Let'say i open my hand in G1 with 2 sideboard cards in it. Judge return those 2 cards to sideboard and now i have 5 cards in hand.
May i mulligan?
If yes i can mulligan to 6 (7-1) or to 4 (5-1)?

Thanks for the attention!!

Saverio

Locking this thread, as it overlaps with this latest Knowledge Pool scenario.

d:^D

Although Saverio's post wasn't specific about whether the sideboard cards were unique to the sideboard, or additional copies of cards also found in the main deck, I didn't want to risk a complete answer here until the KP scenario had been concluded. (I encourage everyone to follow this link to that KP scenario, for that answer.)

If, as noted in the KP scenario, the sideboard cards duplicate one or more main deck cards, the downgrade to Warning does not apply, and this is simply a Game Loss - thus, mulligan is no longer relevant.

However, if we do apply the downgrade, we now have a starting hand of 5; the two sideboard cards (and any others in the deck) cease to exist. This has two ramifications:
1) if you choose to mulligan, you will mulligan to one less than your current hand size - in this example, to 4.
2) if you do not choose to mulligan, you can still perform the “scry” (CR 103.4 doesn't actually call it that; in a related post, Florian referred to it as the “Vancouver Scry”, since it originated at Pro Tour Vancouver, August 2015), because your starting hand is less than the 7 you originally had.

d:^D

P.S. - another thread was started, asking very much the same questions; I'm linking to it here, just for completeness. I also ask - and this is an age-old standard protocol for these forums, and the Judge List before them - that you do a bit of research before you post, in case your question has already been posted.

Scott, may I presente a concern?
I draw my opening hand and see two sideboard cards, as in the example. If I call a Judge, I end up with 5 cards and a possible mull to 4
If I instead anounce the mulligan and, while shuffling, just happens that I take a look at my deck and see a couple of sideboard cards, and call a Judge; he will fix the deck and I will continue with my mull to 6.
I know its a corner scenario. But I dont think it is “that” much corner, specially in some cases when players swap a lot of cards. The solution is harsher than it used to be. And the player gains an advantage by not calling the Judge.

Sorry for the duplicate post. Since Scott rightfully close it, let's continue the discussion here!

I second Federico's concern, and I do not think it is a corner case. Even with a single sideboard card in hand, players are incentivized to evaluate whether they'd keep the hand without the sideboard card(s) before deciding whether to call a Judge. If they don't, it is strictly better for them to not call: even if they don't “discover” the card during the new shuffle (which might lead to pointed questions by the HJ), they still get the chance to not draw any sideboard cards during their game, and if they draw one, they are back to the same number of cards that they would have gotten if they called a Judge.

Let's not (over?) analyze policy in the context of Cheating, m'kay?

d:^D

It's not just a cheating concern. The current fix means players are more disadvantaged if they have a sideboard card in their opening hand (that they plan to mulligan) as opposed to having one in the remainder of their library.
So even if players are honest, it's very ‘feels bad’ to tell a player that their honesty is causing them to receive a harsher penalty.

Is there any harm in allowing players to mulligan to 6 if their opening 7 has one or more sideboard cards in it? They have missed out on the opportunity to have a 7 card hand so they are still at a disadvantage.

The concern is real, when you get the worst penalty if you play corrrect and honest than you do if you bend the rules, most are going to bend it.

and, lets face it, how do you call cheat if they call you for the desideboard if they call you during the mulligan, you dont have how to know if they got a hand with sideboard cards before the mulligan

I'm going to go a step further and ask why we can't just have the player draw two cards to replace the ones that were removed? I don't think this is an abusable fix - they had to make a verifiable error first, and bring it to the attention of a judge - and it's the kind of thing that could potentially get them in a lot of trouble if a pattern of it develops.

Do players make a habit of looking at their deck while shuffling after
mulliganing in Game One? I know I'd consider it fairly strange if my
opponent did that. How quick on their feet do we think the players who are
trying to do this are going to be when we ask “How did you discover these
sideboard cards? Oh, I see…why were you looking at your deck during
shuffling? Do you do that habitually? Do you do that while shuffling your
opponent's deck?”

Additionally, this situation involves a lot of on-the-fly
cheat-of-opportunity math where the player has to know what the prescribed
fix is, that there's a less-harsh fix available, and figure out how to
explain their discovery of sideboard cards mid-shuffle rather than while
looking at a hand. Not impossible, of course, but I suspect you'd catch
more players trying to do this than there will be players who get away with
it. After all, they are having to alert a judge for their gambit to work.

Now, all of that said, I do agree that the fix feels much more punitive
than I'd like, and I agree that if players know about it, it will prompt
otherwise honest players to try a cheat, which is clearly a path we would
rather not go down. I do think, as I said above, that the actual problems
won't be that bad in practice, but it would be better if we had other
options to address an honest mistake. I am in favor of allowing the
opening hand to still be considered to be a 7-card hand, meaning they can
keep (in this case) 5 or mulligan to 6. In other cases, it will be keep 6
or mulligan to 6. That, I think, would be a much better solution than
effectively skipping over two mulligans. As is, I can even envision
situations where players will cheat by simply not calling a judge at all
and hoping they can sneak by without those sideboard cards being noticed,
or that their opponent just won't know they're sideboard cards for whatever
reason, because the player in question considers a forced mulligan to 5 or
4 to be as bad as a game loss, so they might as well try it. That's
clearly not a good position to put players in.

Just had a quick chat with Policy, to confirm a couple things.

First - yes, it was intentional, removing the (more forgiving) downgrade for discovering s/b cards in the opening hand, if they're additional copies of main deck cards. That variation of s/b cards in game one is both quite rare and very much a concern; it's a Game Loss.

Second - yes, that may incentivize players to Cheat. I apologize for seeming dismissive here, but - c'est la vie.

Originally posted by Nathaniel Lawrence:

why we can't just have the player draw two cards to replace the ones that were removed?

thus rewarding the mistake(s)? No, that seems like a bad idea to me…

d:^D

Edited Scott Marshall (Jan. 24, 2017 03:45:41 PM)

There's no “reward” here if they're simply drawing cards into an opening hand. You've shuffled the main deck cards back into the library and drawn entirely randomly; there's no incentive to game this by “accidentally” putting sb cards into your deck or even using sleight to “draw” from sb. We're not talking about a free mulligan, just a return to whatever hand size is appropriate.

Leaving them down the sb cards is shockingly punitive. Don't we want players to bring errors to our attention?

Reading the back and forth in this thread has unfortunately left me more confused.

If “Ponder, pick up 3, oops this one stuck I have 4” is not LEC, what does fall under that?

Also agree that a forced mull to 5 for a self-called error (2 sideboard cards in opening hand) is very punitive, more than it would have been under the old policy even. If that was the intent, is it really meeting the goal of the tweak?

I think there is some merit to giving the player the choice of

• Keep the remaining cards after SB cards are removed
  
• After fixing, mulligan to one less card than the hand that contained the SB cards
  

As it stands, this IPG change is an increase to the punishment in some very specific corner cases. If we're willing to live with that, that's cool, but the goal recently seems to be avoiding increasing punishment.

Edited Joe Klopchic (Jan. 24, 2017 08:55:26 PM)

I agree with Nathan that I don't see any reward in just redrawing as much cards as there were incorrect cards as long as it is not the card with which you replaced the incorrect card but a random one. With that fix we are as close as possible to the game state that would have happened if everything would have been correct. This might be more complex when we are after the start of the game which the new infraction does not seperate, but a simple “The replacement cards are drawn from the random portion of the deck” should deal with that.

The mulligan to cards before the fix -1 would only be manageable at the start of the game, but not at the middle of the game. I guess one goal of this change was that we don't distinct between start and middle of the game anymore