Neil answers “Four” and Antoine activates Tamiyo, the Moon Sage‘s second activated ability targeting Neil.
Antoine resolves Tamiyo’s ability drawing four cards, and after Antoine puts the 4th card in his hand they both notice a tapped Birthing Pod counted as a creature, and call for a judge.
After investigating we determine no ill intent on any side.
Are there any infractions?
What would be the penalties and fixes associated with such infractions?
View Answer
Yes! It is Player Communication Violation! \o/
=> Why is it PCV?
The Magic Infraction Procedure Guide (MIPG) defines PCV as an infraction consisting in a player violating the Player Communication policy. If we check chapter 4.1 of the Magic Tournament Rules (MTR) we will find what is covered under Player Communication. And that’s it, it is only PCV when a player violates what MTR 4.1 says, and other problems such as language miscommunications or problems with shortcuts are not PCV.
This is a problem with misrepresenting Derived Information. Note the difference between “Is this tapped?” => Free Information; and “How many tapped creatures do you control?” => Derived Information.
The physical status of a card is Free Information, but the number of any type of objects present in any game zone is Derived Information. This makes this scenario a matter of misrepresenting Derived Information, so we would issue Neil a Warning for PCV.
=> Any other infractions?
There is no Failure to Maintain Game State infraction for Antoine; PCV is a Tournament Error, and FtMGS is only issued when another player commits a Game Play Error.
But poor Antoine! He has a card in hand he was not entitled to draw. Is he getting a Game Loss for Drawing Extra Cards (DEC)?
It is true Antoine drew an extra card, but the MIPG defines DEC as (emphasis mine):
“A player illegally puts one or more cards into his or her hand and, at the moment before he or she began the instruction or action that put a card into his or her hand, no other Game Play Error or Player Communication Violation had been committed, and the error was not the result of resolving objects on the stack in an incorrect order.”
There is a prior Player Communication Violation, so the Drawing Extra Cards infraction does not apply here at all, Antoine does not get any penalty.
=> How do we fix this?
Now the backup! Our solution would be rewinding to the point of the mistake, that is when Neil commits the PCV stating he controls 4 tapped creatures. We go back before Tamiyo’s ability being activated (we need to correct the loyalty counters on Tamiyo), so Antoine would have priority, and we return 4 cards at random from Antoine’s hand to the top of the deck in random and unknown order to both players. We think there is a lot of disruption in letting Antoine keep one extra card, and not much has happened since the mistake happened, so we would backup in this situation.
This is not as simple as it looked at first, let’s clarify some misconceptions:
- Antoine is not obliged to use Tamiyo’s ability if he does not want to. It is very likely that Antoine will use Tamiyo’s ability anyway and will draw three cards, but still we should allow him to make the play he wants once he is provided with the correct information. Not getting the right information may affect his next play, and he should be able to decide if he wants to draw 3 cards or if he wants to do something else. If he prefers to use any other of Tamiyo’s abilities he has to be able to do so.
- There is no shuffling involved; when we correct card draws, we leave those cards on top of the library.
- There may be some discussion about this fix potentially providing advantage to Antoine. If for example a Miracle card is returned to the top of the library that is something we should not consider when deciding if backing up or not. The reasoning for this is on MIPG 1.3:
“These procedures do not, and should not, take into account the game being played, the current situation that the game is in, or who will benefit strategically from the procedure associated with a penalty.”
- It does not make any difference if the player already had cards in hand, but if some of them were known (previously revealed to Duress, for example), we should exclude those known cards from the ones being randomly chosen and then returned to the top of the library.