Mostly for a bit of discussion, seeing as Judge Apps is back! Long live Judge Apps

From the IPG:

Game Play Error - Looking at Extra Cards
Example B. A player pulls up an extra card while drawing from their library.


Game Play Error - Hidden Card Error
Example B. A player scries two cards when they should only have scried one.


If a player is picking up a card from the top of their library and accidentally reveals a second one, how do you draw the line between this being LEC or HCE? Does the action that instructed them to do so matter? (and if so, what if they were picking cards up 1-by-1 for something like Anticipate, and got an extra card with their 3rd, but still separate and distinct physically from the first two?) Can picking up an extra card from the Scry action ever be considered LEC or is it always going to be HCE? If it *could* be LEC, what would need to happen for it to become HCE?

For me, the line is very much at the point at which any reasonable ambiguity is introduced, or if they intentionally performed an incorrect action (e.g. thinking the card said Scry 2, rather than just accidentally grabbing a second card). If the player picked 2 up and began to look at them for long, certainly if they changed their order, or if there's any good reason to not be sure about the correct relative order of the two cards in question then it would be HCE. This includes these cards joining other sets.

I have had discussions that involved using the term ‘set’ more broadly than the CR definition, and that “the two cards you picked up, one of which was by mistake” being considered a different set. Certainly we treat cards this way when someone picks up too many cards for Collected Company as an example. But getting too deep onto that side of things would likely put the LEC example in the HCE camp – you've got a set of 2 cards consisting of the card you should've drawn and the card you accidentally picked up, and clearly the IPG guides us away from that.

So here, an answer isn't so much what I'm after insofar as a bit of discussion, as I believe there is some community ambiguity around what's right here and.. well, it'd be nice to see some life in these ancient, hallowed halls. With Judge Apps being back, of course.

My interpretation of the philosophy underlying these two infractions is as follows:

- Looking at Extra Card pertains to a mistake that is easy to commit, easy to rectify, and carries a low potential for abuse. A straightforward remedy, such as eliminating the extra information, is typically sufficient to restore the game to its proper state.

- Hidden Card Error (HCE) involves either a card transitioning from a set of cards the opponent lacks access to another set they also don't have access to, or operations conducted on a subset of cards the player was not authorized to access. These scenarios pose a significant potential for abuse, as the first case enables a player to carry out an illegal action, while the second case allows a player to perform actions on a greater number of cards than permitted, potentially yielding a more favorable outcome than the legal action they were entitled to even if a fix involving randomly removing cards is applied. Given that applying the same fix as Looking at Extra Card isn't a sufficient deterrent and raising the penalty for common, easily committed accidental actions with a readily available fix is undesirable, a separate infraction with a more fitting remedy is warranted.

- Émilien

The line for me is if there is any way that the player has manipulated the set. So if a player goes to draw (or scry 1) and picks up two cards, and its very clear that the order of the cards hasn't changed, then that's LEC. But if the player goes to draw and picks up two cards but the player could have possibly physically manipulated the set, I'd rule HCE. This is pretty similar to your “reasonable ambiguity” standard, I think.

“If the player could have manipulated the set” is a pretty loose standard on face value, so I think its important to use this standard in the strictest possible sense. I'd use a similar philosophy to a Reversing Decisions ruling where I'd lean heavily towards a “stricter” ruling unless there's some particular reason not to do so.

I know a few people who use the line “has the player touched the set with both hands”, with the idea that using both hands makes it easier to manipulate the set and change the order. I disagree with this, because I think that a player can definitely manipulate the set using only one hand, but it does demonstrate the idea.

I think the confusion with the examples is that “draw a card but look at 2” and “scry 1 but look at 2” can both translate into the same physical action, and if you think of them as the same action then I would rule LEC in both cases as appropriate. But I think when this line was written they thought of “scry 2 when you should have scried 1” as a substantively different physical action- actually picking up the cards and thinking and manipulating them in a way where the opponent has no idea which is which, and that different action translates to a different penalty.

My thought process when taking a call that could be HCE or LEC is to determine if this error can be corrected with the information BOTH players know is true. Do they both know which card is the one that should not have been part of the action? If so LEC. Is there what a judge would consider doubt from 1 or more of them? HCE. I generally use prompts like “show me what you did with those cards”, “when you say you drew an extra card, what do you mean?” or “did those cards join the hand?”

- Mike Hill