We had a lot of discussion on the french forum about this case, so I thought it woulb be interesting to share ot here :

A activate his treetop village to declare his attaquants. N tap his 4 lands to play a cryptic command, choosing tap and draw. He took the first card of his deck, just look at it and put it on the table, away from his hand. A said "wait, I activate my scavenging ooze“, exiled a creature, puted a counter on it and gained a life. N said ”cryptic resolves" and drew the first card of his deck, forgetting he already drew.
He calls a judge and show the card stayed on the table.

what would you rule ?

Edited Sophie Pages (March 4, 2015 04:53:32 AM)

Assuming here that they didn't knew the card and that I see no mark on it
when checking it, I'd assume it was a honest mistake with no great
potential.
When N drew, he said he was resolving the Command, so it won't be missed by
his opponent. The problem is that he drew the 2nd card from top, rather
than 1st, so I'd issue a GPE-GRV (Warning), and put the card staying face
down on the table in top of library.
Once again, all of it assuming the card was unkown. Otherwise things would
get much complicated since the potential of abuse becomes way greater.

2015-03-04 11:35 GMT+01:00 Sophie Pages <

Can I just check the details of the situation:

Player A activates Tree Top Village in the beginning of combat then passes priority
Player N cast Cryptic Command choosing tap and draw, looks at the top card of his library and sets it to one side.
Player A says “wait” and activates Scavenging Ooze which resolves.
Player N then draws a new card into his hand (?)
Player N then calls a judge and the first (?) card drawn is still set aside

I've underlined the parts I'm not totally clear on with that I think makes sense, but before I start answering I'd like to be sure.

Thanks

yes, this is what happened.

If that is what happened, then I'd rule it a GPE - DEC. No other errors than drawing an extra card has been done, and while it is done while resolving a spell, it's not a GRV, but a DEC as it's the only thing done wrong while resolving Cryptic Command.

I'd give a Game Loss for GPE - DEC. Downgrade if the card was known to both players, or the hand was empty before drawing into it.

Since A looked at the first card they drew, this is clearly DEC, and a Game Loss. It would have been a more interesting scenario if A had put the card on the table without looking at it first.

When should the first card have moved from the top of the library?

And as a follow up, when is a card considered to be drawn?

The situation is highly suspicious, but I'll assume that our investigation convinced us that there was nothing fishy.

The players should have called when N said that he wanted to answer the Cryptic Command. That is where the first infraction occurred, as N started to resolve his Cryptic Command without waiting for A to pass. The following incorrect draw is a direct consequence of this first mistake, so i would not issue a DEC, but a Warning for either GRV or LEC (I am never sure about these cases where a GRV leads to a player looking at an extra card).

Backing up is problematic, since we would shuffle a random card from N's hand in the library. It seems better to not back-up (leave the new card in N's hand) and then take care about the ongoing LEC (shuffle the old card in N's library).

I'd suggest the error is a GPE-GRV as Player N has failed to pass priority before starting to resolve the Cryptic. There's also a GRV-FtMG for Player A as they should have called a judge after the questionable “draw” before moving on with the Scavenging Ooze. Either way I'd want to back up (with HJ approval) as I think the game state is fixable.

To Gareth's point, technically the first card hasn't been drawn as the CR defines a card draw as putting the top card of the library into a player's hand (which hasn't happened) which would make Player N's error a GRV-LEC if we were to consider the movement of that card the first error.

Even though the first card didn't reach A's hand, that's the card that A *should* draw. So it's the drawing of the *second* card that creates the DEC penalty.

Originally posted by Huw Morris:

Even though the first card didn't reach A's hand, that's the card that A *should* draw. So it's the drawing of the *second* card that creates the DEC penalty.

It would, but both the GRV-GPE for not passing priority, or if you prefer, the GRV-LEC comes immediately before that, so by definition there is no DEC penalty.

I think the not passing priority thing is a bit of a trap,It must have been passed ootherwise the spell wouldn't be “resolving”

Well, forgetting to pass priority will not preclude a DEC infraction if the first indication that you resolved Cryptic Command in advance is that you drew a card.

If the situation was that N put the card in his hand before A had the time to say “I want to activate Ooze”, we could be looking at DEC.

Here, though, there was a visible mistake that is not drawing a card before the problem card moved to N's hand.

The miss-communication on who has priority is the heart of the issue and the cause of all of the errors in the game. Player N thinks the Cryptic is resolving and has looked at the next card based on that - an action they're entitled to do if they're right. Player A thinks they have priority and are responding to the Cryptic therefore Player N has jumped the gun to look at the next card making that action illegal.

The vast majority of priority passes in a game are not verbalized, often a player will wait a few seconds to see if there is a response then start to resolve the spell at the top of the stack and that makes it very difficult to assess who is correct.

The more I consider this the less happy I am with a GRV-LEC because that would imply that if Player N had put the card into their hand instead we'd be issuing a game loss here. I don't think where the card goes matters - the problem is the players haven't been clear about where they were. We'd need to investigate to figure out if any indication was given that priority had been passed and how the players had been playing before. It also feels like there's an opportunity for players to create a ‘gotcha’ opportunity the way this is being ruled currently.