2 scenarios that you discover during a deck check:

- The player has presented a 61-card deck. In his deck are both a Westvale Abbey checklist card and a real Westvale Abbey in the same sleeve as the deck that's supposed to be with his sideboard.

- The player has presented a 60-card deck. In his deck is a real Westvale Abbey. With his sideboard is a checklist card for Westvale abbey in the same sleeve as the deck.

EDIT: In both cases there's only 1 maindeck Abbey registered, and 0 among the 15 sideboard cards.

Based on the IPG wording I would say the first is not a game loss but the second is, which feels off to me. But maybe I'm just reading things wrong.

Cards in different sleeves, tokens, and double-faced cards for which checklists are being used are
ignored when determining deck (not sideboard) legality.

(about extra double-faced cards in the deck)

If there are extra cards stored with the sideboard that could conceivably be played in the player’s
deck, they will be considered a part of the sideboard unless they are:
• Double-faced cards represented by checklist cards in the deck.
• Double-faced cards being used to represent the ‘night’ side of cards in the deck.

(No mention of checklist cards in the sideboard)

Edited Toby Hazes (May 30, 2017 12:13:15 PM)

Does he play multiple Westvale Abbey?
If not, I see no infraction here
In the first case, because of what you said
in the second case, well a checklist card is not a real Magic card. Plus, I
see no way of gaining any type of advantage by having a checklist on your
sideboard. You couldn't add it to the deck anyway

Re: Scenario 2
Checklist cards are Magic Cards (or at the least, are considered Authorized Cards for the purpose of tournament play). They've either presented with an extra card in their sideboard, or they've presented 59 with 16 in the sideboard (depending on whether or not you actually count the Abbey itself, since a checklist card is technically present). There is no ignoring the checklist card.

Re: Both Scenarios
This actually makes me question the rationale behind the IPG allowing DFCs to be in the same type of sleeves. I personally find both of these cases abusable and feel that DFCs that are in the same sleeve should not be ignored when determining deck legality. However, this is not what the IPG says to do, so the first scenario is technically not a DLP infraction.

Both situations I would rule as a game loss since they are caught during a deck check.

In situation 1 we can't just assume that the extra copy of Westvale Abbey is supposed to be represented by a checklist card. The IPG specifies that these extra DFCs

Originally posted by IPG - DP:

…must not be sleeved in the same way as cards in the main deck and/ or sideboard

For situation 2, we have an extra card stored with the sideboard that could conceivably be played (not correctly per the MTR guidelines about checklists, but still conceivably since the real card is legally in the deck). It fits none of the classifications for cards that can be excluded from the sideboard (not a promo, not an additional DFC to be used with a checklist), and so should be considered part of the sideboard. 16-card sideboards are Deck Problems.

I'll admit that these are close cases, but there's enough potential for abuse that I think we want to take a hard line with this sort of thing.

Edited Andrew Keeler (May 30, 2017 09:52:07 AM)

But… for able the use of a checklist card… the player must have the same number of DF real cards than the number of decklist cards…
We are all agree than have 4x Jace creature decklists in deck and only 1 REAL Card of Jace since It's legendary… is WRONG… not?

Have 1 decklist and 1 DF card and nothing in the sideboard… I only can see it as a failure in the deck… because the “represent card” and the “represented card” are both in the deck.
In case of DF in deck and decklist out… if there are another 15 cards in sideboard I think this is again a problem, because the DF cards in light sleves have a great potential abuse and for that exist the Decklist cards…

Originally posted by Andrew Keeler:

Both situations I would rule as a game loss since they are caught during a deck check.

The following sentence should prevent the possibility to issue a Game Loss in the first scenario:

Originally posted by Toby Hazes:

Cards in different sleeves, tokens, and double-faced cards for which checklists are being used are
ignored when determining deck (not sideboard) legality.

So, technically, in the first scenario there is no infraction.

Regarding scenario 2: I think it's a Deck Problem, but I'd issue just a Warning.
There's no upgrade path mentioning “sideboard”: the first one speaks specifically about “deck” (it doesn't mention the sideboard), the others cover different situations.

IPG 3.5: Upgrade: If the deck is discovered to be incorrect during the presentation period, and the
missing cards are not in the opponent’s deck, the penalty is a Game Loss.

Anyway, this seems a bit strange to me…

Edited Jacopo Strati (May 30, 2017 12:07:05 PM)

Originally posted by Jacopo Strati:

Regarding scenario 2: I think it's a Deck Problem, but I'd issue just a Warning.
There's no upgrade path mentioning “sideboard”: the first one speaks specifically about “deck” (it doesn't mention the sideboard), the others cover different situations.

IPG 3.5: Upgrade: If the deck is discovered to be incorrect during the presentation period, and the
missing cards are not in the opponent’s deck, the penalty is a Game Loss.

Anyway, this seems a bit strange to me…

Well for that I believe the second upgrade applies:

Upgrade: If an incorrect card becomes or is about to become visible to an opponent (for
example due to it being revealed or put into a graveyard) or is discovered by a judge, the penalty
is a Game Loss.

Originally posted by Toby Hazes:

Upgrade: If an incorrect card becomes or is about to become visible to an opponent (for
example due to it being revealed or put into a graveyard) or is discovered by a judge, the penalty
is a Game Loss.

I believe that this upgrade is referred only to situations in which a wrong card is about be seen by players or judges while the match is ongoing.
Example: during a Standard pPTQ, a judge who's watching a game notices that AP has in hand a Smuggler's Copter but the player seems to be unaware of it (no cheating). So the judge needs to intervene on his/her own and fix the situation.

I hope to be wrong anyway. :)

Here's my problem with seeing the extra DFC in the deck as not being a GL

Originally posted by IPG - DP:

If there are extra cards stored with the Sideboard that could conceivably be played in the player's deck, they will be considered part of the sideboard unless they are:

• Double-faced cards represented by checklist cards in the deck
  

These cards must not be sleeved in the same way as cards in the main deck and/ or sideboard.

Cards in different sleeves, tokens, and DFCs for which checklists are being used are ignored when determining deck (not sideboard) legality.

bolded for emphasis.

As near as I can tell, the bolded line is a new addition to the IPG, since it doesn't appear in the AIPG (which hasn't been updated to reflect the D/DLP split for some reason).

The way I'm reading things, DFCs that are used alongside checklist cards must be in different sleeves so that we can tell that the card should obviously not be a part of the deck. Simply encountering a DFC in the deck isn't enough to indicate this, since the DFC could be legitimately representing itself. Nor should the presence of a DFC alongside a checklist card indicate that the DFC should be represented by the checklist; players can could reasonably keep the DFC that corresponds to the checklist somewhere else (a binder or another deckbox they have with them, for example).

It is, of course, against the MTR to use a checklist and a DFC as two copies of the same card in a deck, but that on its own doesn't rule that sort of scenario out from being the case. The mere fact that we would need to check the decklist to verify that they are not intending to play both cards as separate copies of each other should argue strongly against the presumption that this DFC is clearly intended to be represented by this checklist.

Additionally, there is a higher-than-average potential for abuse here, similar to the scenario of differentiating sideboard and maindeck copies of a card by their artwork. Yes, if the player draws the checklist card and can't find their DFC they may infer that it was shuffled in by accident, it is just as likely that they might draw and play the DFC and their opponent would have no way of knowing that anything might be wrong, since they could legitimately be playing the DFC in their deck as a copy of itself.

In short, given the current phrasing of the DP infraction, I'm more inclined to see the sentence “cards in different sleeves, tokens, and DFCS for which checklists are being used are ignored…” as being a slight redundancy that comes from carrying over old wording than as an exception to the previous sentence dictating that DFC represented by checklists “must not be sleeved the same as the deck and sideboard.”

MTR 3.5 settles the case for the first situation in my opinion.

If a player uses a checklist card to represent a double-faced card in his or her deck, then all copies of that double-faced card in the deck must be represented by checklist cards, and any copies of that double-faced card in a hidden zone are considered to not exist for purposes of determining deck legality.

Originally posted by Andrew Keeler:

Additionally, there is a higher-than-average potential for abuse here, similar to the scenario of differentiating sideboard and maindeck copies of a card by their artwork. Yes, if the player draws the checklist card and can't find their DFC they may infer that it was shuffled in by accident, it is just as likely that they might draw and play the DFC and their opponent would have no way of knowing that anything might be wrong, since they could legitimately be playing the DFC in their deck as a copy of itself.

I think the potential of abuse here isn't so high. As you said, if the player draws his checklist card he won't be able to show the real card because it's already in his deck.
In the opposite situation, if he/she draws the real card first, when he/she'll draw the checklist it won't be possible to use a different DFC card. The opponent can ask him/her to show the second copy of the DFC card: this possibility makes this “cheating” scenario really disadvantageous for those who'd like to abuse of it. :)

Originally posted by Megan Holden:

MTR 3.5 settles the case for the first situation in my opinion.

If a player uses a checklist card to represent a double-faced card in his or her deck, then all copies of that double-faced card in the deck must be represented by checklist cards, and any copies of that double-faced card in a hidden zone are considered to not exist for purposes of determining deck legality.

Yes, I've the same opinion. :)