Where it’s at

| bimmerbot

Andrea and Nick are playing in a Standard GPT. Late into a long game, Nick is at 18 life and tapped out with no cards in hand, while Andrea is at 1 and staring down a Phantom Warrior poised to kill her next turn.

Andrea casts the last card in her hand, a fused Beck // Call. She draws cards. Then she plays a Hive Stirrings and draws cards.

Then she pauses, and counts, she has put a total of six creatures into play (2 sliver tokens and 4 birds). She has cast 1 card since her hand was empty (Hive Stirrings), and she has 6 in her hand. That means she has one more than she’s supposed to.

She calls for a judge, explains what happened, and tells you very confidently that she’s sure the last card that she drew was a Burn at the Stake and wants to put it back on top. She asks a spectator, “You were standing behind me and must have seen me draw it, can you tell the judge that?” and the spectator says “Yeah, I was watching, that’s the last card she picked up.” How do you rule?

Judges, feel free to discuss this scenario on Judge Apps!

View Answer
As many of you have deduced, because Andrea has a card in her hand that she cannot account for, this is a case of Game Play Error – Drawing Extra Cards, for which the penalty is a Game Loss. The option to downgrade is only available when all players can confirm the identity of the extra card, as much as the spectator may be trying to help, we cannot use that as confirmation of what the extra card is.

As we should always do, when we need to give a game loss to a player who called the judge on themselves, thank them for their honesty.