Hello guys,

If a player casts Dig Through Time and looks at 8 cards from the top instead of 7, notices the mistake and calls for a Judge, what infraction did he commit? Is it L@EC ou GRV? What fix would you apply?

Originally posted by Thiago Perígolo Souza:

Is it L@EC ou GRV?

It's a Looking at extra cards infraction because the 8th card was something the player was not entitled to see.

Technically any kind of illegal game action is considered a game rule violation to some extent but if the illegal action is a more specific Game Play Error (like L@EC for seeing an extra card with Dig Through Time in this example), then we classify it as one of those more specific infractions and remedy the situation accordingly.

Originally posted by Thiago Perígolo Souza:

What fix would you apply?

Have the player shuffle the 8th card into the random portion of his deck and then continue playing. Don't forget to record the penalty on the match slip and give a time extension if necessary.

Since the cards were not revealed to the opponent do we know which card the 8th one was? Do we shuffle a random one in?

Edited Sal Cortez (April 19, 2015 04:18:08 AM)

We probably don't know which was the 8th card, so we'd choose one at random to shuffle in. If there's no doubt about which card is the 8th card, we can use that.

d:^D

Is there actual policy support for choosing one at random? The IPG merely says: “Shuffle the randomized portion of the deck (which may include the cards that were seen, if they were part of the random portion of the library).”

Let's say there's a high chance (but not a certainty) that a particular card was the 8th card. Should we choose that one or still pick a random card? I would argue that picking a random card increases chances of cheating as players who look at the first, say, four cards, and don't like them, might then look at the next five cards on purpose to get a chance on a shuffling one of the first four cards into the deck (we prevent this type of problem in a different fashion for Improper Drawing at Start of Game).

Picking a card at random seems like a good fix, yes, but it also looks like a little like a deviation.

Knowing the 8th card seems edg-y enough I wouldn't really worry about interpreting policy around it. And the risk of “I don't like any of these, lemme LEC so I can reshuffle them all, and get a new 7 to look at” seems more likely.

If you can't tell which card was the 8th card? They were all random (unless we knew some of the others for some reason), so since that portion of the library was random, there isn't really a difference which card gets pulled as long as nobody gets a choice in the matter. I don't think it's a matter of policy explicitly saying to do it, but a result of the state of the cards.

I believe the policy for fixing L@EC is not well suited to deal with this cases, like Dig Through Time, Anticipate, Ponder and other effects that let only one player look at a bunch of cards. That's because the current fix of randomizing the viewed cards that should not be seen is “impossible” due to the fact that there are another cards in his hands at the moment that the opponent doesn't know the identity of.
The “remove a random card for each card seen that shouldn't have seen and shuffle” might seen the obvious fix, but there's a big problem in here. Let's say the player desperatly needs to find a land in his Dig Through Time and finds none, then he picks and 8th card hopping for a land, finds it, calls a judge and knowing the fix now has a chance of 1/8 to keep a land that he shouldn't have. That seens like a good price, a warning for a land. We all know that it's cheating, but we all know that it's really hard to unveil intent in this situation.
A full backup is even worse as you can imagine, because we would give a full new set of cards to be chosen.
I believe that two solutions could be discussed to maybe be added to the IPG as fixes to the specific case of L@EC where only one player has the opportunity to look at a bunch of cards and adds even more cards to that group of cards.

1st - the harsher approach would be to upgrade to GL in the same line we use for GRVs in which the opponent didn't have the opportunity to check the legality of the chosen card that was putted in the hand.

2nd - the softer, and more appropriatein my opinion, we randomly take the amount of cards seen in excess +1 and shuffle into the unknown portion of the deck, following the line we use in IDaSoG.

My thoughts on the two suggestions:

1. We tend to give GL for offences that have a higher potential for advantage. I feel that although I can see the reasoning that these types of mistakes are harder for the opponent to catch, I do not feel that the potential to cheat weighs very heavily for me to want to move this to GL. There is definitely more potential for advantage here than your average LaEC but does having another chance at hitting a land/removal/whatever with another card and then removing a random one of them represent an advantage we want to GL? I feel no :).

2. This is an interesting suggestion to offset a potential advantage based off of the same philosophy we use for Improper Drawing. I see similarities between the kind of advantage one can gain with Improper Drawing and this type of LaEC.

I'm curious though, what consequences do you see if this were to be policy? Will it have some unintended side effects? Can you see any reason that might cause you to doubt this would be an improvement?

I'm going to sleep now, looking forwards to seeing your thoughts :)

I don't see this situation as being any different than a player accidentally seeing the faces of two cards while playing a scryland. Would you shuffle them both into the player's (unknown portion of the) library and make him lose the effect entirely?

I feel that just taking one of those cards and shuffling it back (preferably the last one if it can be fairly determined, but a random one otherwise) would be the best solution.

just a quick bit of background - this situation occurred several times at GP:Miami. Three of the level 5 judges were in attendance (Toby as Head Judge, myself, and Riccardo). We discussed the various options, and agreed to use the approach I mentioned above (shuffle away the 8th card, which might have to be chosen at random).

d:^D

Thanks for the input Eskil, Claudio and Scott, didn't know it had already been discussed, and I was afraid of the potential for exploiting the fix.
With the current text of the IPG I couldn't agree more with you that the best we can do is taking a random card

;D

Edited Thiago Perígolo Souza (April 27, 2015 10:48:58 AM)