Welcome back to the Knowledge Pool, this week we have another Silver scenario. L2s should wait until friday to chime in.

In a Legacy GP match that you are observing, Apollo is at 3 life while playing against Neptune, who is at 5 life. Apollo casts Chain Lightning, tapping one of his two mountains, targeting Neptune, who has several red mana available. Neptune says “it resolves” and marks herself down to 2. Apollo looks at you, waits a few seconds, then announces he's casting a second Chain Lightning targeting Neptune. What do you do?

Edited Joe Klopchic (Oct. 17, 2017 11:00:11 PM)

Under the recent IPG update, Apollo has committed CPV by not informing Neptune of her option to pay RR. I would ask the players to pause the match, explain the issue and mention that it is a recent change, issue the warning, and seek approval from the HJ to back up to the point of the original Chain Lightning having done 3 damage and continue to resolve it from there. Even though this feels like a “simple backup”, CPV is not one of the infractions that permits one.

Edited Jake Eakle (Oct. 11, 2017 11:59:56 AM)

I was going to make a separate topic but this works. I agree with Jake that this fits the mold of the new communication change, and we definitely should be giving Neptune the opportunity to pay the RR, are we actually supposed to give Apollo a CPV? I know Toby said we should in the blog post, but the IPG specifically states that CPV is only for violations of the communication policy as outlined in 4.1. The new change is in 4.2, and as such doesn't apply? In which case we'd handle this like an illegal shortcut (since that's what 4.2 covers) and backup to the beginning of the proposed shortcut (in this case “you choose not to pay RR”), and go from there.

Edited Jeff Kruchkow (Oct. 11, 2017 01:14:12 PM)

Originally posted by Jeff Kruchkow:

I agree with Jake that this fits the mold of the new communication change, and we definitely should be giving Neptune the opportunity to pay the RR, are we actually supposed to give Apollo a CPV?

I do believe so. The CPV infraction was amended so that the player has to confirm the intention of his opponent to not use his choice. “Now, if a spell or ability you play gives an opponent a choice, you must get confirmation from them that they aren’t doing the optional choice.” I think this correctly describes the situation with chain lightning, and therefore issue a CPV.

Now the CPV infraction allows for a backup if “A backup may be considered in cases where a player has clearly acted upon incorrect information provided to him or her by his or her opponent.” I do believe this is the case since the player had incorrect information (IE : No reminder of the optional choice). I would seek the HJ to perform a backup to the point of the choice (and not to the point of casting the chain lightning) as stated per IPG “The backup should be to the point of the action, not the erroneous communication.”

Originally posted by Maxime Emond:

I do believe so. The CPV infraction was amended so that the player has to confirm the intention of his opponent to not use his choice. “Now, if a spell or ability you play gives an opponent a choice, you must get confirmation from them that they aren’t doing the optional choice.” I think this correctly describes the situation with chain lightning, and therefore issue a CPV.

The CPV infraction was NOT amended. The MTR in section 4.2 was changed, the actual IPG for CPV has no changes which reflect that it should apply to these scenarios, other than that Toby said that it does in his blog post.

Thanks everyone for the discussion this week.

Jake was quicky in with the correct answer.

Apollo has committed a CPV for not confirming that Neptune was opting not to pay RR to copy Chain Lightning. Issue him a CPV-warning and back up to the point where Neptune has the option to pay RR to make a copy.

I'll address the further discussion on the topic of CPV technically not covering this case as well. Toby Eliott has said it does in this blog post https://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2017/09/25/policy-changes-for-ixalan/, and we treat his rulings there as official interpretations, unless further amended.