This is the Silver edition of the Holiday Knowledge Pool scenarios.

We're going to change the rules a bit for this edition, and take answer submissions on a google form for this Silver scenario. Please feel free to discuss this with your colleagues and come up with a well-rounded answer before submitting.

The highlighted answers will be revealed on January 1st.

Patrick is playing his God-Pharoah's Gift Deck at a Standard 5k event run at Competitive REL.

This is Patrick's Deck List

22 LANDS
4 Glacial Fortress
2 Hostile Desert
2 Ipnu Rivulet
3 Irrigated Farmland
5 Island
6 Plains

14 CREATURES
4 Angel of Invention
4 Champion
3 Minister of Inquiries
3 Sacred Cat

14 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Chart a Course
1 Fumigate
2 Opt
4 Refurbish
3 Strategic Planning

10 OTHER SPELLS
2 Cast Out
4 God-Pharaoh's Gift
2 Legion's Landing
2 Search for Azcanta

SIDEBOARD
1 Angel of Sanctions
3 Anointed Procession
1 Authority of the Consuls
1 Crested Sunmare
2 Fairgrounds Warden
1 Fumigate
2 Ixalan's Binding
1 Negate
2 Settle the Wreckage
1 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship

His list matches his deck, with the exception that he is playing 4 copies of Champion of Wits and its full name is not recorded on the decklist.

What do you do?

Please submit your answers here: https://goo.gl/forms/rWe48FhuPkPXUxHf1
Note, this is a different form than the Bronze thread.

Edited Joe Klopchic (Dec. 13, 2017 11:16:16 AM)

Thanks everyone for all the great responses.

For this scenario, we're highlighting Logan Anbinder's very thorough answer.

Originally posted by Logan Anbinder:

This is a Decklist Problem– the decklist is illegal because “Champion” is not the name of a Standard-legal card. The IPG allows us to choose not to issue this penalty if we believe that “what the player wrote on their decklist is obvious and unambiguous.” A quick Oracle search indicates that there are multiple standard-legal creatures with “champion” in their names. One of these creatures, Sunscourge Champion, is mono-white and would be a reasonable card to include in a UW God-Pharaoh's Gift deck. Therefore, there is at least some ambiguity in what the line “Champion” is intended to refer to, so we do not refrain from issuing the penalty here.

Patrick receives a Game Loss for TE-DLP. We update his decklist to include the full name of Champion of Wits.

Logan has the thought process correct here. We've identified that “Champion” isn't the full name of a format-legal card, and there are other cards in Standard which have Champion in their name.

Logan tells us that the decklist isn't obvious and unambiguous, as Sunscourge Champion is a reasonable card to play in the deck.

In another response, Sophie Hughes pointed out her gut feeling:

Originally posted by Sophie Hughes:

My initial reaction being “Well that's obviously Champion of Wits” and I haven't played standard since KTK rotated out

This initial response is a strong indicator that we shouldn't issue the Game Loss here, as the card being unquestionably obvious warrants using the clause that both answers referred to.

In this case, the decision is ultimately a judgement call. Basic knowledge of standard means that this card is clearly Champion of Wits. With a bit more knowledge of the format, Sunscourge Champion being a strong card in the archetype makes it less obvious. With strong knowledge of this archetype, it becomes clear that playing God-Pharaoh's Gift without Champion of Wits is extremely unlikely.

Knowledge Pool's answer is that this doesn't qualify as being obvious and unambiguous, so issue the Game Loss. Which leads me to a great piece of advice on this specific clause: if we can really discuss a whether it is obvious or not for this long, it probably isn't.