Making the Cut

You are judging at a standard PPTQ. While performing a beginning of round deck check, you see that Osiris is playing with 59 cards in his main deck and 16 in his sideboard. Upon counting his decklist, you read there are actually 59 main deck and 16 sideboard registered. His sideboard lists the following:

3 Never // Return 2 Insult // Injury 3 By Force 4 Magma Spray 2 Harsh Mentor 2 Cut // Ribbons

You bring Osiris to the deck check table and ask him about the problem. He tells you he thought he registered 60 cards main deck and 15 sideboard. He quickly gathered 75 cards last minute before the tournament started and mistakenly classified one maindeck card as sideboard while writing his decklist.

What do you do?

Judges feel free to discuss this scenario on Judge Apps!

Answer

Osiris has committed two separate tournament error infractions. One is Decklist Problem for submitting an illegal decklist, the penalty for which is a game loss right off the bat. The other is Deck Problem for presenting an illegal deck and sideboard to the opponent at the beginning of a game. The penalty for this infraction is generally a warning, however there is a particular upgrade path outlined in section 3.4 of the MTR…

“If the deck is discovered to be incorrect during the presentation period, and the missing cards are not in the opponent’s deck, the penalty is a Game Loss.”

Thus the Deck Problem infraction yields another Game Loss for Osiris. Although both penalties will be recorded, only one will affect his match score. In other words, the double game loss doesn’t technically become a match loss for Osiris. Section 1.2 of the IPG:

“Infractions with the same root cause, or multiple instances of the same infraction that are discovered at the same time, are treated as a single infraction.”

To remedy the main deck problem, have Osiris choose one of the five traditional basic land cards to be added as the sixtieth card. As for the sideboard, remove one Cut // Ribbons. Annotate the decklist to reflect the changes. The match will continue starting from the second game and Osiris has the choice for the play/draw rule.