We’re continuing our JAR Series for our Tournament Tuesday tips, and today we’ll be covering accidental drawing! I’m sure many of you have had this happen: You thought a spell said to draw 3 when it said draw 2, or you drew a card for a Howling Mine that you destroyed last turn. Maybe your sleeves just stuck together and you accidentally drew 2 when you only meant to draw 1!

In any of those cases, the JAR tells us how to handle a player accidentally drawing more cards than they were supposed to. The first thing is, does everyone know which card it is? For example, if you drew a card when you weren’t supposed to, and you had zero cards in hand previously, then it’s obvious which card is the one you drew: the only one in your hand! If all players can uniquely identify the ‘extra’ card or cards, you just put the cards back where they should be. Easy fix, move on.

But what happens if you DON’T know which cards are the extra, say because two cards stuck together? Your opponent doesn’t know which one was the ‘top’ card once it hits the rest of your hand, so how do we fix that? Still easily! We figure out how many cards you drew ‘extra’. Then, a Judge will randomly take that many cards from your hand, and put them on top of your library. If you drew extra cards at the very start of the game while drawing your opening hand, we instead shuffle the random cards back into your library and allow you to continue making mulligan decisions.

So, that’s how we fix extra draws at Regular Rules Enforcement Level! Remember, if you aren’t sure how to fix something, or think you may have done something wrong, you should always call a Judge. It’s our job to help fix things and make sure everything is being done by the rules and properly, so please don’t be afraid to call us over. Our primary job is to FIX things, not punish people!

Today’s Tournament Tip written by Trevor Nunez