Welcome back to another edition of Knowledge Pool! This week we have a silver scenario, which I will remind us once again means that it's aimed at level 1 judges and L2+ judges please wait a until Friday before giving your answers. Feel free to check us out at the blog below:

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/knowledgepool/?p=1124

At a Competitive REL Legacy event, Nightingale controls Blood Moon. Annabelle casts Leyline of Sanctity by sacrificing two Lotus Petals for WW and tapping City of Traitors for 2. In response, Nightingale casts Lightning Bolt targeting Annabelle and both spells resolve normally. Annabelle then plays an Island and sacrifices the City of Traitors. After Annabelle puts her City into the graveyard, Nightingale realizes that Blood Moon affects City of Traitors and calls for a Judge. After investigating, you conclude that this was an honest mistake.

What do you do?

Edited Lexie Steele (Aug. 13, 2014 12:11:46 AM)

Nightingale clearly has a Failure to Maintain Game State infraction for not noticing Anabelle's initial Game Rule Violation, which was activating a nonexistent ability of City of Traitors. Though several actions have taken place since then, they're all straightforward taps and zone changes (and thankfully no drawn cards), so it won't be too disruptive to back them up.

Unless I'm led to believe that Annabelle was particularly explicit about activating the Lotus Petal mana abilities as a separate action from activating City of Traitors, the backup would include the Petals being on the battlefield, considering their activation to be part of the broader action of casting Leyline of Sanctity.

EDIT: To be more clear about the backup, my backup would be to right before Leyline of Sanctity was announced, since the GRV occurred during the casting process.

Edited Michael Shiver (Aug. 6, 2014 12:54:22 PM)

This one is really interesting.

To determine what infraction we are having here we first have to find out what error exactly happened. After reading the scenario i'm not sure about the specific error. From my perspective, the first error that occoured is tapping City of Traitors for 2 colorless instead of R. One could argue that there is one more error here (either paying too much mana for Leyline of Sanctity or forget to announce floating mana after she cast for the spell), but the IPG says that seperate infractions with the same root are consideres as one, applying the most severe one. Since both mistakes that are not covered by any specific infraction, Annabelle commited a GPE-GRV. Nightingale didn't point it out immiediately, so there is also a GPE-FtMGS for here. Both players recieve a Warning.

To fix the situation we have to determine if we can rewind or not. The rewind isn't easy but not impossible or too complex, thats why i would ask for permission to rewind by performing the following actions:

- Annabelle puts her Island back into her hand and City of Traitors back on the battlefield
- Nightingale puts her Lightning Bolt from her graveyard to her hand, untap the land which produced the mana for it and Annabelle gets back three life
- City of Traitors will be untapped
- both Lotus Petal return from the graveyard to the battlefield, Leyline of Sancity is on the stack and Annabelle needs to pay for the spell in order to finish casting the spell

To be honest i'm struggling with the last part. The scenario is written in a way that i believe Annabelle follows the technical correct steps of casting a spell by first putting it on the stack and then pay for it. Activating City of Traitors was not ok, but sacrificing both Lotus Petal in order to pay for the spell are totally fine. I don't feel like there is any difference between Nightingale first sacrifice Lotus Petal and then activate City of Traitors or vica verse, therefore i'm fine rewinding up to the point where she has to pay for the spell but the Petals are on the battlefield.

GRV to Annabelle for casting her Leyline with insufficient mana, FtMGS to Nightingale for allowing the Leyline to be cast. I wouldn't give a second GRV to Annabelle for sacrificing the City, because it's clear that the origin of the confusion is the same. I don't think the rewing would be “sufficiently complex”, so I would rewind by returning Annabelle's Lotus Petals to play, returning to play and untapping the City of Traitors, returning the Island to Annabelle's hand, returning both the Leyline of Sanctity and the Lightning Bolt to their respective owners' hands, and increasing Annabelle's life total by 3.

EDIT: Upon rereading the definitions of GRV and FtMGS, it might be a double-GRV and not an FtMGS to Nightingale.

Edited Lyle Waldman (Aug. 6, 2014 01:16:50 PM)

I see where you're coming from with double GRV but I think that would be incorrect. While Nightingale controls the Blood Moon it does not call for an effect that was handled improperly. I believe Failure to Maintain would be the proper infraction for Nightingale.

I agree with everything already said in regards to the backup. The only clarification I would want is if Annabelle announced the Leyline and then sacrificed the Petals when paying the cost or if she activated her mana abilities first. If she sacrificed the Petals prior to announcing an argument could be made that the rewind should stop after those actions, they would not return, and Annabelle would have WW in her mana pool.

It would be double GRV if Blood Moon's effect had Annabelle take an action, that action wasn't performed correctly, and Nightingale didn't immediately say something, but Blood Moon doesn't make anyone take actions.

GRV Nightingale
FtMGS Annabelle

Reverse back to before the casting of Leyline undoing all actions that occurred in the interim.

Specifically…
*return City of Traitors to the field
*return the Island to Annabelle's hand
*return Lightning Bolt to Nightingale's hand
*increase Annabelle's life by 3
*return Leyline of Sanctity to Annabelle's hand
*return the Lotus Petals to the field

I'm a little uncomfortable with Annabelle knowing that Nightingale has a Bolt, but Nightingale missed the illegal casting too and additionally, dropping the Island, Annabelle can still cast the Leyline which likely will result in Nightingale responding with the Bolt anyways.

Originally posted by Christopher Wendelboe:

If she sacrificed the Petals prior to announcing an argument could be made that the rewind should stop after those actions, they would not return, and Annabelle would have WW in her mana pool.

This seems equivalent to saying that if you tapped your lands before casting your spell, then you don't get to untap your lands if your spell was cast incorrectly, which is not how procedure works. If the mana from the Lotus Petals was used to cast the spell, then the Lotus Petal activations should be rewound as well, regardless of how precisely the ordering of events worked.

Originally posted by René Oberweger:

- both Lotus Petal return from the graveyard to the battlefield, Leyline of Sancity is on the stack and Annabelle needs to pay for the spell in order to finish casting the spell

why would we leave leyline on the stack, the error occurred during the casting process so we should rewind the entire process. If not then we are setting up the player to receive an additional GRV if she can't pay for it (or doesn't want to).

Edited Kyle Connelly (Aug. 6, 2014 02:10:27 PM)

Without reading other responses:

There are several infractions in this scenario. First, Annabelle cast Leyline of Sanctity when she only had 1WW available, which is a GPE-GRV. Nightingale didn't call for a judge right away, so she committed a GPE-FtMGS. Later, Annabelle resolved a trigger which didn't exist on the stack, which is another GPE-GRV. Since the root cause for both GRVs is the same (not applying Blood Moon's static ability to City of Traitors), we issue only one Warning to Annabelle, and one Warning to Nightingale for her FtMGS.

Now we look at the remedy: Since the first infraction (illegally casting the Leyline, sacrificing two Lotus Petals) the following things happened: NAP cast a Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt resolved, Leyline resolved, AP plays an Island, AP sacrifices City of Traitors.

If we decide to rewind the game state:
- City of Traitors is put back on the battlefield (untapped)
- Island is put back into APs hand
- Leyline is put into APs hand
- Lightning Bolt is put into NAPs hand
- The land/permanent that was tapped to pay for Lightning Bolt is untapped
- Both Lotus Petals are put on the battlefield from APs graveyard

I would ask the HJ for permission to rewind. If I'm the HJ, I would allow it because the rewind is not very complicated in this case, and wouldn't cause much disruption.

GPE-GRV - Warning to A, FTMGS to N. I would strongly consider NOT rewinding, due to complexity. Of course, since we have everything written out, it seems easy enough, but in a live scenario, I don't think we'd consider it simple enough.

Edit: I would probably try to rewind the city of traitors going to the graveyard, since that's a second GRV that's occurred. I will reflect upon if two GRV's are warranted in the scenario.
Edit 2: only one grv, since the rules state that two grvs stemming from the same root are treated as one, and only the more sever penalty is assessed. So grv and ftmgs. Still unsure about a rewind, it feels complicated. Would consult another judge

Edited Olivier Jansen (Aug. 10, 2014 01:34:28 AM)

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

Christopher Wendelboe
If she sacrificed the Petals prior to announcing an argument could be made that the rewind should stop after those actions, they would not return, and Annabelle would have WW in her mana pool.

This seems equivalent to saying that if you tapped your lands before casting your spell, then you don't get to untap your lands if your spell was cast incorrectly, which is not how procedure works. If the mana from the Lotus Petals was used to cast the spell, then the Lotus Petal activations should be rewound as well, regardless of how precisely the ordering of events worked.

Not that I think this is the case as written, nor would I investigate it as such unless a player pointed it out, but if Annabelle had declared her mana abilities prior to announcing her spell they are legal actions which resolved. If we back up here it is to just before the illegal action occurred, which in my example is after the Petals were sacrificed. While this is not a common occurrence it does seem to me that the order can be important based on the wording of the rules.

Edited Chris Wendelboe (Aug. 6, 2014 02:48:24 PM)

One thing not mentioned yet by anyone is that we haven't established a REL for the event in question.

== Competitive REL ==
Annabelle - Warning: GPE-GRV
Nightingale - Warning: FtMGS
Remedy - Rewind to before the casting of Leyline of Sanctity

== Regular REL ==
Rewind to before the casting of Leyline of Sanctity. Remind both players to play more carefully in the future.

== Rewind Steps ==
Annabelle returns City of Traitors to the battlefield, and puts the Island back into her hand.
Nightingale returns Lightning Bolt from the graveyard to hand, and untaps the mana spent to cast it.
Annabelle returns Leyline of Sanctity to hand, untaps City of Traitors and returns both Lotus Petals to the battlefield.

Originally posted by Kyle Connelly:

René Oberweger
- both Lotus Petal return from the graveyard to the battlefield, Leyline of Sancity is on the stack and Annabelle needs to pay for the spell in order to finish casting the spell

why would we leave leyline on the stack, the error occurred during the casting process so we should rewind the entire process. If not then we are setting up the player to receive an additional GRV if she can't pay for it (or doesn't want to).

This is not correct. The Game Rules handle the rewind of a uncastable spell during the casting proces (like for insufficient mana) within themself. Therefore this is not a violation against the CR but in consens with the Game Rules and no GPE-GRV.

For the rest I agree with everyone who said GPE-GRV Warning for Annabelle and GPE-FtMGS Warning for Nighingale and a rewind until before the Leyline was announced which is not to difficult:
-City of Traitors back onto the battlefield (tapped)
-Island back to the hand.
-Lightning Bolt back to the hand, Annabelle gains 3 life, 1 land of Nightingale untaps
-Leyline back to the hand, 2 Lotus Petal back onto the battlefield (City of Traitors untaps)

EDIT:Clarification

Edited Markus Dietrich (Aug. 6, 2014 04:19:10 PM)

Just a small note:
Please consider the scenario as Competitive REL.

Thanks!