Howdy folks, welcome back to another edition of Knowledge Pool. This week we have a Silver scenario, so L2s should hold out a couple of days before joining in.

During a deck check in round 4 of a PPTQ, you quickly spread out the player's deck, face down. You notice that five of the cards seem to be in sleeves that are a millimeter or two smaller than the rest. Those 5 cards are a Botanical Sanctum, an Island, an AEther Hub, a Spirebluff Canal and a Servant of the Conduit. You ask the player about his sleeving process, and he says that he sorted the deck, filled out his deck list, then shuffled his deck a bit, then sleeved. He also mentions that he had to use two packs, because the first pack didn't have quite enough sleeves for his entire deck. You've ruled out any type of Cheating. What do you do?

Edited Joe Klopchic (Nov. 1, 2017 05:25:11 PM)

Allright so the infraction here is quite obvious, as it is a TE-Marked cards. As cheating has been ruled out, this becomes an issue of Upgrade. The IPG states an upgrade condition “If the Head Judge believes that a deck’s owner noticing the pattern of markings would be able to gain substantial advantage from this knowledge, the penalty is a Game Loss.”

Therefore the question becomes to rule if this constitute a “substantial advantage from this knowledge”. When we questioned the player about his sleeving process, he said that he shuffled the deck prior to sleeving the deck. However, there are something interesting about the cards that are differently sleeved. First, all of them are able to produce mana, and further more all of them are able to produce blue mana. Now we have ruled out cheating, therefore we have to assume the player is not doing this intentionnaly, but having the information that your next card is a Blue mana producing card could be relevant.

After debating with my own self (lol) for about a minute, I'd rule this as a TE-Marked cards, Issue a warning and ask the player to please resleeve his deck for the next round. The fact that there is most likely more blue mana producing cards in the deck and the fact that the cards are not all of the same type is what guides my decision in this case.

I would be most interested in hearing the thought process of other judges on this case!

As per Tournament rules 3.9 …“all sleeves must be identical and all cards in his or her deck must be placed in the sleeves in an identical manner.”…
I would issue TE-Marked Cards, giving a warning due to the assertion by the player that he didn't intentionally sleeve the deck in two different kinds of sleeves.

Seems quite suspicious to me.
Mentioning that he had to use 2 packs of sleeves, mentioning he shuffled his cards before sleeving.

Depending on his behavior and how I feel in the situation I would give him a warning for TE - Marked Cards or upgrade it to a Game Loss.

A lot of packs have only 50 sleeves so using 2 packs is quite reasonable. Sometimes packs vary slightly so not particularly suspicious based only on those facts.

The upgrade path is there if we deem a pattern to the marked cards assuming no deliberate attempt to gain an advantage.

Graham

Sent from my iPhone

On 3 Nov 2017, at 11:35, Marius Zurwieden <forum-39423-fbc4@apps.magicjudges.org<mailto:forum-39423-fbc4@apps.magicjudges.org>> wrote:


Seems quite suspicious to me.
Mentioning that he had to use 2 packs of sleeves, mentioning he shuffled his cards before sleeving.

Depending on his behavior and how I feel in the situation I would give him a warning for TE - Marked Cards or upgrade it to a Game Loss.

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As Graham mentioned, the GL upgrade is for a pattern in the marked cards. If you think the player did that on purpose or is lying to you, UC-Cheating applies rather than an upgrade to the original violation. Since the original post stipulated that we ruled out Cheating, we can ignore that and focus on the question of the presence/absence of a pattern rather than player behavior.

Edited Joe Kull (Nov. 3, 2017 01:33:55 PM)

Thanks everyone for responding this week.

Maxime quickly moved towards the question at hand here. Obviously there are 5 cards which are slightly different in the deck, but should this fall under the Game Loss upgrade of Marked Cards.

That upgrade reads:

Originally posted by IPG 3.8 Marked Cards:

Upgrade: If the Head Judge believes that a deck’s owner noticing the pattern of markings would be able to gain substantial advantage from this knowledge, the penalty is a Game Loss.

The question is, do we believe that a player knowing whether the top card of their library is one of these cards causes them to be able to gain substantial advantage.

While this is another Head Judge judgement situation, we suggest the answer should lean towards issuing the game loss. While the 5 cards seem innocuous, there are plenty of mulligan and in-game situations where the knowledge that the top card is either a blue-producing land, or a creature that is going to produce blue mana soon enough. This meets our bar for upgrading to a Game Loss.

Issue the player a Game Loss for Marked Cards. The five cards which are discernable from the rest are all blue lands or are able to produce blue mana within a turn. Knowledge of this could enable a player to gain substantial advantage, so the penalty is upgraded to a Game Loss.

A reminder that after the solution to a Knowledge Pool is posted, the thread is closed. If you have feedback for the presenter, you can message them or post a new thread to discuss the solution. But remember that the Knowledge Pool team generally provides a consensus of policy expert opinion on a topic, so if your response is just “I disagree,” consider reviewing their rationale and whether your opinion needs to shift.