Past weekend, at a competitive Legacy event with deck lists, Adam and Noel are about to start the second game of their match. Adam lost the first game was the starting player. He looked his starting hand and chose to mulligan. While shuffling, Noel looked his starting hand and discovered a card from Adam's deck. Immediately he called a judge.

HJ discarded cheating and issued Game Loss to both players for TE - Deck / Deck List Problem. Noel was playing a card not present in his deck list and Adam presented an illegal 59 cards deck.

My question is if it's possible and a suitable option to downgrade Noel's penalty to Warning, and if it's possible to downgrade Adam's penalty too. And in this case, what fix should the judge apply?

Bonus: What happens if Noel presents a 60 cards deck + 14 cards sideboard?

Noel discovered an error and alerted a judge as soon as possible before he could gain advantage. That falls pretty clearly under the downgrade for the Additional Remedies for D/DL- the error is caught and corrected before the game starts and is minimally disruptive.

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.

The forced mulligan is reminder enough to be careful, but we're rewarding Noel for honesty by not issuing the GL.

Adam unknowingly presented an illegal 59 card deck. He was unlikely to find this error and notify a judge from his 7 card hand before the game began, which makes correcting the deck much more complicated after the game begins.

All of this could have been avoided had both players counted their decks (or their opponent's, for that matter), but the documents don't support a downgrade for Adam. I'd issue the GL for Adam and propose the downgrade to W for Noel.

Bonus- You ask Noel where that 15th sideboard card is. If he can't account for it out of his sideboard, you can check with his decklist for where that missing card is. In this case, it's probably from his maindeck and he'll need to find or replace it before G1 of his next round. Uncle Scott stated in this thread that he sees a potential to downgrade the D/DL from a GL if the player reports it themself.

If the player presents a 60 card deck and 14 card sideboard, it depends on whether he called the judge upon realizing he only had 14 SB cards to seek help in identifying it (I would downgrade here) or brazenly just presented 60 cards and 14 SB cards and the opponent called a judge. 60 cards and 14 SB cards is not the decklist they registered, so I think a GL for D/DL is warranted here.

Note- if Noel notices his 14-card SB before presenting and calls a judge, I think it's ok to not issue a penalty at all.

Originally posted by Evan Cherry:

I'd issue the GL for Adam and propose the downgrade to W for Noel.

To be honest, I don't think that this decision actually represents the philosophy of the downgrade for D/DL issues.

The error was caught upon drawing the opening hand. Fixing Adam's deck is just as disrupting/complicated as fixing Noel's deck. With the information given, the D/DL problem was Noel's fault just as much as it was Adam's fault. That's why I would downgrade the penalty for either both players or neither of them.

The MIPG says this:

“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.”

I understand that Adam didn't call a judge. That's because, in contrast to Noel, he had no chance of noticing the error without actually counting the decks, which neither of them did.

Adam didn't call a judge himself, but still, a judge was called upon drawing the opening hand, which is the primary criterion for a downgrade (in my opinion).

In the given scenario, a downgrade for only one of the two players would feel very akward to me. I'd downgrade for both players or none of them.

Any other thoughts on this? If I'm wrong, please let me know why.

Edited Jasper König (Dec. 5, 2013 06:54:01 PM)

The problem with downgrading Noel but not Adam is that it undermines the philosophy around it. That is, recognizing minimal opportunity for abuse.

If our policy is to downgrade the player that physically picks up a card under his Detention Sphere and puts it in his deck while giving his opponent a game loss if he misses it, we are highly incentivising abuse.

I'm sure that I wouldn't give different penalties unless my investigation turned up something interesting and I think the double GL is appropriate.

We have recently had some Knowledge Pool scenario exactly about such things here.

It seems that HJ is highly recommended to downgrade in such situations, although he, of course, can choose not to downgrade because of the “may” in IPG.

We had a similar but slightly different Knowledge Pool scenario since each
player with the D/DL Problem was in a different match and both of them had
the opportunity to detect the error on themselves but only one of them
noticed it.

In this scenario Noel notices the error while Adam is still resolving
mulligans before keeping his initial hand (note that IPG does not say the
first 7 cards hand, it talks about an initial hand which can be the one
with 6, 5, etc. cards hand). Once Noel detects the error and calls a judge
Adam can no longer detect the error on himself and call a judge. But since
Adam is still resolving mulligans I think he should also get his penalty
downgraded.

As Cameron says, if we downgrade Noel but we don't downgrade Adam, players
could try to abuse of this when playing with cards that take control or
exile an opponents card (normally the exiled card remains under the one
that is exiling it). I think this is not the philosophy of this
infraction-fix-penalty.
Also, if we don't downgrade any of them, the result is the same. The player
that won the first game and kept a card from his opponent wins the match.
This would be cheating, but I think it's hard to identify it.



2013/12/6 Alex Zhed <forum-7338-90f6@apps.magicjudges.org>

The reason for the downgrade is to encourage players to self-report. In this case, we have no idea if Adam would have ever noticed, or reported it - his actions match neither the conditions nor the philosophy … no downgrade.

d:^D

Sorry for the lack of clarity; when I wrote “in this case”, I was referring specifically to this:

Originally posted by David Larrea:

Once Noel detects the error and calls a judge Adam can no longer detect the error on himself and call a judge. But since Adam is still resolving mulligans I think he should also get his penalty downgraded.

My response was intended to explain why we downgrade, and why it might not be appropriate - in that scenario.