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http://blogs.magicjudges.org/knowledgepool/?p=836

Andrea and Nick are playing in a Standard GPT. Late into a long game, Nick is at 18 life and tapped out with no cards in hand, while Andrea is at 1 and staring down a Phantom Warrior poised to kill her next turn.

Andrea casts the last card in her hand, a fused Beck // Call. She draws cards. Then she plays a Hive Stirrings and draws cards.

Then she pauses, and counts, she has put a total of six creatures into play (2 sliver tokens and 4 birds). She has cast 1 card since her hand was empty (Hive Stirrings), and she has 6 in her hand. That means she has one more than she's supposed to.

She calls for a judge, explains what happened, and tells you very confidently that she's sure the last card that she drew was a Burn at the Stake and wants to put it back on top. She asks a spectator, “You were standing behind me and must have seen me draw it, can you tell the judge that?” and the spectator says “Yeah, I was watching, that's the last card she picked up.” How do you rule?

game loss for dec, seems fairly straightforward.

I agree that it is Drawing Extra Cards, and a Game Loss for the penalty, but I think it's likely Andrea will be upset by this ruling. It's critical that we keep tensions at bay here while explaining why we can't just put that card back on top. Most importantly, we need to explain that even if an outside bystander can confirm which card was the extra drawn card, if her opponent can't, it doesn't matter.

Agreed on DEC, game loss, and the personal attention afterwards.

The IPG does have a downgrade path for DEC though: “If the identity of card was known to all players before being placed into the hand, and the card can be returned to the correct zone with minimal disruption, do so and downgrade the penalty to a Warning.”

I think the extra knowledge is disruption enough on its own to warrant not applying this downgrade even if her opponent tracked her draws and was confident she was correct about which was last drawn.

I go with DEC and game loss as well. A downgrad is not possible in my opinion.

reasons:
- the identity of the card is not know to all players.
- the spectator could lie. Maybe its a close friend of the player, the way the player asks the spectator might suggest that. The player is directly influencing what the spectator should say
- its not clear when the additional card was drawn. In fact the additional card migth have been the Hive Stirrings

the draw is most likely a mistake, but in order to prevent cheating in such situations we have to explain the situation to the player and why we have to give the game loss

I'd go with Markus, DEC with GL. And clearly communicate that it's not clear whether she already drew 5 cards of Beck // Call of which the 5th may have been Hive Stirrings so that she possibly couldn't have casted it anyway and that for being eligible to downgrade the additional card must be clear to all PLAYERS and since her opponent has not seen what she drew there is no way around the default penalty so a GL has to be given.

If both players confirmed the number of cards being drawn (Andrea says “Draw 4”, Nick says “Okay” for the fused Beck//Call, and the same is done for the hive stirrings) it is possible we have an exception added to IPG's section on Drawing Extra Cards:

2.3 GPE-DEC “If the player received confirmation from his or her opponent before drawing the card (including confirming the number of cards when greater than one), the infraction is not Drawing Extra Cards.”

An investigation would determine if this was the case. If it was determined that the error was actually a Communication Violation, we apply the fix from 3.7, which in this case would be taking a random card and returning it to the top of library, and issue a warning.

Originally posted by Jeffrey Higgins:

If both players confirmed the number of cards being drawn (Andrea says “Draw 4”, Nick says “Okay” for the fused Beck//Call, and the same is done for the hive stirrings) it is possible we have an exception added to IPG's section on Drawing Extra Cards:

2.3 GPE-DEC “If the player received confirmation from his or her opponent before drawing the card (including confirming the number of cards when greater than one), the infraction is not Drawing Extra Cards.”

An investigation would determine if this was the case. If it was determined that the error was actually a Communication Violation, we apply the fix from 3.7, which in this case would be taking a random card and returning it to the top of library, and issue a warning.

That exception only applies if Andrea confirmed “Draw five?” for the Call (or “Draw three?” for the Stirrings), which according to the scenario didn't happen. Confirming one number of cards and then drawing a different, larger number of cards is not eligible for the exception.

The philosophy behind the exception is the same behind the exception for pre-existing GRVs/CPVs. If the opponent had an opportunity to stop the extra draw by intervening before it happened, when it first became apparent that something was wrong, we can downgrade. That's not the case here–the first point when something went wrong is the extra card hitting the hand, so there was no opportunity for the opponent to step in beforehand–so we can't downgrade.

I felt the situation described was missing multiple pieces of crucial information, which is why I brought this case up.

The most important part of the scenario is “Andrea casts the last card in her hand, a fused Beck // Call. She draws cards. Then she plays a Hive Stirrings and draws cards”.

We assume that Nick gives the thumbs up, or places an F6 button on the table, etc…

Since we are on text, this is missing a hefty amount of information that we would fill in during an investigation.

Originally posted by Jeffrey Higgins:

I felt the situation described was missing multiple pieces of crucial information, which is why I brought this case up.

The most important part of the scenario is “Andrea casts the last card in her hand, a fused Beck // Call. She draws cards. Then she plays a Hive Stirrings and draws cards”.

We assume that Nick gives the thumbs up, or places an F6 button on the table, etc…

Since we are on text, this is missing a hefty amount of information that we would fill in during an investigation.

All the crucial information for this scenario has been given. If it doesn't say that Andrea verbally indicated she was going to draw an incorrect number of cards and her opponent agreed with it, then it didn't happen.

Would anyone consider downgrading since Andrea called upon herself immediately after commiting the infraction?

But did she? The infraction could have been committed on the first
draw, stuff has happened since then.

Also I'm not sure I've ever felt inclined to do that for a DEC, it
doesn't feel right.

On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 4:55 PM, Lev Kotlyar
<forum-5914-1fbb@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> Would anyone consider downgrading since Andrea called upon herself
> immediately after commiting the infraction?
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–
Gareth Pye
Level 2 Judge, Melbourne, Australia
Australian MTG Forum: mtgau.com
gareth@cerberos.id.au - www.rockpaperdynamite.wordpress.com
“Dear God, I would like to file a bug report”

Originally posted by Lev Kotlyar:

Would anyone consider downgrading since Andrea called upon herself immediately after commiting the infraction?

I wouldn't consider downgrading becuase there is still the potential that Andrea has gained a significant advantage by drawing that extra card. She didn't really call it out right after committing the infraction but rather after she noticed that an infraction had been committed due to the illegal game state. If we do choose to downgrade and rewind to the point of the error that what point in the game do we back up to? As many people here already mentioned it's unclear exactly when the extra card was drawn.

If anything, we would thank Andrea for bringing the error to our attention so it could be fixed properly and inform her that even though her mistake results in an unpleasant penalty of a game loss, she avoided a disqualification by calling a judge right when she saw something was wrong.

This is a pretty clear cut case of GPE - DEC. Even though Andrea did call the judge on herself straight away this is still a Game Loss as she's drawn extra cards.

This can't be downgraded as the identity of the card wasn't known to both players before being placed in her hand.

Hello Judges!

As many of you have deduced, because Andrea has a card in her hand that she cannot account for, this is a case of Game Play Error - Drawing Extra Cards, for which the penalty is a Game Loss. The option to downgrade is only available when all players can confirm the identity of the extra card, as much as the spectator may be trying to help, we cannot use that as confirmation of what the extra card is.

As we should always do, when we need to give a game loss to a player who called the judge on themselves, thank them for their honesty.

Thank you all, and tune into tomorrow for another scenario!