@walker: I never said anything about backing up to the fetchland resolving and letting him find a blue source.. I believe your preferred ruling is also what mine was.

@Scott: Ah, I get what you mean. Robert correctly explained the source of my confusion.

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

Espen Skarsbø Olsen
shuffle the library (after checking if any part of the library was known),

Really? Why would you shuffle here?

Sorry, just a brainfart. We should absolutely _not_ shuffle here.

I really don't think assuming he failed to find is supported by rules or policy. Search is a part of the effect of the card (independently if he failed or not to find something), and therefore cannot be omitted. If he hasn't searched, he hasn't resolved the ability yet.

I would put three cards at random on top of the library, then brainstorm in hand, and I would probably assume the misty is on the stack, as it was announced and the player was paying it's costs when the error was committed. GPE-GRV, Warning, finish paying the cost, “please try to be more careful, but at least this is something that can go into the judge's forums”, “ha ha” (hopefully), go on.

I dislike doing that because then you're backing up a draw with a shuffle effect. He can now decide if he wants to recast brainstorm if it suits him or not which is a significant advantage. I agree that maybe declaring he failed to find is unfair but If we don't go with backing up to fail to find I don't like backing up at all and would prefer leaving the game state as is.

Originally posted by Joaquín Ossandón:

I really don't think assuming he failed to find is supported by rules or policy. Search is a part of the effect of the card (independently if he failed or not to find something), and therefore cannot be omitted. If he hasn't searched, he hasn't resolved the ability yet.

Agreed. The searching isn't the relevant part, but the shuffling is–since the brainstorm resolved before any known cards from the top or bottom of the deck got shuffled in, we can't say the fetchland resolved without also assessing a Tournament Error: Insufficient Shuffling penalty. On that basis, it seems clear that Brainstorm resolved with the fetchland ability on the stack. As others have mentioned, it's not DEC because of the preceding GRC. But it's also not DEC because of another exception in the IPG:

…and the error was not the result of resolving objects on the stack in an incorrect order.

So, we assess a warning for GRV to Adam. Maybe or maybe not we assess FtMGS to Nancy; I'd have to be there to figure out who caught the error and who called the judge over. Brainstorm resolves, then the fetchland resolves. It's not a great solution, since Adam gets a “free” mana and a free shuffle (which let's be honest, is the only reason Brainstorm is played). But I don't think that putting three random cards from Adam's hand on top of his deck as part of a back-up is going to restore the game to a better situation.

I would like to reinforce the idea that you don't get to “choose” how to apply a backup, except in extreme situations. Consistency matters a lot in competitive play, and “creative answers” normally diminishes that consistency. I don't think this situation is exceptional enough to do a “creative backup”.

So, we need to ask, ¿It's something illegal happen? Walker is right at saying: “Adam has illegally cast a brainstorm with no blue mana available in his pool and no ways to get blue mana into his pool.” This is a GPE-GRV (I think we have discarded DEC at this point). So the questions is if we should backup now, and the IPG offers this:

To perform a backup, each individual action since the point of the error is reversed, starting with the most recent ones and working backwards. Every action must be reversed; no parts of the sequence should be omitted or reordered. 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. A shuffle is reversed by shuffling again.

Backups involving random/unknown elements should be approached with extreme caution, especially if they cause or threaten to cause a situation in which a player will end up with different cards than they would once they have correctly drawn those cards. For example, returning cards to the library when a player has the ability to shuffle their library is not something that should be done except in extreme situations

So, we cannot reorder or omit what happened. The only thing we should do is to choose between doing the backup or not. If we do the backup, we need to put three cards at random on top, then brainstorm in hand, and go from there (probably with the fetch in stack). If we don't, we got to Eli's response. After reading his response, the rules, and thinking about it a while, I think Eli is right, putting the brainstorm back in hand and 3 cards at random on top makes a lot of decision trees, and is not necesarily significanlty better than not backing up.

On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 7:56 AM, Joaquín Ossandón
<forum-16611-ef63@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> I would like to reinforce the idea that you don't get to “choose” how to
> apply a backup, except in extreme situations.


And in the extreme situations not backing up is the much more
consistent option. Backing up is never required.

@Scott since the discussion has grown stagnant could we get an O'ficial answer?