I had a situation at a comp REL legacy tournament last week:

I was observing the following.
Active player cast an irrelevant spell. Non-active player cast Force of Will, using the alternate cost, pitching a blue card. Active player says “okay” and starts to move the spell towards the graveyard. At this point he notices that he controls a Trinisphere and says “hey, that should have cost 3, right?”. Both players quickly rewind.

My question is, as I observe the match, would it be appropriate to interveine and give a penalty? It fits well in the descriptiong of GPE - GRV. There is some potential for abuse. Non-active player could have hoped that Active player wouldn't remember trinisphere.

To me, it seems like it's a gray area of where judges should interveine and award penalties or just let the players do the quick fix (like taking back an illegally cast spell).

It would be a “had to be there” moment, but if we had made it all the way through the spell (AP acknowledging the FoW is parseable to me as the spell having fully resolved) before anyone noticed it, I would probably step in and issue the penalty, for the reasons you stated; potential for abuse exists and players need to be reminded that they are expected to understand how the cards and rules work and operate within those parameters.

That said, there are plenty of times where I'll see someone cast a spell illegally, and either they or their opponent will say “nope, can't do that because X” and the players will “self-rewind”; I won't step in for these situations because the players are already back to where the game should be, and at least one of them is paying attention to the rules and keeping the game moving in a timely fashion.

I really like you noting the potential for abuse here, as it is an easy
thing to overlook. I think asking the extra question might be warranted
here. Just checking how long Trinisphere has been in play and whether it
has been forgotten before.
This won't always be necessary and you'll have to exercise your judgement.
Nor does it seem an obvious attempt at cheating. Yet sometimes that spell
turns out to be more relevant than we initially thought :)
Den 11 jun 2015 00:08 skrev “Nathaniel Lawrence” <

This question always bugs me too. Sometimes the game ends right after your stepping in and the infraction has no effect on it (like a card put with all the exiled cards instead of into a graveyard). It happened to me when I had just issued two warnings (GRV+FtMGS) and I am still not sure this was the right call.

Although generally if I see a mistake happening I wait until players procced and make at least one other game action. This gives NAP time to notice the mistake and act on it. Also I think the policy supports it stating that judges only interevene when asked by a player? to prevent a situation from escalating and to correct a mistake made, not to prevent mistakes.

Edited Arman Gabbasov (June 11, 2015 03:59:35 AM)

When determining if you need to assess an infraction in a match where nobody has called you to the table, ask yourself the question, “If I weren't here, would anything be wrong?”

There are some cases where this is a more nuanced question, but if a) the players immediately fix it themselves in the way you would have fixed it, or b) the game immediately ends in a way that would not have been affected by the error, issuing an infraction generally isn't worth it.

I've found that this is one of the hardest things to determine. I've heard varying opinions on whether judges should be out on the floor actively looking for problems or passively observing and only stepping in for a serious infraction or a judge call.

In the former situation, I've found it can cause players to feel like the judge is actively “out to get them”, even if any penalties assigned are correct. At the same time, it feels like by ignoring smaller penalties or, say, telling a player to flip the top card of their library for their Courser rather than assigning the appropriate penalties is deviating from the IPG in a big way.

I haven't found one definitive answer on how to approach this in these forums or even out on the floor working with other judges. Is there even one? It seems like there are two distinct schools of thought on this in the judging community.

One's primary focus seems to be to provide a good customer service experience even if it means overlooking minor infractions, the other seems to be more “letter of the law”. I don't want to say draconian as I probably fall more in the latter camp than the former (at least during competitive REL events) but sometimes it does feel as if that's how that group is seen.

While a balance between the two schools of thought is ideal, how do others accomplish that? It feels very arbitrary to make up personal rules on the fly like “I'll step in unless their opponent does it first” or “I'll step in for X infraction, but not Y unless I get a call”.

At large events the HJ and TL's tell you to watch players playing magic. Watch games. If someone calls for a judge you answer it. If you spot a mistake in another game your watching, you fix it issues penalties when appropriate. There is no definitive line where X% of your time should be focused on looking for mistakes. When you walk the floor its about presence and being available for players.

Personally when I see a mistake in a match I wait a moment to allow the players to catch it and call a judge. Or just one of the players saying “hey you cant do that” then stepping in. Sometimes they don't notice, then I step in. My approach is usually “Hey guys, can you tell me about ‘thing X?’” Yelling “STOP!” while waiving your hands will not produce the results you are looking for. The issues with perception of being “out to get them” is 110% in how you interject into their game.

Is this not the point of the Failure to Maintain Game State penalty?

Effectively we demand that both players try maintain the game state and thus when they do correct minor issues they're doing it in the spirit of the game.

In OP's case I believe they caught in time and the only query I would have is how they plan on rewinding (are they forcing the casting of Force of Will or not as an example).

@Edward, Remember that we only give FtMGS along another Game Play Error. Also we only give FtMGS if the error was not pointed out immediately. In this case it was, so we would not give FtMGS.

Originally posted by Jonas Breindahl:

@Edward, Remember that we only give FtMGS along another Game Play Error. Also we only give FtMGS if the error was not pointed out immediately. In this case it was, so we would not give FtMGS.

Sorry if I was unclear - I'm definitely not saying this is a case of FtMGS.

What I'm saying is that the FtMGS penalty is there as a means to put the emphasis on keeping the rules on both players. The fact that the players did notice what was going on shows that they are doing so, and that they did it a relatively short space of time and fixed the problem.

If we issue a penalty every time we notice a quick backtrack by players, not only would we be handing out a lot more penalties - we would be discouraging players from noticing things and correcting them on their own. (I'm not talking major rewinds here, we're literally talking here about a spell going from the stack to the graveyard)

Getting involved here and issuing penalties would just be bad customer service and feels very much like a judge trying to assert authority.

As long as the described sequence of events was fluid and didn't include any significant pauses, I would not intervene.

As I see it, the players have not yet committed an illegal action, since the rules have provisions for rewinding spells when you cannot comply with all the steps of casting them (in this case, the player playing the Force of Will couldn't finish paying its costs). He wasn't aware of the Trinisphere effect when he started to cast the spell, but his opponent reminded him of it and then realized the action was not possible.

On the other hand, if there was a significant pause after the playing of the FoW and the subsequent actions, I would consider GRV for an illegally cast spell (and maybe FtMGS depending on the details of the situation). Even more so if they actually resolved the counter.

In situations like this I would probably not step in, as long as it's clear what happened and you can verify that the re-enactment is done properly. Seems similar to players who notice they tapped the wrong lands a few seconds after they played a card; either player notices it and it's very easy to fix by the players themselves.