Welcome back to the Knowledge Pool!
This week's scenario is Silver. L2+ judges should wait until Saturday to contribute to the discussion.

The blog post for this scenario is here.

You are head judging a Battle for Zendikar Sealed GPT with a store owner (who is L0) as a helper, who is doing deck checks for the first time. You're deck checking, and your helper tells you the deck he is checking is about half blue cards and half green cards, but on the checklist player has registered 7 Mountains and 9 Forests. He is actually playing 7 Islands and 9 Forests, and everything else is correct. He doesn't know what to do and asks for your help.

What would you do?

TE - D/DP downgrade to a warning.

Normally an error for D/DP is a game loss however in the IPG it states “The Head Judge may downgrade the penalty for an ambiguous name or obvious clerical error if they believe the error could not be used to gain an advantage in the tournament” I believe this falls under that scenario as even if he were to swap between mountains and islands it could offer no advantage only disadvantage by being unable to play spells (this is assuming preboard; to be able to cast anything then it would have other red spells in and thus not be a legal deck as stands, if its side boarded then no penalty as you can sideboard any number of lands in sealed)

I would then take the player off to the side and ask if he has had any other warnings and issue the penalty, following that I would have the player correct his sheet, tell him to be more careful, and let them resume with an appropriate time extension

No penalty.

From the philosophy section of the IPG under DDLP, “In limited events, the HJ may choose not to issue this penalty for incorrectly marked basic land counts if they believe the correct land count is obvious”. In this case I am very comfortable asserting that the correct land count is obvious (why would a player with blue spells and no red spells be playing mountains but no islands?) and comfortable issuing no penalty. I would also make a note on the decklist to avoid future confusion for the L0. I would instruct them to return the deck to the player and have them begin playing (or continue playing if this is mid round).

If possible without delaying the event (ideally after the round), I would instruct the player to be more careful when filling out their decklist.

This is clearly a Deck/Decklist issue, under that section of the IPG we find this exception:

Originally posted by IPG - D/DL:

In Limited events, the Head Judge may choose not to issue this penalty for incorrectly marked basic land counts if they believe the correct land count is obvious.

Given the decklist is made up of half blue, half green cards (I'd confirm there are no red cards in the deck given this is the Store Owner's first deck check - as if there are that would change the situation entirely) I believe it's obvious that the land base should consist of numerous islands and forests and no mountains, I would therefore choose not to issue this penalty.

I'd let the store owner know that it was right to bring this to me as it is only the head judge that can choose to apply this exception. I'd also change the decklist to match the deck being played and let the player know what has happened. Finally I'd remind the player to be careful with decklists in future as simple errors can lead to serious penalties.

Before reading other responses:

The player's decklist does not match their actual deck. However, this seems like a pretty obvious clerical error, and there's no room for ambiguity that could allow a player to gain advantage. The IPG allows for:

In Limited events, the Head Judge may choose not to issue this penalty for incorrectly marked basic land
counts if they believe the correct land count is obvious.

I'm assuming “ half blue cards and half green cards” means that the decklist has about 50/50 green and blue nonland cards, and that the deck matches this. If this is the case, no infraction has been committed. Correct the decklist to match the deck, and remind the player to be more careful when filling out future decklists.

After reading other responses:

Mark's additional comment about letting the store owner know their actions were correct is a good point!

Normally this would be a deck decklist error and result in a game loss and correction of the list. However this being a limited event as HJ you can downgrade to a warming for incorrect recording of the basic lands.

I would take the player aside and council them on making sure that they correctly register the number of lands in the deck each time. Then i would correct the decklist according to the actual lands played and continue the tournament.

Hello again!
This is the solution for this week's scenario:


This is indeed a Deck/Decklist Problem. The IPG allows Head Judges to not issue the penalty in this case if they believe the correct land count is obvious.

Tell your judge to not issue any penalty here (if you're going with this option) and use this situation for some policy discussions with your floor judge!
Kudos to Marc for pointing out that it is always good to praise judges for making correct decisions!