Situation: AP attacks with and sees the top card of his library. We all agree that this is LEC but we are having a discussion about the fix. I fixed it by shuffling away the seen card and letting AP redo the action. Is this the correct fix?

Kind regards

Olivier Wattel, Alex de Blecourt and Jan Jaap Vermeire

Sound perfect to me, as long as the card was not known prior to this.
Lasse B. Jensen, Denmark

Inspired by your situation, I am thinking about another situation.

Another situation:A card is already exiled by Bomat Courier, and Bomat Courier's controller faced up that card. Such situation maybe occur if he/she controls multiple couriers or resolves Pyxis of Pandemonium's second ability.

I think, in my situation, Bomat Courier's revealed cache should be shuffled into library. IPG2.2 says ‘Shuffle any previously unknown cards into the random portion of the deck, then put any known cards back in their correct locations’, and if revealed card is shuffled into library, he/she gets no advantage through the infraction.

Takeshi Sue, Japan

The more I look at it, the more I believe situations concerning cards hidden to all players aren't covered by the IPG at the moment. I tried to make some big titles so you can go to the part that you find interesting if you don't want to read through everything.

First of all, let's present some situations with Bomat Courier:

A: AP attacks with it and sees/looks at the top card of his library before putting it under Bomat Courier(the one Olivier describes)

B: A player takes the wrong pile on the table, maybe thinking it is his hand or another face down pile he wanted to take (the situation Takeshi describes)

C: The same situation as B, but earlier this game I had the chance to go through my library (maybe with a fetchland or with Attune with Aether). While going through it, I noticed the only planeswalker I play, Arlinn Kord, is missing. I deduce it is under the Bomat.

D: I cast Emrakul, the Promised End and take the control of my opponent who has a Bomat Courier with cards under it. I didn't know I couldn't look at them, so I did.

What's the infraction?

The first sentence in LEC is “A player looks at a card they were not entitled to see.”. So yeah, great, it looks like it belongs here. But looking closely, what can we find in the philosophy paragraph? “Once those cards have joined another set, the infraction is handled as a Hidden Card Error or Game Rule Violation.”.

So this means, I can only apply LEC if the card hasn't touched the other set yet. Situation A definitely belongs in here.

But if it isn't LEC, is it HCE or GRV?
HCE: "A player commits an error in the game that cannot be corrected by only publicly available information and does so without his or her opponent’s permission. This infraction only applies when a card whose identity is known to only one player is in a hidden set of cards both before and after the error."
Since it can't be a HCE, we only have GRV left. So be it.

What's the fix?

Now this is where it get's tough.

Situation A: We agreed on LEC. What fix does the infraction allow us to do? “Shuffle any previously unknown cards into the random portion of the deck, then put any known cards back in their correct locations. ” Which means… We should shuffle Bomat courier's card into the library and… That's it? It doesn't allow us to put any card back anywhere. It doesn't tell us to do the action again. So yeah, that's it.

If the set has more than a single card:

Situation B: The GRV additional remedy only offers us the classic “backup or leave as it is”. Can we back up? Probably not. It would mean backing up until the point where the card was put under Bomat courier. If the set contains more than one card, it means we'll have to back up more than a full turn, which probably isn't a good idea. So do we leave as it is? Well, no other choice so yes.
Notice that if situation A was a GRV, we would actually be able to backup and perform the action again. But it isn't.

Situations C and D follow the same reasoning as situation B.

If the set only has one card:

If they only contain 1 card it gets weird(er). The card is the set. But at the same time, one card can't be a set. Can it? In LEC Definition, we can find the sentence “A set is a physically distinct group defined by a game rule or effect.” Hey, this feels like a dictionnary, now I have to look up for the word group ! The mathematician inside me tells me that yes, a group can only have one element in it.
It means every other situation other than situation A cannot be LEC.
So we fall back at the GRV fix: we do nothing (unless it happenned early enough that we can backup).

Hey, we found the fixes, so what's the problem?

Oh sure, we found it. But do they feel right? Does it feel right to have that information and only get a warning out of it? Situation D is an actual GP call. Does it feel right that the opponent has the information but not the owner since we have to leave as it is?

I think we need an actual paragraph covering cards in hidden zones outside of the library. It could cover Botmat courier, Pyxis of Pandemonium or hideaway lands for example.

Now should we just replace the cards by taking another one at random? It doesn't feel quite right if you take a look at situation C. Also if you imagine that bomat courier took a card originally know by it's controller, maybe because he scried for example.

We could also punish the player by revealing this information to both players. Now they both have an advantage. We need to judge how big this advantage is, and for sure it could be huge maybe making the owner of the cards instantly activating Bomat courier. But the IPG is supposed to cover 95% of the cases, and maybe this last sentence is the 5%.

The last idea is to make it be the actual LEC. But the fix becomes “Shuffle any previously unknown cards into the random portion of the deck” which doesn't feel quite right for situations C and D.

Unfortunately I don't have the panacea here. My personal opinion is that the second fix might be the best. What needs to be decided is “what covers 95% of the case” and I think this is the one. But I might be wrong.

Don't get me wrong, we found what's written on the IPG so we apply it. But it's not because it is official it isn't broken, so we should at least discuss it to see if it needs a change. And I believe it does.

Originally posted by Àre Maturana:

C: The same situation as B, but earlier this game I had the chance to go through my library (maybe with a fetchland or with Attune with Aether). While going through it, I noticed the only planeswalker I play, Arlinn Kord, is missing. I deduce it is under the Bomat.

I don't think this is that bad. You can have an identical scenario with gonti, lord of luxury where it will also be known what the “missing” card is.

Originally posted by Àre Maturana:

I think we need an actual paragraph covering cards in hidden zones outside of the library. It could cover Botmat courier, Pyxis of Pandemonium or hideaway lands for example.

With hideaway lands you do know the exiled card so maybe two different paragraphs are in order here: one for known hidden cards and one for unknown.

Originally posted by Àre Maturana:

Don't get me wrong, we found what's written on the IPG so we apply it. But it's not because it is official it isn't broken, so we should at least discuss it to see if it needs a change. And I believe it does.

So do I.

“Once those cards have joined another set, the infraction is handled as a Hidden Card Error or Game Rule Violation.”

So this means, I can only apply LEC if the card hasn't touched the other set yet. Situation A definitely belongs in here.

When does this make B & C stop being L@EC? What is the “other set” here?
If I understand the scenarios correctly, those are just looking at a hidden card or a hidden pile of cards without putting them anywhere else?

Actually even D seems to be L@EC, but I would deviate and not apply the fix then =)
Similar to picking up the other player's hand for whatever reason (No Emrakuls involved).

This infraction only applies when a card whose identity is known to only one player is in a hidden set of cards both before and after the error."
Since it can't be a HCE, we only have GRV left. So be it.

HCE seems to apply if you only look at part of the pile and then put it back on the pile. Somehow.
Or, more likely, A if the seen card was put on an existing pile.

Edited Toby Hazes (Dec. 13, 2016 06:25:38 AM)

Originally posted by Toby Hazes:

When does this make B & C stop being L@EC? What is the “other set” here?
If I understand the scenarios correctly, those are just looking at a hidden card or a hidden pile of cards without putting them anywhere else?

I might be missing something here but I don't get how legally searching your library and noticing a card missing so concluding that it is underneath the courier is L@EC.

C is just B but with more investigation. The searching library is not part of the infraction. My “looking at hidden pile” referred to the Courier pile, that is being looked at as described in B.
But I might be missing things too.

Edited Toby Hazes (Dec. 13, 2016 08:27:29 AM)

Hello, i have a question.. If NAP have pithing needle and name bomat courier as pithing needle enter the battlefield, AP activate bomat courier ability (he/she forget about pihting needle) which have 4 cards in exiled and currently no hand, after resolve NAP just realize AP can activated bomat courier act ability.. Is it GRV or HCE and what the best remedy for this situation.?

Originally posted by Wendra Djati Kamadjaja:

Hello, i have a question.. If NAP have pithing needle and name bomat courier as pithing needle enter the battlefield, AP activate bomat courier ability (he/she forget about pihting needle) which have 4 cards in exiled and currently no hand, after resolve NAP just realize AP can activated bomat courier act ability.. Is it GRV or HCE and what the best remedy for this situation.?

I'd say it's a GRV as AP is activating an ability that couldn't legally be activitated. You would then return the card to their appropriate zone (being in exile under the courier). However, as Are is pointing out, this leads to an awkward situation.

Some interesting ideas, here. This is an oddity, to be sure - but Bomat Courier saw play at GP Denver recently, so it *will* come up. I don't know if any real issues came from it, nor how many - but judges at the GP were certainly discussing the “what-ifs”, as we're wont to do.

For now:

(A) {sees the card before adding it to the Bomat set} Looking At Extra Cards, apply the remedy, then resolve the Courier's effect correctly. Those who noted that L@EC doesn't include a backup are correct - but the Courier's effect never got resolved, an infraction occurred instead, and we continue.

(B), (C) and (D) - simple GRVs. Same for the Pithing Needle twist.
In a way, that's unfortunate, as we don't have a remedy that can really repair the damage done. For that reason, be sure you investigate carefully - I worry that the risk/reward calculation is a bit skewed, in this example, and some may be very tempted. Once you decide it was an honest mistake, issue the GRV and leave things as they are.
Note that, in situation (C), it's implied that the player still picked up and looked at the Bomat pile; the fact they already “knew” what card(s) were there, based on a tutor effect, is irrelevant.

I will mention that the policy team is aware of the complications presented by Bomat and Pyxis of Pandemonium; I am not promising changes, but I won't be surprised if something can be done, in the future.

d:^D

First,

Originally posted by Toby Hazes:

Similar to picking up the other player's hand for whatever reason (No Emrakuls involved).

It's a sad day to see “Mindslaver” get replaced by “Emrakul” in colloquial language. RIP Mindslaver.

Okay, back to the scenarios.

(A) This seems fairly intuitive to me. A single card under Bomat can be considered to have never left the top of the library (physically moved, yes, but philosophically still in that zone), so you just apply the LEC fix and finish resolving Bomat's ability—no “backup” needed. Scott beat me to this.

(B), (C), (D) Could we treat this as HCE, reveal the set to the opponent, choose 0 cards, and continue playing? Not technically supported in the remedy section, but seems to fit the philosophy of “error can be mitigated by giving the opponent sufficient knowledge…”

Originally posted by David Poon:

(A) … Scott beat me to this.

well, that also applies to (B), (C), and (D).

Originally posted by David Poon:

Could we treat this as HCE

No.

d:^D

Originally posted by David Poon:

(B), (C), (D) Could we treat this as HCE, reveal the set to the opponent, choose 0 cards, and continue playing? Not technically supported in the remedy section, but seems to fit the philosophy of “error can be mitigated by giving the opponent sufficient knowledge…”

If you want to do that, you probably have to chnage the definition of HCE beforehand. There is no cards moving from a set to another in this case and this is what HCE currently applies to

Originally posted by Théo CHENG:

If you want to do that, you probably have to change the definition of HCE beforehand. There is no cards moving from a set to another in this case and this is what HCE currently applies to.

Surprisingly, there's nothing in the definition of HCE that states the card(s) must move to a different set.

Scott, knowing that we can't apply HCE—do you think it would be better to have the fix I proposed available in the future? If not, why? (I could see reasons ranging from the scenario being too corner-casey to justify making a change, or some similar situation causing bad things to happen with the fix… what are your thoughts?)