This occurred at the SCG Open in Milwaukee this past weekend, during the Legacy PIQ. Scenario is as follows:

Players (Adama and Nerys) call for a judge (hereafter referred to as “you”). When you arrive at the table, you see one player has a Preordain on the table in front of him and the requisite land tapped to cast it. The players then inform you that, while the Adama put a Preordain on the table, he has resolved the spell as if it were Ponder. There is no disagreement from the Adama or Nerys about what happened. Adama looked at the top three cards of his library, changed the order, elected not to shuffle, and drew a card. Adama currently has a copy of Ponder in his hand, and says he intended to cast that card and put the wrong card on the table. Adama did not verbally announce "Ponder“ when he cast the spell. Neither player caught the error until after the card was drawn into Adama's hand from ”Pondordain."

This sparked a reasonable amount of discussion among the judges present, both with respect to what the infraction should be and what fix, if any, we should apply. For the infraction, there was an argument for Looking at Extra Cards and an argument for Game Rule Violation.

The argument for Looking at Extra Cards is that the first thing Adama did incorrectly was see the third card down on top of his library. The difficulty is that the prescribed fix for Looking at Extra Cards is to shuffle the unknown portion of the library. Preordain would entitle Adama to see two cards, one of which could go into his hand, which would put one card on top. With what actually happened, the extra card that should've been part of the unknown library could be the top card, the second card down, or the card Adama actually drew. So what is the unknown portion of the library?

The argument for Game Rule Violation is that the root of the error was believing one cast a Ponder instead of a Preordain. The advantage to assessing a Game Rule Violation is it gives access to the backup or leave as-is style fix, which is definitely easier to do correctly. It does appear to be the less-specific infraction, however.

An argument was also advanced that we could put the Preordain back in Adama's hand and bin the Ponder in his hand, since that's the spell he actually resolved. The problem with this is the Ponder could have been the card drawn into his hand from “Pondordain” and there is not any policy that allows for this type of fix that I am aware of.

Ultimately we were not particularly satisfied with what we ended up doing, but could not conceive of a cleaner/better solution. I am interested if the community can arrive at something better.

What do you think the best solution is?

I think we do have a fix that we apply often and that could resolve this issue quite cleanly - the backup we apply to mechanical errors. If a player taps UB and casts Anticipate pointing to a creature and says “kill that”, it can be quite obvious that they were trying to kill it with the Doom Blade in their hand. We just have them play the correct card and keep playing.

In this case, I would conduct a short investigation but expect a very simple result - the player simply made a mistake in which card they took from their hand and placed it on the table. The potential for intentional abuse is so small and the possibility of getting caught so large, that I cannot really imagine a player doing this on purpuse, especially if they didn't have a Ponder actually in hand. If the investigation didn't show anything out of the ordinairy (like they knew which card was 3rd from the top or something like that), I would simply switch the Ponder in their hand with the Preordain in their graveyard, caution both (!) to be more careful in the future and have them carry on.

I'd go with GRV and Warning - Adama simply didn't follow the correct instructions of the spell just being cast. A random card from his hand is returned to the top, then the unknown portion of library is shuffled. He then proceeds to finish resolving correctly his Preordain.

It's not the same if Adama announced “Ponder” and then drop a Preordain from his hand. In that case, the first error is playing the wrong spell, and I would rewind the spell completely (Preordain back to his hand, land untapped).

What are you defining as the “unknown portion of the library”? Is the random card you returned included in this?

Yes, if we go with the backup, I see no other possibility. We rewind the illegally drew card by placing a random one to the top.

I wanted to make sure of that because I am not in favor of backups that result in the possibility of a random card from a player's hand effectively disappearing for good (barring it randomly getting redrawn). That can draw attention to the fix and makes feel unnatural.

Originally posted by Mitja Bosnic:

I would simply switch the Ponder in their hand with the Preordain in their graveyard, caution both (!) to be more careful in the future and have them carry on.

As has been pointed our earlier, I'm not sure policy supports this fix. But regardless, I'd be very concerned about this fix damaging the game state. Ponder is a “better” card than Preordain (Ponder is restricted in Vintage, Preordain is not), so what do we do if Ponder is enough better than Preordain that Nerys decides she wants to respond?

Edit: technical screw-up resulted in the wrong person being quoted. Now fixed!

Edited Eli Meyer (Sept. 29, 2015 03:07:36 AM)

Furthermore, we are free to believe Adama about having a ponder in hand before resolving the preordain, but implementing a backup on the basis of this information does not look advisable

Based on the new policy changes, it looks like this scenario would be handled by a Warning for Drawing Extra Cards and either backup or leave as is, with the latter looking much better than the former. Does anyone disagree?

Obviously not what was ultimately done when this happened as the new policy was unknown / not in effect.

Could someone please explain why this cannot be treated as a simple mechanical error? I see this as very similar to this (example from a casual game I may or may not have participated in):

***
AP controls a Tarmogoyf.
NAP is holding Brainstorm and Path to Exile in hand. At EOT, they want to exile the Goyf, but, being tired, they accidentally take the Brainstorm from their hand, tap a Tundra and point it at the creature, then put the spell in the graveyard. AP, being quite tired as well, doesn't even register what they saw and assumes it is a Path, so they exile the creature, find a basic, shuffle and present.

On the next turn, the NAP-now-AP draws a card, then is surprised to find a Path to Exile and a land in their hand and a Brainstorm in their graveyard.
***

In both cases, it seems (to me) quite obvious what a player was trying to do. It was apparently so obvious that the opponent didn't even notice it is a completely different card that is being cast. If our aim is to provide the players with an opportunity of playing a game that is as close to the game that is supposed to have happened (while also minimising the potential for cheating), then the ruling should be relatively straightforward.

In your example the opponent was aware (or not) what actually was happening. If we do not rewind we stole the opportunity to react from the opponent. If he would want to counter Ponder but not Preordain we just screwed his whole game plan.

Originally posted by Mitja Bosnic:

Could someone please explain why this cannot be treated as a simple mechanical error?

Because a card has been drawn, and it's possible (though if we rule out cheating, unlikely) that the Ponder in hand was drawn off the “pondordain”

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

Ponder is a “better” card than Preordain (Ponder is restricted in Vintage, Preordain is not)

Preordain was printed after a big wave of restrictions in Vintage that swept up Ponder along with Brainstorm. I wouldn't put too much weight on what the banned or restricted lists say about cards. After all, Earthcraft is still banned in Legacy.

I strongly disagree with backing up here. There is too much potential for the mistake to actively help the Active Player (randomly returned card is something they didn't want that was already in their hand, now they get to scry it away).

I'd start by solidifying the fact that the player resolved a Preordain, not the Ponder still in their hand. Two reasons: 1. Nerys' decisions were based on the spell Preordain as they had no way of noticing the dexterity error (if there even was one). 2. We cannot verify that Ponder was in Adama's had when they cast the Preordain. Next, the action taken (Ponder, no shuffle), is mechanically indistinguishable from Scry 3. So we've established that Adama cast preordain and performed Scry 3, which is DEC by the new definition. As I mentioned before, I don't like backing up here, so I would issue the Warning with no backup.

Both players were under the impression that Ponder was being cast. Ponder was also resolved fully before either play caught it. Ruling out any wrongdoing from an investigation, I put ponder from the hand into the graveyard, pre-ordain back into hand, and continue the game from that point.
I issue a GRV and FTMGS, ask the players to be more careful, and continue on. No need to waste more time then this. If both players are in agreement, and there is no intention of foul play, continue.