SCG States last weekend, I was the head judge, and we encountered a interesting angle on perceived advantage.

BTW the situation is slightly different, the actual situation resulted in a DQ investigation for cheating…

It is turn 2 in my win and in match. I play a second scry land, and look at the top card of my library, and set it down behind his library, out of the view of his opponent. As he is making the decision, his friend comes over and asks him a question about lunch, and he gets distracted. After his friend leaves, he casts duress, and his opponent reveals his hand. The active player looks at the hand, chooses a card, and as his opponent goes to discard the card, he notices the face down card next to the library. At this point both players call for a judge, and the situation was ruled on, appealed, and you are now the head judge working out the situation.

What is the fix? Remember the opponent has no idea the card was not put on the top or the bottom of the library (as it was hidden behind the library. The player who scryed said in the investigation that he would have put the card on the bottom of the library. We are assuming the player was not cheating during this call. Can we minimize the potential for abuse in the fix? Is their philosophical guidance in this situation?

Discuss!

Edited Amanda Swager (May 19, 2014 12:59:36 PM)

Since you ruled out cheating already, we'll stick with the standard GRV -
Not resolving scry completely.
Only the Duress has occurred since then, so you can back up to the scry
resolution and move on.
Some may argue that backing up through a Duress may cause “too much
disruption to the course of the game”, but I do not think that it does.

Agree with Shawn on this. It's also hard to leave the game state as is
because that card is just sitting on the table, so you have to do something
with it and you can't really assume what the Scrying player intended to do.

Well the card shouldn't be sitting on the table it should be on the top of the library. Scrying doesn't move the card. If we don't want to back up the card would stay on top of his library.

Steve,

Then you are forcing a decision that the player hasn't made.

Right but you have to back up to let them make that decision, I was saying if you don't feel like you can back up. The default would be leave the card on top since that where it should be during the scry effect. I'm not saying backing up isn't the way to go, just saying if you felt like the duress was to much info or if it was past combat and 3 spell had been cast and even worse 2 card were drawn or something.

Here is the problem with either fix:

- Backup — player now knows the content of the hand. He could technically choose to not cast duress, and he has the knowledge of the entire contents of the hand. In any backup, the player has the choice to not follow the same block of actions, and we can not undo the knowledge he has gained through careless play that the opponent had little chance to catch.

- Not Backup — He is in the middle of a scry effect when he should not be scrying. He now has full knowledge of his opponents hand, and can base his decision on that fact. If we do not backup, what do we do with the card that is now separate physically from the library, but technically on top still? The player said he wanted it on the bottom… do we honor that choice? Was that choice made on information based on the duress?

Is there another way to limit the players advantage gained by the error?

There really isn't one supported by policy, no.

I don't really agree that the opponent had little chance to catch the error. It's not like scrying is an invisible action that the opponent can't see happening.

In the end, it's up to both players to maintain a legal game state. Both failed to do so here.

I fully agree with Shawn Doherty and everything he said. I have no issue rewinding here. Nothing in policy says a rewind can't be advantageous to a player, it just can't be too disruptive.

Any time the game state gets broken, the outcome is likely to be broken in some way. That's the unfortunate “price” of neither player noticing that something went wrong before it was too late. It's not ideal, but as you pointed out: there's no solution that doesn't favour someone.

I think Steve has a valid point. Let's break down the logic of this…

Where is a card when a player scrys?
It's on top of the library. It doesn't matter physically where it is. As far as the game is concerned, it is on top of the library until the player moves it to the bottom. It never leaves the library.

How do we know when a player is done scrying?
Well that is a bigger discussion than we want to have here, but I think we can all agree, a player who takes the next game action, like casting a spell, is done scrying.

What If…

• Would your ruling change if the card was “turned sideways” on top of the library?
  
• Would your ruling change if the card was never fully moved off of the top of the library? (sneaking a peek by bending the corner back)
  
• Would your ruling change if the card was placed behind the library. After the player spoke with his friend, he got back to the game and said, “Sorry about that, I'm done. Go to combat? Take 2. Second main, Duress?”
  

As I see it…

• In all four cases, the player says he wasn't done scrying.
  
• In all four cases, the player took game actions after the scry.
  
• In all four cases, the player was distracted by a spectator.
  
• In all four cases, the game considers the card to be on top of the library.
  

How would you rule in each?
Do you think it is appropriate to not be consistent on these scenarios?

I believe whether you rule GRV or not for one of these, you need to rule consistently across all.

The “reminder text” from scrylands is quite annoying in this scenario:

Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card on the bottom of your library

Players could probably argue that “may” refers to an action not taken, and we should apply the default action, like a Pact. However, in CRs there's no mention to any “may” or default action:

To “scry N” means to look at the top N cards of your library, put any number of them on the bottom of your library in any order, and put the rest on top of your library in any order.

I'm more into “no backup”. I find a Duress quite problematic to rewind, and if we leave that card on top, AP has gained perfect information about NAP's hand and lost possibility to scry that awful top card away. Quite balanced, but unsure about this is the proper way to handle this.

Originally posted by Joaquín Pérez:

The “reminder text” from scrylands is quite annoying in this scenario:

Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card on the bottom of your library

Players could probably argue that “may” refers to an action not taken, and we should apply the default action, like a Pact. However, in CRs there's no mention to any “may” or default action:

Funny thing, I was talking over this scenario with a player, and that was exactly his response, and for that reason.

I'm pretty literal about these things by nature. I figure if I'm going to get it “wrong”, I may as well have the written policy helping to cover me.

I think this is clearly a GRV, so now that we have the infraction, lets look at penalty and remedy.

Option 1: Do nothing. Not a good option

Option 2: Partial fix? Nope… none apply.

Option 4: Deviate? This doesn't seem Significant or Exceptional. (yes, I went out of order. These aren't card instructions, I can explore in any order I like =) )

There aren't many ways of attempting to nullify the information gain, and the ones I can think of range from “icky” to “what were you thinking?” anyway. Unless that rewind is going to be insane, I don't think it's worth exploring this too much.

Option 3: Rewind? Would this be too disruptive to the game? It's a little icky, but I don't think terribly so. I think we'd rewind to mid-scry and get him to finish. He could choose not to cast his spell since he has the info, but if he's not cheating, I think he's most likely going to re-cast it (human tendency). But my faith in humanity isn't really a factor here.

Sure, he might take the new information into account on his scry, but NAP did have a chance to say something before revealing his hand. I think falling back on “the other player contributed to the broken game state” is an easy thing to do, but is entirely appropriate here.

It sounds like there are two available options here…

Rewind and allow the AP to put card on top or bottom (meh…)
Leave game as is, using the idea that the card is technically still on top of the library. (Slightly better…)

I think after much discussion the better option is to leave the card on top of the library. It leaves the game how it would have been if the game occurred naturally.

You can also use the fix which has been applied in the past to similar situations which is to minimize the advantage by shuffling the card away, and giving the player a random card next turn. While that may “punish” the player for his mistake, it damage the game state as much as backing up. In short I think leaving the card on top is what I would do given the specific instance here.

I can think of many situations in where a player could miss the scry. Do not always assume the player saw the player not complete the scry. What are you doing at this point of the game? Watching your opponent, or planning your next two to three turns?

Regarding whether we consider this card to still be on top of the library or not:

Does your answer change if we determine that the player in question has consistently been shipping scry cards to the bottom by placing the card on the table, then picking up the library and setting it on top of the card, sliding the library back into place? Is “bottom of library” so rigid as to be only determinable by the card actually making it to the physical base of the library stack?

Along the lines of what Nathanial said, I have noticed that most players scry like this: They look at the top card. If they want it on top of their library, they put it back. If they want it on the bottom, they put it on the table, then place the deck over it.

It seems apparent here that the player's intent was to put the card on the bottom of the library, and he simply didn't complete the motion of putting the library on top of it due to the interruption. I would definitely investigate by asking the player to demonstrate how he typically performs a scry (perhaps by placing a token or land card on top of the deck instead of having him look at an actual card.). I would also ask the opponent if he has seen the player do this previously during the tournament. I would also ask him if he thought his opponent put the card on the bottom of his library, or if he thought his opponent was still thinking about what to do. If so, it's a dexterity issue, and I would caution the player to be more clear about what he is doing and finish the action before doing the next thing.

If this behavior is completely new, or if the player usually sets the card aside while deciding where to put it, then we have the issue of a scry not being completely resolved. This also applies if the player told his opponent “I'm still thinking about what to do with this card” before the interruption. I would go with the rewind and GRV penalty in this case.