I totally agree with Theo and Bartlomiej here.
I would have never ever ruled a GRV in this situation, this is textbook OoOS from my PoV.

The words “once they are complete” have no material impact on this scenario. The game state here is not clear, even once the actions are all complete. Nancy has been forced to make a guess (probably a good guess) about what just happened in her game because there was no prior communication and abilities were resolved before any indication was made that they were going on the stack.

Out of Order Sequencing enables a player to say “I have a bunch of stuff to do,” then do that stuff in a convenient but technically incorrect order. OOS is not a free pass for doing whatever you want, whenever you want as long as you eventually end up in a potentially legal final state.

A good example of OOS is saying “Crack my fetch for basic Mountain, Lightning Bolt your creature.” Then putting the Bolt on the table, and waiting for it to resolve before actually performing the search and shuffle. The game state that will result after all actions are complete is clear to both players, and we are fine as long as the physical actions of the game eventually catch up with that expectation.

A good example of something that is definitely not OOS is milling the top two cards of your library, revealing a Terminus from the new top of library, paying a white mana, then tapping an island and putting Mental Note in your graveyard. While players could reverse engineer a probable legal sequence of events that got us here, the game state is not actually clear. The opponent is left with a reasonably good guess, but that isn't sufficient.

Originally posted by Joshua Feingold:

The words “once they are complete” have no material impact on this scenario. The game state here is not clear, even once the actions are all complete. Nancy has been forced to make a guess (probably a good guess) about what just happened in her game because there was no prior communication and abilities were resolved before any indication was made that they were going on the stack.

Out of Order Sequencing enables a player to say “I have a bunch of stuff to do,” then do that stuff in a convenient but technically incorrect order. OOS is not a free pass for doing whatever you want, whenever you want as long as you eventually end up in a potentially legal final state.

A good example of OOS is saying “Crack my fetch for basic Mountain, Lightning Bolt your creature.” Then putting the Bolt on the table, and waiting for it to resolve before actually performing the search and shuffle. The game state that will result after all actions are complete is clear to both players, and we are fine as long as the physical actions of the game eventually catch up with that expectation.

A good example of something that is definitely not OOS is milling the top two cards of your library, revealing a Terminus from the new top of library, paying a white mana, then tapping an island and putting Mental Note in your graveyard. While players could reverse engineer a probable legal sequence of events that got us here, the game state is not actually clear. The opponent is left with a reasonably good guess, but that isn't sufficient.

Am I right assuming, that it all boils down to proper communication before taking these “out of order” actions? Because that would be a nice headnote in determining OoOS.

Like Théo, Bartłomiej, and Gilles, I fail to see what is unclear in this scenario.

In the “Terminus + Mental Note” scenario, the player learned new information in the middle of the sequence, which could impact the decisions that should have been taken earlier (such as which land to tap, and maybe which spell to cast).

Hi Joshua,

While I understand your (and KP team's) stance, I think that the situation in this KP scenario is somewhere between your two examples of OoOS and not-OoOS. The main difference I see, compared to your not-OoOS example is that both players know about the possible effect that is manipulating with the library (Domri Rade's ability) and both know that active player has just put one card on the top via Scry.

I personally, could imagine ruling both ways in the OP scenario, but I am more inclined to call it OoOS. Where do we draw the line?

Hello,

I really have a hard time understanding what is happening here.

The GRV is assigned for failing to announce the loyalty ability activation on Domri.

Can you confirm that we are instructed to give a GRV for each instance of a player taking action of an ability without paying it first (let's say a planeswalker ability) and announcing clearly that we are activating this ability?
I would never do that but maybe I am doing it wrong.

I have the impression that looks like a forgery if I use a legal term, or that we are retro engineering to find an infraction to justify the fix. Isn't that just a case where a player went a little too fast without letting his opponent respond appropriately?

The game state here is not clear, even once the actions are all complete. Nancy has been forced to make a guess (probably a good guess) about what just happened in her game because there was no prior communication and abilities were resolved before any indication was made that they were going on the stack.

If I may, without comprehensive communication, players always assume and guess and to be blunt, I think this is how most Magic is played.
And I think everything is clear when all actions are done. Turning the dice over explains the last details that were unsaid.

And to be honest, the discussion about out of order sequencing is not even what I am fighting for. Why are we talking about OoOs while the main issue is that a player did everything without waiting for his opponent's response?

I'm going to take this discussion back inside the KP team briefly. All of the L3 judges on KP have, to this point, agreed that this is GRV. (In fact, this scenario was designed to create discussion about GRV vs HCE, not OOS.) However, given the level of consternation that outcome appears to have created, we can put out our heads back together and try to craft a tighter answer on why OOS doesn't apply (or perhaps, even, why it does.)

I strongly disagree with situation not being clear enough. Sentence “Whoa! Hold on a minute! I had stuff to do!” clearly indicate for me, that Nancy is aware what happened. Those actions happened quickly, and she want to respond in middle of that action-block. It's clear OOS.

I agree that it would be clear GRV if there would be no “scry-to-top” effect involved.

I think there's some confusion between Out-Of-Order Sequencing (Section 4.3 in the MTR) and “doing things in the wrong order” (which can sometimes be OOOS, and sometimes not).

In particular:

An out-of-order sequence must not result in a player prematurely gaining information which could reasonably affect decisions made later in that sequence.

When Anna flips and reveals the Thragtusk, Nancy has prematurely gains information which most definitely affects her decisions in the sequence (the decision in question - Do I cast Path in response to Domri activation or not).

Once OOOS is ruled out, we need to figure out which action was the illegal one. The sequence of events that should have transpired is:
(a) +1 the die on Domri, announcing activation
(b) Nancy has opportunity to respond (if she does, resolve the response)
© Reveal the top card
(d) Follow Domri's instructions regarding the revealed card

The sequence that played out was © (d) (a) and no sign of (b). The first thing that was wrong was not doing (a). Not paying a cost properly is a GRV.

Originally posted by Théo CHENG:

Can you confirm that we are instructed to give a GRV for each instance of a player taking action of an ability without paying it first (let's say a planeswalker ability) and announcing clearly that we are activating this ability?

No, I suspect. In the vast vast majority of cases, either it's very clear what's going on, or it actually is OOOS. The KP situation is different is that the game is somewhat broken. And when a game is broken it needs to be fixed as best as possible, and the player(s) responsible receive the appropriate penalty. But sometimes it is in fact correct to GRV someone for taking an action without paying the cost first.

When Anna flips and reveals the Thragtusk, Nancy has prematurely gains information which most definitely affects her decisions in the sequence (the decision in question - Do I cast Path in response to Domri activation or not).

Fair.
I guess by saying this, you also invalidate the example of Joshua

A good example of OOS is saying “Crack my fetch for basic Mountain, Lightning Bolt your creature.” Then putting the Bolt on the table, and waiting for it to resolve before actually performing the search and shuffle. The game state that will result after all actions are complete is clear to both players, and we are fine as long as the physical actions of the game eventually catch up with that expectation.

because Knowing you play bolt can reasonnably make me play a stifle on your fetchland.

EDIT : In short, that means that all the sequences involving a fetchland and casting a spell cannot be OoOs, right?

Edited Théo CHENG (April 10, 2017 07:49:38 PM)

Actually, i believe that in the PTE case, the fact that the card is revealed and information is gained this way is mostly irrelevant. When a player scry cards on top, it's more than common to cast PTE before the opponent get the opportunity to draw/put the scried card in hand in order to get either a 1 mana removal without drawback or a shuffle effect on the scried card.

We don't have any other information about the decks, the match-up etc… we can't be sure that the tragstusk is actually a good draw or not.

I know that it's not obvious and depends on the strategy of the game but still… as a PTE player, this case is more than common.


On another side, the problem here is not because AP did something wrong, it's because he did something wrong while NAP had something to do in response.
To me, an infraction is not dependant of the fact that one player had a response or not.

In this KP, the problem is that NAP wanted to play a PTE and his/her opponent didn't let him/her play the PTE.
I strongly believe that if AP had activated his Domri in the correct order, he still wouldn't have let time to NAP to play his/her PTE: he already knew that there was a tragtusk on top of library and would have perform all the actions in a really fast manner (I did play with scrylands and Domri in standard, and it was a more than common play to scry/reveal/put in hand/move the die in a single move) and the only problem would have been a communication problem.

Now, if NAP didn't have any response, AP would still have activate his planeswalker ability in a wrong way and according to this KP, it's still a GRV and you should intervene as a judge and give a warning to AP.

I don't think anyone here would do that in a magic game.

I'm looking at this official answer and I don't see how we fail to have a “clearly understood game state” at the end of it. Anna reveals a card and puts it in her hand -wait, what? Then she rolls up Domri, and now everyone understands what she was doing. It's a textbook example. Every other possible example of OOOS begins with something that doesn't make sense, but then does make sense once all of the actions are complete. In fact, if it made sense all along, it wouldn't be out of order. Nancy wanted to do something in between the activation and resolution, and the MTR makes allowances for that, so no harm no foul.

Edited Russell Gray (April 10, 2017 09:50:37 PM)

Hi all,

I'll be locking this thread until Joshua comes back :-) We can continue discussing it when we have more information.

Greets
Jeremie

Thank you for your patience.

There has been a lot of discussion around whether this could fall under Out
of Order Sequencing. TL;DR: No. This is GRV.

So, why is that? The answer is simply that a Game Rules Violation has
preceded any opportunity to perform OOS. And, just like situations where a
later error is the consequence of an earlier error, it's the first error
that counts.

The root error here is rushing the resolution of an ability. In this case,
we have the additional problem that the ability was not announced, making
it effectively impossible for the resolution not to be rushed. (Which of
these problems you pin the GRV on is largely immaterial, since the result
is identical in both cases.) The fact that the ability was announced and
paid for later, after it had already been completely resolved, does not
mitigate this initial error.

For clarity, I want to also consider the situation where Nancy doesn't have
any response. Does this situation suddenly become OOS because we aren't
there to issue an infraction? Or if we see this happen and neither player
says anything, should we intervene to issue the infraction? In both cases,
the answer is “no.” The reason this is neither OOS nor something for which
an infraction assigned is found in the General Philosophy of the IPG: “If a
minor violation is quickly handled by the players to their mutual
satisfaction, a judge does not need to intervene.” If there are no
responses and a retrospective understanding of what happened is sufficient
for Nancy, that's sufficient for us.

We hope this helps clarify the issue.
-The KP team