After reading other responses, I think there's a really strong argument to be made that Nathan has actually committed GPE - DEC. The best heuristic, in my mind, is whether, before drawing a card, the opponent would have received a FtMGS. In this case, Alice can't catch Nathan and say, “no, you haven't discarded yet”, until he actually starts drawing that second card.

But, say we don't consider this DEC, and we're going to apply a rewind, not a partial fix - most people have been rewinding such that the stack is Bolt, Ascendancy Trigger, Bolt, Ascendancy Trigger (resolving). I would argue that this is an incorrect backup.

Whenever a player adds an object to the stack, he or she is assumed to be passing priority unless he or
she explicitly announces that he or she intends to retain it. If he or she adds a group of objects to the
stack without explicitly retaining priority and a player wishes to take an action at a point in the
middle, the actions should be reversed up to that point.

I would argue that ‘2 bolts’ would typically be understood as a shortcut for, “Play a bolt, resolve it, Play a bolt, resolve it”. With Ascendancy in the mix, it would be “Play a bolt, resolve the stack, Play a bolt, resolve the stack”. If this is the case, the correct backup actually puts the second bolt back in Nathan's Hand, not on the stack.

One point someone made is about “resolving objects in the wrong order”. That's not the case here - the second trigger is being resolved before the first has finished resolving, but they're not actually out of order.

A few people have made the persuasive argument that this is DEC, since the first opportunity A had to intervene was with the drawing of the second card. I've re-read the definition for DEC in the IPG a couple of times, and this still feels like GRV to me, as the problem starts when N fails to discard to resolve the first trigger.

Originally posted by Huw Morris:

I've re-read the definition for DEC in the IPG a couple of times, and this still feels like GRV to me, as the problem starts when N fails to discard to resolve the first trigger

Just a quick question to all who feel the same way:

If I play a Brainstorm and draw 4 cards… Is that a GRV as well? The problem starts when I fail to put 2 cards on top of my library… If not, where is the difference?

Jeremie

PS: not saying it's not GRV either :-)

Since I apparently feel he was just playing too fast and there was no malicious cheatyface intent, clearing a partial fix with the HJ is easy enough. Both players know the identity of the land that was played and the card that was not discarded. Send both to the graveyard and continue playing. The fix is easy, corrects the board state, and allows the players to continue playing.

GRV GPE for Nathan
FtMGS for Alice

Originally posted by Jeremie Granat:

Just a quick question to all who feel the same way:

If I play a Brainstorm and draw 4 cards… Is that a GRV as well? The problem starts when I fail to put 2 cards on top of my library… If not, where is the difference?

In this scenario, why am I drawing the 4th card? The answer may be different depending on whether it's my main phase or my upkeep before my regular draw.

Edited Eli Meyer (March 14, 2015 02:34:11 PM)

Originally posted by Jeremie Granat:

If I play a Brainstorm and draw 4 cards… Is that a GRV as well? The problem starts when I fail to put 2 cards on top of my library… If not, where is the difference?

From the IPG Definition for Drawing Extra Cards:

IPG 2.3
A player illegally puts one or more cards into his or her hand and, at the moment before he or she began the instruction or action that put a card into his or her hand, no other Game Play Error or Communication Policy Violation had been committed, and the error was not the result of resolving objects on the stack in an incorrect order.

Emphasis mine. In your Brainstorm example, Jeremie, presumably the 4th card drawn was not supposed to be drawn whatsoever. In comparison to this scenario, the second card drawn to Jeskai Ascendancy was absolutely legal to be drawn, except that the player was supposed to discard before doing so. Ergo: the draw was illegal because the GRV had been committed. In the Brainstorm example, the draw was no good regardless.

I'm very much on DEC as the infraction here. Prior to the second card being drawn, absolutely nothing was wrong with the game. No GRV has occurred. The first time someone could know there's a problem is when the second card has been drawn.

Originally posted by IPG:

at the moment before he or she began the instruction or action that put a card into his or her hand, no other Game Play Error

Before the draw, there was no error - the player was in the middle of resolving a trigger.

Also, the scenario says that he drew 2 cards, not 1 card then 1 card. So I suspect the two were taken in one action, which is near impossible for the opponent to spot or stop.

GPE-DEC the moment before he drew the card no infraction had been committed. Drawing the card was the error. OOOS does not apply since he gains information that affects the discard decision. Game Loss.

In case it helps anyone else I wanted to share my thought process and difficulties with DEC.

What keeps throwing me off on DECs is that logically the failure to discard must have happened before the draw. The way the IPG phrases DEC doesn't explicitly include the ‘if another player could have noticed the error’ part that's being referenced by various posters, but the more I examine the IPG, the more I see that it is in there.

What I stumbled on was that for the player drawing the card, the error was clearly committed before the draw, because in their head the Ascendancy has finished resolving (incorrectly) and now they're moving on to a legal draw from the second trigger - this is always what is going on in my head when I do this. However we can't possibly assess an infraction based on what's gone on in a player's head and that is what the DEC exception requires:

… Game Rule Violation or Communication Policy Violation had been committed…

We must have a visible action to point to in order to apply an infraction and there simply isn't one. The additional problem I struggled with is applying a GL for what could be a simple error, this feels harsh but the philosophy makes it very clear why this is handled this way.

——————-

Ps. I'm now with the GPE-DEC camp :)

So here is the problem I have with DEC: we are claiming no GRV was committed prior to the second draw for failing to discard the first card. Was no GRV committed for failing to discard the second card? What's the difference?

My opinion for those asking why the failure to discard from the first legal draw isn't the first illegal action:

Player draws card. Player draws second card. Those were his actions for that segment of the scenario.

We judge based on what he did, which was to draw a card he wasn't entitled to see, because he had not yet discarded.

The first time his opponent could say something to stop him was when that second card hit his hand, not when he failed to discard the first; Alice didn't know he was going to fail to discard in between draws and had no opportunity to stop him. Stopping him at the second card draw would have been the first place to stop him, and also would have saved her the FtMGS had she called a judge then.

We assign penalties for illegal actions. Penalties for failure to do a thingy always come when we know the thingy is passed by the game state moving past the point of the thingy. The first thing he did illegal was drawing the second card; while he did indeed fail to discard after the first draw, the action he took was drawing a second card rather than discarding. When you draw a card you're not supposed to, that seems like DEC.

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

So here is the problem I have with DEC: we are claiming no GRV was committed prior to the second draw for failing to discard the first card. Was no GRV committed for failing to discard the second card? What's the difference?

The claim is that no GRV exists up until the player drew the card. Can you imagine trying to give a GRV to a player before they draw that card?

Judge: Well it looks like you forgot to discard so I'm giving a GRV
Player: I haven't done anything, I was just thinking about the discard!

The difference is that in the second instance we work through all the other GPEs without finding an appropriate error and so this must be a GRV. From the IPG:

It (GRV) handles violations of the Comprehensive Rules that are not covered by the other Game Play
Errors.

This seems like a GRV for Nathan, with the possibility of a rewind. What *actually* happened (which was done as OOS, which is allowed by policy if done correctly, but in this case it wasn't) was the following:

Bolt
Draw
Discard the card drawn (we know that it was the card drawn because Nathan had 1 card in hand after drawing 2 and playing 3)*
Bolt
Draw
Discard the card drawn

The * is where the GRV occurred. Since Nathan only had extra cards in his hand after this point, he gets GRV instead of DEC.

Since Nathan had 2 cards in his hand, both Lightning Bolts, at the beginning of this exchange (we know this due to the evidence described above) we can rewind. I would rule in this case that since Alice never indicated she wanted to respond to Nathan's Lightning Bolts and Nathan seemed to indicate that he did not care about the cards drawn when he cast the Bolts due to his communication, the game would be rewound to the following game state:

There are 2 Lightning Bolts on the stack, with a Jeskai Ascendancy trigger in-between them. Nathan has 1 card in hand, and he has to discard a card to the Jeskai Ascendancy.

To do this, I would do the following things:

1) Put a random card from Alice's hand on top of her deck.
2) Return the land that Nathan played to his hand.
3) Return a random card from Nathan's hand to the top of his deck.
4) Put both Lightning Bolts on the stack from Nathan's graveyard.
5) It is now Nathan's (whatever phase it was when he cast the Lightning Bolts).

Nathan must now discard the card he has in his hand, and he gets to choose whether or not to resolve the other Jeskai Ascendancy trigger.

While I would like to force Nathan to mill 1 card or shuffle his deck or something to remove the information gained by knowing the top card of his deck, that's not supported by policy so I wouldn't do it.

After reading the responses from people who think it's DEC:

Originally posted by IPG 2.3:

At the moment before he or she began the instruction or action that put a card into his or her hand, no other Game Play Error or Communication Policy Violation had been committed…

(Emphasis mine)

At the moment before Nathan began the instruction that put the extra card into his hand, he believed he had finished resolving his Ascendancy trigger. This is clear because he began to resolve the second trigger without discarding the card. However, he resolved the trigger incorrectly, which is a GPE - GRV.

Edited Lyle Waldman (March 16, 2015 12:15:59 AM)

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

To do this, I would do the following things:

1) Put a random card from Alice's hand on top of her deck.
2) Return the land that Nathan played to his hand.
3) Return a random card from Nathan's hand to the top of his deck.
4) Put both Lightning Bolts on the stack from Nathan's graveyard.
5) It is now Nathan's (whatever phase it was when he cast the Lightning Bolts).

I am not sure why you would perform this rewind. The IPG states that you may consider a rewind after checking the available partial fixes. The rewind is not required. The section for backing up states:

Due to the amount of information that may become available to players and might affect their play, backups are regarded as a solution of last resort, only applied in situations where leaving the game in the current state is a substantially worse solution.

A good backup will result in a situation where the gained information makes no difference and the line of play remains the same (excepting the error, which has been fixed). This means limiting backups to situations with minimal decision trees.

If you rule it as a GRV:GPE and choose to perform a rewind here are the two states described:

Khans timeline-
Nathan has an extra card in hand (naughty, could be changed by GRV additional remedy)
Nathan has a land in play he should not have had in his hand after resolving trigger (naughty)
Alice is okay other than not making sure Nathan resolved his triggers correctly as they happen

If you reforge their fate by rewinding the game you have:

Dragons timeline-
Nathan has a Lightning Bolt, ascendancy trigger, Lightning Bolt, ascendancy trigger on the stack (resolving trigger)
Nathan has one of the two previously seen cards in his hand
Nathan knows the top card of his hand while he has, on the stack, a loot ability that is optional
Alice knows the top card of her library; her hand possibly contains a card that was previously on top of her library.
Alice knows that either the card in Nathan's hand or the top of his library is a land (she does not currently know the other card). If Nathan's discard to the trigger resolving right now is a non-land she knows his next card.

If you backup you can't also force Nathan to resolve his second trigger in a certain way (without deviating). I can see why a rewind is tempting but I think it puts the game state in a worse condition than just performing partial fixes.

Edited Gregg Nakagawa (March 16, 2015 05:05:50 AM)

Originally posted by Adam Zakreski:

OOOS does not apply since he gains information that affects the discard decision.

At that point, he has 2 cards in hand, and must discard 2 cards. What decision does he have to make?

It seems to me that there is no decision to make, therefore he has not actually gained any additional information. He intended to loot twice while he was empty-handed. There are no decision points in that process (in standard, at least).

Because it could have been OOOS, I'm not sure that the first time that the opponent sees something wrong is when the second card is drawn - because that could simply have been OOOS and not a GPE. I think the first time Alice could know that something is wrong is when Nathan doesn't discard (i.e. when he plays a land).