Hello judges! Welcome to a new Knowledge Pool scenario. This week we have Silver scenario, so L2 judges should wait until Friday before they reply.

Blog post for the scenario

You are a floor judge in a Modern Competitive event, where Angus is playing against Neil. The only cards in their graveyards are a Scalding Tarn and a Duress. At the beginning of combat, Neil casts Lightning Bolt targeting Angus's Tarmogoyf, saying, “Bolt your Goyf.” Angus puts Tarmgoyf in the graveyard. After combat, Angus casts another Tarmogoyf, at which point they realize they made a mistake with the first one and call for a judge.

What do you do?

I think the situation is clean enough that I would ask the head judge if I could perform a backup.
I would backup the play to the point where 3 damage was marked in the goyf, Alan has priority at the beginning of combat.

As for penalties, I'm not overly sure but I'd go with -
Angus: would be given a GPE-GRV warning, for putting a goyf in the grave when it should of remained on the battlefield.
Neil: would be given a GPE- FtMGS warning, for not correcting Angus at the time.

Putting a 3/4 with only 3 marked in the graveyard is a GRV for Angus; after considering our new option to double-GRV I'd still give Neil a FtMGS. (He probably made the same mental error as Angus, but didn't do anything illegal because of it – just a strategy error.) I would not request a rewind, because combat passed between the error and the call, and choices have almost certainly been made based on the absence of the poor prematurely-dead goyf. None of the partial fixes apply (an object is in the wrong zone, but not for any of the reasons given) so we'll leave the game state as it is. Warnings for everyone, a compliment for even knowing how goyfbolt should work, and a friendly reminder to be more careful with the second one.

I'm requesting a rewind here, paired with GRVs for both players. As I believe, at this point, both players are responsible for knowing that Tarmogoyf should not have died. Finn, I understand where you're coming from, however given the scenario nothing happened that is overly-difficult to rewind. Of course, it's the HJ's discretion whether or not to rewind.

I'd be comfortable with requesting a rewind here from the HJ (or issuing one, if I was the HJ). Return the second Tarmogoyf to owner's hand, untap the mana used to cast it, return the Bolted Tarmogoyf to play with 3 damage on it. Lightning Bolt was a legally cast spell which also resolved legally, so I would not “un-cast” the Lightning Bolt. The first illegal action here was putting the not-actually-dead Tarmogoyf into the graveyard, not casting the Lightning Bolt. Sorry, Bolt player!

In this case I feel like both players are responsible for the Tarmogoyf “dying”; the controller for actually putting it into the graveyard, and the opponent for not correcting the error. Therefore this would be a GRV for the Tarmogoyf controller and an FtMGS for the opponent. I think so anyway; Toby's latest blog post seems to imply that maybe this should be double-GRV, so I'm unsure. Either way, Warnings all around!

I see this situation like as: “A player fails to put a creature with lethal damage into a graveyard and it is not noticed until several turns later.” - so obvious GRV.
Next: “If an object is in an incorrect zone either due to a required zone change being missed or due to being put into the wrong zone during a zone change, the identity of the object wasknown to all players, and it can be moved with only minor disruption to the state of the game, put the object in the correct zone” - so we should backup to point when 3 damage is marked on tarmogoyf.
Last thing: “If the judge believes that both players were responsible for a Game Rule Violation, such as due to the existence of replacement effects or a player taking action based on another players instruction, both players receive a Game Play Error – Game Rule Violation” - I belive that both players was responisble for a GRV - so GRV and Warning for both.

Edited Tomasz Ludkiewicz (Feb. 5, 2016 01:04:30 AM)

I'd ask the players to bide while I consult with the HJ. My request, after outlining the situation, would be for a rewind to just after the bolt is put on the stack.

I'd issue a GRV-GPE to the player with the goyf and a GRV-TtMG to the bolt player. Assuming I received permission for the backup, the goyf would be returned to the board for the resolution of the bolt. I'd advise the players to be more careful and I'd stick around for a moment to watch until the end of the turn.

A GRV has been committed; a goyf with 4 toughness has been placed in the graveyard after being dealt 3 points of damage.
I would want to perform a simple back up here and as a floor judge I’ll need the Head Judge’s approval. Assuming I have that I’ll be returning the 2nd goyf to Angus’ hand, untapping the appropriate mana sources and returning the original goyf to the battlefield.
Angus will be receiving a warning.
The question is what penalty should Neil receive?
Under GRV we have a new clause that allows for a double GRV rather than GRV and FtMGS but I find it really difficult to parse these two thoughts:

Originally posted by IPG: GRV:

If the judge believes that both players were responsible for a Game Rule Violation, such as due to the existence of replacement effects or a player taking action based on another players instruction, both players receive a Game Play Error – Game Rule Violation

IPG: FtMGS
“If the error is allowed to persist, at least some of the fault lies with the opponent, who has also failed to notice the error.”

FtMGS states that the opponent is at fault and you can’t be at fault without responsibility so I’d have to believe both players were responsible hence double GRV. However, this starts to look like Double GRV for pretty much anything and that being the case the FtMGS penalty would no longer exist.
With that in mind I believe the new Double GRV is trying to capture the sense that as the opponent I have a responsibility to inform the other player about my pertinent effects (like replacement ones) and not offer them the wrong instructions.
In the case that I control a card like Anafensa – I share some responsibility to ensure that creatures are exiled, I’m also at fault if I say to my opponent “<<creature>> goes to the graveyard”
Based on that logic in this case I don’t believe Neil deserves a GRV so I’d give him FtMGS.

Neil wouldn't receive a GRV because he did not follow an instruction from Angus to put it in the graveyard. Neil just said, “Bolt your goyf.” So he just receives FtMGS . Angus would earn a GRV.

But *I* wondered why a Duress was in the graveyard. The player couldn't have duressed the land out of a hand, and the land is probably there after sacking to its own ability. Was there a choice not to discard anything, or no legal cards to discard at the time? I'd ask the players what happened then. But I am sure we weren't supposed to focus on that fact for this KPMG scenario.

I disagree with the double GRV here.

The new example for both players being responsible describes A player casting path to exile and the spell resolving incorrectly. In this case, the lightning bolt was correctly cast and correctly resolved, and the Goyf's controller incorrectly resolved a state based action.

GRV warning to Goyf's controller, FtMGS warning to bolt's controller, backup to a goyf with 3 damage marked on it at beginning of combat, with permission from HJ.

Originally posted by Roger Dunn:

But *I* wondered why a Duress was in the graveyard. The player couldn't have duressed the land out of a hand, and the land is probably there after sacking to its own ability. Was there a choice not to discard anything, or no legal cards to discard at the time? I'd ask the players what happened then. But I am sure we weren't supposed to focus on that fact for this KPMG scenario.

I wouldn't focus too much on this. It's entirely possible they had a hand of all lands and creatures, and isn't really the focus of this situation. It could realistically be almost any sorcery, or anything with any other card type to set up the “Bolt your 2/3 Goyf with no instants in the GY” scenario.

That said, I agree that double GRV doesn't work here. Bolting Goyf is a legal action; it was the movement of Goyf to the GY that was illegal. GRV-FtMGS with Warnings. I'm less inclined to back up here, since rewinding to beginning of combat allows Angus to decide to attack or not now that Goyf lives, and affects his decision tree greatly there.

Originally posted by Matt Cooper:

I'm less inclined to back up here, since rewinding to beginning of combat allows Angus to decide to attack or not now that Goyf lives, and affects his decision tree greatly there.

Do you believe that giving Angus this choice is more damaging to the state of the game than having a live Goyf die incorrectly?

I find myself firmly in the GRV with FTMGS camp. Bolting is a perfectly legal action that was executed correctly and the only rules violation was from Angus who improperly destroyed his Goyf. Certainly Neil should have noticed and maintained an accurate game state (hence FTMGS) but this is not a situation where both players have taken an active role in the game play error.

The question of whether to back up or not is a bit more complicated. Backing up through combat seems fairly straightforward, after all, no cards were drawn, no lands were fetched and many of our usual triggers for “don't back up” are missing.

However, I don't think I would back up here. We are missing a bunch more about the game state, but on the face of it I can see a fairly dramatic impact on the decision trees of players as a result of the restored Goyf and additional information about the contents of both players' hands. If we back up Goyf will almost certainly attack, potentially requiring blocks or other spells (as well as the obvious life total change). Its certainly possible that Angus casts a different spell instead of the second Goyf now that his first one is still around.

I would have to know a bit more about the game state (cards in hand for the players, empty board etc.) to determine how likely it is that everything progresses along the same set of decision trees, but on the face of it I think a backup would be too disruptive even though its “just backing up through combat”.

I don't think we can speculate on other factors that are not mentioned in the OP scenario as to what ruling we would make, as i think any such information that would change the ruling would be included in the scenario.

After correcting the game state by backing up, the only information that could change decision tree paths (from what they should have been if the game state had been maintained) is Neils knowledge that Angus has another Goyf in hand, overall i feel thats less detrimental to the game than keeping the incorrect gamestate.

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

Do you believe that giving Angus this choice is more damaging to the state of the game than having a live Goyf die incorrectly?

At first I did, but I was operating under applying the zone-change partial fix; which naturally I forgot to mention, and I then realized didn't apply to this situation. Backing up now seems appropriate here.