Adam is playing Nolan in a Legacy Grand Prix, Day 1.
At the end of Adam’s turn, Nolan casts Enlightened Tutor, searches for a card and places it on top of his library forgetting to reveal it. On Nolan’s turn, he draws his card and Adam realizes that Nolan did not reveal properly for Enlightened Tutor. Nolan currently has 3 cards in hand and shows you a Tropical Island, Tundra and a Sylvan Library.
What is the appropriate Infraction, Penalty and Fix?
Judges, feel free to discuss this scenario here!
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The infraction is Game Rule Violation, the penalty is a warning and the fix is to reveal the information, if possible. We also should award Adam a warning for Failure to Maintain Game State. Since Nolan has 3 cards in hand, we can’t really know what the card he searched for was so we can’t really reveal any information. There isn’t really any point in a rewind here, so we will let play continue from this point.
This is a Game Rule Violation because Failure to Reveal was taken out of the IPG in the last update, with fixes for failing to reveal relevant game information added to GRV. We don’t upgrade to a warning here because the information was at some point in a position to be uniquely identifiable, it was put on top of the library correctly before being drawn. This makes it so the opponent can’t wait until the card can’t be identified anymore to call a judge and get the player a game loss. We don’t want the timing of judge calls determining what the penalty is for things like this, turning the IPG into something that you can game for free wins.
The player having 2 irrelevant cards and 1 potential choice for the Enlightened Tutor in his hand that he shows you is also irrelevant and is a red herring to the question. All we know is that the information wasn’t revealed and it fits the description to fix it in GRV. It’s important to note that even though it is tempting to reveal that correct choice, since the card isn’t identifiable by both players, we do not reveal the information to the opponent.
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