Welcome back to the Knowledge Pool, this week we have a Silver scenario, so L2s wait until after your FNM to join the discussion.

Anna is playing against Nigel at a Sealed PPTQ, round four has just begun. Anna asks to speak to you away from the table, shows you her hand, which contains 3 copies of Narnam Cobra. Anna explains that she is only playing 2 copies of Narnam Cobra in her main deck, and has one more which she sideboarded into her deck in round three. You confirm that Anna has just drawn her hand, and called you immediately. What do you do?

Edited Joe Klopchic (Jan. 18, 2017 11:05:36 AM)

This is D/DLP with the option to downgrade the game loss to a warning. Correct the deck, have Anna shuffle and mulligan.

This appears to be TE– DDLP - GL

Although the player did notify the judge, their mainboard contains 3 copies of a card that should be 2:1 MB/SB split, per the last 2 sentances of the downgrade path that would have allowed this to be a warning we do not apply this downgrade. We fix the main/side board of the player's deck and instruct them to go to game 2, no sideboarding allowed as they did not take any game actions

"Downgrade: If a player discovers an erroneous sideboard card (in a non-sideboard game) and
calls attention to it before an opponent sees (or is about to see) it, issue a Warning, return the
discovered card and all other sideboard cards back to the sideboard and shuffle any cards that
were supposed to be in the library into the random portion of the library. No card replaces
discovered sideboard cards in hand or other sets (such as a group of cards being scried or drawn).
Do not apply this downgrade if the error resulted in more copies of a main deck card being
played than were registered. For example if the decklist has two copies of Shock in the main
deck and two in the sideboard, but there are three copies of Shock in the library, the penalty is
not downgraded.

Edited Daniel Woolson (Jan. 18, 2017 12:03:53 PM)

Thanks everyone for participating this week, Daniel Woodson correctly identified the key phrase in the new downgrade section of Deck/Decklist problem.

Do not apply this downgrade if the error resulted in more copies of a main deck card being
played than were registered. For example if the decklist has two copies of Shock in the main
deck and two in the sideboard, but there are three copies of Shock in the library, the penalty is
not downgraded.

Anna receives a Game Loss for Deck/Decklist problem. While Anna has notified a judge immediately following drawing an opening hand with a wrong sideboard card, the downgrade does not apply when the extra sideboard cards also appear in the main deck.

Have Anna fix her deck to match her decklist, and the match will begin on game two.

Out of curiosity, may I ask about the philosophy behind not allowing the downgrade in this case?

Hi Lyle,

It is somehow explained in the Annotated IPG.

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg3-5/

But I could imagine a more elaborate note to this a bit seemingly unnatural exception. Just to make sure that all judges worldwide are on the same page when explaining this unpleasant situation to affected players.

Enjoy!

Well, I just updated the AIPG to match this answer. I would not have expected it to have been the answer had you asked me, but it is in line with the MIPG as documented.

Fortunately, this is such a rare circumstance that if it is an oversight, it will only affect a game or two between now and the next update.

Lyle, all - I'll speak a bit about the philosophy, why this specific example (additional copies of a main deck card left in for game one) is not eligible for the downgrade.

First, there is concern about this being more “abusable” than other failure to de-sideboard errors.
Simple example: A plays 2 copies of Fatal Push in each of her main deck and sideboard. In game one, she resolves 2 Fatal Push against her (aggressive deck) opponent, then draws a 3rd.

Also, the remedies get complicated by even the slightest of very realistic tweaks.
Simple example, same deck & sideboard setup as before: A resolves 1 Fatal Push, then uses some tutor or fetch-land effect, and sees the other 3 copies in her deck. Which two do we remove - the ones not yet played? We can't really remove the one in the graveyard, that already impacted the game.
Another, same setup as before: A has 2 Fatal Push in her opening hand, and has cast one of them. Then, N resolves the trigger from Gonti, Lord of Luxury, exiles a Fatal Push, then casts it targeting one of A's creatures. A realizes that adds up to 3 and immediately draws attention to her mistake - but which 2 are removed?

(Note that those are rhetorical questions. I know there are logical and justifiable arguments for which cards should be removed, but the point is to illustrate the issues with allowing the downgrade in those situations. Please don't debate which cards should be removed!)

d:^D

Thanks, Uncle Scott! Actually, it was my bad; I recall a previous edition of the IPG restricting the downgrade to 1) when the error is discovered before a game action has been taken and 2) when the player calls it on themselves (this previous situation happened to me actually and I was expecting a GL but was allowed to simply adjust my deck and take a Warning instead, which was awesome). I only skimmed Daniel's answer above and didn't notice the change in the IPG from what I had previously seen. Given the new information (new to me) in Daniel's quoted answer above, it makes sense.

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Lyle, all - I'll speak a bit about the philosophy, why this specific example (additional copies of a main deck card left in for game one) is not eligible for the downgrade.

First, there is concern about this being more “abusable” than other failure to de-sideboard errors.
Simple example: A plays 2 copies of Fatal Push in each of her main deck and sideboard. In game one, she resolves 2 Fatal Push against her (aggressive deck) opponent, then draws a 3rd.

Also, the remedies get complicated by even the slightest of very realistic tweaks.
Simple example, same deck & sideboard setup as before: A resolves 1 Fatal Push, then uses some tutor or fetch-land effect, and sees the other 3 copies in her deck. Which two do we remove - the ones not yet played? We can't really remove the one in the graveyard, that already impacted the game.
Another, same setup as before: A has 2 Fatal Push in her opening hand, and has cast one of them. Then, N resolves the trigger from Gonti, Lord of Luxury, exiles a Fatal Push, then casts it targeting one of A's creatures. A realizes that adds up to 3 and immediately draws attention to her mistake - but which 2 are removed?

(Note that those are rhetorical questions. I know there are logical and justifiable arguments for which cards should be removed, but the point is to illustrate the issues with allowing the downgrade in those situations. Please don't debate which cards should be removed!)

d:^D

These examples are all for already started games. But why are we not allowed to downgrade even if game 1 hasn't started yet, and the player called the judge themselves?

I think scenario there is faulty described. I would respond just like Maxwell. Because of “round four has just begun” part I assumed that Anna call us in pre-game procedures. Furthermore, there is no indication, that we are mid-game. Therefore I would go with Downgrade no.1 (de-sideboard deck and apply forced mulligan).

@István: we are, according to Downgrade no.1

Edited Bartłomiej Wieszok (Jan. 23, 2017 06:16:22 PM)

Not according to the annotated IPG, and I know that the annotations are not the official document, but it is on blogs.magicjudges.org, so which one is it?

The downgrade doesn’t apply here because there is no way to know if an advantage has already been gained. Typically, you aren’t going to realize you have three copies of shock until you have already seen/drawn/cast the previous two. If you catch this in your opening hand, the downgrade still does not apply.

Originally posted by Bryan Prillaman:

Well, I just updated the AIPG to match this answer. I would not have expected it to have been the answer had you asked me, but it is in line with the MIPG as documented.

Fortunately, this is such a rare circumstance that if it is an oversight, it will only affect a game or two between now and the next update.

At a tournament on sunday we had the following scenario:
Player plays thought scour on himself, sees a sideboard card and calls a judge. The judge confirms that he called immediately after he saw it, it would not even be apparent to the opponent that it was a sideboard card (just a 3 damage boardwipe, also main deck playable) and there were no copies officially in the mainboard so the downgrade applies. And then, during fixing, there were more cards to fix. He also boarded in a 3rd negate previous round. Downgrade is no longer an option, so the player got a game loss.

Okay in this case it was caught during a game, possibly with negate already seen in the game (no clue), so this scenario is a clear case for when the downgrade should not be applied. However, while seeing your 2 mainboard snakes and 1 sideboard snake in your opening hand will probably be a really rare scenario, the scenario where a player will see a clear sideboard card in opening hand while also having boarded in an extra copy of a mainboard card will be a way more common scenario and if I understand correctly the downgrade cannot be applied in that scenario.

Edited Harm Tacoma (Jan. 24, 2017 01:26:36 AM)

@Istvan: I don't know why, but I was sure, that new downgrade was in addition to old one (allowing us to fix deck and force mulligan if error was discovered before any play was made). It looks like it is replacing old one.
Answering your question, I think scenario when you have multiply copies of particular card in main and in side, and you manage to draw enough of them on your opening hand is highly unlikely (with biggest chances if you are playing 1 main and 3 side).

> However, while seeing your 2 mainboard snakes and 1 sideboard snake in your opening hand will probably be a really rare scenario, the scenario where a player will see a clear sideboard card in opening hand while also having boarded in an extra copy of a mainboard card will be a way more common scenario and if I understand correctly the downgrade cannot be applied in that scenario.

@harm: ‘the 2 mainboard snakes and 1 sideboard snakes in your opening hand’ is the only scenario I was talking about because it was the scenario presented in the KP scenario, and people were discussing that the penalty of GL was seemed too harsh in that instance and a philosophical change from the previous revisions of the IPG.

I wasn't saying that discovering instances mid game was going to be rare, although in reality, even those definitely aren't common.