Welcome back to the Knowledge Pool! This week we have our first Gold scenario in quite a while. This means that everyone is free to join in the discussion right away. Enjoy!


Anya is playing against Natalie on day 1 of a Grand Prix. In game 2 of the match Anya activates her Cryptbreaker's first ability, discarding a card and saying “create a zombie.” She searches the Hour of Devastation Bundle box she is using for her deck box for a zombie token, and can't find one immediately, so takes the contents out of the box and puts them on the table. She searches some more, finds the zombies, deploys them, then returns everything to the box. Returning to the game, Anya and Natalie both discover that Anya's hand of 4 cards is missing. They call for a judge, and you find 19 cards in Anya's deck box, separated in a group of 8 and a group of 11, divided by the tokens.

You investigate and confirm that Anya should have 4 cards in hand, based on the game state and number of turns passed.

What do you do?

Edited Joe Klopchic (Aug. 30, 2017 11:19:54 AM)

First of all. Can we have a decklist? Or we work with all the possibilities for this scenario?

Actually. Just saw this is Game 2. A decklist wont make a difference.

First, I would discuss issue with another judge and/or a HJ before answering the issue due to my lack of GP experience.

If I was alone, I would count the cards in the library and play to make sure there were no extra cards in the sideboard for a deck issue. If no extra cards were found, I would issue a HCE warning to Anya, due to the cards changing sets without the opponent's permission and unable to correct the exact cards due to public information. I would have the merged cards of hand and sideboard presented to the opponent to choose the four cards in a reasonable amount of time. I would do this because during a second round, all sideboard cards are legal to have been in the deck and it cannot be publicly known which cards were exchanged during side-boarding.

To Natalie, I would issue a FtMBS warning as she should have noticed the issue as it was happening and stopped her opponent.

Let me begin by saying - what an amazing scenario! Thanks!

Now back to business.

By the phylosophy of a Game Loss:

Game Loss is issued in situations where the procedure to correct the offense takes a significant amount of time that may slow the entire tournament or causes significant disruption to the tournament, or in which it is impossible to continue the game due to physical disruption.

This fits pretty well. And logically, unless NAP can identify the whole 4 cards that should have been in AP's hands, there is no way for us to correct this situation. This, GL looks the most natural. However, there is a question - what infraction has been committed? At first glance (and after few more), it seems that nothing works out. However, giving AP Warning for slow play due to taking excessive time to find token and letting her know that if she is not able to find her hand with 100% certainty, she will be issued second Slow Play, which will be upgraded to GL. Obviously, she won't be able to do so, and yes, I understand, that this does not look fair for AP to give impossible task, but I don't see another way to progress the game.

Edited Gediminas Usevičius (Aug. 30, 2017 12:48:26 PM)

I really like CoriAnn Theroux's suggestion and it does make more sense than mine at this point. Showing SB to NAP never crossed my mind because it gives a lot of information but I do like it

Okay, here's an attempt.

The only potential for abuse I can see is if Anya knew there were cards in her box that could help in this situation. As such, since there is a potential, I'm looking to track an infraction. The best seems to be HCE since Natalie didn't give permission, it happens in a way they couldn't reasonably be expected to catch (there are just too many sight lines that could be blocked by a bundle box), so even though she didn't “call the judge immediately”, I see no FtM.

As far as a fix… We have 2 distinct sets. One on each side of the tokens …or perhaps one set (cards minus tokens). I want to use the smallest sensible set. So, I would investigate if Natalie has any knowledge of any of the cards that were in Anya's hand (I can also scan the gys to see if there is an indication there to aid memory). If Natalie remembers even 1 card, I would pick the set that contains that card especially if it is no more than 4 cards in from the top of bottom of that set. Else, I have to use the bigger set.

At this point, have Anya reveal those card and allow Natalie to pick 4 of them …which become Anya's hand.

— a side note that I"m sure others will tell me is irrelevant (because it is). But I feel better about this than I might normally, because at least for now, Anya has a cryptbreaker she can ditch the crud cards that Anya may well give her.

EDIT: If the HJ asked to be consulted before giving a HCE, I would of course do so. Also, more generally as the previous judge stated, this is a complex enough case that I would like to consult with a team lead, more experienced judge, or HJ in general. However, I try to answer these questions as if I am the HJ.

Edited Mark Mason (Aug. 30, 2017 01:09:44 PM)

Quick note, this scenario mentions being at a GP because it literally happened at a GP. We still want your thought process for how you would rule, no need to mention going up the chain of command to confirm anything, we can assume that you will get approval if needed.

After taking a short nap I would like to elaborate a bit more.

If you are saying it is a HCE, then you are saying that SB is a set, which honestly, I don't like (and don't agree) because it is not a zone and in games it is referred as ‘outside the game’. But okey, I can get behind why it could be considered a set - because it is a group of cards. Even then, revealing ~20 cards from SB seems a bit too much.

Right now I am split between to choices: Giving GL for slow play (comment above) or issue GRV-W for shuffling hand into SB and leave everything as is. However, this then would lead to another infraction - Deck Problem - Illegal deck, as well as illegal SB, which would be Deck Problem - W. Because upgrade does not apply here (fix me if I'm wrong), this will not be GL.

As for a fix, there is no way for us to know which cards she sided in and which out, so using a decklist we should check which 4 cards, that are in SB supposed to be in MB that apear at the top of the decklist, get shuffled into library. And yes, AP will have zero cards in hand.

I get, it is confusing and I am not even close for feeling sure about this. But this is what I would do if it ever happened to me as a HJ. I would really like to give a GL in this type of situations but there probably is not good enough reason (even if the gamestate is really damaged). Once again, thanks for this amazing question, it will bother me till the end of the week.

Edited Gediminas Usevičius (Aug. 30, 2017 06:08:29 PM)

Interesting thought, Gediminas.

First, the ipg says…

A Set is a physically distinct group of cards defined by a game rule or effect. It may correspond to a specific zone, or may represent part of a zone. A Set may consist of a single card.

(Emphasis added)
Further, the annotated IPG reads: there will not exist a card without it being part of a set.

Last, since we have “wishes”, Especially the “black wish” were we don't even need to reveal. Where are they tutoring that card if not from the set “called” the sideboard? And, when players present the sideboard in pre-game actions… Is that not a set?

Will be interesting to see the answer.

Originally posted by Gediminas Usevičius:

I get, it is confusing and I am not even close for feeling sure about this. But this is what I would do if it ever happened to me as a HJ. I would really like to give a GL in this type of situations but there probably is not good enough reason (even if the gamestate is really damaged). Once again, thanks for this amazing question, it will bother me till the end of the week.

As I understand things this is the wrong way to go about handling the problem. We need to first look at what infraction has been committed, and then that will tell us what penalties and/or remedies are appropriate. Under no circumstances should we be manufacturing a penalty (especially a GL penalty) by issuing multiple penalties for the same infraction, especially when the infraction (slow play) bears no resemblance to what actually happened (two distinct groups of hidden cards being mixed together).

Incidentally, we have an infraction that does cover mixing together two hidden groups of cards: HCE.

A player commits an error in the game that cannot be corrected by only publicly available information and does so without his or her opponent’s permission. This infraction only applies when a card whose identity is known to only one player is in a hidden set of cards both before and after the error.

So we're at HCE-warning. For the fix, HCE says these things:

Always operate on the smallest set possible to remedy the error. This may mean applying the remedy to only part of a set defined by an instruction.

If a set affected by the error contains more cards than it is supposed to contain, the player reveals the set of cards that contain the excess and his or her opponent chooses a number of previously unknown-cards sufficient to reduce the set to the correct size. These excess cards are returned to the correct location.

So we're going to “thoughtseize” the sideboard 4 times. If any of AP's hand was previously known from this game, it is possible that we could restrict the fix to the 8 or 11 cards that contains the previously known cards. If we can't make such a determination, or the determination would be ambiguous, the entire 19-card “sideboard” should be used for applying the fix. As CoriAnn mentioned, this process should not take a long time.

I would not apply FtMGS to NAP here, since it doesn't seem NAP allowed an error to persist past the point where it happened. FtMGS is for when NAP also doesn't catch AP's error immediately (in game time), and in this case it sounds like the error was caught as soon as it reasonably could.

Originally posted by Andrew Keeler:

As I understand things this is the wrong way to go about handling the problem. We need to first look at what infraction has been committed, and then that will tell us what penalties and/or remedies are appropriate.

I totally agree with you. I might not have been clear enough with that statement. The philosophy behing GL seems appropriate here and everything that is happening here would check in my little head. Otherwise, it complicates everthing for me (which would be a sad but important moment for me).
(I need to make the thing I want to say and the one I actually do say match. Sorry for that ;) )

If a set affected by the error contains more cards than it is supposed to contain, the player reveals the set of cards that contain the excess and his or her opponent chooses a number of previously unknown-cards sufficient to reduce the set to the correct size. These excess cards are returned to the correct location.

So we're going to “thoughtseize” the sideboard 4 times.

Would you do the same if the hand was shuffled in the library, not SB? What if it the library only contained 30 cards? These aren't question I'm looking answers to. Just a food for thought.

Edited Gediminas Usevičius (Aug. 30, 2017 10:56:14 PM)

This looks like a Game Play Error - Hidden Card Error, which carries a penalty of a Warning for Anya.

It's exceedingly unlikely that her hand got mixed up so that some of the cards are in the 8 and some in the 11, so I'll ask Natalie if she recalls Anya's sideboarding:
was it 4 in and 4 out (meaning the 11 cards are sideboard cards, and the 8 contains 4 main deck cards that were sideded out, plus the missing hand);
or was it 7 in and 7 out (meaning the 8 cards are sideboard cards, and the 11 contains 7 main deck cards that were sideded out, plus the missing hand).

If Natalie recalls the sideboarding (and it matches what Anya says), that narrows down the set that we can fix from. This can also be accomplished by getting a hold of the decklist - one clump of cards will likely be entirely sideboard cards, and the other will be a mix. Whether I get the decklist may depend on how easy it is, but it's probably doable even at a GP.

Once a set of cards has been established, the set is revealed to Natalie, who chooses 4 cards to become Anya's hand.

Round it off with an appropriate time extension and a caution or words of advice on keeping your hand of cards safe in the future.

I would issue a GPE-HCE warning to Anya.

Natilie chooses Anya's SB, and effectively also her hand

My logic being treating it as reverse logic, see the non-token cards as
being Anya's hand.