A topic of discussion that came up over the weekend was the difference between the remedy for Looking at Extra Cards and the remedy for extra cards being drawn as a result of a GRV/CPV. That is, in the former case, the illicitly viewed cards are shuffled back into their owner's library, and in the latter the extra cards are randomly replaced on top without being shuffled in. It's a somewhat unintuitive conclusion for an inexperienced floor judge (like me), and experienced judges enjoy being cryptic when asked these sorts of questions - a good thing, as it keeps us thinking harder about such situations. So I thought I'd give my reasoning to make sure I'm on the right path.

Example 1: Augie casts Divination and draws two cards. As he picks up the second card, the card underneath it gets flipped up; he sees what it is, and calls a judge right away. The judge gives Augie a warning for Looking at Extra Cards, then shuffles the flipped card into the library.

Example B: Augie casts Divination and draws two cards. A moment passes, then Augie and his opponent realize that Augie controls only three Plains. The judge is called; she warns Augie for a GRV, takes two cards randomly from Augie's hand and puts them on top of his library.

A judge with a cursory knowledge of the IPG would look at the first example, see that we're fixing by ensuring that the order of the deck is unknown to both players, and wonder why we don't take the same step for the second example. In that case, Augie has an advantage in knowing roughly which cards he'll be drawing next. Why doesn't the random card get shuffled back into the library?

First we have to point out that the library and the hand are two very different zones. In the general case, any particular card is in its owner's hand due to deliberate choices made by that player to keep it there - they haven't played it yet, they decided not to mulligan it away, and so on. Now a number of cards come into the player's hand illegally due to some GRV, and are now indistinguishable from the cards that were in hand previously - they belong to a set now, not an ordered list. So we can't use the more ideal fix of just taking the extra cards in question and putting them back in the random list. The question now is not what fix is perfectly fair, but what is the least unfair and the least imposing to both the players and judges involved.

Let's say at the point where a judge applies the fix in Example B above, Augie's hand is XY, where X is the set of cards that should be there, and Y is the set of cards that shouldn't. Let's assume the judge decides to take |Y| cards out of Augie's hand randomly and shuffle them into his library. One of the randomly selected cards came from X, one that Augie was holding onto to save him against an aggressive push from his opponent. Since his deck has quite a few cards still in it, he's effectively been handed down a forced random discard - Legacy players should know just how fair that feels.

But what if Augie lost cards from X, and Y turned out to be much better? Perhaps Augie Pondered, then cast Divination without having the proper mana to draw the two cards he just looked at. Well, Augie's raising a big red flag to all judges if any kind of deck stacking effect happens before the “accidental” drawing. If he's not stacking his deck first, then it's really not in his interest to get in a couple “draw X, then put X back on top of your library at random” effects before he starts racking up game losses.

I can think of all sorts of ways these rules might be abused, but at the end of the day, if I'm a player in a Competitive event, I know it's in my best interest to avoid GRVs, and I won't be punished excessively for making a common error. I feel like I'm missing something more obvious, and I'm sure the L5s could answer this in a sentence or two, but it helps me to write these things out. Comments are appreciated.

My general understanding of the philosophy difference is thus:

L@EC: The important bit across all competitive magic policy where the library is concerned is that it should be sufficiently randomized such that no player knows any part of its contents unless a game effect allows it. Thus, shuffle the errant card back in. Also, we can't always be sure the exposed card is the top one.

Drawing cards thanks to a GRV/CPV: The approach taken is generally regarded as the “least bad”, rather than being the most ideal. Because in most of these cases we do end up taking cards randomly, and as you noted, this can sometimes warp the flow of the game, putting the random cards back on top is the best way to minimize damage to the game. We can't allow a player to retain more cards than they should have at a given point in the game, but we also don't want to ruin the stability of the game in progress by applying a fix and removing key cards. Putting the card(s) on top will keep those cards in close enough “proximity” that they will quickly recover them if the “wrong” card was removed.

As far as being abusive about it is concerned, well, that's partly why we issue penalties, innit?

Not exactly on the same topic, but I'd like to ask a question about remedy:
If we cannot identify the cards, that were drawn, we put random cards on top of the library. But what if some cards have already been seen by an opponent?
Example:
Player A has 6 Cards in his hand - 4 Glory Seekers, Plains and Divination. He also has Martyr of Sands on the battlefield. He activates Martyr's ability with his only blue mana and reveals 4 Glory Seekers. After the ability resolves, he casts Divination for 3 white mana.
Judge correctly says that it is GRV, but when choosing which 2 cards should be returned on the top of the library should he choose them from the whole hand or only from the 3 unknown cards?

Aaron - here's what made it click for me. Imagine you're playing some Core
Set limited, and you have a Fireball in your deck. The games where you
have a Fireball in your hand will probably cause you to play very
differently to the games where the Fireball is elsewhere in your deck.

Imagine I don't have Fireball in hand, and I accidentally look at the top
of my deck, and it's the Fireball. I shouldn't know I'm about to draw
Fireball, so it's shuffled. I still might draw the Fireball, or I might
not, which is exactly where I was before the infraction.

Imagine I do have Fireball in hand, and I accidentally draw extra cards.
Fireball is one of the cards randomly put back on top of my deck. Now
consider the impact of a shuffle. Shuffle my Fireball away, and my game
plan is ruined. Leave it on top of my deck, and the whole situation sorts
itself out 1 legitimate card draw later.

Then there's the bad side. I might, though it's unlikely, not have
Fireball in hand, accidentally draw extra cards, get the Fireball, and not
have it replaced. I've just obtained the Fireball a little early. This
isn't going to happen very often, and the advantage I've gained if offset
by the warning I picked up.

Paul

Paul Smith

paul@pollyandpaul.co.uk

Originally posted by David Zalesky:

Not exactly on the same topic, but I'd like to ask a question about remedy:
If we cannot identify the cards, that were drawn, we put random cards on top of the library. But what if some cards have already been seen by an opponent?
Example:
Player A has 6 Cards in his hand - 4 Glory Seekers, Plains and Divination. He also has Martyr of Sands on the battlefield. He activates Martyr's ability with his only blue mana and reveals 4 Glory Seekers. After the ability resolves, he casts Divination for 3 white mana.
Judge correctly says that it is GRV, but when choosing which 2 cards should be returned on the top of the library should he choose them from the whole hand or only from the 3 unknown cards?

Whether it is looking at extra cards, drawing extra cards, or a GRV, our policies have a clause that references known vs. unknown cards. The bottom line is that we want to make the game as correct and consistent as possible–and we can use as much information as is available.

In this case, we have a GRV. Assuming the back-up is approved, you reverse everything done since the illegal action. Divination is still on the stack, so that card is out of the way. At this point–as always–the better information you have, the better your outcome. We know the 4 Glory Seekers, so we can set those aside (face up, if you like, since everyone knows them). As for the remaining 3 cards, the exact identity of which two were drawn is not known… but we know it had to be two of those. We can take two of those three and put them back on top of the library. Now untap the lands used to pay for divination, and put divination back into the player's hand.

Is this a perfect solution? No, but it's much better than shooting in the dark!

–David Hibbs
L3, Houston, TX