Looking at Remedies Redux
Many moons ago—March 11, 2005, to be exact—Lee Sharpe wrote a fine column on how to remedy many common problems, using the Penalty Guide. This is an important and separate question from the other two major questions we deal with regarding penalties: What is the infraction and What penalty is called for at this Rules Enforcement Level. While it was a solid effort at the time, the sand slips through the hourglass (current block silliness notwithstanding) and—particularly with the release of the new version of the Penalty Guide—it's now long out of date. Today, I will look at the situations Lee covered, address how they've changed, and demonstrate how clear the new PG is.

I'll crib liberally from Lee, where his words are still relevant. Quotes from the source will be set in italics.

This is mostly an article geared toward judges, but players may find it interesting also. Many judge calls deal with one or both players making some sort of mistake—we'll assume the judge does not believe there is any intent and it's an honest mistake—and one of the players calls the judge to see what the situation is.

Some things don't change, and this paragraph is one of them. Many of you probably still don't care about this (though: why are you reading Ask the Judge?). But more to the point: intent to commit an offense is still often the difference between a garden variety penalty and a Cheating or Unsporting Conduct penalty. These are innocent play mistakes we're talking about.

Our terms, in Lee's words:

Infraction: An infraction is an action taken that is in violation of the rules (including the rules of Magic as well as tournament rules). These are listed in the penalty guidelines, along with the suggested penalty for that infraction at each Rules Enforcement Level.

"Suggested penalty" is less-strong language than we'd use today. Don't think of it as a suggestion. Think of it as a penalty, with a big sign nearby that says IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK NORMS.

Penalty: A penalty is a punishment a player receives for violating the rules. Most often, the purpose of a penalty is to discourage repeat behavior, help compensate for the chance that the player might be cheating and the judge did not catch it, and, in some cases, to deal with situations where no remedy is available (see below).

(Note: In Magic there are only five penalties: Caution, Warning, Game Loss, Match Loss, and Disqualification.)

A couple points here. I'd disagree with Lee's second purpose for penalties. The distinction I'd make is somewhat subtle. The strength of a penalty is partly determined by the ease of catching it, and the impact that the error, uncaught, will have on the game, but we're not exactly weighing in all the times someone did it on purpose and didn't get caught.

Also, the new Penalty Guide has added a sixth penalty: Match Point penalties, for use in certain situations in single-game match formats (like Two-Headed Giant). There are some significant restrictions on the use of this penalty that I won't go into here, but use with caution.

Remedy: A remedy is a step or series of steps taken by a judge to attempt to restore, as much as possible, the game to what would have happened had the infraction not occurred.

This is also only somewhat true, or perhaps better stated: it's true enough, but don't think about it too much. Remedies described by the PG should generally be as far as you go in "restoring the game to what would have happened."

Why is this distinction, you ask, important enough to write an entire judging article about? Well, while I am one of the more recent Level 3 judges (I was tested at the recent Pro Tour Columbus), I have been involved with training newer judges before this time. One of the most common mistakes when getting a tough call is jumping right to the penalty, but having no idea what the remedy was.

Again, some things just don't change. Many judges want to think of infractions first and foremost as penalties, only worrying about esoterica like infractions after the fact. Don't be that judge!

Now, on to the meaty stuff: Lee's examples.

Example #1 (Taken from a judge call at Grand Prix — Seattle)
Situation: Player A has Isochron Scepter with Orim's Chant on it. Player A taps three lands, then Isochron Scepter, and says "Activate Scepter, targeting you with Orim's Chant." Player B says "No, wait, I wanted to respond to your Isochron Scepter activation. I play Orim's Chant, targeting you." Player A decides to call a judge to resolve this.

Infraction: Procedural Error.

Penalty: No penalty is really needed here, aside from a Caution to Player A to perhaps remind him to give his opponent a chance to respond. Usually, though, this is an acceptable shortcut and I probably wouldn't. Especially since it's so easy to fix! How to fix, do we ask? That's what we look at for the.....

Remedy: While the ability of the Scepter is on the stack, Player B played Orim's Chant. After it resolves, Player A cannot legally play the Chant. Therefore, we must back the game up and let Player B play his Orim's Chant. Of course, this means Player A has not played the Chant yet either, so we should back up the entire announcement of that, including untapping a blue mana source. One could argue that the mana ability is seperate from the actual announcement and should not be reversed, but the intent is clear here, and in general I do not favor forcing technical precision on players when intent is clear.

Under the new PG, you could make an argument that this situation is a Game Play Error - Game Rule Violation, but this is actually an example of a philosophical shift in the PG (where most judges would have probably called this a Procedural Error - Minor, which carries a caution). The new Penalty Guide cuts down rather drastically on catch-all penalties. Reading the descriptions and examples in the Game Play Error section of the PG, we see that no penalty really fits. That is, believe it or not, okay. As a rule violation, assess whether the illegal action was problematic—was it really what the rules were trying to prohibit. If it was, ask the player not to do it again. A player who points at a card on the table and accidentally brushes his partner's permanents in a 2HG game has technically violated the rules, but probably doesn't need admonishing. Here, it's probably appropriate to remind the player to give his opponent opportunities to take actions when he has priority.

Lee's remedy is perfectly adequate. A player who gets ahead of where he should legitimately be in a game (generally only a priority or two) should generally be backed up to the place where they skipped ahead.

Example 2 (A common ruling from a previous season)
Situation: Player A begins his turn by untapping, and then starts to draw his card for the turn, but then notices Braids, Cabal Minion is in play, to which he forgot to sacrifice a permanent. The card isn't in the physical hand yet, but Player A has already seen what it is. Player B calls the judge.

Infraction: Looking at Extra Cards. Some might call this Drawing Extra Cards, but as long as which card involved is clear to both players, I consider it to be of the looking variety.

Penalty-First Approach: This seems to be a case of Looking at Extra Cards. That's a Warning. Was there an extreme advantage here? Probably not, so warning is fine.

What's wrong with this? Hopefully you'll see the difference....

Remedy-First Approach: At this point, once you've established the facts (or at least each player's version of them), a good idea is to review the remedies you feel are available to you. Here, I've listed them in the order that they might occur mentally (or, at least, do to me; your mileage may vary). Also, as I think of it, I identify what I like and dislike

Option #1: This is a case of Looking at Extra Cards. Reveal the card to both players, put it back on top of the library, have Player A resolve the Braids ability, and then draw the card.

Advantage: Basically the legal game state

Disadvantage: Possibly allowing Player A to benefit from his mistake

Option #2: That disadvantage in #1 isn't really acceptable; players shouldn't benefit from their own errors. And since there is no way to remove the knowledge of the card from the player's head, we'll just have to end the game with Player A losing.

Advantage: The player making the mistake will not benefit from it

Disadvantage: A game loss is harsh for something that is pretty clearly an accident

Option #3: Put the card back, and shuffle the library. Then have the player resolve Braids and draw a card (which may be the same one, or may not).

Advantage: Combines the advantages of both of the above, without the disadvantages

Disadvantage: This involves shuffling the deck, which is bad to do without good cause. Also, it's not being possible to do this if there was any library manipulation effects (say the player had scryed putting both cards on the bottom last turn).

I've quoted all of this thinking in part so I can point out how easy this situation is now. Infraction is Game Play Error - Missed Trigger. Penalty is a Warning at all RELs. How to remedy it is spelled out carefully. Short answer: resolve the trigger immediately. Long answer: read the Penalty Guide, which is—in no small part due to this exact circumstance—vastly more explicit on this matter now than it was back then.

Also, the comments about deck shuffling represent a philosophy that we've left behind us. The current approach is to treat the randomized portion of a deck as a random pile of cards with no particular order, so there are situations, like Looking at Extra Cards, where we are comfortable shuffling the deck as a remedy.

Example #3
Even just at the recent Betrayers of Kamigawa prerelease, two players watched as everyone else in their flight built and registered decks (unknown to the flight judge that they were in the flight), and decided not to inform the staff until Round 1 started that they had no decks or cards. What do you do here? No obvious infraction or penalty obviously applies to this situation, other than perhaps "tardiness", since they aren't coming prepared to play.

Instead of going with that, I thought a bit and tried a more remedy-based approach that I felt was in the spirit of the prerelease: I changed the pairings so their scheduled Round 1 opponents were playing each other, and then had these two changed to play each other. I then entered their result as an Intentional Draw and had them spend Round 1 building decks. They then were able to play Round 2 and later rounds out, and had a blast doing so.

Lee has deviated here, in a way that I'd disagree with (for what it's worth, Lee still supports his answer here: this is my personal take on the situation). The players have failed to position to their match in time. This is likely due to somewhat poor communication between staff and players at the event, but I don't think that gives us free reign to impose a result.

This is, however, a case that I would be willing to call "significant and exceptional," which is the criterion given for deviating from the Penalty Guide. I have never observed a mistake like this, and I probably never will. If it did happen, at a Regular REL event, as a result of two utterly tournament-naive players showing up for their first event, I'd do the following: explain that they have failed to make it possible for us to get them into a match for the first round; manually pair the players who now have no practical opponents; pair the late players, and give them a double match loss for tardiness.

Perhaps the key difference between what I would do and what Lee describes (though he may well have done this at the actual event) is that I would be careful to explain what would normally happen and why I was doing things differently. This is something that every head judge should be careful to do whenever deviating from the penalties and remedies of the Penalty Guide.

If I did think that the event bore some responsibility for their confusion, I'd talk to the TO, and discuss a partial refund or some similar token of apology for their difficulties. I'd be careful, however, to keep this discussion out of the realm of tournament results.

Final Thoughts
The new Penalty Guide carries us away from Lee's article in several directions. In general, remedies are spelled out to a much finer degree than before. And there is much less dependence on vague, catch-all infractions. The end result is a document that needs to be studied somewhat more carefully, but one that will give you more careful and accurate guidance in your judging travels.

Until next time, keep shufflin'.