Sorry, Ihave to bring it up again: I'm also a bit confused by the example with Rummaging Goblin and the solution Scott gave for that compared to this. If this is DEC for the given reasons, shouldn't the error with the Goblin also always be DEC because the first thing the opponent can look out for that goes wrong is the drawing of the extra card no matter whether the controller first taps it or not?

Originally posted by Markus Dietrich:

Sorry, Ihave to bring it up again: I'm also a bit confused by the example with Rummaging Goblin and the solution Scott gave for that compared to this. If this is DEC for the given reasons, shouldn't the error with the Goblin also always be DEC because the first thing the opponent can look out for that goes wrong is the drawing of the extra card no matter whether the controller first taps it or not?

With Rummaging Goblin the discard is part of the cost of the ability meaning the first “noticeable” error is not paying the correct cost, similar to only paying U for Brainstorm with Thalia in play.

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

With Rummaging Goblin the discard is part of the cost of the ability meaning the first “noticeable” error is not paying the correct cost, similar to only paying U for Brainstorm with Thalia in play.

That is exactly what I'm confused about. Why is “not paying the correct cost” different from “not resolving the ability correctly”? Both can be done until the card is drawn (unless the players communicates well, but we have that in both scenarios I think)

EDIT: More exactly: Incomplete cost you can still be assumed to be paying until you draw the card. I can see this with wrong cost like a Brainstorm of a Steam Vents with active Blood Moon

Edited Markus Dietrich (March 18, 2015 09:54:34 AM)

Originally posted by George FitzGerald:

Head Judge may elect to downgrade the penalty to a Warning, and put both the land that Nathan played, and the card still in his hand, into the correct zone - the graveyard.

Is this a deviation? The IPG says " the card can be returned to the correct zone“ which I thought meant ”put it back where it was before it was drawn“ and not ”put it where it should have ended up instead of the player's hand“.

Edit: Looking at the Annotated IPG they have an example of cards changing zones in a similar scenario so it could just be my interpretation of the word ”returned".

Edited Gregg Nakagawa (March 18, 2015 10:02:12 AM)

Originally posted by Loïc Hervier:

Moreover no explanation was given about why OoOS (thus no DEC) cannot apply here. Why is the sequence (Bolt Bolt {empty hand} draw draw discard discard) not a legal OoOS here please?

Had the player flipped two cards off his library into his graveyard I'd have accepted OoOS as we've ended up at the right place, but in this case we've violated the clause that states “All actions taken must be legal if they were executed in the correct order” as he still had cards in hand.

George FitzGerald
Since both cards were drawn into an empty hand, and it's minimal disruption to do so, the Head Judge may elect to downgrade the penalty to a Warning, and put both the land that Nathan played, and the card still in his hand, into the correct zone - the graveyard

Both cards weren't drawn into an empty hand, one was drawn into a hand with one card, additionally the identity of the second drawn card is not identifiable once it's added to the hand, but given that we know exactly where both cards are now and know both should be in the graveyard I can see a downgrade here. I also see the logic for moving the land from the battlefield to the graveyard, but the infraction seems to state ‘if we can put it back from the hand’. Both of these however feel like a deviation from the letter of the rule to achieve the philosophy - is that correct?

George FitzGerald
The philosophy that led to the addition of the “GRV immediately prior = not DEC” phrasing in the IPG was based on the idea that the opponent, if paying attention, had a chance to see something going wrong and stop it before the card was drawn

Totally bemused by the rummaging goblin example as partially resolving the costs feels exactly like partially resolving the ascendancy trigger - the first point that we know the error exists is still after the draw.

Edited for punctuation :)

Edited Marc Shotter (March 18, 2015 11:36:00 AM)

Originally posted by Marc Shotter:

Had the player flipped two cards off his library into his graveyard I'd have accepted OoOS as we've ended up at the right place

Indeed, but then you agree that (Bolt Bolt {empty hand} draw draw discard discard) is a legal OoOS if it is performed properly. In this hypothesis, the first thing that went wrong is not when Nathan drew a second card (legal in this OoOS) but when he takes another action: playing a land, instead of discarding.

If the end state isn't legal, it isn't OoOS so I'd have to say no

If you were Alice, or a judge watching the whole sequence of actions, would you intervene when Nathan drew his second card, or would you think "everything is fine, Nathan is about to discard 2 cards, that is legal OoOS until now"?

Based on the MTR I view OoOS as a way to protect players who get to the right place using technically illegal actions. If you get to the wrong place then you've stepped outside that protection so I while I wouldn't step in at the point that you've described, once we've got to an error the OoOS doesn't apply.

Just because there is a way to a legal game state using a different set of actions and invoking OoOS does not make taking the same illegal actions legal if you end up in an illegal game state. Once the game arrives at the end of a sequence and the game state is not legal we need to look for the first illegal action, in this case “Drawing the second card”

How can an action be legal or not, based on the next action? How can we ask Alice to intervene when Nathan draws his second card, if she cannot know yet that this action is legal or not? Was she supposed to say at that time: "Nathan, I must tell you right now that if your next action is not to discard the two cards in your hand, then the second card that you have just drawn in a legal OoOS, will be retroactively considered illegal, and I do want to avoid a Warning for FtMGS, so I am compelled to warn you now, even if no judge would intervene if he were watching this."?

Edited Loïc Hervier (March 18, 2015 11:53:44 AM)

The actions are still technicaltechnically illegal it's if the group of actions that can become illegal, depending if the game state before and after are legal then while the actions may have been taken in an order that would be illegal we assume they were taken in the correct order.

If you've left enough time for Alice to make that assessment I think you're in the “substantial pause” that indicates an OoOS has ended. In any case if Alice explained that she legitimately assumed an OoOS was plausible I would not apply a FtMGS penalty. Finally she could make this challenge to ask him to work through the technically correct steps per the OoOS description.

Edited: Added the finally

Edited Marc Shotter (March 18, 2015 12:09:35 PM)

I would start by issuing a warning to Nathan for GPE-GRV and a warning to Alice for GPE-FtMGS.

At that point I would could apply a partial fix by having Nathan discard his card thus completing the last resolving Ascendancy loot trigger. We could also apply a full backup to the point when the last Ascendancy loot trigger was resolving (put a random card back on Alice's library, tap all permanents that were untapped, return the land to Nathan's hand, adjust her life to +3) and have Nathan complete the loot trigger and proceed with the game.

I would not back the game up to the resolution of the first loot trigger since, that would give Nathan the information about the top card of his library and would allow him to change his decision whether to loot or not.

Furthermore, I think that doing the full backup to the resolution of the second loot trigger would allow Nathan to discard the land and keep a card in his hand, which would be more disruptive than doing the partial fix (which would leave Nathan with no cards in hand like he would have been if he had resolved the triggers correctly).

I wouldn't say this situation is a case of drawing extra cards, since both draws are legal due to the 2 ascendancy loot triggers. Resolving the first trigger allows a card draw. Resolving it incorrectly leads to a GRV. Then resolving the second trigger allows a second draw, and leads to a second GRV. Both cards were legally put into Nathan's hand.

So finally: warnings for both players (gpe-grv and gpe-ftmgs respectively) + a partial fix by having Nathan discard a card at this point of the game.

Edited Venelin Gornishki (March 18, 2015 12:18:30 PM)

I see a lot of people throwing OoOS around. I just wanted to point out that this isn't OoOS because the second card drawn should never have been in his hand until after the first card has been discarded. Going draw, draw, discard, discard is not doing things out of order.

OoOS would be if he played Bolt twice, points to the Ascendancy and says “trigger twice”, put the bolts in the graveyard and wrote down the change in life total, then correctly and completely resolves loot 1, then loot 2, and only if he does this all in one quick succession.

Doing several things correctly, just in the wrong order, in one quick succession is fine so long as you do each thing correctly. That is not the case here. He was supposed to draw a card, then discard a card. We could say the REASON he drew the second card was to resolve the second loot, but he couldn't legally resolve the second loot in the middle of the resolution of another loot. It is tempting to say he just did things out of order, but that is not how OoOS works.

He simply drew an extra card in the middle of the resolution of the Ascendancy's first trigger. DEC.


Here are some good articles I suggest everyone read :)

Drawing Extra Cards:
http://wiki.magicjudges.org/en/w/Annotated_IPG/Drawing_Extra_Cards

Out of Order Sequencing:
http://blogs.magicjudges.org/rulestips/2013/03/understanding-out-of-order-sequencing/