Scenario

Antoine and Nancy are playing in a standard Grand Prix event. Antoine, who controls three untapped Cryptbreakers, taps one of them and two swamps, draws a card, and marks down one life loss on his note sheet. Nancy stops him to point out the mistake and Antoine replies, “Oops! I meant to draw a card but I activated the wrong ability. I was supposed to tap my two other zombies instead of the lands. Judge!”

What do you do?

Solution

In this scenario, it appears that we have a previous error: something went wrong with activating Cryptbreaker. However, NAP could not see there was a mistake before the card draw. AP tapping Cryptbreaker and two swamps was a legal action; drawing a card instead of discarding a card to finish paying the cost of Cryptbreaker’s ability is the illegal action. Because the first illegal action matches HCE, this is HCE.

Many judges I've talked to about this say that the error was incorrectly activating the Cryptbreaker's ability because it was clear that Antoine wanted to draw a card. The issue here is that only Antoine knows which ability he wants to activate until the point of the error, which was drawing a card. If Antoine had said “draw a card” or “activate the draw ability” then the error would be at that point, but he did not. Thus, there is no prior illegal action at the point of the draw.

Antoine receives a warning for Game Play Error - Hidden Card Error

To fix this error, Antoine reveals his hand to Nancy and she chooses one card to be shuffled back into the random portion of Antoine library. Antoine untaps his Cryptbreaker and two swamps and resumes play.

Edited Joe Klopchic (June 20, 2017 02:25:29 AM)

I am interested in getting to know the reason that we untao Antoine's Cryptbreaker and Lands here. As it is HCE the IPG does not provide a backup, does it?

I think it would be more consistent to have Antoine resolve cryptbreakers ability correctly.

Hey there Joe,

I don't think it is right to mark this one HCE - I'd mark it as GPE-GRV because of Antoine not paying costs right and backup (reveal hand, choose a card to shuffle back into random portion of library random card on top of library, untap stuff).

What am I missing?

So far…

Edited Maximilian Hahn (June 21, 2017 09:33:48 PM)

Originally posted by Maximilian Hahn:

I don't think it is right to mark this one HCE - I'd mark it as GPE-GRV because of Antoine not paying costs right

There are situations where I can see this being marked as a GRV, but all of those involve AP making clear that they are drawing a card before actually drawing the card. If NAP doesn't have an opportunity to stop the card draw before it happens, then we have a HCE, even if AP intended to draw a card the entire time. When we're figuring out what went wrong, we look at the first thing that obviously went wrong, not the first thing that would have needed to go wrong based on one player's unspoken intentions about the game state.

Where this situation potentially becomes more interesting is that AP didn't correctly activate cryptbreaker's first ability either, so if NAP has an opportunity to correct that error and doesn't, then we also have a clear GRV that precedes the HCE and should rule GRV. It's a difficult backup because AP would know the top card of their library after we finish backing up and may decide that an extra few zombie tokens may be better than losing a life for that card, but AP being up a card instead of down a card is a rough spot to leave the game in, so I can see a backup being justified.

Originally posted by Dennis Nolting:

I am interested in getting to know the reason that we untao Antoine's Cryptbreaker and Lands here. As it is HCE the IPG does not provide a backup, does it?

I think it would be more consistent to have Antoine resolve cryptbreakers ability correctly.

Antoine hasn't finished paying the cost of the ‘make a zombie’ ability. Namely: Antoine hasn't discarded a card. We aren't going to force Antoine to discard a card here. This is a ‘backup’ in the CR sense (720) not in the IPG sense.

Originally posted by Andrew Keeler:

Where this situation potentially becomes more interesting is that AP didn't correctly activate cryptbreaker's first ability either,

He didnt activate any ability of Cryptbreaker correctly. So it still comes down to GRV in my opinion.

Originally posted by Johannes Wagner:

He didnt activate any ability of Cryptbreaker correctly. So it still comes down to GRV in my opinion.

- A player taps Noble Hierarch and draws a card, then says "oh sorry, I was thinking about Archivist".

What would you rule? GRV or HCE?

- A player casts Lightning Bolt and looks the top two cards from his deck, then says "oh sorry, I was thinking about Magma Jet".

What would you rule? GRV or LEC?

Edited Francesco Scialpi (June 23, 2017 10:12:40 PM)

Originally posted by Aaron Henner:

Originally posted by Dennis Nolting:

I am interested in getting to know the reason that we untao Antoine's Cryptbreaker and Lands here. As it is HCE the IPG does not provide a backup, does it?

I think it would be more consistent to have Antoine resolve cryptbreakers ability correctly.

Antoine hasn't finished paying the cost of the ‘make a zombie’ ability. Namely: Antoine hasn't discarded a card. We aren't going to force Antoine to discard a card here. This is a ‘backup’ in the CR sense (720) not in the IPG sense.

If Antoine had finished paying the cost of the ‘make a zombie’ ability, we would rule HCE and the “make a zombie” ability is on the stack, correct?

Edited Francesco Scialpi (June 25, 2017 04:32:16 AM)

Originally posted by Francesco Scialpi:

Originally posted by Aaron Henner:

Originally posted by Dennis Nolting:

I am interested in getting to know the reason that we untao Antoine's Cryptbreaker and Lands here. As it is HCE the IPG does not provide a backup, does it?

I think it would be more consistent to have Antoine resolve cryptbreakers ability correctly.

Antoine hasn't finished paying the cost of the ‘make a zombie’ ability. Namely: Antoine hasn't discarded a card. We aren't going to force Antoine to discard a card here. This is a ‘backup’ in the CR sense (720) not in the IPG sense.

If Antoine had finished paying the cost of the ‘make a zombie’ ability, we would rule HCE and the “make a zombie ability” is on the stack, correct?

In my opinion it depends on AP's real intention (we can determine it via investigation): if he really wanted to make a zombie but he draw a card for error instead, it's ok to resolve the correct ability after fixing the problem.
Otherwise, we rewind the the payment returning to the moment before AP activated the ability.
We shouldn't force players to make actions they didn't intend to do.

Originally posted by Jacopo Strati:

In my opinion it depends on AP's real intention (we can determine it via investigation): if he really wanted to make a zombie but he draw a card for error instead, it's ok to resolve the correct ability after fixing the problem.
Otherwise, we rewind the the payment returning to the moment before AP activated the ability.
We shouldn't force players to make actions they didn't intend to do.

Put in other words, you let the player rewind the ability, then he can re-activate it or not.

I would like to hear some opinions on that.

Originally posted by Francesco Scialpi:

Originally posted by Jacopo Strati:

In my opinion it depends on AP's real intention (we can determine it via investigation): if he really wanted to make a zombie but he draw a card for error instead, it's ok to resolve the correct ability after fixing the problem.
Otherwise, we rewind the the payment returning to the moment before AP activated the ability.
We shouldn't force players to make actions they didn't intend to do.

Put in other words, you let the player rewind the ability, then he can re-activate it or not.

I would like to hear some opinions on that.

I don't like that at all. Absent any clear indication (from within the game) that AP intended to draw the card, I would not let AP take back the cryptbreaker activation just for being under the wrong impression of what would happen when the ability resolved.

For comparison, if I cast divination and resolve it as concentrate, we don't look and say, "Oh, you have a concentrate in your hand, we'll back up and let you cast that that one instead since we think you intended to cast that.“ A player is allowed to make play mistakes due to their own negligence, and judges are obligated not to help them make the ”correct" play instead.

Edited Andrew Keeler (June 24, 2017 03:19:02 AM)

Originally posted by Andrew Keeler:

I don't like that at all. Absent any clear indication (from within the game) that AP intended to draw the card, I would not let AP take back the cryptbreaker activation just for being under the wrong impression of what would happen when the ability resolved.

For comparison, if I cast divination and resolve it as concentrate, we don't look and say, “Oh, you have a concentrate in your hand, we'll back up and let you cast that that one instead since we think you intended to cast that.“ A player is allowed to make play mistakes due to their own negligence, and judges are obligated not to help them make the ”correct” play instead.

This is an apples/oranges comparison. The problem we have here is that the player did not verbalize their intended ability, which is a problem in and of itself in that it makes it virtually impossible for their opponent to respond. This is drastically different than a player verbalizing their intent, and then playing the wrong card OR resolving a cast spell incorrectly as you described. In a case where they verbalize their intent, we're going to hold them to that and rule accordingly.

One thing's for sure, we need to stress the importance of clearly communicating our intent, because it will avoid issues like this.

Originally posted by Christopher Wendelboe:

In a case where they verbalize their intent, we're going to hold them to that and rule accordingly.

I agree, but that isn't what I was responding to. I was pointing out that, in the situation in which cryptbreaker's first ability is apparently activated (by paying all the costs) without any verbal clarification, we should not apply the fix of backing up the entire activation solely on the basis that AP now claims they intended to activate the second ability instead.

Analogously, if AP wordlessly taps three lands and lays a divination on the table, then draws three cards and claims that they had really intended to cast the concentrate in their hand instead, we wouldn't back up the (completely legal) casting of divination.

Originally posted by Christopher Wendelboe:

One thing's for sure, we need to stress the importance of clearly communicating our intent, because it will avoid issues like this.

I agree, but absent explicit communication, we have to deal with the generally clear but potentially ambiguous communication that we are left with. And in cases where it looks clear that one thing is happening, then AP's unspoken intentions alone should not be enough to dictate that something completely different is happening instead.

Originally posted by Andrew Keeler:

Analogously, if AP wordlessly taps three lands and lays a divination on the table, then draws three cards and claims that they had really intended to cast the concentrate in their hand instead, we wouldn't back up the (completely legal) casting of divination.

Uhm, yes. This makes sense. I agree with you, this example made me understand better the whole thing.
Thanks. :D

Originally posted by Andrew Keeler:

Analogously, if AP wordlessly taps three lands and lays a divination on the table, then draws three cards and claims that they had really intended to cast the concentrate in their hand instead, we wouldn't back up the (completely legal) casting of divination.

or, further:

AP taps a City of Brass and casts a Lightning Bolt on NAP's 5/5 creature.
NAP: “so what?”
AP: "Oh sorry, I intended to cast this Path to Exile instead“.

What would you do?

I think we are in the ”it's a play error, blame yourself" realm.

Edited Francesco Scialpi (June 25, 2017 04:33:08 AM)