Alex casts an Ancestral Recall, targeting himself and paying it with a green mana.
When the spell resolves, he draws four cards.

Should we consider it a GRV + HCE or just a GRV?

Thanks for your help! :D

Edited Jacopo Strati (Sept. 16, 2016 08:55:54 AM)

I'm very much inclined to call this 2 seperate infractions, as the drawing of the 4th card is completely independent from the wrongly paid cost. Also, we need to fix the 4th card in hand ^^

Yes, this is a disastrous recall… and I would dtay close to this table to see what else will come up!

I agree with Dustin. This player has committed a GRV, followed by an HCE, with different root causes. They'll receive both Warnings.

We would apply the HCE fix of having the opponent choose one card to shuffle in to the library, followed by either rewinding, or (perhaps more likely) leaving the game state as it is. The rewind may not be advisable if it will leave the player with the ability to recast the Recall - or choose not to - with the knowledge of which three cards were returned to the top of their library.

Thanks everyone for the replies! :D

I'm inclined to consider it just a GRV, but I'm not totally sure about it (that's why I'm asking :D).

The point is: the “previous error clause” exists because it allows the opponent to stop the action before it leads to an illegal game state.
This is why, I think, we don't apply HCE in such situations: some of the fault lies with the opponent if he/she doesn't point out the error, so we don't allow him/her to look at the offender's hand (which would be a great advantage for him/her).

I think this scenario falls in this interpretation. If my opponent pays a wrong amount of mana, it doesn't matter if he/she draws 3, 4 or N cards: any draw is illegal and I'm responsible of that error as well.
I had a chance to stop him/her, but I didn't, so I should not be allowed to “destroy” his/her Hand.
It's the same when I cast Think Twice and I say “I draw two cards” and my opponent says “ok!”. I don't consider it HCE for the same reasons. :)

Edited Jacopo Strati (Sept. 17, 2016 03:30:52 AM)

Casting a spell for wrong mana is a visible mistake (GRV) that the opponent can stop from escalating before he/she allows the spell to resolve. If the opponent allows you to resolve the draw effect, it is completely expected that you draw some cards, and that is not a second error, but merely an effect of the first error.
Drawing 4 from an effect that instructs you to draw 3, becomes visible at the moment you add the 4th card to the hand, and that is the first point the opponent can act (and by then, you already have too many cards in hand, which we need to fix and penalise, by HCE).

Casting Recall and announcing “I will draw 4” is a situation where you had to be there… if both players agree this is exactly what happened, they understood eachother and only later realise that Recall draws 3 and not 4, well, you could argue that the opponent allowed the extra draw and HCE should not apply. But that's a totally different discussion…

The “previous error clause” is there to remind you that a GRV that leads to an HCE is not itself an HCE. If a player casts a Recall with green mana, that's the error. Drawing 3 cards is a perfectly legal resolution of the spell.

In this case however, the player has committed 2 separate errors. First he cast a spell incorrectly, then he resolved a spell incorrectly. Just because they were the same spell doesn't make them have the same root cause, so they should be handled as two separate infractions.

Thanks everyone for your answers! :D