Ann and Nathan are playing a standard match in their local GPT. Nathan has been to a few of these types of events, but Ann is relatively new to Magic and this is her first Comp REL event. This game has lasted a long time, and at the end of Nathan’s turn Ann is down to 2 life and zero cards in her library. After he passes the turn to her, she untaps, doesn’t draw a card, then taps all her lands for a Sylvan Primordial. As she’s deciding on a target for the Primordial’s trigger, a person observing the match asks them to pause their game and calls for a judge.

After arriving and hearing what the situation is, you decide to investigate for cheating.

When you ask Ann about her current turn, she tells you:
“I decided not to draw my card this turn because I think you lose for drawing from an empty library, right? And I’m pretty sure you don’t have to draw if you don’t want to, so I decided not to. I think I can maybe still win with the cards in my hand.”

When you talk to Nathan, he says:
“Well, I noticed that she skipped her draw, but I didn’t want to point it out to her because that would make her feel bad. Plus, I can just kill her with this Shock on my turn, so there’s no harm in letting her play one more turn.”

Your investigation is complete, and now you have to decide: Is there foul play here? What infraction do you rule in this situation, and what penalty does it carry? Is a fix necessary, or are one or more players from this match going to be Disqualified?

Judges, feel free to discuss this scenario on Judge Apps!

[expand title=”View Answer”]The newest iteration of the Cheating infraction falls into Unsporting Conduct. A player has committed USC-Cheating when:
A person breaks a rule defined by the tournament documents, lies to a tournament official, or notices an offense committed in his or her (or a teammate’s) match and does not call attention to it.
Additionally, the offense must meet the following criteria for it to be considered Cheating:

• The player must be attempting to gain advantage from his or her action.
• The player must be aware that he or she is doing something illegal.

Now, let’s assess each player’s testimony and see if it falls under this infraction.

Ann broke a rule- she didn’t draw a card during her draw step. She also was attempting to gain an advantage by not losing the game. However, as a brand new player she didn’t know this was an illegal action. She is therefore not guilty of USC-Cheating. Instead, she has committed GPE-Game Rule Violation. She should receive a warning and, as a partial fix listed in the IPG, she draws the card now that she should have drawn at the beginning of her turn.

Nathan noticed an offense committed in his match but didn’t call attention to it. He was also aware that skipping the draw was illegal. However, he was not attempting to gain an advantage (he was letting his opponent NOT lose the game!). Therefore, he is not guilty of USC-Cheating. Instead, he has committed GPE- Failure to Maintain Game State. He receives a warning.

Final Note: Keep in mind that we are arbitrators of the game, but we do that as part of our capacity of customer service to the players. Always be careful to give the correct ruling, instead of a hasty one that seems obvious at first but may be incorrect given more information. In this case, a hasty decision to DQ one or both players would have caused both players to be unhappy, when the correct call is simply to drive the game to its natural conclusion.

Well done those of you who avoided this trap. Under our previous documents both players would have been disqualified, so it’s great to see we’re keeping up with the document updates.[/expand]