This match has just started. Abel plays a polluted Delta, cracks it, verbalized he was getting a hallowed fountain to cast serum visions, then resolves serum visions. Afterwards he realizes he never got his land from fetching. JUDGE!!!!!

How would one resolve this issue?

How would you propose resolving it?

I'm torn between two thoughts.
1 He announced the land he was going to get. Set aside the scry, have him fetch the land and put it into play, then place scry back on top.

2. He fetched, failed to find a land, rewind the serum visions because he didn't have the Mana to cast.

Either way it's a GRV, but the sequencing on it is weird since he did announce the land he was getting.

Originally posted by Chase Shank:

2. He fetched, failed to find a land, rewind the serum visions because he didn't have the Mana to cast.

Is that what happened though? How much of this decision are you making for the player?

I don't think option 1 is a valid fix. You need to back up everything back to the point of the error, which means putting the scried cards on top in a random order, returning a random card from hand to library, and returning Serum Visions to hand, then letting them search and shuffle. Even if we were allowed to do partial fixes, we wouldn't want to here – the cards they drew and scried were too likely to be Hallowed Fountain.

As for the “fail to find” idea, it seems intuitive to me that the announcement should be taken as a clear indication of intent and we shouldn't force the player into this horribly feel-bad situation. I'm not sure there's great policy support for this, though – their announcement isn't binding, they might not even have a Hallowed Fountain in deck, so there's really no way to argue that the only valid gamestate is Fountain in play. Failing to find is a legal thing they can do, even in the world where they announce their choice, so the general philosophy of leaving legal gamestates alone would seem to apply. That said, it seems like a really good opportunity for a minor deviation – Warning for GRV feels like the appropriate penalty here; Stone Rain seems extremely harsh.

This is a mess. Regardless of ruling I'd be having a good talk with the player about tightening up their play to avoid this kind of stuff. That said the “hold scries and make them go get ftn” fix is def not supported by the IPG since that's a partial fix. Likewise the stone rain and no visions fix seems pretty inappropriate as well since they pretty clearly indicated they were getting a certain land. Which means we can leave as is (no land but they get the serum visions) or do a full backup. As ugly as a full backup is that's certainly where I'd be here since it seems the less bad of the 2 options.

MY issue is this. He properly resolved a fetchland ability. He is well within his means to fail to find. Zero infraction. It's crappy customer service, I agree, but it's not an illegal play. Going by the IPG, I think stone rain is the best move consistency wise and also most supported, but it's a HUGE feel bad move.

Originally posted by Chase Shank:

MY issue is this. He properly resolved a fetchland ability. He is well within his means to fail to find. Zero infraction. It's crappy customer service, I agree, but it's not an illegal play. Going by the IPG, I think stone rain is the best move consistency wise and also most supported, but it's a HUGE feel bad move.

Disagree strongly on the stone rain. They said they were fetching a specific land out. To me, if it weren't for the fact that serum visions drew cards and scried, this would be simple OOS (think fetch then rampant growth and just getting both at the same time). Because of that I'd want to keep my fix closest to that as possible, the error here isn't an illegally cast spell, its resolving the spell out of order. If we could do partials your “set aside scries” would be ideal, but because we can't I think a backup to when he was searching (as I believe that was the point of error, casting a spell mid fetch) is best.

In a competitive REL, here's what I would do.

The error is a GPE-GRV, as the root cause is the player failed to correctly resolve the activated ability off the fetch land. However, he verbally announced which land he was going to get, both player (I'm assumuing) recorded a life loss of 3 for the active player (shockland comming into play untapped) and both player acted as if the land was in play as he casted the serum vision.

The restoration point for this seems to be the moment where the player failed to put his hallowed fountain into play. I don't think the “failed to search option” is correct here since he verbalized which lands he wanted to get, and mostlikely has one in his deck.

I would back up the game state to the point of resolving the activated ability of the polluted delta, including returning the scries to their correct location, a random card from the players hand to the top of the library and returning the serum vision to his hand. Have him resolve the polluted dealt activated ability, shuffle his library then continue the game.

of course I would ask questions to the active player about experience in magic and yaddi yaddi yadda to check for possible intended exploits. I am still on the fence about giving GPE - FTMBS to his opponent since I don't have the exact timeframe of then the error was cought, and so on.

Hey I just wanted to ask a few clarifying questions, this is something I'm discussing locally with my judge group.

Did the player note down a total life loss of 3 for the fetch and hallowed fountain entering untapped?
Did the player just completely forget to even try to search? Like he fetches, writes down a 3 life loss, and then tries to resolve the serum visions?

Life total shows 3 life lost, zero attempt to fetch. Moves immediately to serum visions resolution

An important question is whether Abel had mulliganed and scryed to the top. I'll assume he did not.

I would treat this situation as a mis - executed shortcut: the error was during the resolution of the fetch, but the Serum Vision is already announced and Abel cannot change his mind.

The backup is to put back the two scried cards on top of the library, a random card from the hand on top of these, put the Hallowed Fountain in play, then shuffle the library except the top 3 cards. Then you play from here, and Abel has to cast his Serum Vision, drawing back the card he should have drawn and probably making the same scry decisions.

The end result is simply to search for a Hallowed Fountain and put it in play, while preserving the scrys. Make sure that everybody (both players and the Head Judge) is aware of what you intend to do before beginning the process.

Note that it is a very specific ruling, and that extra circumstances are likely to change it.

Originally posted by Florian Horn:

The backup is to put back the two scried cards on top of the library, a random card from the hand on top of these, put the Hallowed Fountain in play, then shuffle the library except the top 3 cards. Then you play from here, and Abel has to cast his Serum Vision, drawing back the card he should have drawn and probably making the same scry decisions.

This looks like just partial fixing things. As I understand policy, when we execute the backup we'd return the scried and drawn cards to their proper location and then resolve the fetch correctly, which would involve shuffling away those “seen” cards. Even if policy supported retaining these as the top three cards through the resolution of the fetch, we wouldn't require AP to cast the serum visions again after resolving the fetch correctly.

No, that's how we do backups:

Originally posted by IPG - 1.4:

Shuffles are reversed by a single shuffle of the random portion of the library after the rest of the backup is complete. A card that became legally known to only one player after the error was committed is not considered random and is returned to the appropriate location after the shuffle has been completed.

As for the question of forcing Abel to play the Serum Vision, it is a bit of a stretch, but I don’t think it is unreasonable to say that “fetch for Hallowed Fountain, Serum Visions” is a shortcut.

Edited Florian Horn (Oct. 9, 2017 06:52:29 PM)

Thank you all for the feedback. It was a puzzling situation to have been put in.