I actually don't like the partial fix here. The 2nd Magma Spray may well not have been cast if Ned had seen the Swan Song going back into Anne's hand. There's also serious scope for cheating if we just give Anne the Swan Song back and allow her to cast it. The fact that Ned might have a Miracle put back on top of his deck feels less disruptive to the game state, to me. (I know we shouldn't care about such things in determining the correct fix, but if Anna wants to complain about this, it was her error in the first place.)

Well if both the partial fix and the rewind are too disruptive, shouldn't we just leave it as is? I'm in favor of the rewind, unless I'm missing some key info but all the info we were given makes me want to rewind here.

I feel like everyone's assuming that the second Magma Spray was just drawn during Ned's turn. It could easily have already been his hand, and there's nothing in the original scenario to suggest otherwise.

Personally, I would rewind. GRV to Anna, FtMGS to Ned. I don't think that we can return the swan song to Anna's hand, since that would disrupt the game state. My reasoning behind that is the fact that there's currently a spell on the stack, and returning the Swan Song gives Anna responses that she would not have originally had, which Ned definitely might have taken into account when casting Magma Spray. I don't think rewinding is too disruptive, as there's only one draw and we know what was previously tapped/untapped, and there aren't any shuffling/searching effects in play that we know of. We'll retap Ned's lands, put a random card from his hand on top of his library, and go back to right as the Swan Song finishes resolving, and put it in Anna's hand instead of into her graveyard.

Alternately, we could just do no fix, but I think that's worse and feels like a ‘punishment’ which we're trying to avoid as judges.

I feel like the IPG is pretty clear on this. GPE - GRV for Anne and FtMGS for Ned. The Swan Song goes back into Anne's hand. Because the card is known to all players, and because the grand master ability is a replacement effect, the card can be moved into the correct zone.

Originally posted by Bryan Li:

I feel like everyone's assuming that the second Magma Spray was just drawn during Ned's turn. It could easily have already been his hand, and there's nothing in the original scenario to suggest otherwise.

That´s right… but either way, Anna shouldn´t have seen that card. I don´t say that we leave the game state as is as a punishment. Bad things happened and we can´t really fix this.
Either a card has been revealed to Anna and Ned got to see his next draw (rewinding), a decission has been taken over a wrong -and now different- game state (partial fix), or a card ended in the wrong zone due to a sloppy play (no fix whatsoever).

I really feel bad for this, as it seems that Anna just moved her hands wrong, even remembering the Swan Song should go to her hand… but if in the same fashion Ned was genuinely oblivious to this, he had not commited a worse thing… he has been just as sloppy as her. I see both of them doing things wrong, and either fix could reasonably be advantageous to one player (most likely Anna, but I don´t really care about which). As we are now, things are bad only for her, but at least that´s what they both did.

walker metyko
disrupting the game state was my main concern and I was really divided on which to choose. I do agree it doesn't feel right to return the Swan Song (which usually signals it isn't the right thing to do). However the philosophy is what convinced me

"While Game Rule Violations can be attributed to one player, they usually occur publicly and both players are expected to be mindful of what is happening in the game. It is tempting to try and “fix” these errors, but it is important that they be handled consistently, regardless of their impact on the game"

That´s a very big thing, which ruminated a lot in my head… Certainly, that´s why we should apply the partial fix. But is returning a counter to Anna´s hand disrputive in the current game state?
We take back on this after the next quote.

Dylan Goings
I disagree with Juan that a backup (even a “safe” one) would arrive at a more correct game state. We don't know enough information to know whether Ned would still play the Magma Spray into the Swan Song if everything had been done correctly (maybe he's trying to bait out counters and wants the bird tokens), and now that he's seen another card from his draw those lines of play may be even more complicated. If Ned's play is based on the assumption that the Swan Song is definitely in the graveyard and he gets bitten for that with the partial fix, well, that's why he's getting a GPE-FtMGS. I see this as a great education opportunity to dissuade a player from abusing something like this in the future and suffering worse consequences.

For the first part, we don´t have enough information to know if Ned would have still played the Magma Spray, that´s right, but that´s precisely why I didn´t liked to force him to keep casting it. I hadn´t considered initially the fact that he saw a new card himself and that would affect his decission even more, that helps fully discarding a normal back up, I guess…
The last part of your message is what I see really important and enlightner. With that, and the above quote from Metyko, we should take the partial fix way… but I still want to defend the no-fix:
I don´t like saying that he should got bitten for not maintaining the game state… If that´s the case, shouldn´t Anna be bitten by not resolving correctly the Swan Song? Isn´t it something with abuse potential? I mean, I simulate to missresolve it, let you play a card and then go “oh my, that should be in my hand!”

It all boils down to:
-Is partial fixing disruptive here? (not being disruptive is privative to that rule as it is written).
If it isn´t, let´s be consistent, as Walker points out.
If it is, and that is my guess, we should make both of them responsible for what happened and continue playing from here. It actually is educational and would dissuade future occurances of missplaying things.

I agree with Juan it really all comes down to (at least for me) if the judge that answers this call feels that returning swan song is disruptive or not. Once that has been decided then it seems fairly simple to go on from there…but ultimately it's a judgement call (bu dum tiss).

Originally posted by Bryan Li:

I feel like everyone's assuming that the second Magma Spray was just drawn during Ned's turn. It could easily have already been his hand, and there's nothing in the original scenario to suggest otherwise.

Let's assume it was in his hand. If he was willing to magma spray at EoT, then in response to the swan song, he probably would have gone for it again, right? The scenario though doesn't tell us how much mana he still has untapped, but this makes me believe it was drawn for the turn. This is a question that could be asked to the players.

Originally posted by Joshua Feingold:

Ned then untaps, draws, and casts another copy of Magma Spray.

I'm interpreting that as “Ned then untaps, draws for turn, and then casts magma spray,” but I could be wrong.

Originally posted by Juan Agustín Cuch:

I don´t like saying that he should got bitten for not maintaining the game state… If that´s the case, shouldn´t Anna be bitten by not resolving correctly the Swan Song? Isn´t it something with abuse potential? I mean, I simulate to missresolve it, let you play a card and then go “oh my, that should be in my hand!”

We aren't saying that he should be penalized for not maintaining the game state (which would be a punitive fix and not what we do ever). The argument is that since he is at least somewhat culpable in the mistake, the fact that the fix is somewhat “unfair” to him shouldn't have too much influence on our decision.

As for your last question, yes, there is the potential for abuse in this case, but that's what investigations are for (and it's always assumed that no cheating is taking place in KP scenarios). That's also why we track penalties to look for trends. As a related question, if Ned really did choose to play Magma Spray because the Swan Song got put into the graveyard instead of back into the hand, why didn't he call attention to the fact that it was in the wrong zone it right then? That has just as much abuse potential.

Backing up or applying a partial fix will always (or almost) benefit one of the players in some way. We cannot “feel bad” for Ned and think applying the partial fix isn't fair. Both players are responsible for maintaining the game state so I'm not worried if, in this case, the partial fix happens to be at Ned's detriment. It's always about consistency.

- GPE-GRV for Anne - warning
- GPE-FtMGS for Ned - warning.
I would explain that the game state as is is legal, and there has been choices made and information revealed and that makes it really difficult to back up the game or apply a fix of some sort. And now they can continue the game.

Originally posted by Bryan Li:

I'm interpreting that as “Ned then untaps, draws for turn, and then casts magma spray,” but I could be wrong.

This is the intended interpretation. If it makes a difference in any of your rulings, do not assume that we can positively identify the card drawn by Ned for this turn. Sorry for any ambiguity.

Originally posted by Chuck Pierce:

We aren't saying that he should be penalized for not maintaining the game state (which would be a punitive fix and not what we do ever). The argument is that since he is at least somewhat culpable in the mistake, the fact that the fix is somewhat “unfair” to him shouldn't have too much influence on our decision.

As for your last question, yes, there is the potential for abuse in this case, but that's what investigations are for (and it's always assumed that no cheating is taking place in KP scenarios). That's also why we track penalties to look for trends. As a related question, if Ned really did choose to play Magma Spray because the Swan Song got put into the graveyard instead of back into the hand, why didn't he call attention to the fact that it was in the wrong zone it right then? That has just as much abuse potential.

I think I didn´t expressed myself well. What I´m trying to say is that we seem to be using double standards. Unless one of us could convince the rest that the partial fix is disruptive or not, we re not ressolving the partial fix/no fix problem; and if unsolved, the “we shouldn´t take our ”unfairness“ feeling to solve this” seems to be what it´s actually happening. If we can´t decide if it´s disruptive or not, the only motive left to partial fix is that Anna should have her card. It´s the exact same thing as the thought that Ned should have had the chance to play spells on a correctly represented game state. Since I´m thinking it IS disruptive, I try to point out how the partial fix isn´t ideal.

I´m not saying that it could be Cheating as for the scenario. On the quote I made, Goings says that the situation is good to reinforce education and dissuade players from engaging in shady things. That´s a very good point in this discussion, and I´m thinking that if we don´t apply any fix, the possibility for education and to dissuade a potentially abusable situation is still there.


I really liked your last question. It´s an awesome point to start the investigation (I usually have a hard time stating ´em). But again, we assume that all people involved in the scenario are good guys, so Ned probably forgot about the Grandmaster´s ability and watched it hit the graves without thinking anything -meaning he didn´t “let” it go the the GY on purpose-.

I support the GRV/FTMGS and IPG partial fix in this scenario.

I don't feel that the partial fix is disruptive, and here's why: If Ned, when deciding to cast Magma Spray, took into account that the Swan Song had not been returned to Anne's hand, then he was cheating (assuming he meets the other cheating criteria). You should definitely investigate this possibility. If Ned did not notice that the Swan Song had not been put into Anne's hand, then he made his play knowing that Swan Song was a possibility (or should have).