Welcome back to the Knowledge Pool! This week's scenario is Bronze, so judges with a lot of Competative REL experience should wait until after their FNM to give a response.

Ariel is playing against Nick at a Standard PPTQ. Ariel controls a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, a Selfless Spirit, and an Archangel Avacyn. Ariel draws her card for the turn and considers her hand for a moment. Eventually she taps her Selfless Spirit and pushes forward her Avacyn. Then she ticks up Gideon and taps it, saying, ”attack with all my creatures, animate Gideon, and attack with him too." Nick calls for a judge. When you arrive to the table Nick explains, “Ariel tried to animate her Gideon during declare attackers, it can't attack.” What do you do?

Edited Jon Munck (Feb. 1, 2017 11:27:08 AM)

Its obvious that Ariel technically can't do this. However she announces what she is doing and immediately does it. So she doesn't get any advantage or produces any possibilities, where she can get extra informations.
I would issue no penalty and back the game up to the point, when she wants to declare attackers and with a gideon up a loyalitycounter thats also a creature and can't be activated otherwise. I think its ooOS and should be treated that way. But Nick should always get the opportunity to respond on gideon also wanting to attack.

It's most likely something along the lines of Out-of-Order Sequencing. AP has shortcutted the activation of Gideon and has also shortcutted the passing of priority through the declare attackers step. NAP was never given a chance to respond to the activation of Gideon, which is where we should most certainly back up to. This is a viable option because AP never received any sort of new information but they did not allow NAP to respond. After backing up issue no penalty.

Thank you, Judges, for participating in this week's Knowledge Pool! You guys nailed it, this is Out-of-Order-Sequencing.

Players are allowed to perform a block of actions that are technically incorrect as long as those actions end in a legal game state and aren't used by the player to gain information prematurely. There weren't any pauses in Ariel's line, she went directly from her mainphase to attacking with her Gideon without verbalizing some kind of shortcut that would offer priority to Nick

Issue no penalties and inform the players that if Nick has a response to Gideon's activation he may have Ariel perform her batch of actions in the correct order. OoOS does not deny players a chance to respond, it is simply a way to progress the game in a natural and timely manner. We don't have to back up the game every time an opponent is confused about OoOS, but if they have a response it is the player's right to request the actions be done in order.