Dear Judges!

I would like to share with you this interesting case I encountered yesterday with Mark Dragstra at a PPTQ.
Following this call, we had a good 30' discussion about the slight border between GRV & FTMGS in few cases.
I'll first post the case here, let you share your point of view and then I'll write down how Mark decided to handle it later.

There we go!

Nathalie only controls a Liliana, the Last Hope with 6 loyalty counters on it. Amy controls a Rhonas the Indomitable and nothing else on the board.
Nathalie activates +1 abilities of Liliana, going to 7 counters, targeting Rhonas then pass the turn.
Amy cast Verdurous Gearhulk putting 2 counters on Rhonas and 2 counters on the gearhulk. Amy declare Rhonas attacking Liliana. Following this announcement, Nathalie puts her Liliana his her graveyard. Amy says then “End of turn” when a spectator is calling you.
What do you do? What is the fix and what penalties do you issue to both players? Why?


Seb 3:-)

Edited Sébastien De Spiegeleer (June 12, 2017 11:42:26 AM)

The point of error is when Nathalie puts Liliana into the graveyard. Rhonas attacked as a creature with power 5, not 7 so Liliana should have lived.

After that error, not much happened so with the OK from the Head Judge, I rewind to the point of error. Nathalie put the Liliana to graveyard for no reason, Amy didn't point out the error.

Issue Warning for GRV to Nathalie and Warning for Ftmgs to Amy.

..unless I miss something.

I think what Sebastien is pointing out is the responsibility for pointing out Nathalie's mistake falls on Amy as well, and that neglecting to point out something as severe as this situation which generates significant advantage should warrant a greater penalty than FTMGS for Amy.

Two notes to respond to this sentiment:

1. Although the FTMGS seems like a slap on the wrist here, Judges should not change and adapt their rulings to fit the significance of a board state. One of the goals of the judge program is to provide uniform solutions to player's problems across multiple countries, languages, tournaments, and the 1000's of Judges within the program. Adapting penalties based on board state confuses the players and creates situations that sound like , "Well this one time at this other tournament a judge did it differently…." and that is something that we as a program try to avoid.

2. One of the few times we can take the significance of a board state into account when issuing a penalty is during an investigation for cheating. This situation is one that would generate significant, game-swinging advantage for Amy and it is worthy of at least a few questions.

From the IPG:

Cheating: A person breaks a rule definted by the tournament documents, lies to a tournament official, or notices an offense committed in his or her (or a teammate's) match and does not call attention to it.

Gaining an advantage is one of the 3 pillars of cheating, and our investigation would have to look into establishing a basis for the other 2 pillars: Knowledge that the action was wrong, and participation or observation of doing said wrong thing.

Here's a conversation that would lead to Amy receiving a DQ for cheating:
Judge: Did you know that you attacked the planeswalker for 5 and that your opponent put in in the graveyard when they shouldn't have?
Amy: Yeah, I should have told them not to. But if they had kept the planeswalker I would have lost the game. So I figured it was better for them to mess up and for me to have a fighting chance.

and here are several hyperbolic answers to that question which would result in Amy receiving a FTMGS: (Please note that all of these answers would result in a further line of questioning, including but not limited to the # of times Lilly's +1 had been used correctly, why it was used incorrectly this time, etc..)

• I thought the planeswalker was on 4 loyalty.
  
  I am nearsighted and forgot my glasses. I had no idea what the planeswalker loyalty was at.
  
  I had no idea what even happened. I turned my creatures sideways to attack and was scratching my nose and all of a sudden a spectator called for a judge.
  
  Yes, I saw that happen. But this is my first ever competitive event and in my home game things like this happen all the time. One time my friend's dog ate all my opponent's creatures and allowed me to attack for the win. We called that the Wrath of Dog. But afterwards the dog cast Plague Wind and it wasn't as funny.
  

What you've described is a situation where we have been called upon to put the “Judge” into Judgement Call. While I agree that the options (FTMGS vs Cheating DQ) are extremely different, I believe that we need to have both penalties as options for this situation and use our investigation skills to come to a correct conclusion.

Edited Russell Deutsch (June 13, 2017 10:40:48 PM)

I'd lean double GRV personally since it is Amy's damage that would be causing liliana to die, so it is as much Amy's fault as it is Nathalie's that liliana is being improperly put into the GY.

I think example C of GRV fits really well here:
2.5 GRV
C. A player fails to put a creature with lethal damage into a graveyard and it is not noticed
until several turns later.

Philosophy
While Game Rule Violations can be attributed to one player, they usually occur publicly and
both players are expected to be mindful of what is happening in the game..

Amy did not “do” anything wrong. To me, this is no different than Amy casting a Wrath of God and Natalie destroying her Darksteel Myr. Natalie committed the GRV, Amy merely didn't notice it. That's why Amy committed only Ftmgs, I find it dangerous to put Amy on a GRV here too simply because she advantages a lot by it.

As for cheating, I don't consider cheating in this forum, because else you'd simply have to add a “unless it's cheating” to every paragraph.

Hey, about that, I 'd like to weigh in.

I had a discussion with Toby and I brought this exact topic :

Here is the conclusion of that discussion we had :

To your more explicit concern, about double-GRVs, I found this part interesting: “don't you feel now that this wording can lead to very wrong rulings like a wrath of god destroying all creature but I forget one”. Who do you think should be getting the GRV here? This one seems quite complex to me, and I don't see a very wrong ruling to be made. Indeed, this seems like exactly the kind of situation where it seems best left up to the judge.

Originally posted by Philip Böhm:

Amy did not “do” anything wrong. To me, this is no different than Amy casting a Wrath of God and Natalie destroying her Darksteel Myr. Natalie committed the GRV, Amy merely didn't notice it. That's why Amy committed only Ftmgs, I find it dangerous to put Amy on a GRV here too simply because she advantages a lot by it.

That's not necessarily the case here based on the information that we are given. Supposing Amy had attacked Nathalie and Nathalie said, “no blocks, I take 7,” we'd likely be looking at a GRV for Amy unless she immediately responded, “no, for 5.” It is Amy's responsibility to represent her damage correctly, even though it is Nathalie's responsibility to maintain her Planeswalker card.