After some questioning the judge determines Andrew was not aware of anything at all about formats, and is just playing a deck made with the cards he has available at home.
How would you proceed?
View Answer
The JAR document gives us the following solution.
“A player has illegal, insufficient, or another players’ cards in their deck:
Remove any cards that shouldn’t be there and replace any cards that should – or Basic Lands of their choice if the deck/sideboard is short. If discovered during a draw effect, have them redraw after fixing and shuffling their deck. Additionally, recommend that the players count their deck and sideboard before they start a match.”
In our Lightning Bolt scenario, we should remove the illegal cards and replace them with basic lands of their choice, then shuffle the deck and have the game proceed from there.
This is as an opportunity for customer service. FNM is run at regular REL, which means we have the flexibility to use the fix that will make your players happy.