Two players mulligan to 6 and both start their game. One player plays a land a passes the turn. The second player is about to play a land when they find out that the second player has mulled to 7 insead of 6. The mistake was accidental.

How do we solve this during a regular REL?

At this point, at Regular, it seems like a pretty simple fix. I would go ahead and put the card drawn this turn (if it is uniquely identifiable) back on top of the library. Otherwise, we'd just put a random card back on top as we would with fixing DEC at Regular.

As always, instruct the players to be more careful in the future, but thank them for calling a judge promptly when the error was discovered.

First, I would ask if they can uniquely identify the card that the player just drew. If so, I would simply have the player put that card back on top of his library. Otherwise, I would pick a card at random at that point and put it on top. It's a fairly minor issue, so we want a clean, simple, and fair fix.

Edit: Ninja'd by Trey.

Edited Peter Richmond (April 29, 2013 02:00:07 AM)

Thanks for the input, the last card drawn wasn't uniquely identifiable. But I put a random one on top. My gut feeling wanted to do this, but I am unsure if it was “correct”.

The other player (a bit of a Spike) argued that he was at an unfair advantage now. (He even said he had a free type-of-ponder this way).

Originally posted by Niki Lin:

Thanks for the input, the last card drawn wasn't uniquely identifiable. But I put a random one on top. My gut feeling wanted to do this, but I am unsure if it was “correct”.

The other player (a bit of a Spike) argued that he was at an unfair advantage now. (He even said he had a free type-of-ponder this way).

While I agree, let's just be clear that we're now going into policy discussion, and not the actual rules. There is a reason that the penalty is as it is: it has to do with the philosophy of the situation.

First off, the error began in the start of the game, meaning that there is almost nothing to the opponent's advantage, beyond knowing a card that he would have drawn his next turn anyway. Past this, the situation can easily backfire in the offender's direction, even if he meant to cheat. By taking a card at random, he could very well lose a crucial starting card or land in his opening hand.

While my personal opinion, outside of policy, would be to have them shuffle in a card at random, it is much less disruptive and more suitable to just put that card on top and have them continue play. Do note that what I noted is indeed the fix for Looking at Extra Cards, which is a different and much more abusable scenario.

The reason why it's not “shuffle one at random” is, from everything I've read, that it simply takes too much time to figure out if any cards on the top or bottom are known, shuffle the remainder, give the opponent a chance to shuffle as well, then put the known cards back. A single shuffle probably takes close to a minute, if not longer to carry out from the time you start asking the players if any cards were known through shuffling the card in and giving the opponent a chance to shuffle as well.

Is there some potential for advantage? Yes, I suppose there is. Is this a problem? At Regular, it's probably not too big of a deal, but you shouldn't neglect to scrutinize for possible cheating.

Originally posted by Trey Cizek:

The reason why it's not “shuffle one at random” is, from everything I've read, that it simply takes too much time

Nope, not at all. If we put a random card back on top, there's a non-zero chance it's one of the cards on which that the player based his “keep this hand” decision - or a card that he doesn't need, and would prefer to shuffle away. Also - and this goes WAY back - we removed the ability to get a “free shuffle” - although, all these years later, I'm not remembering why that's a huge concern. (It'd be Cheating, after all…)

The time required to apply a proper fix should never discourage us from doing just that…