Judges in Madrid

[Gabethebabe]

They don´t have a very good name here in Barcelona. This happened in a REL 2 T1 tourney.

Player one plays Fish, lies Island-go.
Player two plays Stacks, and plays Workshop-Mox

Player one says: damn, I only drew 6 cards and calls the judge.
What is the correct decision according to you? And what did the judge in Madrid do?

1) It is too late to draw your card, so bad luck for you. Also drawing an incorrect number of cards in opening hand deserves the mulligan to 6 that actually happened
2) Player one may draw his seventh card
3) Player two has to unmake his plays, put the drawn card back on his lib and we go back to turn 1, player 1 draws his 7th card and we go back to his upkeep.
4) Game loss for player one

Second decision:
A player with 3 mana open plays Impulse and with three cards remaining in his lib (he is playing Oath), he draws all three and looks at them. His opponents says: sorry, but there are two spheres on the table and you don´t have mana to play Impulse. The first player says sorry and puts the drawn cards back in an undeterminable order. Actually player one wasn´t even sure if he mixed the cards with the ones in his hand

What did the judge decide?
1) Nothing, the situation has been corrected, play on
2) Warning
3) Game loss
4) Match loss

[epeeguy]

I will make only a brief comment before I post my thoughts on the situation.  That is, I wasn't at the event, nor do I know anything about the judges in Barcelona.  I will not make any comment on how they handled it, speculate as to what did or did not happen, nor pass judgement on their decision.  While I may not come to the same decision that the judge did in your situations, that does not mean they made the wrong decision.  Both of the situations you present are sufficiently complicated that there are several avenues to approach, and there is no outright wrong one.  My answers are simply my own, and are not to mean anything beyond that.

Anyhow, on to the situations.

Situation 1:  There are a couple of problems here.  Firstly, while this could indeed be "Improper Draw at Start of Game", the game has also actually started.  So, this penalty isn't really necessary appropriate at this point as we've already begun a game, both players had made plays, and they are past the point where we really could correct this problem in this way.  Secondly, there's the question of how much impact that the lack of a card had on Player 1s first turn, as well as Player 2s second turn (since whatever the 7th card may have been might have been playable and affected Player 2).  Thirdly, there's the question of how to fix the situation, or if it is even fixable.

I would immediately rule out either going back to an earlier point in the turn, or going back to a prior turn entirely.  Neither of those is a very good solution at all.  It's one thing to reverse a play, it's quite another to go back that far.  I would also immediately rule out allowing Player 1 to draw a card for his 7th to bring him to the right number.  Player 1 definitely did something inappropriate here, and the game state shouldn't (and wouldn't in reality) just be "fixed" by giving Player 1 his 7th card.

So, the only real two options here would be to 1.) give Player 1 a Warning at this point for a Procedural Error - Major (because of the game actions that have occured after when the "real penalty" occured) or 2.) give Player 1 a Game Loss for a Procedural Error - Severe.  If the game could progress from this point on, which it looks like it can, I would leave the game as is and let it finish out at this point (Player 1 gets a Warning).  If not, then it has to be a Game Loss.  But, in this situation, it looks like the game can continue on from this point.

Situation 2:  Both players are clearly at fault.  Player 1 for not paying enough mana for the Impulse, and Player 2 for not reminding Player 1 that he had to pay instead of .  Secondly, there is the problem with whether or not Player 1 mixed up the cards in his Hand with the cards from his Library.  Which makes it even more severe and not just looking at extra cards or drawing extra cards, as it could be abused.  So, I would probably have to walk through the entire situation and confirm a fair amount of information as to what happened regarding the Hand and Library.  But, what is likely to happen is that Player 1 will receive a Game Loss due to the compounded nature of the problem and Player 2 will receive a Warning as well.

But, I may take a long look at what happened here, as Player 2 could have been gunning for Player 1 receiving a Game Loss (for example, did Player 1 immediately resolve the Impulse because Player 2 had no open mana or cards in hand; or did Player 1 wait for Player 2 to respond and then resolved the Impulse after Player 2 said "Okay").

[Gabethebabe]

That is a well thought evaluation of the situation. looks damn more intelligent than what I heard of what happened:


1) The judge allowed the players to go back to the first turn, player 2 unmaking his plays and player 1 drawing the 7th card. Words can not describe what I think of this solution. Not only do you allow a player to get away with an error, also you give him back the turn with a significant advantage: he knows what the opponent is playing (important if this is the first game) and he knows 25% of the cards that opponent will have in his first turn.

IMO whatever approach you have to this problem, leads to the same conclusion: do not correct the game state and hand over a caution (this is REL 2, a caution should be sufficient) to player 1.
E.g. failure to draw a card is explicitely described in the penalty guidelines and it is stated that this should normally be corrected, unless a turn has passed.
Also as you state, improper start of the game covers this situation and declares that a forced mulligan usually settles it. In this case the player has already self-punished himself by taking an automulligan, so why would you want to correct that?


2) Here I provided a small piece of incorrect info: the opponent was not playing Stacks, but MUD. This makes it likely that the guy who played the Impulse did not await his opponent´s approval and proceeded directly with the spell resolving(MUD generally doesn´t do anything in response).

I have to admit that this is a muddy situation and as a judge you should indeed get all the information and interferences of what happened at the table. As I was told, it was a clear situation of a game loss. If the judge can´t make sure that the game state is corrected, because the player has mixed up the cards than the game state has been damaged beyond repair (as in procedural error-severe: shuffling the deck), so a game loss for the Oath player and a warning for the other player looks automatic.

[epeeguy]

IMO whatever approach you have to this problem, leads to the same conclusion: do not correct the game state and hand over a caution (this is REL 2, a caution should be sufficient) to player 1.

That depends on the assessment of the penalty, and what the possible impact was on the game.  In this situation, I believe that the draw compounded the subsequent game actions that were taken and it wasn't caught until the turn afterwards.  In this case, it is not a Procedural Error - Minor, but rather a Procedural Error - Major (and something I'd want to keep my eye on in case it happens again).  Nevertheless, there are different ways to approach the situation and ways for a judge to handle it.  YMMV.