Clearly Andy has resolved Dig Through Time wrong, drawing seven cards when he should've looked at seven, keep two and put the rest to the bottom. This is clearly GPE-GRV. One could say that this is DEC, but since that violation comes from the GRV, we wont give penalty for that.
For Nathan, GPE-FtMGS, for not noticing the error in a timely manner. He had plenty of time to notice in between resolving Dig and drawing the card for his turn.

Fixing this seems simple enough. Nathan puts a random card from his hand to top of his deck and taps all his lands, and Andy takes the land he played back to his hand and resolves Dig Through Time properly.

Originally posted by Jacob Milicic:

Clynn Wilkinson
Also I don't understand why “at the moment before he or she began the… action that put a card into his or her hand, no other Game Rule Violation … had been committed” doesn't apply.

What is the Game Rule Violation that was committed prior to the cards entering Andy's hand?

GPE- Not finishing the resolution of dig.

Andy has certainly not finished the resolution of Dig.

If he hasn't started the resolution of dig,
then
he has drawn 7 cards with dig on the stack and played a land and passed the turn and never resolved dig.
else,
step 1: He started the resolution of dig looks at 7 cards.
step 2: This is where the rest of the resolution of dig should be.
step 3: Other stuff happens.

The rest of dig's resolution never happened and it should have happened as immediately as something could have possibly happened after everything that happened legally. Therefore any other error's happened after it.

Edited Clynn Wilkinson (Nov. 18, 2014 12:36:41 PM)

Every DEC ultimately comes from making a mistake, and they don't all automatically downgrade themselves because of that fact. Andy looked at 7 cards, then put 7 cards into his hand. There was no indication of a problem before the cards hit the hand. When Andy made his play and said “go” without putting anything on the bottom of the library, that was the first opportunity Nathan had to notice that something went wrong. Andy committed DEC, and Nathan committed FtMGS because he didn't call out the problem at his first opportunity.

Every DEC comes from a mistake unless they are cheating. Not all DECs are created by a GRV.

The famous ancestral recall draw 4.
or
the similar and recent Sphinx's rev for 4 draw 5.
or
a DEC that I Had in the last Comp. REL event I judged. AP goes into draw step, and draws. A bunch of stuff happens in the draw step. He forgets he has drawn and draws again.
or
Dexterity Errors

Hey guys, thanks for some wonderful, civil discourse about this question. The devil's in a couple of small details in this one, and those were all identified and discussed. Niels, the creator of this scenario, is in Germany and thus asleep right now, so I'm posting the solution in his stead:


This scenario does not fall under ‘Drawing Extra Cards’. As people mentioned in the discussion, it is practically impossible to look at multiple cards without holding them in your hand. By this logic calling the cards taken off the top of the deck is completely legal.

When accepting the above paragraph, the next thing is looking for what is going wrong first. In this case that would be playing a land during the resolution of the spell, a clear Game Rule Violation. Once we reach this conclusion, we also exclude the possibility of this being Drawing Extra Cards.

This leads us to the next pitfall. The first thing we do when handling a GRV is looking if any of the partial fixes are applicable. The partial fix for objects that are changing zones and end up in the wrong zone is not, because had the spell been resolved correctly the cards would not have changed zones at any time. That partial fix only applies to objects which were supposed to be moving from zone A to zone B, but moved to zone C instead.

We are left with GRV and rewind or leave the game state as is. Rewinding a draw for a tapped out opponent is far less disturbing than allowing a player to play on with 5 extra cards in hand so we rewind to the point where the game was last in a legal state which is when Andy was looking at the 7 cards, so we return a random card to top for Nathan, tap him out again, return the played land to Andy's hand and we are ready to go.


To sum it all up, the proper Infraction is a Game Rule Violation, which comes with a warning. There are no relevant partial fixes, so the solution is to (with HJ permission) rewind to the point in the spell's resolution when Andy is looking at all 7 cards, since that is the last time the game state wasn't broken. A failure to maintain game state penalty for Nathan is also appropriate.

Congratulations to everybody who got this one right, and we look forward to seeing your involvement continue on next week's scenario!

Thanks for the answer, Patrick! Can you clarify something? I'm having trouble reconciling this:

Originally posted by Patrick Vorbroker:

This scenario does not fall under ‘Drawing Extra Cards’. As people mentioned in the discussion, it is practically impossible to look at multiple cards without holding them in your hand. By this logic calling the cards taken off the top of the deck is completely legal.

with this:

Originally posted by Patrick Vorbroker:

We are left with GRV and rewind or leave the game state as is. Rewinding a draw for a tapped out opponent is far less disturbing than allowing a player to play on with 5 extra cards in hand so we rewind to the point where the game was last in a legal state which is when Andy was looking at the 7 cards, so we return a random card to top for Nathan, tap him out again, return the played land to Andy's hand and we are ready to go.

Wouldn't the choice be between rewinding or leaving the cards that he's holding back on top of his library?

The putting the cards he's holding back where they belong isn't a suitable answer, because while they were being looked at when he played the land, there's no arguing that they aren't in his hand when Nathan begins his turn. Simply having him finish resolving the spell now, as you suggest, is not a fix that's supported by the IPG. We either apply a partial fix, rewind, or do nothing.

Originally posted by Patrick Vorbroker:

Hey guys, thanks for some wonderful, civil discourse about this question. The devil's in a couple of small details in this one, and those were all identified and discussed. Niels, the creator of this scenario, is in Germany and thus asleep right now, so I'm posting the solution in his stead:

Wow, be careful, you do not make friends only when you think Belgium is Germany :/

Originally posted by Patrick Vorbroker:

This scenario does not fall under ‘Drawing Extra Cards’. As people mentioned in the discussion, it is practically impossible to look at multiple cards without holding them in your hand. By this logic calling the cards taken off the top of the deck is completely legal.

When accepting the above paragraph, the next thing is looking for what is going wrong first. In this case that would be playing a land during the resolution of the spell, a clear Game Rule Violation. Once we reach this conclusion, we also exclude the possibility of this being Drawing Extra Cards.

The last sentence in the first paragraph doesn't make sense to me for some reason. Is it missing a word?

I know that the cards being looked at have to be in Andy's physical hand during the resolution of Dig Through Time, but at some point they moved to his Hand Zone. What about the scenario makes the distinction between “play a card during Dig's resolution, forget to finish what you're doing, accidentally draw extra cards” and “accidentally draw extra cards during Dig's resolution, play one of them”? Because there's little or no visible difference between the two situations, are we just trying to give Andy the benefit of the doubt?

The cards from Dig Through Time remain in the library until the spell finishes resolving, at which point two are placed in hand and the rest on the bottom of the library. Those five never leave the library - even though, in this case, Andy still had part of his library in his tight grip.

Had Andy simply put the land on the battlefield, set aside another card face-down, and then put five cards on the bottom of his library, it would be a simple case of Out of Order Sequencing; clearly, there's no way that the 7 cards were suddenly in his “hand zone” instead of still in the library, even though he played the land out of order. The same principle applies here.

One of the reasons I liked this scenario so much, is that it not only teaches an important, basic concept (how to distinguish between Drawing Extra Cards and a Game Rule Violation that includes cards in hand that shouldn't be), but it also illustrates how easy it is to be led astray by some details. It's easy to think “oh, that just *has* to be DEC!” and then conclude that the cards became his hand before he played the land (just one example).

The much simpler explanation is, simply, that Andy failed to correctly resolve Dig Through Time, and as a result of that GRV, he now has cards in hand that shouldn't be there. None of the partial fixes apply, so we consider a Backup; this one seems relatively harmless - i.e., we aren't likely to change many decisions, perhaps none at all - and we arrive at a much better game state by applying the Backup.

When we dig too deep, in search of infractions, we imply a requirement for more exacting, technically perfect play than any player can actually comply with. Always try to remember, these are humans, having fun, playing a game. Let's help them do it as fairly as possible.

d:^D

EDIT: clarified the part about how the cards weren't suddenly Andy's hand…

Edited Scott Marshall (Nov. 19, 2014 11:04:35 AM)