Another judge in my area was having a discussion with me and a local player regarding re-tapping his lands at FNM. By “re-tapping”, I mean the act of casting a spell, and then some game-time later (i.e. not while the spell is still on the stack, but after some game actions have taken place) untapping the lands for that spell and then re-tapping them to make better use of the mana. The discussion was not regarding an ongoing game state, but simply a theoretical discussion.

I was wondering what people's opinions on this are, i.e. what guidelines to follow when allowing a player to re-tap their lands. This was an example put forth during the discussion:

Player A controls some lands, including a Mountain. Player B is at 3 life. Player A taps his lands, leaving up 2 non-red mana to cast a spell. Player B, noticing that Player A did not leave open a red mana to cast Lightning Strike (or so he claims in the ensuing investigation; it's your decision as the judge as to whether or not to believe him), casts Dissolve on the spell. Player A calls a judge and requests that his land be re-tapped so he can hold up a red mana to cast Lightning Strike and kill Player B, who is no longer holding up counterspell mana. How do you resolve the situation?

One opinion put forth is that allowing Player A to re-tap his mana here is good customer service and provides Player A with a good play experience, since he may have been playing sloppily, and “obviously” he meant to hold up Lightning Strike. Another opinion put forth was that if we rewind ths game state and take back all plays after the mana was tapped, Player B is now at a disadvantage because Player A now knows about Player B's Dissolve and can play around it, where Player A may not have played around it otherwise (you may assume Player A is significantly less skilled than Player B in this example).

From the JAR (my emphasis): Magic is a complicated game. While we can’t prevent players from making mistakes, we should do our best to fix situations as fairly as possible. It is important that players know that when help is needed or something goes wrong, calling a judge is the best course of action. Our solutions should focus on educating the players and keeping the game going rather than worrying about the impact on the game.

You have a lot of leeway here, and it really depends on you and your players what is the best course of action. At Competitive, this is easy: A made a mistake by tapping unfavorable but legal lands, nothing to see here, move on. At Regular… it's not that easy. Whatever you do (rewind or not) either A or B is going to be unhappy. The question now is who you want to provide customer service to, and this holds the danger of favoritism.

Since nothing illegal happened, I myself am in general very inclined to do nothing, and explain to A that he/she needs to plan ahead better. After all, is A has the Lightning Strike in hand but chooses to first cast another spell, he/she can't be completely unknowing of some basic strategy, right?
There might be a very specific situation where I would rewind, but this seems extremele unlikely. Customer service is great, disadvantaging other players is not cool.

However, remember that at Regular, if both players agree almost every ruling is correct. So if B has no obligations to rewinding (because he/she also knows to be the superior player and wants to do new player A a favor), that's perfectly fine! Just be careful not to put too much moral obligations upon B, it should be their own and free decision.

Maybe this makes me a curmudgeon, but I think the answer is obvious at every REL. Allowing A to “take back” his decision after so much has happened, and so much information has become known, without any justification other than the nebulous crutch of “good customer service”, would completely undermine the integrity of this tournament.

Players have to be allowed to make errors. That is all.

-Eric Levine

Thanks for the responses, guys! Here's a wrinkle to add to the issue, which also came up in the original discussion:

In the OP, I said that Player B knew he was supposed to be playing around Lightning Strike. In this alternate scenario, Player B does not want to allow Player A to re-tap, on the basis of “I want to prison rules my opponent, too bad so sad” (obvoiously this would be Undesired Conduct or something if he said it this exact way, the point being he doesn't have a good reason for protesting, he just doesn't like the idea). Does this change your ruling in any way?

Edited Lyle Waldman (July 27, 2014 01:13:19 AM)

what? you can't ever just decide to untap some lands and tap different
ones. that's just not how magic tournaments work. the details are
irrelevant, i would never ever allow this takeback.

Makes no difference; Player A should have thought more carefully before tapping his lands. Player B is asking the judge to correctly enforce the rules of Magic and does not need any additional justification for making this request.

“Good customer service” would be stretched way outta shape IMO to allow untapping and retapping lands after any significant game action has been taken. No illegal action has been committed, and player A needs to learn to play less sloppily.

I've two takes on this:

1) it's better customer service to the test of the event to disallow A to re-tap his lands, as a well-run tournament is good for the community, and
2) The rules of the game allow players to make mistakes. There's nothing that says we have to allow a player to repair one of his own mistakes.

I wouldn't allow it at a casual game, I wouldn't allow it at an FNM, and it's out of the question at anything of higher enforcement.

not a chance.

You mentioned that it is ‘good customer service’ to allow A to re-tap his lands, but then I feel it would be horrible customer service to Player B.

Magic is a game of skill and planning and foresight is a skill. After the game I would talk with the player and explain why we do not allow players to re-tap mana after the fact.

In regards to your second point of B wanting to be strict on the rules. That is perfectly fine. As has been stated multiple times, while you might not consider it to be ‘sporting’ behavior the way he said it, playing by the rules and requiring your opponents to play by them is in no ways ‘un-sporting’.

Edited Nicholas Brown (July 28, 2014 08:20:00 AM)

Judges don't enable “take-backs”; opponents are welcome to do so, and it's unlikely we'll even know about it, if that happens. If a player actually asks us, instead of their opponent, for a “take-back”, our answer can be as simple as “ask your opponent”.

I'd argue that, in the long run, it's better customer service to help A learn the importance of tapping correctly the first time. :)

d:^D

Fixes should only be applied if something actually goes wrong, not if someone makes a strategically bad play. Just as playing well has positive consequences, playing poorly has negative ones. Like Nicholas expressed earlier, a perceived opportunity for “good customer service” to one player will never justify truly awful service to another.