Albert is a local tournament grinder in his area. He is playing his favorite mono green deck in a local PTQ and is having a great success with it. During Round 6 of the PTQ, Albert’s opponent calls for a Judge. Upon arrival he asks to speak with you away from the table. After walking away from the table, he says, “Judge, I think my opponent is cheating. All of his lands are foils and he doesn’t have any other foils that I’ve seen. Isn’t there a percentage of the deck that needs to be foil or something?”

What do you tell the player in response to his allegation of his opponent cheating because of not having enough different foil cards in his deck?

After explaining to this player that foils are not inherently marked cards and there is no special number of foils you have to play for your deck to be legal, the player says, “But judge, you have GOT to see THESE foils… I could skateboard in them!”.

You walk back to the table with the player, and you can clearly see that the foil Forests, both in play and in Albert’s deck, are in fact warped to the point that you can see where they are in the deck.

 

 

How would you handle this situation?

Judges, feel free to discuss this scenario here!

[expand title=”View Answer”]Since the player was not cheating, the infraction is Tournament Error – Marked Cards, because ”A player’s cards are marked or oriented in a way that could potentially give an advantage to that player.“ The normal penalty for this is a Warning. The head judge has the option to upgrade this penalty to a Game Loss because of the potential for abuse if the player or his opponent noticed that it was possible to know where the land cards are in the deck, as this ”would clearly compromise the integrity of the game.“ We will ask Albert to replace the marked cards with unmarked versions, and might offer to help him to locate replacements if possible. He should be issued a Game Loss for an upgraded TE-Marked Cards penalty, to be applied in the current game, or if completed, a subsequent game of the current round, or, if all games for this round are over, it is applied to the first game of his next round match. We should also note that if wishes to replace his lands with unmarked foils we should allow him to do so as foils are not inherently marked simply because they are foils.[/expand]