During a modern tournament, two players call for a judge. When you arrive at the table, Nathan tells you that his opponent Adam hasn't announced the colors for Manamorphose. Adam is playing a storm deck, on his battlefield is a Goblin Electromancer and the spells in this turn were Manamorphose 1 (announcing red / blue), Manamorphose 2 (this one is where the color of mana has been forgotten), Serum Visions (with one card being put to the bottom of the library) and Gitaxian Probe (paid with life), in this order.

Let's assume that both players agree that Adam has forgotten to announce the colors he wants to produce with the second Manamorphose. What do you do? Do you actually backup to the resolution of the second Manamorphose, do you just let the player decide now, or do you flip a coin to decide what mana has been produced?

Edited Jasper König (March 2, 2014 10:28:02 PM)

Assuming that you've ruled out cheating (which it sounds like you have), I'd ask Adam to make his choices now. Then I'd remind him to play more carefully, and remind Nathan that he's also responsible for maintaining the game state - he should have pointed this out to Adam or called a judge when Adam started casting Serum Visions without naming colors. I'd probably hang out near the match to watch him finish comboing and make sure there aren't any more mistakes - he might be unfamiliar with the combo (leading to additional errors we'll want to remedy before they get out of hand) or he might miss more key choices which would lead me to be suspicious about how much he's actually forgetting versus “forgetting”.

Under no circumstances would I rewind - he's drawn three cards, so we're basically giving him a whole new hand if we rewind, plus he's seen the next card of his library, plus he's seen Nathan's hand, so he knows what to play around. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too complex to rewind safely.

And under even less circumstances would I flip a coin/roll a die - making choices randomly here isn't supported by the JAR. As much as I'd find Magic more exciting if we had more cards go all Goblin Test Pilot, and the wacky results would cause players to forget their choices less often, it's not hard to imagine scenarios where this goes horribly wrong:
Player: “Slaughter Games… let's see your hand! Uh oh, I forgot to name a card.”
Judge: “Here, roll this d1235 to decide which card you're exiling.”

I'd definitely say don't back this up: lots of decisions and deck manipulations have been made, and just getting the backup completely correct will be a hairy process. Also, choosing randomly seems like a, well, arbitrary decision - I can't imagine that would be backed up by any of the documents.

Given that this is Regular, I'd probably just let Adam choose his colors now, warn him that he needs to be much more conscious of these effects in the future, and go grab him a couple spin downs so he can track his red and blue mana counts explicitly for his opponent.

Quick note, however: a bit of investigation should probably be done before making a decision. At the very least, I'd like to confirm whether Adam used mana from Manamorphose for the Serum Visions he cast after it: if he did, that nails down at least one of the color choices for us quite clearly.

Edited Talia Parkinson (March 3, 2014 01:44:38 AM)

In general, I'd most likely have them decide now as well (sure, he has an advantage because he has more information, but his opponent should be watching too, so it's kind of a wash), and it's much less disruptive than rewinding.

We do have some flexibility on the tone we want our Regular events, and some of that will be guided by the players and the TO (maybe they're practicing for a Comp event, but don't want to hassle with deck lists?). So I think there's room to say he just loses his mana, but most likely he just chooses now. (and most of the time, I bet they just choose on their own without calling anyone anyways)

In general, when 2 copies of the same spell are played like this, I've noticed it often means that the choice is intended to remain the same; an explicit answer is not given, because the implicit answer is “nothing relevant has changed in the game state, so nothing relevant changes in my choice”. I'd be OK with having the second Manamorphose make red and blue by default, for this reason.

Alternately, unless Adam has produced any mana from his lands in the intervening period, we know that at least 1 mana from the Manamorphose had to be blue to pay for the Serum Visions. So Adam only gets to choose UU or RU for his Manamorphose, which simplifies the situation significantly. I'd be wary of doing this, because if Adam thinks he's going to fizzle after seeing 5 more cards of his deck, he can simply choose UU to get extra value. However, in this case, I suppose a fair counterargument is “Nathan should have seen that and pointed it out at the time”.

Edited Lyle Waldman (March 3, 2014 02:57:27 AM)

In my opinion Adam has resolved incorrectly the second Manamorphose but I
think assuming he will choose the same as in the previous one is not fine
based on IPG.
He has committed GPE-GRV resolving incorrectly that Manamorphose and I
think backing up is too complex. There are three partial fixes for GPE-GRV
but the one that looks like it could fit for this scenario is about making
an ilegal choice or failing to make a choice for a permanent on the
battlefield.

He casted Manamorphose to get UR, then casted a second Manamorphose using R
thanks to Goblin Electromancer and he had U in his pool floating. After
resolving incorrectly Manamorphose, he used that U mana to cast Serum
Visions and then casted Gitaxian Probe paying life.
If we leave the game state as is now after applying state-based actions,
Adam did not add any mana to his mana pool when resolving the second
Manamorphose and the game will continue from that point with no mana in
Adam's mana pool.



2014-03-03 6:58 GMT+01:00 Lyle Waldman <forum-8748-1ca0@apps.magicjudges.org

Sorry, I answered thinking it was competitive REL…


2014-03-03 10:17 GMT+01:00 David Larrea Baeza <davidlarreabaeza@gmail.com>:

Hey!
I totally agree with your explanation, David, for Competitive REL, but I think that for Regular REL I'll let Adam to choose the colors now without backup (I think that to backup could be very problematic in this case) and will tell him to play more carefully and to not forget choosing colors as he resolves Manamorphose ever again.
All the best!

I agree with Alejandro, I like your proposal to fix this situation at
Regular REL.


2014-03-03 11:35 GMT+01:00 Alejandro Rodríguez Sánchez <

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

Alternately, unless Adam has produced any mana from his lands in the intervening period, we know that at least 1 mana from the Manamorphose had to be blue to pay for the Serum Visions. So Adam only gets to choose UU or RU for his Manamorphose, which simplifies the situation significantly.

Adam controls a Goblin Electromancer, so his Manamorphoses cost R each. The first one produces RU, then he casts the second one, which should have resulted in him having UUU, URU or URR in his mana pool. As you can see, he does not need to produce U mana with the second Manamorphose to cast Serum Visions, and assuming he chose UR again by default seems sketchy, considering the game-state changed significantly and the players obviously do not understand the new game-state without explicitly announcing the choice.(In other words, if both players were sure he chose UR again, that would be fine, but in that case no judge would have been called anyway)


In general, the situation is way too complex to rewind, and the scry from Serum Visions makes it entirely impossible to back the situation up correctly anyway(you can't return the card from the bottom of the library to its former location when trying to back up, since you probably do not know if it was the first or second card on top).

Randomly determining which colors were chosen is a terrible idea. Not only is it frustrating for Adam to receive the “wrong” types of mana, it does not have a sufficient educational effect on the player either.
Furthermore, randomly making decisions on any portion of a tournament (except those that have to be random, such as pairings) as a tournament official, especially in public, sets a bad example to any players involved in the tournament that witness your ruling, potentially creating the impression that gambling and determining match outcomes using a random method is acceptable.

Since we are sure we can and will not rewind the situation, the “default” option is to leave the game as is.
While it is tempting to “fix” the game by having the player make a choice now, I think we shouldn't worry too much about our ruling's impact on the game, and rather educate both players to be more careful next time. In that case, no mana will be added to Adam's pool.
Hopefully, Adam will remember this situation the next time he casts a Manamorphose and make a choice right away.


Best regards,
Sebastian

Edited Sebastian Stückl (March 3, 2014 10:57:43 AM)

It seems like in the given scenario, these are the two best options:

A) let the player decide now
B) leave the gamestate as it is, without any mana floating from the second Manamorphose.

I have to admit that I dislike B because it doesn't represent the turn as it should have been, however, this mitigates the potential for abuse in contrast to A.

I'd like to propose a little variation to the scenario: What if Adam has announced the mana for the second Manamorphose, but the two players don't agree on what has been announced? Is that a judgement call, and we just have to decide what is more plausible?

Edited Jasper König (March 3, 2014 11:43:19 AM)

What I really dislike about “leaving it as is” is that we are teaching player B to not paying attention to what his opponent does, and also to not calling a judge or pointing out a mistake right away.
How player A is seeing this situation is more likely “I don't care which colors are there, I'm trying to go off and don't think about that details… Wait… Did a judge just say I lose because of that?”. It doesn't sound that bad to a player B if we allow to choose colors now.
Giving a chance to choose colors now seems to be profitable for player A, but player B now will be paying more attention in future and will call a judge immediately when something goes wrong. Encouraging players to sit on a judge call and waiting for opponent to cast something un-backup-able is not what we want to do.

Jasper, if they don't agree, we have to come to a conclusion, we can't leave “two U/R hybrid mana in a mana pool”. Some investigation is needed here.

Originally posted by Maria Zuyeva:

Encouraging players to sit on a judge call and waiting for opponent to cast something un-backup-able is not what we want to do.

This, very much this!

While we do treat Regular and Comp/Pro REL differently, we can & should teach good habits (and avoiding bad habits) that transfer well between the different RELs. This is one such example, and Maria nails it.

I agree hat we should let the player choose their colours now, and part of that is because of what Maria said, which is am excellent reason to do so, but in addition to that I just can't see how to justify having the player not add mana to their mana pool.

Manamorphose says “add two mana in any combination of colours to your mana pool. Draw a card.” They are in that order for a good reason, and choosing what colours to float is a skill in piloting the modern storm deck so it's not irrelevant, but if the player forgets to choose the colours, why should that somehow not make any mana? Players do have to announce floating mana after every spell, if he was not doing so I would award him a warning both for incorrectly resolving manamorphose, and also not announcing his floating mana, and I would tell him to choose the colours now.

In standard a similar problem might happen if someone activates a Nykthos for “8 mana” when they have devotion to both red and green of 8, doesn't choose a colour casts a few spells while being ambiguous what mana they're using from lands vs floating from Nykthos. When they go to cast a spell they think they can, but their opponent thinks they can't we get called. If the situation is too much to back up, and the players disagree only about the colour of floating mana what do we do? I would apply the same fix there that I would here, and also make sure they weren't cheating since this sounds pretty fishy.

If he was explicitly announcing his mana, and was not announcing the mana from the manamorphose, in that case I might rule he had forgotten to add any mana since he was actually saying he had not, but otherwise I think warnings and choosing the colour now is ideal.