On Alex's upkeep, Natalie asks how many cards he has in hand and he answers “Nine.” When called over, the judge is able to determine that Alex had activated his Underworld Connections at the end of Natalie's turn, but that still meant that he had 8 cards in hand at the end of his previous turn and no effects in play that increased his maximum hand size. Alex explains that he did not count the cards in his hand at the end of his previous turn and as such forgot to discard down to 7.

Is the fix to have Alex discard a card from his hand at random, just as we would have him put a card at random from his hand back on top of his library if he drew an extra card? Does it make a difference if Natalie knows what card was drawn off of Underworld Connections, say because Alex has a Courser of Kruphix in play? Do we omit the known card from the potential selection for discarding in that case?

Not at random, no.

The random element for (downgraded) Drawing Extra Cards is because the card that was drawn should be random (from a randomized library).

Discards are a conscious choice - just have him do so, right now.

d:^D

Is the player allowed to discard the card he just drew, since he didn't have it in his hand when he was supposed to discard?

I'm guessing he can, since there is no specific rule to that effect in the IPG, and it would be unenforcable regardless. But the Missed Trigger rule does say

No player may make choices involving objects that were not in the appropriate zone or zones when the ability should have triggered.

So, I'm wondering if a similar rule applies here.

Edit: whoops, this is the Regular forum, not comp, so the IPG is the wrong text to look at. However, question still applies!

Edited Eli Meyer (Sept. 10, 2014 05:25:17 PM)

Well, this isn't a Missed Trigger, so we won't mix part of the Missed Trigger stuff in here.

In this case, you can decide to rewind (it's a Game Play Error - Game Rule Violation); as described, I'm not likely to consider a rewind (nor approve one, if I'm Head Judge). Instead, the IPG tells us to

leave the game state as it is … with the following exception… If a player forgot to draw cards, discard cards, or return cards from their hand to another zone, that player does so.

d:^D

There seems to be a lot of IPG referencing for the Regular REL foum in this one :(

At Regular REL, we advocate generally either backing up the game state where possible, or leaving the game state as it is if it is not possible. In this case, that would be to put one card at random back on top of Alex's library to undo his draw step (we don't know which card was drawn in it), go back to the Natalie's cleanup step and make Alex discard down to maximum handsize there. We then continue back into his turn and he redraws the card that was put on top of his library (which we did not shuffle as we don't know if the card we put back was one that he just drew or not).

We do allow judges some discretion on fixes, though, and this may seem unnecessarily convoluted to explain to players when Scott's suggestion of just making him discard a card of his choice right now achieves exactly the same thing. Making him discard a card at random is unnecessarily punitive, and we cannot hold him to discarding only one of the cards that was in his hand before his draw for this turn as we do not know which cards those were.

Why would we backup to Natalie's clean up step, when Alex wouldn't normally discard during Natalie's clean up step?

To me the choice is - leave as is, or backup to the last of Alex's End Steps. Given that's all the way through Natalie's turn, it would have to be a turn that barely anything happened for me to want to do that.

It would be nice to have a similar clause in the JAR that matches the IPG for “If a player forgot to draw cards, discard cards, or return cards from their hand to another zone, that player does so.”

And Mark provides an excellent lesson in why one should never answer questions on a forum between waking up and drinking one's morning coffee. There is basically an extra turn cycle in this question that I missed.

Given that, Mark is correct - don't back up here; the amount that you would have to go back is likely to cause more disruption that it is worth. I still feel that just making Alex discard a card of his choice now is the most appropriate fix. I'll look at adding a clarification in the upcoming update.

Personally, in this instance I'd likely get a bit more annoying, in the sense that I'd have Alex essentially put a card aside (since he drew a card after the cleanup) THEN discard a card of his choice. (then add the put aside card back to his hand)

While that random card being out of the equation for a moment might make no difference, it just strikes me as a bit more fair, compared to the scenario where he drew a land off connections and gets to pitch it right away.

Gregory, I don't see why we should put a random card aside before allowing
him to discard for Regular if in Competitive/Professional, where rulings
are more strict, we don't do it.
Obviously, Alex may have drawn a land when he drew at the end of Natalie's
turn, but we don't use strategy for our rulings. Maybe he needs that land
or not, we don't care at Competitive so why should we do it at Regular?

“While that random card being out of the equation for a moment might make no difference, it just strikes me as a bit more fair, compared to the scenario where he drew a land off connections and gets to pitch it right away.”

If you put a random card aside, then there is no guarantee that you avoid him being able to pitch the land he just drew straight away anyway :) This is what I meant by it making no difference.