My opponent has an Aetherling and activates its exile ability. I have a Stifle, and would love to counter its delayed triggered ability in order to prevent it from ever coming back.

My opponent however forgets this trigger, which is discovered the next turn. Since delayed zone change triggers do not expire (see additional remedy of missed triggers in IPG) and those triggers resolve imediately, doesn't that make the ability uncounterable if the original event was missed?

From the IPG:
Four types of triggered abilities do not expire and resolve immediately if they are discovered:
…
A delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of one or more objects defined when the ability was created. For this trigger, the opponent chooses whether to resolve the ability the next time a player would get priority or when a player would get priority at the start of the next phase.


The clarification text is a bit horrifying:
Finally, wherever the opponent chooses to place the trigger, it is resolved immediately, without using the stack. This is to prevent responding to these triggers that should have already happened. You wouldn’t want a Slaughter Pact trigger placed on the stack, then the player casts a card draw spell in response to dig out a Stifle, would you?


Does this mean that if I want to counter the ability I have to acknowledge its existence so it can be put on the stack normally, or risk having it resolve uncounterable in draw step?

Yes. If you want to stifle it you should remind your opponent of the trigger so they can put it onto the stack.

As Mark said. The unfortunate thing in this scenario is that many players now know (thanks to our education process) there is something called missed trigger policy and that they are not obligated to point out an opponent's trigger, but they have no idea that the remedy for this type of triggers is prescribed like this. So, in this rather uncommon situation, there is a possibility of a feel bad moment. And I do not think there is an elegant way how to prevent that. The player who wants to do that will learn the hard way.

The player could easily have countered the trigger when it should have happened. Instead they decided to rely on their opponent forgetting about it. That's something they're allowed to do, but if they're going to take that gamble they should be prepared for the chance that it fails.

One detail you seem to miss is that the player may intentionally miss it, only to “remember” it in the draw step. Or even worse, during cleanup.

Now it is suddenly not only “unmissed” but it is also uncounterable. Feelbad is not quite enough to describe this situation.

In theory this is of course cheating. In practice the player will always get away with it. :(

Originally posted by Olle Liljefeldt:

One detail you seem to miss is that the player may intentionally miss it, only to “remember” it in the draw step. Or even worse, during cleanup.

AP: Attack with Ancient Brontodon
NAP: Block with Aetherling, exile it
AP: May I move to my end step?
NAP: Yes
AP: Stifle your Aetherling return-trigger.

Or instead, in step 3 instead of “May I move to my end step?”, AP might just say "Stifle your Aetherling return-trigger, your turn“ and they will be understood fine, and get the desired result.

Not difficult.


This sort of ”problem“ (except it's not really a problem) with triggers comes up more often with players asking ”I want to respond to my opponent's prowess trigger but ONLY if they remember it, but they aren't required to announce it, so how will I know“. The answer to this problem has been established for a long time, and has been repeated time and time again of: ”There's no way, if you care that much then you need to mention the trigger yourself".

Edited Aaron Henner (March 16, 2018 05:26:01 AM)

Yes, the player may attempt to intentionally miss it. That's where our job comes in. In smaller time events, maybe a pattern will be harder to decipher, but if a player remember his triggers throughout his matches but suddently forget his own trigger when facing a blue deck with open mana, and timely remembers it at the beginning of his next turn… I'd find myself asking a few questions to that player. Not every case is cheating, and it is possible that this happens, but if we do our job right, the potential of being DQed/banned afterward should be deterrent enough.

The IPG also says something about remembering and pointing out your opponent's triggers. “If an opponent requires information about the precise timing of a triggered ability or needs details about a game object that may be affected by a resolved triggered ability, that player may need to acknowledge that ability’s existence before its controller does.” P8 2nd paragraph from the bottom.

This pretty much spells it out. Even if your opponent intends on missing it intentionally, if you want to specifically interact with a precise timing, you may have to acknowledge the trigger before your opponent.

Originally posted by Olle Liljefeldt:

Now it is suddenly not only “unmissed” but it is also uncounterable. Feelbad is not quite enough to describe this situation.

In theory this is of course cheating. In practice the player will always get away with it. :(

I don't really like the “in theory it's cheating, in practice it's never ruled as such” stance, because it's a strongly defeatist attitude. It is, of course, true that some players do cheat and “get away with it” for a variety of reasons (including insufficient investigation or because the advantage to be gained is very subtle). It's also true that many judges are primed to almost never consider cheating as a possibility because most of our scenario discussions begin with the assumption that we've already ruled out cheating.

That said, these are things that exist within the judge community and can be addressed. Perhaps running a Knowledge Pool companion thread where the discussion centers around “how would you rule out cheating in this week's KP scenario?” Perhaps it means committing to asking players how advantageous a particular GRV really is more frequently.

I guess this is all just to say, why should the player always get away with it? Ultimately we, as judges, have the power to determine whether that happens or not.

Originally posted by Olle Liljefeldt:

In theory this is of course cheating.

No theory about it, that's Cheating. The IPG even states, clearly, that you aren't allowed to:

intentionally ignoring one may be Unsporting Conduct — Cheating

In addition to the other points already made, I want to mention that we write policy to manage mistakes; there's a separate section for Cheating. Non-cheating infraction remedies don't mesh well with Cheating - nor should they. Except for the policy re: Cheating, the IPG is meant to allow games to continue in the best possible manner.

d:^D

P.S. - Mark Brown's post is, in fact, the ‘O’fficial answer.