The Scenario:

Adam has 2 cards in hand and controls Forgotten Creation.

He points to it at the beginning of his upkeep, announcing “trigger.”

His opponent, Nathan, says “ok.”

Adam discards a card and draws a card.

Nathan then says, “wait a minute…” and picks up the card to read.

Forgotten Creation {3}{U}
Creature — Zombie Horror
Skulk (This creature can't be blocked by creatures with greater power.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may discard all the cards in your hand. If you do, draw that many cards.
3/3

“Judge!”

I took this call and have consulted many L3s in a couple of GPs on how would they rule and I got a number of different infractions with different fixes. And everyone had good reasons for their infraction and fix.

Before I share those, would anyone like to have a go at it first? :)

HCE - Nathan gets to look at the two cards in hand and decide one of them to treat as the card that should have been discarded. No additional card is drawn.

Adam didn't discard a card he should have an we can't now reconstruct the right set (the card that was left). I take the view that Nathan could only reasonably determine this error at the point Adam drew - I'm making some assumptions about speed of process here, I'm also assuming cards in hand weren't known.

I'd use the line “…The player does not repeat the instruction or partial instruction (if any) that caused the infraction.” to decline the additional draw Adam might be expecting here.

Technically this falls under GRV. The original error was discarding one card instead of two, drawing the card happened later. However, I think the HCE fix covers this situation much more nicely than the GRV fix, so I'd be tempted to go with that.

If the error put cards into a set prematurely and other operations involving cards in the set should have been performed first, the player reveals the set of cards that contains the excess and his or her opponent chooses a number of previously-unknown cards. Put those cards aside until the point at which they should have been legally added, then return them to the set.

I'd treat the drawn card as having been put into the hand prematurely, the other card should have been discarded first. So I'd have Adam reveal his hand and Nathan chooses a card to be drawn later, the other one is discarded. Then, since the instruction that caused the infraction was the “draw that many cards”, we don't repeat/continue it. Adam is left with one card in hand.

I like this fix better than applying GRV, because any of the possible GRV fixes (discarding a card now, a backup, or leaving the game state as-is) allow the possibility of Adam keeping a card he should have discarded.

I'm not sure I feel comfortable rigging a fix for an infraction that
shouldn't be there. Particularly one that ends up invoking such an awkward
game state. We're essentially (if we go with that solution) telling
someone they got a GRV, then their penalty is the opponent gets to dig
through their hand (not something that GRV ever calls for), and they also
end up with one card less then they should have. I strongly prefer going
with the prescribed fixes via the MIPG.

Originally posted by Isaac King:

I'd treat the drawn card as having been put into the hand prematurely, the other card should have been discarded first. So I'd have Adam reveal his hand and Nathan chooses a card to be drawn later, the other one is discarded.

Agree on this.

Originally posted by Isaac King:

Then, since the instruction that caused the infraction was the “draw that many cards”, we don't repeat/continue it. Adam is left with one card in hand.

Disagree on this.
HCE penalty instructs us to not repeat the action if that action causes us to identify excess cards.
Excess cards can be:
- “cards more” (Divination, drew three)
- unrevealed cards that don't match a criteria (Mystical Tutor, unrevealed card added to the hand, opponent chooses a non-instant, non-sorcery card)

In this scenario, I cannot identify any excess cards. So, I would let player draw, ending with two cards in his hand.

Edited Francesco Scialpi (June 1, 2016 09:59:52 AM)

Originally posted by Francesco Scialpi:

HCE penalty instructs us to not repeat the action if that action causes us to identify excess cards.

It actually just says

The player does not repeat the instruction or partial instruction (if any) that caused the infraction.

In this case, there were no excess cards, but we still don't repeat the instruction, since that's what caused the HCE.

I think you guys are looking at the wrong paragraph of the HCE fix :)

The section I'm looking at says: “if the error put cards into a set prematurely and other operations involving cards in the set should have been performed first, the player reveals the set of cards that contains the excess and his opponent chooses a number of previously-unknown cards. Put those cards aside until the point at which they should legally have been added, then return them to the set.”

In this case, the active player started drawing before he finished discarding. So, he reveals his hand, the opponent chooses the one to set aside. AP finishes resolving the first part of Forgotten Creations instruction and discards the rest of his hand. Then, the put-aside-card is re-drawn, along with the correct number of additional cards.

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

In this case, the active player started drawing before he finished discarding. So, he reveals his hand, the opponent chooses the one to set aside. AP finishes resolving the first part of Forgotten Creations instruction and discards the rest of his hand. Then, the put-aside-card is re-drawn, along with the correct number of additional cards.

That's exactly what I mean.

Originally posted by Francesco Scialpi:

That's exactly what I mean.

Sorry I misunderstood then, and glad we're in agreement!

Thank you for everyone's input!

One thing I forgot to mention is that this is potentially more common in Competitive REL with Chandra, Flamecaller's second ability. The original scenario happened in a Sealed Deck tournament.

I will now share the infractions and fixes I was given from my consults, and (paraphrased by me, to the best of my ability) briefly explain why it was ruled as such.

So, it was somewhat split between GRV or HCE.

1) Let's start with GRV.

The GRV ‘camp’ points to this:

Originally posted by From - IPG 2.3 Game Play Error — Hidden Card Error, Philosophy:

Be careful not to apply this infraction in situations where a publicly-correctable error subsequently leads to an uncorrectable situation such as a Brainstorm cast using green mana. In these situations, the infraction is based on that root cause.

For the reasoning behind not identifying this as HCE.

More than half of the ‘camp’ feels that the HCE fix is better despite not being a HCE, but only a very small number of them would prefer to deviate and apply a HCE fix of some form.

The fixes for GRV would be the standard:

a) Back up

Put a random card on top, return the discard card, now resolve the ability properly.

b) Leave it as it is

As the back up would potentially swap a card from his library to his hand we could prefer to just leave it as it is.

2) HCE.

a) As mentioned in this thread,

From Eli Meyer
So, he reveals his hand, the opponent chooses the one to set aside. AP finishes resolving the first part of Forgotten Creations instruction and discards the rest of his hand. Then, the put-aside-card is re-drawn, along with the correct number of additional cards.

this is the most common suggested fix.

b) The biggest difference in HCE fixes is whether or not to apply this paragraph from the IPG:

From IPG 2.3 Game Play Error — Hidden Card Error, Additional Remedy
Excess cards are returned to the correct zone. If that zone is the library, they should be shuffled into the random portion. The player does not repeat the instruction or partial instruction (if any) that caused the infraction.

Where the fix would be: choose one of the current two cards as the excess card, shuffle it back to the library, return the discarded card, do not repeat the instruction.

And… that's it, as far as I can tell from the scribbles in my notepad.

Hope to hear your thoughts and comments!

Originally posted by QJ Wong:

The GRV ‘camp’ points to this:

From - IPG 2.3 Game Play Error — Hidden Card Error, Philosophy
Be careful not to apply this infraction in situations where a publicly-correctable error subsequently leads to an uncorrectable situation such as a Brainstorm cast using green mana. In these situations, the infraction is based on that root cause.

I don't think this paragraph applies here. They are resolving the trigger, and have discarded one of the cards in their hand. Pausing here, have they committed an infraction? Could they just be figuring out the order they want their cards to go into their GY? There's no infraction here until the moment they draw a card without discarding the other. Which means their opponent wasn't obligated to intervene until they drew a card.

For the fix, I'm with Eli on this. The card they drew was legal for them to draw, just in the wrong order, so it's not an excess card. They reveal their hand, their opponent chooses which card they drew, set it aside and discard the other, then draw one more card.