At the during the final round before cut to top 8, after a player has finished his match, a player comes to you and says that he was looking over his decklist and he just realized that what he played all day may not be what he registered. (He was playing a clifftop retreat and 1 forest instead of 2 forests).

What would you consider the appropriate penalty and fix (if any)?

Would your answer change if the player realized this and brought it to your attention in round 1 or 2 as opposed to round 7?

Originally posted by William Anderson:

..
What would you consider the appropriate penalty and fix (if any)?
Would your answer change if the player realized this and brought it to your attention in round 1 or 2 as opposed to round 7?

I'm not penalizing early rounds. I have him make his deck match the decklist. No difference if it's round 1-2 or round 7.

Philip, there is no policy support for what you said.

William, policy is pretty clear here as much as we might be feeling bad
that the guy brought it up on his own.

The definition:

A player commits one or more of the following errors involving their deck:
• The contents of the presented deck and sideboard do not match the
decklist registered.

Pretty clearly D/DLP, which I think we all agree with. This is a Game Loss.
The only situations where we can downgrade are:

"Ambiguous or unclear names on a decklist may allow a player to manipulate
the contents of his or her deck up until the point at which they are
discovered. Use of a truncated name that is not unique may be downgraded to
a Warning<http://wiki.internationalmagicjudges.net/index.php?title=IPG:1.2b> at
the Head Judge’s discretion if he or she believes that the intended card is
obvious and the potential for abuse minimal.“

Obviously doesn't apply here.

And:

”If the player, upon drawing an opening hand, discovers a deck problem and
calls a judge at that point, the Head Judge may downgrade the penalty, fix
the deck, and allow the player to redraw the hand with one fewer card. The
player may continue to take further mulligans if he or she desires.“

You could argue that the philosophy here applies, even if the exact words
do not. Regardless, I see there being too much potential for advantage in
allowing players to come up and say ”Oh I was playing x all day when I
realize now that my list said y." This is a game loss, even if you might
feel bad that they brought it up.

This seems to be similar to a thread from a few days ago (
http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/post/16556/ ). In that thread, Scott
posted: “ we have always held that, between games/matches, there can not be
a D/DL error. Those only apply during games.”
I believe that this also applies here.

Edited Shawn Doherty (March 14, 2013 02:01:12 PM)

Shawn Doherty you have shut me down, I was being overzealous.

Of course the deck hasn't been presented so there is no infraction.

So if the player isn't committing an infraction between rounds, will we still change the decklist to match the deck without a penalty? Is there not potential for advantage if the player decides he wants to change his deck mid-tournament and just comes up between rounds? I think if we're changing the list, the infraction has to apply. Or we can tell the player to match his deck to the decklist, and there's no infraction…

Thoughts?

Josh, I agree with you on the sticky situation here. Personally based on my understanding of DLP in general, we are going to need to investigate what is going on here. In the original example, a player notices a problem, brings it to the judges attention right after finding it, and we fix it. The way this happens though is something we need to investigate, to see if the player is cheating, or it was an honest mistake.

If a player just comes up to me in the middle of two rounds and says “my deck has these two cards, and my decklist has two others,” without wanting to see the decklist, it is sending up red flags everywhere. It is all about normal player action in this case.

I can see how a situation like this can occur. Historically I write my deck lists up days before the event, but in the past have made a last minute sideboard or maindeck change, but in the chaos of the beginning of a tournament, forget to change it. I could very well see me figuring it out by looking at the list - key is investigate.

I would make the deck match the registered decklist rather than making
the decklist match the deck. This would minimize the potential for
advantage you describe. Of course, if we believe the player was
trying to gain advantage by changing his deck throughout the
tournament, we have a different situation.

Sent from my iPhone

I would make the list match the deck, even between rounds. We have no guarantee that the player necessarily has access to all 75 cards on his list. Just ask the player the usual line of questions you would if you spotted it during a start of round deck check: “Is this what you've been playing all day?”, “Why doesn't your list match that?”, etc. Trust your investigation skills to catch cheaters, and follow policy to keep exploitation to a minimum.

There are a lot of times players end up with a mismatch because they are rushed to finish deck lists. Or a friend wrote the list for him and didn't realize he had made some last minute change. Or he wrote up the list at home but made a last minute change in the car and forgot to write it down. These sorts of things happen pretty regularly.

Edited Joshua Feingold (March 17, 2013 04:26:28 PM)

Make the decklist match the deck doesn't match what I find in the IPG. I can find nothing in this that says to take a legal decklist and make it match what is presented.

Additional Remedy
Remove any cards from the deck that are illegal for the format or violate the maximum number allowed, fix any
failures to de-sideboard, restore any missing cards if they (or identical replacements) can be located, then alter the decklist to reflect the remaining deck. If the remaining deck has too few cards, add basic lands of the player’s choice to reach the minimum number. If the deck and decklist both violate a maximum cards restriction (usually too many cards in a sideboard or more than four of a card), remove cards starting from the bottom of the appropriate section of the list.

So as I read this, if the cards can't be found they should be replaced by basic lands. But once basic lands have been used to replace the missing cards and the decklist corrected, they cannot go back.

We should not deviate from the IPG because our players are ill prepared for the event.

Edited Jim Shuman (March 17, 2013 06:12:45 PM)

Originally posted by Jim Shuman:

if the cards can't be found they should be replaced by basic lands.

What cards are missing, Jim?

That phrase applies when a player loses a card, but is (un)able to find a replacement. Cards on the list that aren't in the actual deck are not “missing” - they're a mismatch, which is a problem.

And, the most likely (and probably most frequent) occurrence is, as people have said, those last-minute changes that weren't recorded properly - or simple clerical errors. What we want is for the decklist to match the deck (and s/b) they presented for the first game they play in the event, and for them to continue to match throughout the day.

Also, please follow that link, where Mr. Doherty Sarnath'd this whole thread… :)

Edited Scott Marshall (March 17, 2013 06:25:38 PM)

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Jim Shuman
if the cards can't be found they should be replaced by basic lands.

What cards are missing, Jim?

That phrase applies when a player loses a card, but is (un)able to find a replacement. Cards on the list that aren't in the actual deck are not “missing” - they're a mismatch, which is a problem.

If a replacement for a card mismatch can't be found, then it must be missing. I guess I was reading into the fix here as the Additional Remedy section did not address card mismatch's. I know there are recent policy changes which I have missed but I see nothing in the IPG that says I take a legal deck list and make it match the deck presented. In the 15 years I have been judging I have been taught to make the deck match the legal deck list. Although our current IPG isn't very clear on that.

I'm just trying to find documented direction for the things we are doing.

Originally posted by Jim Shuman:

I know there are recent policy changes which I have missed but I see nothing in the IPG that says I take a legal deck list and make it match the deck presented. In the 15 years I have been judging I have been taught to make the deck match the legal deck list. Although our current IPG isn't very clear on that.

I'm just trying to find documented direction for the things we are doing.

The June 2011 revisions of the IPG changed this. The language about missing cards could perhaps be a bit clearer, but the intent of the changes was expressed in the very direct language of the summary of the change in the Appendix, “Decklists are now always fixed to match decks.”

Originally posted by Dillon Plunkett:

Jim Shuman
I know there are recent policy changes which I have missed but I see nothing in the IPG that says I take a legal deck list and make it match the deck presented. In the 15 years I have been judging I have been taught to make the deck match the legal deck list. Although our current IPG isn't very clear on that.

I'm just trying to find documented direction for the things we are doing.

The June 2011 revisions of the IPG changed this. The language about missing cards could perhaps be a bit clearer, but the intent of the changes was expressed in the very direct language of the summary of the change in the Appendix, “Decklists are now always fixed to match decks.”

Note that when decklists are fixed to match decks, we should be doing the full remedy, which also involves handing out a Game Loss in the player's next game. Otherwise, it pretty much defeats having a decklist in the first place.

-The deck and/or decklist contain an illegal number of cards for the format - this is clearly not the case.
- contain one or more cards that are illegal for the format - neither is this.
- A card listed on a decklist is not identified by its full name, and could be interpreted as more than one card. - no, not it.
- The contents of the presented deck and sideboard - there is no presented deck/sideboard, so this cannot apply either.

None of the definitions of D/DLP apply. Therefor I can not / will not tell the player he commited this Infraction. He has beforehand (most likely) done so, when he presented the Deck in earlier rounds, but unless I think he did so knowingly (in which case we are dealing with Cheating, which I should start investigating for anyways - I need to make sure he only just realized his (possible) mistake), no infraction, not even D/DLP, matches what I am looking for.

So, since I really cannot hand out a penalty for D/DLP (unless I want to deviate from the documents, which I generally do not), I would not apply the remedy for this infraction, either. I would tell the Player that I need him to make his Deck match his Decklist when he presents it to his opponent (which he will do in the next round) and inform him about the definition of Cheating, which will apply if he presents his deck not matching his decklist (since he now is aware of the fact that he would commit an Infraction). So he now basically has until the beginning of next round to make his Deck match his Decklist (I will have him take a look at his Decklist so he can check whether or not his Deck needs to be changed). I will have him Deckchecked next round. If he manages to do so, there will be no penalty. If he does not, and he calls a Judge on himself for it the instant he presents his Deck, he has commited D/DLP, and I would make his Decklist match his Deck.
For the penalty here, by the book this is a Game Loss, since the additional remedy does not apply (he did not draw an opnening hand, nor will he have the chance to do so due to the impending deck check).
If he does NOT call a judge on himself the instant he present the Deck of which he knows it does not match the decklist, it is a pretty clear case of Cheating, probably doesn't even require a great amount of investigating, and the penalty is a DQ.