Last weekend I was on a team judging a comp REL legacy event. In one of the games the following situation occured: a player has an Engineered Plague for humans in play and attacks with a Shardless Agent and a Baleful Strix. When damage is assigned, he says ‘Take three’ and both players write it down. After that a judge intervenes, asks what was named for the Plague and makes players correct life totals issuing both players a GPE-GRV. A couple of turns later the other player quickly casts Delver of Secrets, puts checklist onto the battlefield and says ‘go’ and reaches for the DFC in his deck box. Immediately NAP responds removing a counter from his Umezawa's Jitte to -1/-1 the delver. After that AP fishes out the physical card and realizes that it is a human and should have died as soon as it entered the battlefield.

I believe that in both cases only one of the players should have gotten a GRV (controllers of agent and delver) while their opponents should have gotten a FtMGS. I failed to convince that judge.

Am I right? What arguments would you use?

In the first case, it seems like double GRV is the most suitable outcome.

Originally posted by IPG Section 2.5:

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 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.

The bolded part seems to match very well here - AP instructed “take three”, and NAP accepted that.

In the second case, this depends a little more on the timing of things. AP might not have done anything illegal at all here. Casting Delver is completely legal, as long as they make sure to resolve the state based action when it enters the battlefield. NAP, however;
1. Did not even have priority
2. Should have realized that the Delver will die as a state-based action, and as such is not a legal target for the Jitte's ability

NAP should receive a warning for GRV, AP has not committed an infraction.

Originally posted by IPG Section 2.5:

or a player taking action based on another players instruction

Hmmm, I must have interpreted it incorrectly. For me said instruction was not just one player telling another what to do gamewise but rather a player taking actions that should be executed by another player. In the corresponding example Path to Exile instructs its controller to exile a creature but in reality the creature's controller actually puts into exile. Thus "another player's instruction is an instruction to be executed by antoher player.

Filip Söderholm
In the second case, this depends a little more on the timing of things. AP might not have done anything illegal at all here. Casting Delver is completely legal, as long as they make sure to resolve the state based action when it enters the battlefield. NAP, however;
1. Did not even have priority
2. Should have realized that the Delver will die as a state-based action, and as such is not a legal target for the Jitte's ability

NAP should receive a warning for GRV, AP has not committed an infraction.

It all happened very quickly, but NAP did have priority, I wrote that AP said ‘go’. I also believe that taking time to grab the actual delver card for the checklist indicates that AP intended for delver to stay in play and forgot about the plague.

Help me understand something. Why is the “take 3” case not CPV here? AP misrepresented the Shardless Agent's power as 2 instead of 1.

Originally posted by Chris Vlastelica:

Help me understand something. Why is the “take 3” case not CPV here? AP misrepresented the Shardless Agent's power as 2 instead of 1.

The question is weirdly interesting. It prompted me to think about something I deemed obvious.

For me the difference between CPV and GRV is that the former involves nothing but communication, e.g. answering a question by an opponent or a judge, while the latter means committing an error like assigning incorrect amount of damage in this case or leaving a 0/0 creature in play in the next case.

By saying “take three”, AP is communicating incorrect information (power of his Humans). I'd go with CPV here, not GRV or FtMGS.PANTS!

Originally posted by Arman Gabbasov:

Hmmm, I must have interpreted it incorrectly. For me said instruction was not just one player telling another what to do gamewise but rather a player taking actions that should be executed by another player.

No, I'd say you interpreted it correctly, although perhaps a bit more specifically than our current philosophy.

We used to say “it's really only Path to Exile, and very similar effects”; now, we've expanded the scope a bit. If both players are responsible - and remember, the next phrase begins with “such as”, which means that's examples, and they are not limiting examples.

We made that shift for two reasons: one, it seemed that's how most judges wanted to interpret the double-GRV; two, we realized it was OK for double GRVs to happen more often - i.e., it won't cause significant damage to an event, and may well improve our tracking.

d:^D

Edited Scott Marshall (April 19, 2016 07:10:54 AM)

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

By saying “take three”, AP is communicating incorrect information (power of his Humans). I'd go with CPV here…

I had the impression that the incorrect resolution of combat damage due to the prior CPV was a GRV - I used to issue GRV/FtMGS here (or double GRV depending on the situation)

Is this an instance where the “root cause” is a CPV leading to further infractions and consequently is recorded as such?

Years ago, a fine young gentleman named Paul was the source of ‘O’fficial answers; occasionally, he would correct something he'd said with “PANTS!” - Paul, Again, Not Thinking Straight. The term outlived its source, although it has been some time since I've invoked it; it still means that your friendly moderator wasn't on top of his game…

I've edited my post, above - that's a GRV, not a CPV.

d:^D