Hello Judges.

I need your opinion about this scenario.

AP cast Gonti, Lord of Luxury and trigger its ability target NAP.
NAP say “OK”, count his library top as facedown, pass those cards to AP.
NAP believe those cards are 4 cards, but he counted by mistake, those cards are 5 cards in actually.
AP receive (but not count) those cards and look faceup, he notice those cards are not 4 cards.

Please assume that you decided to it is not cheat.
Who is What Infraction? How to fix it?

Thank you.

Fumi

IMO, responsability of counting received cards relies on AP.

As an analogy, suppose you present your deck, your opponent shuffles it, and hands you your starting hand, face down. You look at the cards, there are eight of them. What would you rule?
(It actually happened)

back to Gonti. I would rule HCE for AP, so NAP chooses a card to reshuffle, and resume from that.
NAP gets to choose the best card from five, and deny AP that card.
Well, AP, you really should have counted yourself…

Edited Francesco Scialpi (Nov. 17, 2017 12:09:34 AM)

I don't think I'd rule HCE in this scenario: there's a public correctable error made before AP picks up the cards (putting the wrong amount of cards face down on the table).

I'd rule LEC instead, shuffling back one random card from the set into the library.

Originally posted by Francesco Scialpi:

back to Gonti. I would rule HCE for AP, so NAP chooses a card to reshuffle, and resume from that.
NAP gets to choose the best card from five, and deny AP that card.
Well, AP, you really should have counted yourself…

This makes for an easy cheat?
Just fumble a card to the set as you hand it to your opponent and get to reduce effectiveness of Gonti.

Originally posted by Alex de Bruijne:

This makes for an easy cheat?
Just fumble a card to the set as you hand it to your opponent and get to reduce effectiveness of Gonti.

Fair point.
Also, AP should be encouraged in calling the judge, and this ruling does not encourage him at all.
Got to think more.

Just an L1 here, but here's my take on it.
I would actually go the route of double GRV and then leave the gamestate as is. and here is my thought process about it.

What is the core infraction? The core infraction is AP not resolving the ETB trigger of Gonti properly. Now we have to be careful (as mentioned before) on how we approach this fix. If NAP get's a HCE, it is extremently tempting to add one more card in there and get that “thoughtseize” fix. However if the cards are already seen, you just can't return a random one to the top of the library. But if the error is cought before AP get's to see the cards, it is not LEC now is it? but the core infraction remains the same, not properly resolving Gonti.

So I'd rule GRV, AP gets GRV because he is responsible for his triggers, and NAP gets GRV for handing a wrong amount of cards to his opponent (similar to a NAP putting a creature in the grave from Path). If the error is caught before the cards are seen, just return an unseen card (by both player) to the top of it's respective library. if the cards were seen, just keep the board state as is as it has become too corrupted to fix.

If the error is caught before the cards are looked at, I'd probably just give GRV to NAP, as AP will have called a judge at the first possible moment he has where he has noticed the error, and he can't control the number of cards his opponent deals.

All in all this case is interesting as the IPG seems badly equipped to deal with it. One could also consider a deviation of returning a random card from the 5 to the random portion of the library, but the only way that could be a supported fix is through LCE, but that seems iffy (see Par. 2)

Definitively looking for more answers/thought on this!

Originally posted by Maxime Emond:

The core infraction is AP not resolving the ETB trigger of Gonti properly.

Actually, almost any game error happens because something has been resolved in a wrong way. If we watch the game from this point of view, then all the errors are GRV. :)

Originally posted by Maxime Emond:

But if the error is cought before AP get's to see the cards, it is not LEC now is it?

As long as those cards aren't seen by any players no infraction has happened.

I agree that LEC has no specific fix for such a problem, but I think that shuffling back a card at random is better than leave everything as it is in this scenario. :)

Edited Jacopo Strati (Nov. 17, 2017 07:09:35 AM)

My two cents.

In my opinion, it cannot be LEC because the cards are now in a hidden set (hidden from NAP).

If we read the instructions on the card, NAP should not have been involved in the resolution of the ability. But he decided to do so anyway, by picking up the cards and handing them to AP. The error thus lies in NAP: I would give him HCE-Warning, then AP chooses one of the cards to be the one in excess. The card is reshuffled into the library, then AP continues the resolution of Gonti's ability.

Originally posted by Samuele Tecchio:

The error thus lies in NAP: I would give him HCE-Warning, then AP chooses one of the cards to be the one in excess. The card is reshuffled into the library, then AP continues the resolution of Gonti's ability.

Uhm. I still believe that there's no HCE here. There's a public error that could have been noticed before reaching this game state.

And I think that what Alex wrote is valid here, even if now it refers to AP and not NAP: AP can notice the error, remain silent, and call a judge after he picks up the cards, resolving the trigger with actually 5 cards instead of 4.

Edited Jacopo Strati (Nov. 17, 2017 07:26:32 AM)

HCE says the following:

Definition
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.

HCE requires that it was done without the opponent's permission, but the players made this mistake together. I'd count that as having permission from the other player. NAP gave too many cards and AP accepted them. So if it is not HCE, it might be LEC.

LEC says the following:

Cards are considered to be in a library until they touch cards in another hidden set. Once those cards have joined another hidden set, the infraction is handled as a Hidden Card Error or Game Rule Violation.

I can see this applying here. Since we already ruled out HCE all that remains is GRV.

I'd be inclined to give a GRV to both players. AP should have been the acting player, but NAP got himself involved and caused the error. NAP deserves a GRV for this, but since it should have been AP's responsibility I feel this is a good scenario for a double GRV.

As for the fix, no additional remedy really hits the spot here, but luckily the backup is simple:
Return the 5 cards to the top of the deck, re-randomize the random portion of the deck and continue from there. At this point the players can resolve the trigger again.

Originally posted by Jacopo Strati:

And I think that what Alex wrote is valid here, even if now it refers to AP and not NAP: AP can notice the error, remain silent, and call a judge after he picks up the cards, resolving the trigger with actually 5 cards instead of 4.

The purpose of the “Thoughtseize fix” is to offset the error as much as possible. Here, the error was made by NAP, thus I see reasonable to give AP the choice of the excess card.
Regarding the possibility of cheating, that would require NAP to count one excess card, and AP to notice it before picking them up, and realising he could wait until picking them up to call a judge. Windows for opportunistic cheating are present in almost all IPG fixes. I think we can confidently rule HCE and use the other tools at our disposal (read: investigations) to discover these forms of cheating.

Originally posted by Harm Tacoma:

I can see this applying here. Since we already ruled out HCE all that remains is GRV.

I'd be inclined to give a GRV to both players. AP should have been the acting player, but NAP got himself involved and caused the error. NAP deserves a GRV for this, but since it should have been AP's responsibility I feel this is a good scenario for a double GRV.

This is a good point. I like the way you dealt with the scenario. Yes, (double) GRV makes sense.

Originally posted by Harm Tacoma:

As for the fix, no additional remedy really hits the spot here

On the fix: I'm ok with the backup, but I wouldn't randomize all the cards in the library. I usually don't like to allow a player to see a completely new set of cards in such situations. Randomizing just one card leaves the set as close as possible to how it should have been.
So we can put back all the 5 cards in a random order, we can let AP pick up the top 4 cards and then we can shuffle the deck to lose track of the fifth card that was on the top.

Edited Jacopo Strati (Nov. 17, 2017 08:41:25 AM)

The set we are mentionning is a subset of the Library. (Technically, those cards are still in the Library, so the LEC case is not easily excluded, not saying that this should be appropriate).

I am reading about GRV, HCE and LEC. They all have some reasoning behind, but let's see first :

- This cannot be HCE. As Jacopo said, the AP can count the cards before looking at them, so the error can be corrected with public information (number of cards actually in the subset of cards). This cannot be HCE, for either of the players, since it does not match really the definition, and neither actually in spirit by the way.

-LEC is the solution that looks the more attractive because it actually matches how we want to fix in a natural way (cards were unknown by AP, and if the extra card is shuffled away, so noone can really get an advantage of this, except that AP knows an extra card in the Library, but the card is given by NAP so let them share the blame). But the infraction is then the burden of AP, which one might find a bit severe since he did not manipulate the cards. Hence, seems a bit harsh to punish the only player that did not touch the Library.

-GRV is quite interesting, like the reasonning behind : two players make the mistake. That is also technically true and asking the players to be careful is rather close to the philisophy we usually follow.Issue is that NAP did not actually break any rules (he gave 5 cards but as long as noone sees them, there is not any rule infraction and if anyone sees them, it will be this one who is responsible, not the only picking the cards from Library).

I think that GRV and LEC are rather close in the result of the fix either way. What I don't like in LEC is that NAP could distribute LECs quite easily to his/her/* opponents easily and should be tracked (which might not be easy in a large-scale event since it does not seem natural to track this player on the slips). Sharing the blame seems the most fair overall but infractions do not really fit.

Interesting.

Two random thoughts:

- I really would like a way to keep track of NAP error.
- I don't like the “reshuffle and draw 4 new cards” backup. I envision AP thinking:
“5 cards instead of 4. No one I really like. let's call the judge, and spin the wheel again”.

Originally posted by Théo CHENG:

What I don't like in LEC is that NAP could distribute LECs quite easily to his/her/* opponents easily and should be tracked

If we go for LEC we could give to NAP a FTMGS to track his behavior. Actually he/she allows AP in making a mistake, so the FTMGS definition can be applied here.
But yes, it seems to be a bit “forced” to me.

Edited Jacopo Strati (Nov. 17, 2017 08:11:47 AM)