You're called over to a table. Player A says his opponent has too many lands. Player B is playing a ramp deck, and has a few spells in his graveyard that let him search for lands and put them into his hand and the battlefield. You do the math and find out B indeed has an extra land on the battlefield. You also determine there was no cheating involved, and that neither player is sure when the error occurred. Naturally you give a GRV, and because of the situation leave the game state as it is. At most you could argue that there's an object in an incorrect zone, but since you don't know which land it is, you can't do anything about it.
So far so good, but this troubles me - Everyone agrees that player B has an extra land he shouldn't have. What if we were to apply some “Hidden Card Error” logic here? Meaning - "Though the game state cannot be reversed to the ‘correct’ state, this error can be offset by giving the opponent ability to correct the error so that it cannot generate advantage.“
What I suggest is that in this case Player A will get to choose one of B's lands (”the complete set of cards that contains the unrecoverable information") and it will be shuffled into player B's deck, or put into his hand, if he should have had the extra card there.
Thoughts?

If there is no HCE, the IPG does not allow us to apply the HCE fix.

This situation does not appear to be either significant or exceptional. Are
you suggesting that we deviate, or are you suggesting a change in policy?

If you're suggesting a change in policy, is there a scenario that isn't a
corner case that this change would apply to? It might be easier to
understand if it was clear what problem you were trying to solve.

Good thinking.

Now what comes to my mind is can the opponent take only basics if you can determien that the spells he used only searched for basics?

All in all i do think we should be allowed to figure out some situations and fix them accordently, thats whats bothering me in the ruleset we have now. Its too strict.

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

If there is no HCE, the IPG does not allow us to apply the HCE fix.

This situation does not appear to be either significant or exceptional. Are
you suggesting that we deviate, or are you suggesting a change in policy?

If you're suggesting a change in policy, is there a scenario that isn't a
corner case that this change would apply to? It might be easier to
understand if it was clear what problem you were trying to solve.

My understanding of his thinking is: If you clearly without any doubt can fix it, why don't we do it?

> If you clearly without any doubt can fix it, why don't we do it?

But Sandro, we don't know which land was “extra”, we don't know what effect
put it there. We don't even seem to be sure if it came from the library or
the hand. It seems to me that there is a lot of doubt.

And even if you clearly without any doubt can fix it, players may have
relied on this information to make play decisions since the error. The
error could have been made ages ago.

(and this is why there are so few GRV partial fixes)

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

But Sandro, we don't know which land was “extra”, we don't know what effect
put it there. We don't even seem to be sure if it came from the library or
the hand. It seems to me that there is a lot of doubt.

And even if you clearly without any doubt can fix it, players may have
relied on this information to make play decisions since the error. The
error could have been made ages ago.

(and this is why there are so few GRV partial fixes)

Well lets talk about the Situation described above, where you can see what happened and whatnot. (thats the “without a doubt” part of my text ^^)

And if the players calculated a situation based on a wrong state then they just have to rethink. Ofc, plays made by the land too much in play you cant fix, but to give the player the advantige of having too much lands in play for the future part of the game wont help either.. so why not fix it now and dont have one of the player in a disadvantage known by anyone?

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

It might be easier to understand if it was clear what problem you were trying to solve.

It bothers me that according to the IPG, in this example we need to leave the game state as it is, even if it's clear it shouldn't be in that state.
This is an example of something that I came across, but I can see the rational applying to other similar situations, so it might not be such a corner case as you imagine.

Sandro Carlucci
Now what comes to my mind is can the opponent take only basics if you can determien that the spells he used only searched for basics?

At first glance this feels right, but I need to think this more in depth. Since we don't know which land shouldn't be there we have no way to verify that it is indeed a basic land, do we?

I think you have to leave this as it. Its a bit corner case anyway and while it seems unfair to the opponent they are responsible for the game state and you would be issuing them a FtMGS for that reason.

Without being able to determine what exactly went wrong any fixing action is likely to create worse problems. Unfortunately there are situations we simply can't make better and I'm not sure why you'd single out extra land as something you have to fix. In a ramp deck a far greater problem might be all the things they've already done with that extra mana anyway and we're not doing anything about them.

Originally posted by Marc Shotter:

I think you have to leave this as it. Its a bit corner case anyway and while it seems unfair to the opponent they are responsible for the game state and you would be issuing them a FtMGS for that reason.

Without being able to determine what exactly went wrong any fixing action is likely to create worse problems. Unfortunately there are situations we simply can't make better and I'm not sure why you'd single out extra land as something you have to fix. In a ramp deck a far greater problem might be all the things they've already done with that extra mana anyway and we're not doing anything about them.

But you can count the Ramp spells?

I mean if its turn 5 and there is one Sylvan Ranger in play and the players has 6 lands in Play its clear what happened, isn't it?

We are talking about situations where you can clearly see what happened. noone ever said something about a situation where you fail to find out what happened..

I do get that there are situations you can't fix, but then there are situation you can. but those you are not allowed to. thats whats bothering me.

Zohar, I see the logic that tempts you to apply that fix, but it's not supported by policy - so, please, don't.

Backups are done to the point of the error - in this case, we can't identify that point, so we can't possibly rewind. None of the partial fixes apply. We simply leave the game state as is.

Another point to consider - “do the math and find out B indeed has an extra land” - there's always the possibility that your math is incorrect, or is based on an incorrect memory of the game's progress (from either or both players).

Once we've done the math, confirm that with both players: “so, B, it appears that you do have an extra land, and we have no idea how that happened - do you both agree with that?” … “OK, since we can't be sure when or how it happened - maybe several turns ago! - we have to leave things as is; B, this is a GRV for putting an extra land into play; A, this is Failure to Maintain Game State; now, play on.”

d:^D

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Zohar, I see the logic that tempts you to apply that fix, but it's not supported by policy - so, please, don't.

Backups are done to the point of the error - in this case, we can't identify that point, so we can't possibly rewind. None of the partial fixes apply. We simply leave the game state as is.

Another point to consider - “do the math and find out B indeed has an extra land” - there's always the possibility that your math is incorrect, or is based on an incorrect memory of the game's progress (from either or both players).

Once we've done the math, confirm that with both players: “so, B, it appears that you do have an extra land, and we have no idea how that happened - do you both agree with that?” … “OK, since we can't be sure when or how it happened - maybe several turns ago! - we have to leave things as is; B, this is a GRV for putting an extra land into play; A, this is Failure to Maintain Game State; now, play on.”

d:^D

Ye but especially Rampy kind of things we can mostly figure out what happened, but then we dont fix it.
That means we give someone more lands that he should have even if the fix would be rather simple.

Turn 5 someone with Nissa, Vastwood Seer in play and 6 lands. Easy peasy fix, but we are denied the fix.

Im sad :(

Uncle, we won't do things not supported by policy, but the policy isn't set in stone.
Bottom line this is meant to be a discussion if such an idea could make for a better policy.

May I note that we didn't give them more lands, they made an error and both
players failed to catch it when it happened, which may have been many turns
ago.

With the exception of a few approved partial fixes which we agree are
generally “safe”, the options to fix a GRV are all or nothing. Either we
rewind or we don't.

Attempting to add more partial fixes, especially ones which only really
apply to one or a few corner cases, is far more effort and risk than it is
worth. You don't know what land was extra, you don't know where it came
from or when, and you don't know what it has been used on or what decisions
have been made since its appearance. As Scott mentioned before, the
players' memory of the game may not even be correct. These are all great
reasons to leave the game state as it is, rather than risk damaging it
further. Both players had the opportunity to notice and correct the error
when it occurred.
On Feb 23, 2016 11:21 AM, “Sandro Carlucci” <

Sandro you fix it if you can which means you check for partial fixes. If they are not applicable => rewind if you can and if you cannot the fix is leave it as it is. You also punish by giving out the GRV/FtmGS Warnings.
Both players are responsible for this kind of mistake (unless it is cheating). Judges trying out fixes because they feel Situation A needs to be fair just leads us down a path where Judge 1 feels differently about the fairness of Situation A than Judge 2 und we as a group become terribly inconsistent. It also opens the way for players to complain about judges because “Otherjudge” handled Situation A differently.

This situation actually sounds simple but is it really? How do you decide what lands are okay to take away? Basic/non-basic “But he is not playing basic/non-basic.” Tapped/untapped/any? “But judge, I kept that land open for counter/killspell how can you invalidate my whole strategy”
This also opens up the posibility for players to wait before they call us because they can wait till it might be beneficial. Yes, this is cheating but I would rather have them play on at a slight disadvantage than DQ them.

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

May I note that we didn't give them more lands, they made an error and both
players failed to catch it when it happened, which may have been many turns
ago.

True, both failed to catch it, but then one got the advantage of having one more land, and thats not a small advantage..

I just dislike that we are not allowed to investigate some situations where we may fix certain things that were obvious.