Hello judges! Welcome to another enlightening Knowledge Pool scenario! This scenario is classified as SILVER, which requires a strong knowledge of policy. We encourage L2s and experienced L1s to discuss this scenario, but all judges are more than welcome to chime in!

You can read the blog post here.

And now, the scenario…

Nikolai and Andrew are playing in the fourth round of a PTQ. Nikolai is being attacked by Andrew's ground forces for exactly lethal damage. Andrew is at 2 life. Nikolai calls the judge.

“How can I help you?”

Nikolai explains, “A little bit ago, I had 2 spirit tokens die with my Blood Artist in play. My opponent and I both marked down my life gain.” Nikolai points to his life pad to illustrate. “But I missed the life loss side of the trigger.”

”When did this happen?“

”About three turns ago, I think."

Andrew says, “It's a missed trigger, right? So he… missed it?”

Nikolai says, “This makes all the difference. If I had marked down his life loss, I would have won this game last turn. But right now, I'm going to lose a game I should have won. What do we do now?”

What do you rule here?


Edit: Assume no cheating for this scenario.

Edited Bryan Spellman (June 20, 2013 05:44:36 AM)

First we have to look to see if any cheating was involved. If Andrew recognized that there should have been life loss on his part, but said nothing since his opponent didn't mention it and it would be to his advantage to not say anything, then we may have to DQ him. This probably isn't the case since Andrew feels this is a missed trigger (which players are aloud to keep quiet about), and even if noticed he probably didn't know he was doing anything wrong. So assuming no cheating……

What we have here is 2 triggers that were improperly resolved. So it's no longer a missed trigger, it's a game rule violation.

In order to correct this we would have to back the game up to the point of the error if feasable. In this case it most likely isn't feasable, so you'd leave the game state as is and Nikolai will lose the game.

The violations here are GPE - GRV's for both players, because it's an ability controlled by one player but the appropriate action was not taken by the other. Both players receive a Warning.

I think I'd want to be asking both players some serious questions about
whether or not either of them noticed at the time that the triggers were
incorrectly resolved.

But if after that we believe this really was accidental then I would issue
grv and ftmgs warnings. It was done wrong, but too much has happened since
to warrant a rewind.
On 2013-06-19 12:08 PM, “Bryan Spellman” <

Agree with Chris. This is a double GRV. We apply any SBAs and move on since we have gone too far to back up. Remind both the players to play more carefully.

This unfortunately is going to be a situation where one player is going to e very upset no matter which way you go. The best course of action is to follow policy so that you can remain unbiased and offer to talk to the upset player after the match.

You can also try to back-up. Sometimes even backing up three turns could
cause less disturbance and feel bads than letting a player lose the game
when he should have won. But it would require a very special conditions:
Like empty hands or Telepathy on both sides and both players just drawing
lands for the last three turns and not playing anything.


2013/6/19 John Temple <forum-4689-85b1@apps.magicjudges.org>

Going with the standard line of assume no cheating, I'd need to check if the opponent had marked the life loss but if not then I agree what we have is a double GRV as has been mentioned before, I think as the game has gotten to “I would have won last turn but I am now about to lose” we an safely rule out the ability to back up. I'd then explain to the player who is “about to lose” that due to how long the error was to be noticed there is nothing we can to fix the game state and it will need to stay as it is.

Just thinking out loud, without being able to look up policy and see if I
can find anything to support it.

If the game would have ended at the grv, we wouldn't really be disrupting
anything with a rewind. So players know quite a bit about each other's
possible actions that they didn't know before, but there are no possible
actions if the game is over.

I will do a review of policy after work to see if anything supports this
idea, but I thought of throw it out there as an alternate perspective
anyways.
On 2013-06-19 1:07 PM, “Gareth Tanner” <forum-4689-3338@apps.magicjudges.org>
wrote:

And reading the scenario its incorrect anyways. The blood artist damage
wasn't lethal. It makes some other damage last turn lethal.
On 2013-06-19 1:14 PM, “Mike White” <thatoldguy81@gmail.com> wrote:

First of all we should investigate if Andrew cheated when those triggers
were resolved incorrectly. From the information provided, it looks like
Nikolai could not cheat during that situation. But, by the answer from
Andrew about the “missed trigger”, it looks like he knew that they did
something wrong when they resolved the triggers but he did not point it out.
If Andrew knew that they were not resolving the part of the lose life from
the trigger and he knew it was illegal then he cheated since it matches all
the criteria. He should be DQed and no fix should be applied, although it's
possible that he didn't know that doing that was illegal because he thought
Nikolai was “missing the trigger”.

If we discard cheating, then we are in a situation were Nikolai has
committed a GPE-GRV since he resolved a triggered partially. I think that
no backup should be done since the error was three turns ago (but Nikolai
was not sure about that) and too many actions/decisions have been taken
since the error happened (draws and attacks). Correcting life totals is not
one of the exceptions for a partial fix, so we should not do any fix and
leave the game as is after checking stated based actions.
Both players should receive a warning (we should check for a possible
upgrade if they have previous GPE-GRV during the tournament) because the
effect that caused the infraction is controlled by Nikolai but none of them
updated Andrew's life totals. That's why I think Andrew also commited
GPE-GRV instead of GPE-FTMGS.




2013/6/19 David Zalesky <forum-4689-a13f@apps.magicjudges.org>

As some of you have noted:

Please assume no cheating for this scenario.

Thanks!

Great scenario! This one was one that was very similar to the one that happened at GP Houston with Huntmaster of the Fells dealing it's damage to the creature, but not taking note of the 2 damage it dealt to the player (similar, but not exact).

Assuming no cheating is involved and both players acknowledged that he did not take note of the life loss. The thing with this and Huntmaster of the Fells is….if you acknowledge that a player was supposed to gain life, the life loss portion MUST happen. Just like with Huntmaster of the Fells…if you acknowledge that a creature should take 2 damage, then that creature's controller MUST take 2 damage as well.

Improperly resolving a triggered ability consistutes a GRV for both players as it was N's improperly resolving his triggered ability that caused the incorrect life change by A.

Does everyone agree that the fix is to change to the correct life totals?

Changing the life totals now would be a partial fix, and that is not one of the partial fixes allowed by the IPG. We either have to back up everything or nothing. When explaining this to the players, we can explain why policy is written this way (consistency, and the players have been operating under the assumption that AP is at 2 for a few turns now, so abruptly changing that would be very bad).

NAP may not be happy, but policy is on our side.

I do not agree that we should apply a fix here - the life total error was three turns ago and any number of decisions have been made since then that were contingent on those incorrect life totals - it is very reasonable to assume, for instance, that Andrew may have blocked or otherwise taken different actions had his life total been correctly marked as two less. The IPG is very clear on no partial fixes and only full rewinds allowed. I for one deviate much more than most, and probably more than I should, but this is one time where it's best to stick as rigidly to policy as possible - we are effectively deciding the result of a game here, and either way, someone is going to be unhappy, so we should do as much as possible to get away from any allegations of favoritism.

However, this doesn't seem to be double GRV, since both players are responsible for life totals - it does not strike me as the type of action that counts as “controlled by one player, but taken by the other” due to the intangible nature of life totals (they're not represented by physical objects such as cards or tokens). I would rule GRV for N for failing to resolve the Blood Artist triggers properly and FtMGS to A for not catching the mistake regarding the improper resolution of the trigger. Ultimately, I don't think there's much of a tangible difference which penalty A gets here.

I also believe the nature of this offense would require some amount of investigation for cheating in the real world, even if we assume it away for purposes of this discussion.

Originally posted by Paul Baranay:

Changing the life totals now would be a partial fix, and that is not one of the partial fixes allowed by the IPG. We either have to back up everything or nothing. When explaining this to the players, we can explain why policy is written this way (consistency, and the players have been operating under the assumption that AP is at 2 for a few turns now, so abruptly changing that would be very bad).

NAP may not be happy, but policy is on our side.

I don't see this as a partial fix. To me, this was somewhat of a life total discrepancy that was caught before the judge was called over and the player who does not control Blood Artist is trying to make sure he doesn't get the life loss now even if the player received the life gain.

However…I do agree that it isn't covered by the GRV fix. So the life total changes cannot be done unless the trigger was missed completely, but it was aware.

Alright, I can see this as being leaving the game state as is.

I'll put an end to this. It's not cheating.

Sent from my iPhone