Good Morning Everyone,

Welcome back to another exciting scenario. Here's the link to the blog post Clique Me.


You’re the head judge of a local modern GPT. At the end of Ned’s turn Alfie casts Vendilion Clique, targeting Ned with the triggered ability. On Alfie’s turn in his pre-combat main phase he casts another Vendilion Clique, again targeting Ned with the triggered ability. After the Clique’s ability resolves Ned reminds Alfie that the Clique is legendary, and then as Alfie is putting his one of his Cliques in his graveyard he rereads it and realizes that Ned didn’t draw a card from the last Clique or the one before. Alfie calls for a judge and tells you that Ned has been Clique’d twice and he discarded the card both times and didn’t draw any cards. After speaking with the players you decide these were all honest mistakes.

What do you do?


Shout out to Darren Gamble for the scenario.

I see a warning for GPE-GRV for both players, and two cards for Ned.

It's certainly not a missed trigger, since they executed part of it. It's not any of the other specific kinds of GPE, either, so, GRV. It's not a GRV/FtMGS pair, because one player owned the effect and the other executed it (improperly). We don't need to consider a rewind, since we have the additional remedy of drawing cards when the error was not drawing cards.

Edit: Misread the line about rewinding; we should consider it, and it's feasible since the board state has changed so little. I'm not sure if I'd call it a “simple backup” or not, though.

Further Edit: It had been too long since I read the front matter in the IPG – reviewed and answered my own question. This would definitely not be a simple enough backup to be an improvement on the remedies given.

Edited Finn Ellis (Jan. 10, 2016 11:52:25 AM)

Forgive the less-detailed response; on a phone.

First: investigate whether I'm actually asleep and dreaming. Ned remembered that clique is legendary, yet both players aforgot how it works? ;)

Ned incorrectly resolved instructions from Alfie's creature, twice. These are multiple instances of the same infraction, discovered at the same time, and will be treated as the same infraction. Ned and Alfie have both committed GPE - GRV, and will receive a warning.

The fix is more interesting. The first instance cannot be simply backed up, so we can instead apply the prescribed partial fix of drawing a card now. The second instance *can* be simply backed up. There's no existing policy for these interacting partial fixes, as far as I'm aware. Applying the philosophies of ‘other things equal, the advantage of a fix should go to the player less responsible for the error’, ‘a player is responsible for their own cards’, and ‘do the thing that messes with the game state minimally, while leaving it as un-broken as possible’, I elect to fix as: Ned draws two cards now.

Remind players to play carefully, apply time extension as necessary, record warnings, and continue play.

Could I get clarification if the cards chosen were put in the Graveyard, or put on the bottom of the library?

Originally posted by David Homan:

Could I get clarification if the cards chosen were put in the Graveyard, or put on the bottom of the library?

The cards were (mistakenly) discarded.

My gut reaction is GPE-GRV for both players. In the IPG section for GRV, the Additional Remedies subsection states:

• If a player forgot to draw cards, discard cards, or return cards from their hand to another zone, that player does so.
• If an object changing zones is put into the wrong zone, the identity of the object was known to all players, and it can be moved without disrupting the state of the game, put the object in the correct zone.

For most Game Play Errors not caught within a time that a player could reasonably be expected to notice, opponents receive a Game Play Error — Failure to Maintain Game State penalty. If a player takes an action called for by an effect controlled by his or her opponent, but does it incorrectly, both players receive a Game Play Error – Game Rule Violation. For example, if a player casts Path to Exile on an opponent’s creature and the opponent puts the creature into the graveyard, both players receive this infraction.

As for a fix, I think a backup can be applied without any serious disruption assuming no other actions have been taken in the mean time. How far is the question, though. I'm inclined to say “back up until the Clique being placed on the stack” because there have been zero significant actions taken since then. Have the card chosen from the first Clique be placed on the bottom of Ned's library, have Ned draw from the first Clique, then proceed from there.

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

The cards were (mistakenly) discarded.

Oh! I misunderstood this from the description, glad someone else caught it. This is still covered by partial remedies in GRV, though, since they were known to both players, so I would add to my response moving them to the bottom of the library.

I'm curious about the “without disrupting the state of the game” caveat in this section of the IPG, though. If someone has a Splinterfright on the field, removing things from the yard certainly changes the game state, potentially in a way that matters. Is that a disruption?

Without reading answers :
We have a warning for GRV for each players here. The trigger was not missed but was wrongly executed. Since it's one player's triggered ability and another player's cards, both players are reponsible for the proper execution.

We have two seperate GRVs here that are basically the same thing so ultimately we won't give two warnings per player.

Fix:
We have two things to fix per error, so four things to fix. Additionnal remedies for GRVs in the IPG gives us this :

• If a player forgot to draw cards, discard cards, or return cards from their hand to another zone, that player does so.

• If an object changing zones is put into the wrong zone, the identity of the object was known to all players, and it can be moved without disrupting the state of the game, put the object in the correct zone.

I would apply both these fixes for both instances of the triggered ability and would not backup the game.

There are two default fixes here; allowing Ned to draw cards he should have done and moving the discarded cards to the correct zone (the bottom of the library). I don't believe a simple back up is advisable as we've had a draw for Alfie's turn which we'd need to reverse and might create change lines of play through deck manipulation.

This is a double GRV, Alfie's Clique called for an action which Ned has resolved incorrectly. This has happened twice - but as the root cause is the same I'd only apply one GRV each.

Originally posted by Nick Rutkowski:

Good Morning Everyone,

Welcome back to another exciting scenario. Here's the link to the blog post Clique Me.


You’re the head judge of a local modern GPT. At the end of Ned’s turn Alfie casts Vendilion Clique, targeting Ned with the triggered ability. On Alfie’s turn in his pre-combat main phase he casts another Vendilion Clique, again targeting Ned with the triggered ability. After the Clique’s ability resolves Ned reminds Alfie that the Clique is legendary, and then as Alfie is putting his one of his Cliques in his graveyard he rereads it and realizes that Ned didn’t draw a card from the last Clique or the one before. Alfie calls for a judge and tells you that Ned has been Clique’d twice and he discarded the card both times and didn’t draw any cards. After speaking with the players you decide these were all honest mistakes.

What do you do?


Shout out to Darren Gamble for the scenario.

This would be a double GRV since AP controls an effect that requires NAP to take an action, but allows him to perform it improperly. We have two partial fixes detailed in the IPG:

1. If a card was changing zones and was put in the wrong zone, we put it in the correct zone
- Since the identity of the cards is known to both players, I would put both on the bottom of the library in the correct order
2. If a player is instructed to draw or discard cards but fails to do so, do it now
- I would have NAP draw two cards at this time

I would say that the probability of two players who own $70 cards and care enough about Modern to play in a GPT with cards as universally played as Vendilion Clique is statistically low enough that this situation can probably be shunted into Corner Case Land (TM) and hence not answered :-P

That said, assuming we aren't Corner Case'ing this scenario, this is a double GRV as Ned improperly executed an instruction called for by Alfie's card (which is the definition of double-GRV, as I understand it). Rather than giving each player 4 GRVs, since all were caught at the same time I would wrap it into a single GRV for each player.

For the fix, I would do the following, in order:

1) Rewind the most recent Vendilion Clique. Return the card from Ned's graveyard (cause he discarded it) to his hand.

2) Perform the “partial fix” for the earlier Clique, since we can't rewind through it. Have Ned draw a card now, and also put the other card from his graveyard on the bottom of his deck.

3) It is now Alfie's precombat main phase. As Vendilion Clique's trigger is mid-resolution, ask Ned to reveal his hand and Alfie to procede executing Vendilion Clique's ability.

Issue Game Play Error - Game Rule Violation to both players and remind them to play more carefully. Have Ned draw a card for the most recent Clique (as it's ETB trigger has only just resolved) but not for the original Clique.

Hello everyone and thank you for your participation this week.

Many of you were correct and only issued one GRV to each player though there were more infractions. Both players made mistakes so they will get a warning each. The fix is much more interesting.

Under current policy we have a bit of a flow chart that helps us decide how to fix this. It starts with can we perform a partial fix, if not then we decide if we rewind or leave the game as is. When we take a look at the partial fixes we see two of them that could be applied. One that handles objects moving zones that moved to the wrong zone, and one concerning forgetting to add or remove cards from the hand. That’s all good for the more recent error, but what about the one just before it? Can we apply the same fix? Yes.
The full fix requires 4 partial fixes (2 draws and 2 cards moved from the graveyard to the bottom of the deck, in the correct order), and don't forget to remind the players to please play more carefully.

This has been a fun scenario for us at the KP I hope it was fun for you as well. Stay tuned later today for a new scenario.