At a Limited-format Pro Tour Qualifier, after the initial pool registration and swap, the Head Judge instructs players that they have 30 minutes to build and register their decks. Players are told to hand in their decklist to a judge once they have completed this process.

During round 1, judges count all of the decklists, and then check them against the master list of enrolled players. They find that they do not have a decklist for one player; when a judge approaches that player and asks if he handed in a list, the player pulls the list out of his pocket and says “oh, sorry, I forgot about that”.

Has an infraction been committed here? If so, what infraction, and what penalty should be issued to this player?

Judges, feel free to discuss this scenario here!

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The correct answer is Tournament Error – Tardiness. The relevant section of the IPG’s definition of that infraction is:

“A player hands in his decklist after the time designated by the judge or organizer.”

Since the Head Judge had clearly designated the time by which decklists were due, and this player didn’t get his list in by that time, the infraction he’s committed is Tardiness. He’ll be receiving a Game Loss; if his round-one match is still going on, he can be given that penalty now. Otherwise, it should be given for the first game of his round-two match.

Also, remember that “disruption”, with respect to Tardiness, doesn’t just mean players’ matches being held up. Failing to hand in a decklist does cause disruption to the tournament – just on the judge-staff side, since it means we have to spend more time figuring out who didn’t hand in a list, tracking down the player, etc. (and this scales pretty badly when more than one player doesn’t hand in a list!).

One other interesting parallel that was brought up here was using Failure to Follow Official Announcements. While it’s good to be aware that there is an infraction for that, there are also a lot of things that are announced by tournament officials, and which have more specific infractions when not followed. As in this case, where the IPG specifically provides for Tardiness when a player fails to hand in a decklist on time.[/expand]