At last night's FNM, I was in a very awkward situation. I was the last round to finish, and was hastily collecting and entering match results to get the next round up. When I sat down to start my next match, after we had kept our hands, I played a scryland on the draw and found I had not desideboarded. My first instinct was to yell Judge, but I was the only one on duty that tournament. I felt that anything less than a Game Loss penalty represented a serious conflict of interest. The JAR doesn't really talk about failure to desideboard in section about illegal decks. Assuming the deck is otherwise legal, how do we handle failure to desideboard at Regular REL in the following cases:

1) If it is discovered during mulligans?
2) If it is discovered within the first couple of turns?
3) If it is discovered late in the game (Turn 7+)?

Edited Joshua Deming (Oct. 26, 2013 12:18:41 PM)

At Regular, isn't this just a case of “A player has illegal… cards in his or her deck” from Common Issues?

In which case it's just a matter of:
1) Ensure the player is not cheating (clearly not).
2) Fix the error (note “known” parts of the deck, then desideboard, shuffle, redo the scry).
3) Give yourself the “play more carefully” speech.

Presumably you wouldn't give a game loss for this at Regular to anyone other than yourself (unless they did it repeatedly), and while judges should set a good example, giving stronger penalties to ourselves than to other players is very much against philosophy.

There's no reason to treat a failure to desideboard separately at Regular because we don't award game losses except in extreme cases. Simply apply the usual fix for an illegal decklist: “Remove any cards that shouldn't be there and put back any that should.” Once you do that, the deck is good to go!

Did you use decklists for the event? If not, can the deck actually contain illegal cards if you just failed to desideboard?

Originally posted by Julien de Graat:

Did you use decklists for the event? If not, can the deck actually contain illegal cards if you just failed to desideboard?

If it was a Constructed event, then yes - the deck contains illegal cards if not desideboarded.
If it was Limited - no problem there. MTR 7.2 permits sideboarding deck between matches in Regular REL Limited tournaments without decklists.
We don't know, which case is it in this specific situation.

it's important to note that there is basically never a game loss at
regular. just try to fix it as best you can and carry on.

Originally posted by Piotr Łopaciuk:

If it was a Constructed event, then yes - the deck contains illegal cards if not desideboarded.

And how do we know without a decklist? There is no way to know what the deck is supposed to look like for game 1. So we can only fix this if the player calls us. I see some potential for abuse here (although I'm well aware that we are talking about Regular REL!).

Originally posted by Julien de Graat:

Piotr Łopaciuk
If it was a Constructed event, then yes - the deck contains illegal cards if not desideboarded.

And how do we know without a decklist? There is no way to know what the deck is supposed to look like for game 1. So we can only fix this if the player calls us. I see some potential for abuse here (although I'm well aware that we are talking about Regular REL!).

While this is true, this is part of our role within our local communities to educate that when they do fail to desideboard to call us and fix the problem and teaching them that not doing so is wrong.

The issue at hand was that it happened to me while I was playing in an event, and I was the only judge on duty for the event. None of the other area judges were even available to get a second opinion from. It was a Standard Constructed FNM with no decklists, to clarify. I thought it would look very awkward to my opponent saying, “Hey, I forgot to desideboard after entering in results–I need to back the game up to the scry trigger and deboard” after playing a scryland and seeing a very obviously sideboard Pithing Needle.

I know what the correct fix is–it's more the obvious conflict of interest between playing and solo-judging the same event, combined with the protocol fix for the situation, makes me as the judge look really bad and biased, being unable to point out within the documents where the exact fix was. My first instinct when it happened was to call a judge, but there were no other judges at the event–not even off-duty ones.

Another thing that made it awkward was…I later found out that the same opponent I did this to had another opponent that failed to desideboard, and the two decided to apply the (correct) fix but without calling a judge.

Edited Joshua Deming (Oct. 27, 2013 12:16:07 PM)

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that you cannot point out in the documents where the fix is, having acknowledged that you know what the fix was and also that you know where it is found in the JAR. Surely you can just point out that bit?

Otherwise, in terms of the conflict of interest - your mileage may vary. It is true that a situation could arise where a conflict of interest could be perceived where there is only one player-judge on an event. In an ideal world, you would have a couple of player-judges present so that if something came up in one of their matches, the other could deal with it - but this is sadly not going to be the case. The best recommendation that I can give is to make the effort to build up a reputation for being honest and reliable as a judge in your local community, and it should lead into people trusting you to make rulings even on your own matches.

The risk of you giving yourself a game loss for failure to desideboard at regular REL is that people in your playgroup who saw this may begin to think that this is a standard fix, which runs the risk of causing confusion or even hostility further down the line when the same penalty is not applied in their match at some point, whether by you or by another judge.

Feel free to disregard, as this is a “policy I made up myself and hold myself to, but nobody else cares about”, but I have a policy of conceding if I've done something in error during a match that could give me an advantage, especially at regular REL.

At regular REL we're hear to have fun, and I have as much fun laughing at my own mistakes as I do playing magic. Co-incidentally, I'm an awful player, and I don't know how many times I've laughed at myself mid-game for tapping the wrong mana so I can't cast my second spell and my opponent has laughed at me and taken their win.

You made a mistake, fess up, do whatever you feel is going to keep the event fun for everyone (yourself included) and move on with the tournament. Poop happens, and worlds don't end.

My policy, I make rulings for myself just like I would for anyone else. If anyone finds I made a mistake, I buy them a beer. (Keep in mind I run my weekly tournament in a bar where a beer next to your playmat is standard practice.)

Honestly, I've never seen magic players study the rules so hard as when I announced this policy. :)