I feel a rewind is too disruptive. Leave the board state as-is, GRV warning to A, with possibly some questions being asked - Like why did he go through that line of play when he knows his only swamp is in his hand? I know “Investigate for cheating” is usually not wanted in these scenarios, given that they rarely contribute anything to the conversation, but in the case where someone's going through an action that they should know they can't do, it bears talking extensively to the player. Assuming we believe the player, leave A at 17 with no lands, warning for casting TS incorrectly. No upgrade in this situation, because the opponent COULD verify the legality (by waiting until the land was found), but just dropped his hand in the interest of speed.

Edited Olivier Jansen (Oct. 29, 2014 10:52:57 AM)

So I have question, what's the difference between that situation and casting and resolving Thoughtseize from Plains or uncracked fetch? The latter ones are simply GRV without upgrades, we could say, that they are just alike example A for GRV. For me then it would be GRV and Warning that would left us with question do we back it up.

Originally posted by David Wright:

I feel obligated to point out that we're playing Standard in this example, so the only possible target for the Mire that can cast Thoughtseize is a Basic Land— Swamp.

Fair enough. Well, that, and a basic mountain, but it amounts to the same in this scenario. (Though it does bring up the question: If Astro had a Mountain is his library, would you allow him to find it with Mire's ability?)

Originally posted by Bartłomiej Wieszok:

So I have question, what's the difference between that situation and casting and resolving Thoughtseize from Plains or uncracked fetch? The latter ones are simply GRV without upgrades, we could say, that they are just alike example A for GRV. For me then it would be GRV and Warning that would left us with question do we back it up.

You have described two situations where the error is visible. It is visibly illegal to cast a Thoughtsieze from a Plains without an Urborg in play. In this situation, N believes the Thoughtsieze is being cast off of a Swamp which A has shortcutted the fetching of. This would be legal (and appreciated in order to keep the pace of play up), but for the fact that there is no Swamp to find.

David Wright
Dan, what about the fetch is illegal? I may have missed that part. It seems to me that saying “Mire, activate Mire, fail to find” is a perfectly legal line of play. Isn't casting Thoughtseize without paying for it the first error that occurs?

“Mire, activate Mire, find and tap a Swamp” was the proposed shortcut, and it is not possible because there is no Swamp to find and tap. It is illegal to propose a shortcut that you are not able to legally execute.

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

“Mire, activate Mire, find and tap a Swamp” was the proposed shortcut, and it is not possible because there is no Swamp to find and tap. It is illegal to propose a shortcut that you are not able to legally execute.

Good point. In light of that…

Violet Edgar
(Though it does bring up the question: If Astro had a Mountain is his library, would you allow him to find it with Mire's ability?)

Hmm… since I'm allowing a rewind in my solution, and I'm rewinding to the point of the first error… that would require rewinding to the point where Bloodstained Mire is back in the hand, and I'm not sure about going that far back. It allows too much potential to change AP's line of play based on the information gained from the Thoughtseize. “Thanks judge, okay, Mire, find a mountain, Monastery Swiftspear, attack you” are not words I would feel good about hearing.

Since that's the point I'd have to rewind to, I think we just leave the game state as-is (or issue the game loss).

*delete*

Edited Darcy Alemany (Oct. 29, 2014 11:38:03 AM)

My previous post is incorrect, and I will edit it with my new opinion once I figure out what it is.

The more I think about this the more I see that an upgrade is probably in order.

An error that an opponent can’t verify the legality of should have its penalty upgraded. These errors involve
misplaying hidden information, such as the morph ability or failing to reveal a card to prove that a choice made was
a legal one.

Looking at it from a step by step perspective.
AP basically goes into OOS to crack a fetchland and get a Swamp and cast Thoughtseize with that Swamp.
OOS breaks down because it is illegal in that AP is unable to complete it because there is no Swamp available. If OOS comes to an illegal game state, we have a GRV.
NAP is unable to verify that the OOS comes to an illegal game state because he is not able to check the contents of his opponent's deck. The only way for him to do this would be to allow him access to his opponent's library (which is hidden information). It could be that AP wants to play a mountain rather than a swamp and “can't finding” his swamp. The NAP has no way to verify the legality of the error.
Because we obviously have a GRV we have to decide if we can back up. The problem is that if we back up, the NAP has no way to verify that the OOS had no option but to come to an illegal game state. Perhaps the AP forgot swamps in their deck all together or maybe he just didn't manage to find one. Either way the legality of the GRV can't be verified by the NAP as AP has misplayed hidden information.
Because of this I feel that we have to upgrade this since it revolves around a misplay of hidden information.

The shortcut depends on having found a Swamp. I would say the first error that “occurs” in the proposed shortcut is putting a swamp onto the battlefield, without having actually found one.

I would rewind to the resolution of Bloodstained Mire's ability. Astro is at 19 life, Thoughtseize is in his hand, and the discarded card is in Nono's hand. Astro can find a swamp (if he was incorrect about his decklist), a mountain, or he can fail to find. Continue the game from there.

I don't think the attempted casting of Thoughtseize, nor the announcement of Swamp, bind Astro to only finding a swamp or failing to find, assuming there's a mountain available to find.

—

NAP has two legal options: to accept the shortcut, or to interrupt it at some point with a response. He doesn't have a response, so he must accept the shortcut.

I don't think this is quite right…

Astro has essentially described a shortcut of “Crack the land, find the swamp, shuffle, cast thoughtseize, and you'll discard a card”. And it's true that if there's no responses, it's fine to just execute the sequence of actions without waiting for NAP to pass priority at any point.

In addition to proposing the shortcut, however, Astro did the actions out-of-order.

All actions taken must be legal if they were executed in the correct order, and any opponent can ask the player to
do the actions in the correct sequence so that he or she can respond at the appropriate time (at which point players
will not be held to any still-pending actions).

I think it's entirely reasonable, and the correct thing to do, to not accept a proposed out-of-order sequence. Nono doesn't have to reveal their hand until the swamp is on the battlefield, tapped, and there's a Thoughtseize on the stack in the process of resolving.

—

This is a sort of “misplaying hidden information”. AP would have been fine if he hadn't tried to shortcut this illegally, but the fact that he has now attempted to resolve a spell that he can't possibly pay for is a clear GRV, and by rushing the Thoughtsieze out, he moved past the point where his opponent could verify that a legal land was put into play.

This isn't a case of misplaying Hidden Information.

Hidden information refers to the faces of cards and other objects at which the rules of the game and format do not
allow you to look.

The game rules, applied to the correct sequence of actions, make it clear that at no point is any relevant information Hidden. Again, all Nono has to do is say, “Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Could you please do those actions in the correct, legal order?”

Thanks for the comments.

This case actually happened at the Game Day. We decided there that Astro had played the Swamp from his hand rather than the Bloodstained Mire and to continue from there. I feel that it was correct for Regular, but not in Competitive.

Would there be any merit in ruling that Astro found a Mountain and played his Thoughtseize with R instead of B, which could be GRV, Warning, and no backup ? It sorts of feels like the least disruption in this case (which is an argument to consider for a backup), but the “interpretation” of Astro's actions may be too ad-hoc.

It makes me nervous to have rulings, even in corner cases, where a player states they want a specific card from a search effect, fails to find, and then is stuck with the decision. It could set a precedent where a player uses a fetch and says “I want a swamp” and their opponent attempts to hold them to it, probably involving judges. This case is different because of the illegal actions taken but I think we cannot force a swamp or fail to find even here. Fetches don't have you name a card, they have you search and reveal, thus we cannot hold them to their choice as shown with tournament shortcuts (as opposed to casting God's Willing and naming white).

I believe if we backup here it must be prior to the casting of thoughtseize. Whether the Mire's ability has resolved (with a mountain in play), is on the stack, or we just have a Mire in play is open to interpretation. Personally I would advocate mountain in play, thoughtseize in hand if we backup. With mo backup I feel we still need the mountain in play however.

I agree with others I would not back up in this situation, as resolving Thoughtseize has much potential to affect all subsequent decisions in the game, for both players.

I would say this is OoOS, as this is a pretty obvious shortcut, both players were pretending that the Mire's ability had resolved finding a swamp - something I highly encourage due to the time involved in shuffling of libraries.

I would award a GPE-GRV for the player who cast Thoughtseize because they cast Thoughtseize wrong, the exact reason for this is debatable but I feel it is the correct decision. Since the player called it on themselves that they had no Swamp, and indeed could have simply played a Swamp from their hand I would not suspect any bad intentions on their part.

I would not give the player who discarded the card a GRV or FTMGS as I don't see how they could have possibly caught this mistake without refusing the shortcut, and I don't want to encourage players to refuse their opponent's obvious shortcuts.

Sean: Thanks for bringing this up, as it's an intriguing point, and I spent some time working it through in my head and here's what I came up with: There is hidden information at play in the form of the AP's library. The wording for the upgrade is “an error that the opponent can't verify the legality of should have its penalty upgraded”. These errors will normally (always???) involve hidden information because otherwise the opponent could have just looked. Usually, a rule or ability will tell people to reveal information, and they forget to, and that results in an upgrade. The examples I hear most involve not revealing a card to prove it meets the condition for a tutor like Fabricate, or failing to reveal a card that had been hidden by the effect of Morph as it leaves the battlefield.

However, at no point does the resolution of the Bloodstained Mire's ability require that this information be revealed, and in addition to that, it would be very easy for his opponent to verify the legality of the choice since the new object is in a public zone (the battlefield).

Originally posted by Matthew Turnbull:

I agree with others I would not back up in this situation, as resolving Thoughtseize has much potential to affect all subsequent decisions in the game, for both players.

I don't think anyone can argue that it does not affect subsequent decisions. But the IPG does say “only applied in situations where leaving the game in the current state is a substantially worse solution”. This is different from the previous “if it would be too disruptive to rewind” style thinking. It's asking us to evaluate which state is substantially worse.

So I'm comparing “player gets to know what's in his opponent's hand” and “player gets to know what's in his opponent's hand AND gets to remove the most threatening card from it”.

I think that second situation is substantially worse, so I really want to rewind here.

To those who want to Game Loss the active player:

Cracking a fetchland, and then failing to put a land into play, is never a GRV. Rules 701.15b allows you to “fail to find” since you're searching a hidden zone (library) for cards with a particular quality (land type A or B). Therefore AP has not committed a GRV for that, and so obviously cannot be upgraded to a Game Loss.

(Even if it were a GRV, I don't think we'd be instructed to upgrade a “fail to find”, based on past history. But, I imagine the upgrade clause would be clear on this.)

I have really enjoyed reading the comments here.

This is what i would have done

Astro calls, “Judge!” I arrive and the players explain the situation. Then I would examine the game state. Seeing that it is partially through Nano's turn, and Astro is OOS with a Blood stained mire that is about to resolve as a failure to find or Mountain. Either way his Thoughtseize was Illegally cast.

I would conclude IPG allows me three options,
1 Leave the game state as is and give a GPE-GRV warning.
2 Rewind to the point just before the GPE: I would decide this to be very disruptive since Astro has knowledge he shouldn't and it is several phases later.
3 Determine it is GPE-GRV upgrade to GL due to it being associated with hidden information.

I think #2 a rewind, is majorly disruptive.

The reason I don't like 3 is deeper. Since becoming a judge I have really grown to appreciate the general philosophy, “we try to be as minimally disruptive as possible. We don't want players to fear calling judge”
I find a game loss to be disruptive, and most importantly since he/she has called judge on them self I am more inclined to not give a game loss.

So I would opt for option 1 leave the game state as is and issue a warning. I would also sincerely express to the player to be more attentive because it easily could have resulted in a game loss.

Edited Clynn Wilkinson (Nov. 5, 2014 03:45:19 PM)