AP says the name of a spell, let's say Sorin, Grim Nemesis. They put the card onto the table and immediately start moving their lands around, deciding how to tap to pay the cost (not actually turning anything sideways, just grouping lands differently). While AP is messing with their lands, NAP says “Negate,” taps two Islands and puts Negate onto the battlefield. AP looks up, says “fail to pay costs on Sorin” and puts the Sorin back in their hand.

The main question is “Paying costs is mandatory, but activating mana abilities is optional. Can a player forcibly rewind a spell declaration by choosing not to pay costs?” Let's assume no Cheating, if it's illegal they don't know it.

The followup is “How do we handle it if NAP announces a spell without having priority and it affects AP's decision tree?”

Investigating this concept further, does it change if there's no counterspell involved, but for instance A realizes that they're at 1 life and their only source of black mana is a Caves of Koilos that would kill them?

Edited Brian Leonard (April 27, 2016 04:22:11 PM)

(Moved to Comp REL, as this is more of a Judging question than a Rules question.)

First, this is the sort of situation that benefits greatly from actually having been there, and investigating.

Also, I'm having a very hard time believing that the player knows enough that he can fail to pay costs and force a rewind, but doesn't know that an intentional infraction is Cheating. I'm not saying it's absolute, but I'd expect a DQ from this investigation.

I would encourage NAP to wait for his or her opponents to finish playing spells before interrupting; I suspect that, in this case, NAP thought they'd waited long enough.

Years ago, we had a discussion about playing a spell vs. just showing it off - i.e., a player puts a card on the table, fishes for a reaction from the opponent, then says “I was just showing you” and puts it back in their hand. I recall Sheldon saying something to the effect of “if it hit the table, they're playing it” - and I still agree with that. Really, the supporting philosophy is “you can't bait your opponent into a reaction by ‘pretending’ to do something”. That's really, really hard to write into policy, but it's (thankfully) a fairly unusual occurrence.

d:^D

Edited Scott Marshall (April 29, 2016 10:08:52 AM)

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Also, I'm having a very hard time believing that the player knows enough that he can fail to pay costs and force a rewind, but doesn't know that an intentional infraction is Cheating

Is it an infraction, then? I'm trying to find a relevant point in the rules that says “once you declare a spell you have to pay the costs” as it says in 601.2g that the player “has a chance to activate mana abilities” and 117.3c says that “Activating mana abilities is not mandatory, even if paying a cost is.” According to 601.2, “If, at any point during the casting of a spell, a player is unable to comply with any of the steps listed below, the casting of the spell is illegal; the game returns to the moment before the casting of that spell was proposed.”

My instinct agrees with you completely, once you announce the spell you have to follow through with it regardless. But do the rules support that? Is 117.3c only intended to apply to extra costs imposed or is that relevant for all mana ability activations, including those to cast a spell?

If AP truly intends to cast the spell, and is trying to decide how lands should be tapped but then NAP jumps in out of turn and reveals information during an illegal action, is that different situation than AP fishing for information? In the fishing scenario I absolutely agree that a card laid is a card played.

This point will about Free Information and Personal Information.
AP 1 announce the spell,
2 announce the mood,
3 announce the target,
4 pays the cost,
5 pass priority.
But as the point that player announces it, the spell Must be legal, otherwise it consider break the Magic Game Rule.
Although, NAP costed a spell before past reserve a priority, which makes his spell illegal. So give that player a warning by not pay attention to the game stage.


But after that, AP decided to MAKE the spell illegal by getting advantage form NAP's personal information. If you want to do further investigation and had enough evidence, the player should be DQ.

–John B

Edited john bai (April 29, 2016 10:24:38 PM)

717.1. If a player takes an illegal action or starts to take an action but can’t legally complete it, the entire action is reversed and any payments already made are canceled. No abilities trigger and no effects apply as a result of an undone action. If the action was casting a spell, the spell returns to the zone it came from. The player may also reverse any legal mana abilities activated while making the illegal play, unless mana from them or from any triggered mana abilities they triggered was spent on another mana ability that wasn’t reversed. Players may not reverse actions that moved cards to a library, moved cards from a library to any zone other than the stack, caused a library to be shuffled, or caused cards from a library to be revealed

This would apply here in my opinion and since it is an illegal action as written out it will be covered by GRV. At least this is what me and a few others came up with when talking about Panglacial Wurm.

If this is done willingly we have a different Problem.

Part of the stickiness of this situation is that we can't adjudicate the future. The future where Sorin was played properly never arrived. But let's break down scenarios and see if they provide clarity.

1) Player interrupts self.
I announce Sorin, Grim Nemesis but reveal Sorin, Lord of Innistrad and stop myself.
I play Sorin, Grim Nemesis and realize I only have 5W available and stop myself.

We've long held the idea that players may interrupt themselves while taking and action. In these scenarios, we allow the player to stop their current action, rewind associated actions, and restart or abandon the action. These are unintentional actions.

2) Player makes a legal but unintended play.
I play a Swamp when i meant to play a Plains without announcing anything.

Though the action may be unintentional, we have no countervailing action to indicate an issue. If the player is still in the process of doing the thing (hand on the Swamp, for example) and notice the error, then they are interrupting themselves. If their hand is off the card or the game has otherwise moved on, then the action is as it stands. The takeaway lesson from this is simple: use words and actions to do things. When words and actions don't line up, then we can room to resolve the discrepancy.

3) Player makes a legal, deadly play.
I announce Sorin, Grim Nemesis while at 1 life with my only W source being
Caves of Koilos.

Sometimes mistakes are more costly than others. At competitive, players sometimes pay dearly for making mistakes. A smart opponent will quietly wait for their opponent to pass priority or some other action to indicate they are moving on before reminding them they're dead. If an opponent speaks up during a player taking an action, then that player may realize their mistake and interrupt themselves. It is sporting for an opponent to speak up an cause an interruption, but it is not unsporting to quietly wait for death before saying something. Such is the nature of competition. (At Regular REL, this is a good chance to educate players and keep the game moving along.)

4) Player makes a legal play. looks for a response, and then makes the play illegal.
I announce a targeted black spell without specifying a target, look at my opponent for a reaction, and then choose an illegal target.

Fishing for responses is not allowed. There are two factors that make these cases obvious: pause for response and intentional choices to make something illegal. If a player announces an illegal thing without hesitation, they have violated a GRV, but they haven't demonstrated an illegal intent. Mistakes happen. But when a player injects time and observation into the mix while waiting to finish an action, they've telegraphed their willingness to intentionally break rules, and when they then do break rules, it's cheating.

Consider the following. The opponent has only two creatures.
Player: Throttle your Insidious Mist.
Opponent: Merciless Resolve my, wait, what?

Player: Throttle…
Opponent: Merciless Resolve my zombie.
Player: Target your Insidious Mist. Guess we have to reset everything. Go.

The pause (fish) and choice (illegal) make cheating obvious.

5) What we've got here.
The player in the original post may or may not have intended to bait their opponent. And the opponent should have waited. But as written it's clear to me that the opponent was actually being nice and functionally saying, “Look, Sorin is not going to help you. So think about what you want untapped.” Because of the fidgeting, I don't think the opponent was trying to force an interruption to then hope the player tries to intentionally make an illegal announcement and thereby intentionally break a rule. That is too meta for my tastes.

What is clear is that while the player was fidgeting, the opponent gave away more information. The player then chose to take actions (non-actions, actually) to force an illegal state and gain an advantage (bonus information and no countered spell). Do I think playing Sorin or fidgeting with the lands was baiting? Maybe, or maybe not. But I don't think that that actually matters.

If the player said, “Ok, well, if I can't have Sorin, I'll leave these untapped,” no one would have any issue. By choosing to make his announcement illegal, he's getting advantage out of the illegality of the situation. I would likely DQ the player. The only scenarios in which I might not would have to involve the player pointing out that he was in the process of trying not to kill himself with
Caves of Koilos or perhaps have specific mana available after playing the spell. But in a Swamps and Plains world, the answer is black and white. The opponent's actions introduced the possibility of a cheat of opportunity, and the player took that opportunity and cheated.

Not sure it matters after the above explanation, but just because no one's said this yet:

In any universe where someone thinks AP can legitimately change their mind and “take back” the casting of Sorin (because they hadn't really paid its costs yet), NAP's Negate is also going back to hand, yes? For the same reason – it's not that its target became illegal, it's that it never had a target in the first place (since Sorin didn't make it to the stack) and was thus illegally cast.

I say this not because anyone's actually claiming we live in that universe, but because I can imagine it being part of a conversation with an AP who thinks they've successfully gotten a Negate out of their opponent's hand.

Originally posted by Finn Ellis:

but because I can imagine it being part of a conversation with an AP who thinks they've successfully gotten a Negate out of their opponent's hand.

The point here isn't if Negate (or whatever) is legal or not, is the fishing move AP did to get information from NAP. In this scenario, Sorin wouldn't be countered (because it was never really cast) and now AP knows what NAP have.

bad english, I know, sorry :(