Judging a competitive REL event today I had an interesting situation come up and would like to start a discussion on the ruling and whether it was handled correctly and whether we missed anything.

During a start of round deck check two things were discovered:
A. Two sideboard cards had not been de-sideboarded
B. The deck list showed 3 steam vents and 4 sulfur falls. The deck contained 4 and 3 respectively.

These are potentially two separate problems, A is a Deck Problem, B is either a Deck List Problem or a Deck Problem and as a result even though they were found in the same deck check there is the potential that two Game Losses will be issued here.

However the player has a choice, because we can either fix the deck list to match the deck (altering the count on the two lands) in which case they get DLP for that. Or we can fix the deck to match the deck list in which case they get DP.

Normally they get a Game Loss either way, but here the situation is slightly odd because the existing DP would combine with a new DP but not with a DLP. So understandably the player chose to amend their deck rather than their deck list and take the single Game Loss for a DP and no DLP.

Did we miss anything or is there any way we could have handled this better? It seemed odd to be basically giving a player a choice of “do you want 1 game loss or 2 from your deck check experience?”.

Edited Tim Boura (June 23, 2019 03:45:56 PM)