewind and not doing so. We leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which of these is most appropriate in your real events.

Mechanically, it is simple to rewind to the point of the error by placing a random card from Abby's hand back on top of her library, and continuing with the correct series of actions: revealing that card, then drawing it. Setting aside the Charging Badger before revealing a random card - while quite tempting! - isn't supported by policy. We do not take Nora's notes into consideration when determining which random card to place back on top. This means we may place the Charging Badger back on top and reveal it again. This same principle would apply had the Courser been in play for several turns and a large proportion of Abby's hand were known. The card placed back on the deck will always be fully random.

The complete randomness of the returned card is what leads those in the “no rewind” camp to their opinion. Randomly revealing an already known card will likely be unsatisfactory or confusing, especially for Nora. If you have to go through contortions to figure out how to make a rewind work, the first thing you need to consider is “maybe I shouldn't be rewinding here.”

In a real event, it will be up to you to determine whether you feel the players will be best served by rewinding a completely random card or none at all.

Thanks everyone for participating, and we'll be back tomorrow with a new scenario.

I'm having some trouble parsing this one. I'm sure I've seen cases where information from a previous Thoughtsieze or Duress or Probe was used to “set aside” some cards before randomly choosing one. Is that a different situation from this one, or is it always wrong (at Competitive) to do this?

Is there some reason I'm missing as to why it would be harmful to back up this way?