A: This is a Deck Problem, because they presented a deck that doesn’t match their list, nor what they intended to play. It’s a fairly silly mistake, and – once corrected – won’t have much impact on the match, but that doesn’t influence the penalty, nor define the infraction.

While there is potential for advantage, it’s extremely unlikely that a player would attempt to Cheat in this manner. And, again, potential for advantage (utterly massive or not) neither defines the infraction, nor influences the penalty. Potential for advantage should influence our investigation; nothing more.

Approved by Scott Marshall

A: We would just made AP choose their targets (if any), and let NAP respond if they choose too. Magic tournaments test players ability for superior planning, not pointless technicalities. We don’t allow this kind of angle shooting, and we’re far from the time of infamous tricks such as the Harrow one (‘Player A plays Harrow, sacrifices a land and puts the Harrow into his graveyard. Then he wants to grab his library and search for lands. From a strictly technical point of view it’s too late for that. Because the last thing you do during resolution of the spell is put it in the graveyard, the player has implicitly chosen to search for zero lands.’)
If we want a default choice in case of ambiguous or no communication (such as ‘OK means a spell resolves’ or ‘Not announcing the number of targets means you chose 0 targets’), we would put that in the Shortcut rules in the MTR. There is no such thing for this scenario, so we can’t assume or enforce a default choice, but only make the players clarify what is going on.

Approved by the Forum Moderators  Cards: Command the Dreadhorde, Harrow

A: ‘Dealing’ cards face down onto the table is not ‘Drawing’ cards. The assumption for MPE is that the issue will be discovered when the player looks at their opening hand. Unlike HCE where there can often be separation of sets of cards, MPE will generally operate on the whole hand.

In this instance though I would return one of the face down cards back to the library, the cards haven’t been drawn yet. No infraction nor penalty.
Approved by the Forum Moderators

A: It will not. To ‘tap for mana’ is to activate a mana ability of that permanent that includes the {T} symbol in its activation cost. So, in this case, AP is not activating the ability of an artifact. AP is activating the ability of a blue creature that just so happens to involve tapping an artifact!

Approved by Nathan Long  Cards: Grand Architect, Treasure Nabber

A: Dryad Arbor will be the only creature to get the bonus because it has a color indicator that tells us it’s a green creature. Transguild Courier has a characteristic defining ability that tell us it’s all colors. While both color indicator and color-defining CDAs are used to define a card’s color, the two are not the same thing, and there are important functional differences between the two.

Approved by Callum Milne  Cards: Muraganda Petroglyphs, Dryad Arbor, Transguild Courier

A: That is not an option. Since it’s being exiled face down, the game doesn’t know if it’s your commander or not (since it has no characteristics), so you do not get the option of moving it to the command zone instead of exile. You don’t know for sure that the exiled card is your commander, and being exiled face down means that the game doesn’t know if it’s your commander or not, so you can’t try to apply the replacement effect to the card being exiled face down.

There used to be a rule that said if an opponent exiled a commander face down and they could look at it, they must, and if it was a player’s commander, they had to move it to the command zone, but that rule went away a few years ago. Now, if you let your commander go to your library and your opponent Gontis you, you risk losing your commander to being exiled face down for the rest of the game.

Approved by Nathan Long

Cards: Ilharg, the Raze-Boar, Gonti, Lord of Luxury

(‘If a commander would be exiled from anywhere or put into its owner’s hand, graveyard, or library from anywhere, its owner may put it into the command zone instead. This replacement effect may apply more than once to the same event. This is an exception to rule 614.5.’)