Originally posted by Aric Parkinson:

If Banisher Priest's text made mention of returning the card to it's owner's control, perhaps this would work. However, since it isn't worded that way, I don't think this would be particularly effective in this scenario. Frankly, I'd say that the wording of the card is probably what causes the confusion here.

I like Dominick's answer quite a bit, though I wonder if even asking “Are you doing anything before the exile?” may guide Nutella to realize there's a subtlety she hadn't realized. It's not quite as blatant as “Are you asking about killing the Priest now, or after the effect resolves?” but it isn't far off.

Banisher Priest has reminder text on it that does say it returns under its owners control(yay, M14 reminder text on anything that may behave strangely).

As for the question, I'd stick with “Creatures put into Exile with Banisher Priest return under their Owners control. Owner is defined as the person who actually owns the card.” As it is Comp REL, I wouldn't go any further. This states only facts without addressing the current game state in an unnecessarily coachy manner. It specifies that a creature needs to be put into exile for it to matter, but doesn't preclude a situation where the Demon never goes to exile. It doesn't hint, but you don't provide false or incomplete information either.

Regular, I might nudge them closer by asking if the Demon is exiled yet.

Edited Alan Dreher (May 3, 2014 04:38:47 PM)

Has the Demon been moved to indicate that it has been exiled? For example, the Priest's target is often put under the Priest. If that has been done, I simply answer “Ajvar” and explain why the Priest works that way.

But let's say the Demon has not been moved yet…


The big “point of no return” is when the Priest's ability resolves and the Demon is exiled. Have the players already passed that point? Asking outright goes too far in terms of coaching I think.

So I would play dumb a little bit, and try to get the answer from them while making it sound like I'm just reconstructing the sequence of events in my mind.

Something like: “Okay Nutella, so you put Ajvar's Demon in play last turn? And then you took the turn, Ajvar, and cast the Priest? No other spells were cast this turn? And when was the Demon exiled?”

If the players show agreement that the Demon has already been exiled, I explain why Ajvar gets the Demon back.

If the players show agreement that the Demon has not been exiled yet, I explain why the Demon never gets exiled at all. This reeks a bit of coaching, but I'm basically just answering a direct question.

If the players disagree then a bit of coaching damage will almost certainly be unavoidable, and then I just outright ask Nutella to state when exactly he (she?) is killing the Priest, and answer the question based on that.

That is a great question. The crux of the matter is to establish timing, but it is hard to do because Nutella is not doing anything at the moment: he is asking about the consequence of potential actions.

Even asking questions can be problematic, because it can make the player realize that there is a way to keep the demon when he had no intention to do so (maybe he was planning on killing the priest on the next turn when he called).

I like Marc's hypothetical “If the demon gets exiled…”, but I feel it is already giving too much information (“What do you mean, ‘if’?”).

So I would make a more general statement, like “when a permanent comes back from exile, it is a new object with no memory of its previous existence. Unless something tells it otherwise, it enters the battlefield under its owner's control”.

(Another option, which I used with a measure of success, is to play dumb: “I am not sure about what you are asking. Can you walk me through the sequence of actions?”. Once again, savvy players may realize that it is strategic dumbness and try to explore.)

Edited Florian Horn (May 4, 2014 01:21:07 AM)

Originally posted by Alan Dreher:

Banisher Priest has reminder text on it that does say it returns under its owners control(yay, M14 reminder text on anything that may behave strangely).

Ah, so it does. I suppose I should pay closer attention to italic text, haha. If we were to go with that response, then, directing the player to the reminder text would be for the best (lest they make the mistake I did, heh).

I think I would ask Nutella to describe precisely what is the game state and what he wants to do. This allows us to quickly eliminate the case where he indicates the Priest's ability has already resolved (“He exiled my demon”) or where he obviously does not have the ability to react to the trigger (because he wants to use sorcery-speed removal or something similar). Once we are reasonably certain that he intends to kill the priest in reaction to the trigger (we can confirm this after his first description with “so the demon is still on the battlefield?”), we can say that the priest's effect has a duration that will end before it begins and therefore never happens.

Thanks to everyone who participated this month! We had quite a discussion.

Although there were a lot variations in individual answers, there were essentially three schools of thought:
1. Nutella said “come back” and therefore we are required to answer based on the assumption that the Demon has already been exiled, even though the board state and player statements do not directly indicate this.
2. The exact question as asked is not sufficient to answer. We should provides rulings for both scenarios.
3. The exact question as asked is not sufficient to answer. We should determine the board state and the intent of Nutella before answering.

School 1 is the easiest course to follow. The player said “come back.” There exists a legal series of plays where the Demon does “come back.” And this is nice for a couple reasons. First, it is likely that if you just say “Ajvar gets it,” Nutella isn't going to kill the demon right away, increasing the likelihood that you have given the relevant ruling. And you also get the nice benefit of showing the player the handy reminder text on the card. However, there is a problem here. There also exists a legal series of plays where “come back” does not describe the action performed. And if you give the wrong answer here, you are directly misleading the player as to the legal result of a game action that might be incorrectly resolved now. Even worse, the illegal action make be taken in a future game when you aren't standing there to make sure everything turns out okay, even if it's fine this time. This type of answer that leads a player to future GRVs is undesirable, and you may even be giving an answer that results in an immediate GRV. As a result I would recommend against immediately giving a School 1 type of answer. In Goldilocks terminology, this answer is too small.

School 2 is also pretty straightforward. You interpret the player's question to broadly mean, “Judge, I don't understand this triggered ability. Explain how it works.” You tell Nutella that the outcome depends on his line of play and explain to him the possible legal outcomes of each line. This also has some nice features. Your ruling will never be the wrong one, no matter what Nutella has planned. And you can be pretty sure he won't make bad inferences from your ruling that mess up later games because no inference is necessary. However, you may also be revealing lines of play to Nutella that he didn't realize were available. That's something you really want to avoid. As a result, I would also recommend against giving a School 2 type of answer. In Goldilocks terminology, this answer is too big.

School 3 makes you work a little more. You interpret the player's question as, “Judge, I don't understand this triggered ability.” However, instead of just explaining the ability, you follow up with the players to determine where the exact game state is. Has the trigger already resolved even though the demon hasn't physically moved? Is the player asking about killing it in response or killing it later? What exact interaction is Nutella trying to determine? Then, once you determine the actual state of the game and exact intent of the question, you provide only the answer that is relevant to the game. This means you are not offering more information than was actually requested (avoiding coaching) and you can specify the scope of your answer to try to avoid bad inferences (educating). Goldilocks would say this is just right.

“So, where are we right now?”
…
“And you are killing the Priest now? Or this is about some hypothetical future action?”
…
"In that case, when the ability from Banisher Priest resolves, its duration has already expired. When the duration of ability like this expires before it begins, the effect never happens, so the Demon is never exiled. Since nothing happens, you just retain control.“
//
”Once the creature is exiled again, it forgets all about who controlled it when it was on the battlefield. All it knows is who actually owns it. So, when the duration of this effect expires, if the card is still in the zone where the ability put it - exile in this case - it returns under its owner control. In fact, this handy reminder text says that as well."

The core lesson this month is that sometimes a player can ask you a question that connotes general confusion about a rule. When this occurs, you neither want to simply answer what seems like the easiest interpretation of the surface question, nor do you want to just give the player extra information that could reveal new tactical choices. Neither of these delivers education without coaching. Instead, determine what the player is trying to do, and give an answer that educates the player regarding the rules outcome of his or her already intended action. This is the sweet spot, and both the player and the opponent will appreciate that you are giving the right ruling and not giving any extra hints.

Thanks again to everyone who participated. This type of situation can be a tough nut to crack, and hopefully you can apply this thought process to get you successfully through these types of sticky calls in future.

If you have a suggestion for a discussion topic for Personal Tutor or would like to become a member of the team, please contact me via forum email. Thanks, and Personal Tutor will be back next month with another scenario to turn into an educational opportunity.

"So, I've got this Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, and I put Desecration Demon into play with it last turn. Ajvar just played a Banisher Priest, and he targeted Desecration Demon with the ability. If I kill the Priest, does the Demon come back under my control or Ajvar's?”

I believe from the way this question is worded, it is implied that the trigger is in the process of resolving (meaning that both player passed priority and now we're about to resolve) or has resolved, because he is asking about what would happen to the exiled card if Banisher Priest were to be removed from the battlefield, I would definitely confirm my assumption before going further.

Assuming that it has played out the way I assume it has, I would explain that Banisher Priest has a two shot trigger that applies when it enter and leaves the battlefield. When it leaves the battlefield, for any reason, the card that was exiled by the trigger will return to the battlefield under the control of it's owner (which ever one of them that might be, it wasn't specified)

If the ability is still on the stack and players have not passed priority, I think the safest route I can take is to tell them that given the information that I have about what's going on, the ability is going to resolve like I described above. That could potentially lead Nutella to the conclusion that there is another way this plays out or to even ask about if he were to kill the Priest before the trigger resolves, but I don't think there is a better way to answer that question.

Edited Josh Stothers (May 14, 2014 08:39:51 AM)

Josh,
Talk to me off list about this. Feingold is spot on or near enough thereto.
At the very least, Banisher Priest does not have a “two-shot” trigger. There is one zone-change trigger and a static ability linked that has a duration. “for as long as” denotes the duration and if it ends before it begins, the ability will do nothing. Giving the players less than accurate information will not likely be the best solution for this conundrum.

Joshua, don't you think that in the long run the approach of “walking through the steps” can become (is already?) a tell sign to players that something spooky is going on.

As a player and judge I've seen too many times that players the moment you ask how far the stack has resolved already that players easily (and maybe falsely) claim that nothing of the stack has resolved yet, simply not to get past the point where something negative could result and learn most about the options a judge has to tell at that point.

The moment you say: “Are you killing it now or thinking about a future action” is to me reverting back to “school 2”: In fewer words than school 2 you are saying that as a judge you have 2 different answers ready. We all know that a mediocre player will go like: “well what about option ‘a’” … “and compare that to option ‘b’ for me now judge” …

I like your approach it still requires a player to think about this, but I hope the player and/or the judges are capable of good communication. Do the same scenario 20 times and you will have a different results all the time…

You are never completely in control of the second-order observations a player may make during a ruling. Policy mentions it may be impossible to determine whether a trigger exists without alerting a player who might have forgotten it. Likewise, it is sometimes impossible to acquire all the information necessary to give a relevant and correct ruling without a player potentially being able to infer something new about the rules or game state. And that's fine.

You should strive to minimize these possible second-order observations. However, it's impossible to know what the player knows, doesn't know, or may have momentarily forgotten as the ruling began. If the choice is between giving an incorrect or irrelevant ruling and tipping your hand as to the existence of another possible ruling, just get the information you need to give a good ruling.

Also keep in mind that doing a quick 1-2 question investigation to determine pertinent game state should be very routine both for you and for the players. And that, as a judge, your ability to pick up on hints in the exact questions asked is likely to be higher than that of the average player.

Originally posted by Aric Parkinson:

However, since it isn't worded that way, I don't think this would be particularly effective in this scenario.

Actually, Banisher Priest does answer this in its reminder text. I agree with the asking them to read it thoroughly approach, especially at competitive. Maybe adding that you can't directly answer that question would make the statement seem less harsh. :)