Oh boy. We'll leave aside that somehow, Alice didn't notice the different colored sleeve in her deck from round 1 to round 3.

So Alice gets a warning for a deck error, takes the card out, and reshuffles and re-presents the deck. I'm fairly confident in that part.

But what do we do to Paul. His deck is technically not legal, so by the rules, he should get a deck error as well. It's not intentional on his part, so I wouldn't spend much time investigating for cheating; his deck is smaller, yes, but it's missing a card that would be generally good, it would be bad to take it out if the goal is to thin the deck. We can't go back in time and remove his wins, any more than we can cancel someone's wins if we do a deck check in round 5 and find they had marked cards the whole time (assuming they don't get DQ'd for it). This sucks for Paul in this case, who is running extremely hot without a very good card in his deck, but it seems like the right solution.

Now, does Paul get the card back into his deck immediately, after game 1, or after round 3? Had to look this one up, and found the part where if you lose cards, it's a decklist error. Luckily, we know where his cards are, so they aren't lost. IPG says that we reveal the Eddie Brock to the opponent, who chooses whether it gets shuffled into Paul's deck now, or the next time priority would be given (which is to prevent someone from tutoring, going "oh darn, my Eddie Brock is gone", finding it, shuffling it in, and going "I'll tutor for Eddie Brock").

Don't think this needs escalating to a Game Loss.

This is textbook Tournament Error — Deck Problem for both players.

If the missing card(s) were in a previous or current opponent’s deck, issue penalties to both players.

The only question is what to do about the fact that both of them played through all of Round 2 with these configurations. From what I understand, there's just nothing in the IPG that tells us to retroactively apply penalties, so we don't.

It would be pretty harsh to issue a game loss or something for "probably having an opponent's card in your deck last round" or "probably having a card missing from your deck last round", and issuing a warning is what we're about to do anyway. So it makes sense that we basically ignore Round 2 here.

The Deck Problem remedy is really dense, so let's go through the relevant portions step by step for Alice.

• Locate [...] any incorrect cards in any game zone. (Eddie Brock)
• Reveal to opponent (a bit inconsequential since it will be disappearing from this game).
• The game has not started so Alice's opponent doesn't choose when to fix the problem; we fix it now.
• There are cards not in Alice's library that need replacing (the Eddie missing from hand); Alice's library has no nonrandom portions yet so she just draws a card to replace it.

No upgrade paths are relevant here so Alice receives a Warning.

Now for Paul.

• Locate any cards missing from the deck (Eddie).
• Reveal Eddie to opponent.
• The game has started so Paul's opponent chooses when to apply the fix.

Then, at the appropriatre time, they specify which of the missing cards replaces each incorrect card; any extras are shuffled into the random portion of the library.

• Eddie is one of the "extras" described above so at the time chosen by the opponent we shuffle it into Paul's library. (looking forward to the next iteration of the IPG so they finally fix the typo in that line, lol.)

Again, no upgrade paths are relevant so Paul receives a Warning. 

You could also remind the players that they are allowed a pile shuffle each game to catch issues like this.

Edited Buck Bukaty (Oct. 2, 2025 02:45:25 AM)

I think this is a Tournament Error--Deck Problem for just Paul. Yes, the last sentence in the Additional Remedy portion of Deck Problem reads:

"If the missing card(s) were in a previous or current opponent’s deck, issue penalties to both players."

But we also have, in the Definition section for Deck Problem:

"Cards in different sleeves, tokens, and double-faced cards for which substitute cards are being used are ignored when determining deck (not sideboard) legality."

And from the same part in the Annotated IPG:

"If your card is in my deck, and it’s obvious from the back of the sleeve that it doesn’t belong in the deck, then I don’t get a penalty."

At first I thought the IPG was contradicting itself. After more consideration, I'm thinking that if the error doesn't meet the definition of the infraction because of mis-matching sleeves, then that probably preempts the line in the Additional Remedy section. Thus, no penalty for Alice.

As for Paul, I originally thought this upgrade path may apply...

"In games before sideboarding, while the deck is presented to the opponent for pre-game shuffling or during a deckcheck, if the deck contains fewer cards than registered (and any missing cards are not in the opponent’s deck) or the sideboard contains more cards than registered, the penalty is a Game Loss."

...since his missing cards are in Alice's deck, who is not at this point "the opponent" strictly speaking.

But then I considered the likely reason this upgrade path exists: a player looking to cheat could "lose" a card or two to play under the deck size minimum, and the only ways that'll get caught are if that player gets deck-checked or someone otherwise counts the cards in that player's deck. Thus we have a greater penalty to disincentivize that cheat. On the other hand, in a situation like this one, since the card was taken by someone else we can pretty much rule out cheating, so we don't need the greater penalty, thus the upgrade path probably shouldn't apply. Seems to me that it doesn't matter when it happened, just how it happened. Paul receives a Warning.

As for the fix, we remove the card from Alice's hand, have her draw an additional card, and let her continue making her mulligan decisions.

We show the Eddie Brock to Paul's current opponent. They get the choice of having the card shuffled into the randomized portion of the library now or the next time a player would get priority.

Edited Dennis Bradford (Oct. 2, 2025 02:05:59 PM)

I think this is a Deck problem - warning for both Alice and Paul.

For Alice this doesn't fit any of the upgrade paths, so it's a warning. We're not currently presenting to Opp, and having a 41 card deck is fine for game 2 so we're clear on pretty much every front. For Paul, because he's also commited a Deck Problem by leaving this card with Alice, he also gets a warning. 

Now in order to fix this, first we have to remove the Eddie from Alice's hand and get it back to where it should be, Paul's library. Now Alice's hand is short a card, so she replaces if by drawing back to 7 before she makes her mulligan decision.

Because Paul is still in the middle of a game we let them know that Paul's is getting a warning and this Eddie needs to go back into the deck. We show the card to Paul's opponent and they decide if they want it to go in the library now or when someone next gets prioirty. At that point we shuffle it into Paul's deck. 

Originally posted by Dennis Bradford:

I think this is a Tournament Error--Deck Problem for just Paul. Yes, the last sentence in the Additional Remedy portion of Deck Problem reads:

"If the missing card(s) were in a previous or current opponent’s deck, issue penalties to both players."

But we also have, in the Definition section for Deck Problem:

"Cards in different sleeves, tokens, and double-faced cards for which substitute cards are being used are ignored when determining deck (not sideboard) legality."

And from the same part in the Annotated IPG:

"If your card is in my deck, and it’s obvious from the back of the sleeve that it doesn’t belong in the deck, then I don’t get a penalty."

At first I thought the IPG was contradicting itself. After more consideration, I'm thinking that if the error doesn't meet the definition of the infraction because of mis-matching sleeves, then that probably preempts the line in the Additional Remedy section. Thus, no penalty for Alice.

As for Paul, I originally thought this upgrade path may apply...

"In games before sideboarding, while the deck is presented to the opponent for pre-game shuffling or during a deckcheck, if the deck contains fewer cards than registered (and any missing cards are not in the opponent’s deck) or the sideboard contains more cards than registered, the penalty is a Game Loss."

...since his missing cards are in Alice's deck, who is not at this point "the opponent" strictly speaking.

But then I considered the likely reason this upgrade path exists: a player looking to cheat could "lose" a card or two to play under the deck size minimum, and the only ways that'll get caught are if that player gets deck-checked or someone otherwise counts the cards in that player's deck. Thus we have a greater penalty to disincentivize that cheat. On the other hand, in a situation like this one, since the card was taken by someone else we can pretty much rule out cheating, so we don't need the greater penalty, thus the upgrade path probably shouldn't apply. Seems to me that it doesn't matter when it happened, just how it happened. Paul receives a Warning.

As for the fix, we remove the card from Alice's hand, have her draw an additional card, and let her continue making her mulligan decisions.

We show the Eddie Brock to Paul's current opponent. They get the choice of having the card shuffled into the randomized portion of the library now or the next time a player would get priority.

Interesting! I hadn't seen that part of the annotated IPG. It seems like if the example was using black sleeves vs. say, yellow sleeves, I might be wrong. So I have an impulse to ask "well how dark blue are we talking?", but given that the IPG's criteria is just different sleeves, maybe Alice doesn't get the warning after all... then again, philosophically, don't we want Alice to be more careful to avoid this situation? This is murkier than I realized. Looking forward to hear the experts weigh in.