Hello everyone, and thanks for participating in this week's scenario!

This is indeed an example of DEC, and by the new IPG, you should ask Arnold to reveal his hand to Naomi, and she should choose a card from it to be shuffled in an unknown part of Arnold's library.

The action of Scry 1 was performed, incorrectly; once we fix the DEC, we aren't going to back up and Scry again. (Doing so could create an advantage for Arnold.)

Arnold will receive a Warning for Drawing Extra Cards. Naomi should not receive a Warning for FtMGS, because she did not have reasonable time to point out the mistake or prevent Arnold from making it.

A question for the KP team: How did do you determine that the action
of Scry 1 was taken here?

On 24 July 2015 at 00:50, Maria Zuyeva
<forum-19795-5885@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

I have to say I don't agree with the final ruling here. At this point, you're saying “You're not going to perform your action because if you have performed it incorrectly”. Performing an action incorrectly is a Game Rules Violation.

I do not think we're dealing with a GRV here. We are clearly dealing with Drawing Extra cards. However, as it is Drawing Extra Cards, it feels more harmful to not let the player perform the action he was supposed to and, in fact, did not. A drew a card when he was supposed to scry. Therefore, he should be able to scry.

Originally posted by Andre Tepedino:

I have to say I don't agree with the final ruling here. At this point, you're saying “You're not going to perform your action because if you have performed it incorrectly”. Performing an action incorrectly is a Game Rules Violation.

A Game Rule Violation isn't any time you perform an action incorrectly, a Game Rule Violation is a Game Play Error that doesn't fit into any of the other GPE infraction categories. If you try to Scry 1 but pick up 2 cards and see them, that's performing the Scry incorrectly but is Looking at Extra Cards, not a GRV. Similarly, in this case they picked up the card and added it to their hand, instead of keeping it separate and choosing whether to put it on top or bottom of their library, which as you noted is DEC. That doesn't mean they haven't performed the action of Scry 1 incorrectly, they obviously have.

Another way to think about it, is we can let them complete the action of Scrying by putting any number of the cards from the top of their library - that they are currently looking at - on the bottom of their library, and the rest on the top in any order. Unfortunately for the player, they aren't looking at any cards in their library at the moment, because the only one they were entitled to look at was put into their hand, so there's nothing left to do for the scry operation.

The additional remedy for DEC in the IPG doesn't tell us how to handle this type of situation, where the DEC interrupts an action the player is legally taking. As such, we looked at the options we had - allow the player to scry, or not. There was a bit of a split decision, but the majority of the opinions we gathered decided that the player should not be allowed to scry after the remedy because of the potential for advantage. Here's an example: In a situation where Arnold knows how DEC is handled, he could see a card he doesn't want, ‘accidentally’ draw the card, and take the warning to gain another scry in an attempt to find a card that helps him in whatever situation he's in that game.

Originally posted by Chuck Pierce:

A Game Rule Violation isn't any time you perform an action incorrectly, a Game Rule Violation is a Game Play Error that doesn't fit into any of the other GPE infraction categories.

You are correct. I focused too much on the “not giving the scry” thing that I ended up messing up there. Still, I do think the player that commited the DEC should be given the chance to scry.

I understand your point, Patrick, and now it makes sense to me that it would come with that result. However, as there are plenty of judges who would allow the scry, and the IPG doesn't give a clear remedy, perhaps for next time it'd be best to explain why not give the scry and how the team came with that conclusion to start with.

Other than that, great scenario as always :D

On 24 July 2015 at 06:31, Patrick Vorbroker
<forum-19795-5885@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> There was a bit of a split decision, but the majority of the opinions we
> gathered decided that the player should not be allowed to scry after the
> remedy because of the potential for advantage.

I don't see how that's supported by the IPG: can you please point it
out to me, because I can't find it. If a player looks at two cards
instead of one when scrying one, we shuffle away the second and then
he makes the decision on the first. If a player draws four cards off
a brainstorm, we'll shuffle away the extra and then he'll put two
back. I don't see any room here for the player's scry (which they
haven't done!) to be denied to them given the words in the the
document as I read it.

I think this is a great scenario for exploring the new DEC remedy that
has happened to wander into perhaps-more-interesting territory than
was originally intended.

Originally posted by Devin Smith:

I don't see how that's supported by the IPG: can you please point it out to me, because I can't find it. If a player looks at two cards instead of one when scrying one, we shuffle away the second and then he makes the decision on the first. If a player draws four cards off a brainstorm, we'll shuffle away the extra and then he'll put two back. I don't see any room here for the player's scry (which they haven't done!) to be denied to them given the words in the the document as I read it.

At the same time, the player has definitely started to perform the Scry (by looking at the top card of their library). So in order to let them perform a whole new Scry, we would have to back up the game to before they looked at (and accidentally drew) that top card. The IPG doesn't allow a backup and even if it did, we would only backup to the point of the error, which was after the card was looked at. So nothing in the IPG gives us permission to have the player do a whole new Scry action.