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

Ansel is playing against Nigel in a Modern PPTQ. Ansel plays a Mountain, then plays and attacks with a Goblin Guide and says “trigger, then its your go”, Nigel adjusts his live total, then reveals a Fiery Conclusion and then puts it into his hand. Nigel untaps his only land, then draws a card. Both players immediately realize the error and call for a judge, and explain exactly what happened. What do you do?

Going to take a stab at this. I don't believe this is HCE. HCE involves an action a player takes without the opponent's permission, involving a card that hasn't been legally revealed to all players. It's most definitely not LEC, because the card was legally revealed.

I believe this is a GRV and FtMGS. Nigel incorrectly resolved Goblin Guide's trigger, which led to a revealed card being placed in Nigel's hand. The IPG provides a partial fix of placing Fiery Conclusion back on top of Nigel's library, but now Nigel has drawn an unknown card when he should have drawn Fiery Conclusion.

The situation with the extra card, while not an actual HCE because it was caused by the GRV, can be fixed by treating it as HCE. Unfortunately, this requires the Thoughtseize fix. This early in the game, allowing the opponent to grab Nigel's best card and shuffle it into his library will potentially give an undue amount of advantage (as I understand it, it's a somewhat common practice to avoid the Thoughtseize fix if an error can be treated as GRV). Leaving the extra card in Nigel's hand also gives an undue amount of advantage.

I would make a slight deviation here and backup to the GRV infraction, choosing a card at random to be put on top of Nigel's library (under Fiery Conclusion), unless there is a strong likelihood of Nigel's library being shuffled in the next turn. There's a good chance I'm performing a backup to the GRV. If no backup, no fix. Warnings for both players.

Edited Joseph Dunlap (March 1, 2018 01:29:08 AM)

This isn't LEC, since the action of revealing is prescribed by the Guide trigger. I don't believe this falls under HCE either, since both players agree on the identity of the revealed card from the Guide trigger, and revealing it makes it publicly available information. (Revealing it also makes it such that the identity isn't known to only one player before the error.)

If it's not HCE, then we look at the game play error catch-all: GRV. The game rule being violated was incorrectly resolving the Guide trigger. Being a GRV, we can first consider a simple backup (backing up just the last action) to see if that is sufficient to fix the error. The last action is drawing a card, so backing up just that wouldn't be sufficient enough to fix the error, simply. Next we can check to see if the infraction falls into a category of partial fixes; however, the closest partial fix doesn't fully fit the infraction. There wasn't a zone change that happened incorrectly; there was a zone change when there shouldn't have been!

Since we've now exhausted the possible partial fixes, at this point we could leave the game state as-is, or do a full backup to the point of the error. Let's consider what a full backup would entail: reverse the draw step by picking a random card from the set of possible candidates (which would be everything in Nigel's hand excluding the Fiery Conclusion) and put it on top of his library, tap his previously tapped land, reverse combat damage on Ansel's turn by adjusting Nigel's life total for the amount of damage Goblin Guide had dealt, and then reverse the Goblin Guide trigger in the declare attackers step by putting the Fiery Conclusion back on top of Nigel's library. Now we're at back to the resolution of the Goblin Guide trigger, and make sure it's resolved properly.

GRV comes with a warning for Nigel. Since this happened fairly quickly and the players called attention to it immediately, a FtMGS for Ansel is not necessary. Remind the players to play more carefully.

Well hello community, and thanks for yet another interesting scenario here. I am going to take this scenario in a slight different angle than what has been looked at for now, in the interests of sparking discussions.

I already agree this is not LCE, since the guide's trigger instruct us to reveal. If I was to rephrase what Ansel said in legal Magic terms, he basically said “Attack with guide, trigger, then I propose a shortcut to your turn”. To which Nigel accepted. Nigel now enters a series of out of order sequencing, by adjusting his life before resolving the Guide's trigger, revealing the card as instructed. He then continued with the proposed shortcut (and subsequent OoS) as he sent the fiery conclusion to his hand and untapped. At that very point, we have a legal board state and the Out of order sequencing has ended. I am saying the out of order sequencing has ended because Nigel has the right amount of cards in his hands (he basically already drew for the turn) and his permanents are untapped (hypothesis). At this point, we have a clear and legal board state, which ends the Out of Order sequencing.

He then goes on and draw what would be an additional card for the turn. This is where the infraction happens. We now have no information regarding that card. So, I am going to rule this as HCE, as now this falls under the criteria for HCE (Does so without his opponent's permission and the card is hidden information both before and after the error)

For the fix, I would have Nigel reveal his hand and set apart the Fiery conclusion. Why? Because the IPG says “Information about cards previously known by the opponent, such as cards previously revealed while on the top of the library or by a previous look at the hand, may be taken into account while determining the set of cards to which the remedy applies.” So I would take out the Fiery conclusion from the choice for the fix, since we know this is not the extra card drawn. Once Ansel choses a card, Nigel shuffles it in the random portion of his library. Warning for Nigel, remind them to be more careful and carry on wayward sons.

I'm looking forward to discussions/responses on my take of this!

I see we have two interpretations, heavily related to what was the actual problem. Nigel has drawn an extra card, but it is not exactly clear why he did that. I think the choice between GRV and HCE depends on Nigel's intent.

The best thing to do is just ask Nigel. Ask him “Why did you draw two cards?”. If you get a response like “oh one for the Goblin Guide and then one for the turn” or “oh yeah oops I misinterpreted the Goblin Guide trigger there, sorry” then you are in GRV-territory, for not resolving the Goblin Guide trigger correctly. If the answer is more in line of “yeah I was trying to be efficient and shortcut but in the end I derped and drew an extra card” then you know it is a HCE and should be treated as such.

As for the fix: Anson and Maxime had that covered nicely already, so I have nothing to add there.

Thanks everyone for all the good discussion this week.

Before I reveal the answer, I want to highlight Harm's idea. Asking the player why this happened is a great investigation technique, and will often get you closer to the correct answer.

In the case of this scenario, it was intended that it be clear that Nigel was putting the card in hand off of goblin guide. That's clear to me, since he did it before he started untapping, and as part of his combat out-of-order sequence.

With that being the case, this is a Game Rules Violation, and Nigel receives a Warning. You could give Ansel a Warning for Failure to Maintain Game state, but I believe he called out the error quickly enough to warrant not getting that penalty.

We can use Anson's suggestion for a back up.

Reverse the draw step by picking a random card from the set of possible candidates (which would be everything in Nigel's hand excluding the Fiery Conclusion) and put it on top of his library, tap his previously tapped land, reverse combat damage on Ansel's turn by adjusting Nigel's life total for the amount of damage Goblin Guide had dealt, and then reverse the Goblin Guide trigger in the declare attackers step by putting the Fiery Conclusion back on top of Nigel's library.

Its important to double-check that the back up is okay, but nothing provided in this scenario prevents us from doing so.

This is my first time participating in Knowledge Pool, so let me know if this is out of line, but I discussed this scenario with a fellow judge and he suggested a possibility for a double GRV, since Ansel controls the trigger that was incorrectly resolved. Is that a possibility, or is it clear that Ansel didn't do anything wrong here?