Natasha casts Secure the Wastes at end of Amy's turn and puts 4 tokens into play and puts Declaration in Stone into her graveyard. (instead of Secure the Wastes)

Natasha then draws for her turn and realizes she still has Secure the Wastes still in hand and calls Judge.

The time between casting spell and putting tokens into play and drawing card for the turn was NOT rushed.

How do you rule here?

GRV&FTMGS, Put the Secure the wastes in graveyard, put Declaration in Stone back in hand.

Natasha has shown her opponent a card in hand, she should be more careful!

Originally posted by Jeff S Higgins:

RV&FTMGS, Put the Secure the wastes in graveyard, put Declaration in Stone back in hand.

While this seems like a plausible solution, you seem to be applying a partial fix to this issue and I don't immediately see IPG support for it. What's the reasoning behind your answer?

I kind of want to say this could easily be backed up, assuming permission from HJ, but that draw kind of complicates things. If we are to back it up, we should return a random card to the top, put the Declaration in Stone back into the hand, remove the 4 tokens, and then properly reveal and put the Secure the Wastes onto the stack.

But what if the random card we put back on top happens to be the Wastes? Do we exclude it from the random-card-to-top? Is that a deviation, and is it justified in this case? If we don't back up, things get kind of awkward, but not too big of a problem game-wise, though I don't really like it.

So the relevant partial fix here is:

If an object is in an incorrect zone either due to a required zone change being missed or due to being put into the wrong zone during a zone change, the identity of the object was known to all players, and it can be moved with only minor disruption to the state of the game, put the object in the correct zone.

However, there are 2 problems. Firstly, the partial fix does not cover an object changing zones without reason, so we can't use it to put the Declaration in Stone back into Natasha's hand. Secondly, the Secure the Wastes was not known information before the infraction was committed, so it can't be put into the graveyard now. That leaves us with the option of performing a backup. We know that the Secure the Wastes was already in Natasha's hand, so we will chose a random other card from Natasha's hand to put back on top of the library when rewinding the draw.

If the identity of a card involved in reversing an action is unknown to one of the players (usually because it was drawn), a random card is chosen from the possible candidates.

Then redo the actions correctly. Since this is fairly simple, simply switching the locations of the 2 cards in an acceptable shortcut if both players agree.

Edited Isaac King (May 14, 2018 03:55:12 PM)

The problem is that the Wastes was not shown until after a card was drawn, and was not (presumably) known to both players. I mean, it would be far too unlikely that the player didn't have a Wastes and just HAPPENED to draw it unless they knew it was on top, but that's probably going too far.

Should be fine though c:

(I feel like this is not as complicated as I'm about to spell out, but I'd like to sort of stretch my L1 legs and see if I'm on base with these interpretations of handling various versions of how this played out, since it's actually a fairly vague description of what went wrong.)

Saw this posted on Facebook as well, and it's missing a bit of information here too. Namely, it's unclear exactly how Natasha cast this spell. If the idea is she literally says “I cast Secure the Wastes for 4”, taps 5 mana, waits for a response, sees no response, puts 4 tokens onto the battlefield, and only then puts Declaration in Stone into the graveyard, and that instant of putting it in the graveyard is the first time her opponent (I'm going to call him Boris because it's easier than ‘Natasha’s opponent') has seen ANY card involved in the casting, there's the whole issue of “That's not how you cast spells” to address as well.

I feel like what offense is happening depends entirely on a bunch of other factors.

If Boris knows there is a Secure the Wastes in Natasha's hand (due to it being revealed as drawn, or tutored, or because they've cast a spell that gives access to her hand) then it is a lot easier to fix. You can investigate Natasha's version of what happened, and it would either be a Dexterity Error, accidentally pulling the wrong card from her hand upon resolution of the spell, or a GRV for casting one spell but ‘resolving’ another. Put Declaration back in hand, put Secure into graveyard, carry on.

If Boris saw the Declaration in Stone before the spell resolved, though it was announced as a Secure The Wastes, such as Natasha casting the spell in the normal manner, actually revealing the card when it left the hand and went on the stack (and become public info), I would also consider a Failure to Maintain Game State for Boris for allowing Natasha to resolve a Secure the Wastes while actually playing a Declaration in Stone.

In either event, because Boris knows there is a Secure The Wastes in Natasha's hand, it's a fairly trivial fix. I'd also consider Natasha receiving a Communications Policy Violation for obscuring public information by leaving the card in the hand (Private) instead of putting it on the stack (Public) and make sure she understands that spells on the stack are public information and can't be left hidden in that way. It opens the door to Boris casting a counterspell and then Natasha saying “Oh whoops, my bad, that wasn't a Secure the Wastes” and trying to back up having fished info from Boris.

If Boris has no way to know that there was a Secure the Wastes in Natasha's hand, things become more complicated. If this had been caught before Natasha drew a card, the same fixes as above could have been applied because we can confirm there was legitimately a StW in the hand. However, since Boris is now faced with an extra card in Natasha's hand, I'm not sure he supports the idea of “She PROBABLY already had it in hand, what are the odds?” and I'm not sure we should either.

Given that a card has now been drawn, I'd almost be tempted to suggest the fix is “Nope, you cast a Declaration in Stone, you just CPV'd by calling it the wrong spell” and uncasting StW and making her have cast DiS instead, since that aligns closest with what actually physically happened with cards that are known. I'm afraid that now a card has been drawn and we have no way to confirm what it was, and whether there even was a StW in hand at the time she claimed she cast one, we'd have to investigate UC-Cheating.

Declaration in Stone is an Sorcery. No Targets were chosen. She can't cast it at the end of turn.

I would put a random card on top of lib. Then return the declaration back to the hand go back before stW was casted. If it is still in hand the player can cast it if not that's the players problem.

Warning for N Ftmgs for active player.

Edited Philip Wieland (May 8, 2016 05:02:08 PM)

Originally posted by Philip Wieland:

I would put a random card on top of lib. Then return the declaration back to the hand go back before stW was casted. If it is still in hand the player can cast it if not that's the players problem.

From the IPG:

“A good backup will result in a situation…where the line of play remains the same.”

The backup you propose definitely does not meet that definition.

Also, this fix has a second problem: it “rewards” the opponent for *not* noticing, since the fix involving the backup has a chance to cancel the Secure the Wastes, whereas a fix applied immediately to the error does not.

For both those reasons, I'm convinced that we have to assume the Secure was in hand and treat it as known information (assuming we back up at all, that is!).

The player has cast a spell - I assume they have named the spell rather than just taking the actions of the spell, the only thing they have done “wrong” is to put the wrong card in the graveyard.

I don't think we have a situation where the opponent thinks they have cast Declaration in Stone - Sorcery Vs Instant definitely makes this apparent, and the fact the effects of both spells are completely different.

Do we really need an infraction and a proscribed remedy in the IPG to fix this situation? It's been caught very quickly, we're not several turns past the mistake.

Well, it IS comp REL after all. However tempting it is to fix things the easy and obvious way, it's much more important to keep things by the book for consistency. A GRV is most fitting, not for casting / resolving a Declaration in Stone wrong but for casting a Secure the Wastes wrong (it was resolved correctly, but the root of the problem is the wrong card was revealed). A backup would be appropriate here, and pretty simply despite the drawn card. I think this scenario is uncommon enough that it warrents the use of a small deviation during the backup (not including the Wastes in the random-card-to-top).

And of course a warning for both the GRV player and FTMGS for the opponent not noticing the mistake.

I think we can rule out cheating here, besides if the player really was cheating this would be much more cut and dry than trying to figure out a penalty and fix.

Originally posted by Mark Brown:

Do we really need an infraction and a proscribed remedy in the IPG to fix this situation? It's been caught very quickly, we're not several turns past the mistake.

How many draw steps need to pass before this is an infraction? :-)

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

How many draw steps need to pass before this is an infraction? :-)

If both players are extremely clear about what happened, then any number.

Not everything is an infraction. What we have is both players very clear as to what happened, with a very small “accounting error” where the wrong card is in the graveyard.

If N had no knowledge of the top of her library, I'd definitely switch cards & carry on.

The drawn card is not an issue. It's a so high risk chance for cheating that it should be dismissed.

Originally posted by Sal Cortez:

Well, it IS comp REL after all. However tempting it is to fix things the easy and obvious way, it's much more important to keep things by the book for consistency. A GRV is most fitting, not for casting / resolving a Declaration in Stone wrong but for casting a Secure the Wastes wrong (it was resolved correctly, but the root of the problem is the wrong card was revealed). A backup would be appropriate here, and pretty simply despite the drawn card. I think this scenario is uncommon enough that it warrents the use of a small deviation during the backup (not including the Wastes in the random-card-to-top).

The MIPG address “minor issues” as well…

MIPG "General Philosophy
If a minor violation is quickly handled by the players to their mutual satisfaction, a judge does not need to intervene. If the players are playing in a way that is clear to both players, but might cause confusion to an external observer, judges are encouraged to request that the players make the situation clear, but not assess an infraction or issue any penalty. In both these situations, the judge should ensure that the game progresses normally. More significant violations are addressed by first identifying what infraction applies, then proceeding with the corresponding instructions.

…and if both players agree as to what is going on, and you really don't think that the player intentionally tried to cast the wrong card that wasn't in her hand, I think that a judge could step in enough to clarify the situation before helping the players move on with the game. All without leaning on an infraction.

I think you have to talk to both players and make sure that they are both clear on what is going on here, but I think a judge could approach the situation as Mark suggests here. If the situation makes you uncomfortable as a judge, and there is concern about the significance of what has happened since the wrong card was used to represent the spell and subsequent put into the graveyard, then perhaps it is serious enough to treat as an infraction.

But I don't think the “This is CompREL” that we must default to treating this as an infraction. The book suggests as much.