Honestly I'm surely riding the GPE-GRV -> Warning train.
As much as I want to upgrade the warning, I think this wouldn't be fair towards Nissa, either (in case she didn't do it on purpose). The game is not lost for Ajani from here, altough it's clearly disadvantageous for him. But we can only speculate how the game is going to proceed, so to be fair I would leave it at a warning and encourage Nissa to play more carefully.

GPE-GRV - Warning.

I'm not a fan of it, but we can NOT find a penalty we feel fits, then try to find an infraction to fit it. I don't really like it, based on the severity, but it is what it is, and policy should dictate what we do.

That being said, I'd definitely consult with a head judge.

On 14/08/2014 12:11, Olivier Jansen wrote:
>
> GPE-GRV - Warning.
>
> I'm not a fan of it, but we can NOT find a penalty we feel fits, then
> try to find an infraction to fit it. I don't really like it, based on
> the severity, but it is what it is, and policy should dictate what we do.
>
> That being said, I'd definitely consult with a head judge.
>
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Firstly this requires hard investigation. I would get the HJ involved
straight away if I suspect cheating as he could witness my investigation
and act accordingly.

I would talk to the players particularly if this was not game 1 and ask
if emrakuul has been resolved in a previous game and how? I would talk
to previous opponents of this player if I was thinking cheating might be
happening and consult the HJ throughout.

Assuming this is an innocent mistake GPE-GRV - Warning. I would talk to
the HJ about a possible upgrade as this infraction as probably effected
the outcome of the game. That would be his or her decision as with game
losses we always consult the HJ unless tardiness or deck errors.

I will tell the emrakuul player in future to be careful when resolving
triggers and would expect him to do so with this card for the rest of
the tournament.

Graham Theobalds

I think this part of the IPG is strongly against upgrading the GPE-GRV - Warning, tempting as it may be:

These procedures do not, and should not, take into account the game being played, the current situation that the
game is in, or who will benefit strategically from the procedure associated with a penalty.

Well I think everyone has pretty much covered that its a GPE-GRV Warning for Nissa, and a tough break for Ajani. It's unfortunate, as usually the “tough break, lesson learned” are for the player who committed the infraction. For example at the GP a player accidentally forgot to shuffle a card he didn't see back into his deck after game 1, and ended up with a tough lesson to learn with a game loss, even though he called the judge himself as soon as he noticed.

Its hard to see Ajani get the short end of the stick here with Nissa getting a warning but not otherwise suffering from her infraction. As judges we of course are tempted to fix it, but we cannot deviate from the rules cause we feel bad for Ajani.

The silver lining in this is that it is unlikely Nissa would be able to put all the cards into her graveyard, pick them up, pick up her deck, and start shuffling them before Ajani could stop her seeing as he was ready and waiting to play the Crypt Incursion. If such a scenario occurred, it's a tough lesson but I'm sure Ajani will be more aware of the game as he plays and not let something like that happen again.

‘If such a scenario occurred, it’s a tough lesson but I'm sure Ajani will be more aware of the game as he plays and not let something like that happen again. ‘

II’d like to not assume that Ajani was not aware. Perhaps, even, he was purposely not acknowledging the emrakul trigger until nissa did, in hopes the trigger was forgotten.

Originally posted by Brian Hunter:

The silver lining in this is that it is unlikely Nissa would be able to put all the cards into her graveyard, pick them up, pick up her deck, and start shuffling them before Ajani could stop her seeing as he was ready and waiting to play the Crypt Incursion. If such a scenario occurred, it's a tough lesson but I'm sure Ajani will be more aware of the game as he plays and not let something like that happen again.

I think you're vastly underestimating the manual dexterity of many players (including, apparently, Nissa). Players may often pick up their deck in hand, and peel off cards to be milled. If Emrakul's revealed, she need only scoop up the graveyard with the other hand, and immediately mash it into her deck.

In this scenario, Ajani very likely had 3 seconds, tops, to have even seen Emrakul, and much less time (half a second, perhaps?) from when he realized Nissa was picking up her graveyard to when it was in an unrecoverable position.

I feel really bad telling a player to be more aware in the future, especially when it's going to received very similarly to “be more vigilant of your opponent scumming you in the future.”

I'm with John Trout in that I think that the potential for abuse is sufficient that this might be worthy of being upgraded to a game loss, if cheating is not suspected. Then again, Jonas Drieghe properly points out that the state of the game should not be considered.

This situation is VERY sticky, because we're left either with a very happy Ajani who feels as though his opponent stole the game, or a judge who is forced to make an exceptional deviation. I believe deviating in this case is warranted, however, and a game loss should be issued.

Originally posted by Jonas Drieghe:

I think this part of the IPG is strongly against upgrading the GPE-GRV - Warning, tempting as it may be:

These procedures do not, and should not, take into account the game being played, the current situation that the
game is in, or who will benefit strategically from the procedure associated with a penalty.

I considered this passage and should have mentioned that in my post. I guess with all the current interest being paid to NOT deviating, my mind tends to want clarity on when we SHOULD deviate. When is a physical disruption significant enough?

The definition of Game Loss that I quoted said, in previous versions, “physical damage” rather than “physical disruption” So, why the change? I believe it's because of situations like these, where the game state has been irrevocably changed by an error in a physical way that prevents the game from continuing in anything like the path it was on.

This has, I believe, and correct me if I'm outdated here, been used to support the idea that if you accidentally shuffle your opponents hand into your opponent's deck, you've harmed the game state in a physical way (shuffling cards from the wrong zones together) to the point that the game can no longer continue with integrity and you've earned a game loss. These situations are incredibly analogous.

Edit made for punctuation :)

Edited John Trout (Aug. 14, 2014 12:34:14 PM)

From the annotated IPG:

Penalties are assigned based on how disruptive infractions are they are to the event. Game Losses are assigned to things that take a long time to fix or have a high potential for advantage. Keep in mind this doesn't mean you get to just decide something is a Game Loss because of the potential advantage. This consideration has already been incorporated into the infraction and its upgrade/downgrade paths.

In GRV situations, the choice is between rewinding all the way, or not rewinding. The decision is based on how disruptive it would be to rewind, how much information has been given out, etc. I've noticed, in general, the amount of time since the original error occurred is a good indicator of how likely we are to back up. An error that a player called us for right away is almost always simple to rewind, while an error a few turns ago (generally) would be too disruptive to rewind.

The infractions that carry Game Loss by default are TE - Tardiness, TE - Deck/Decklist Problem, and GPE - Drawing Extra Cards. GPE - Game Rule Violation can also be upgraded to a Game Loss for either repeated errors, or errors where the opponent can't verify the legality.

GRV's legality upgrade, DEC, and D/DLP all have fairly high potenetial for abuse. DEC is pretty disruptive to rewind through (hard to fix), and Tardiness takes a long time to fix (given that the correct fix, if not a game loss, would be a time extension.).

So, game losses are appropriate for situations where a fix is so difficult (or time-consuming) that implementing it would slow down the tournament. That's certainly the case in this scenario. However, no infraction actually lets us issue a GL just because of the impossibility of a fix, even with the high potential for abuse.

I'm on the GPE-GRV and a warning for Nissa train. There's nothing in the IPG suggesting that we should consider this for an upgrade, and it sets a tricky president. I don't feel like you can take Ajani's hand into account when making this sort of ruling–we're punishing the infraction itself, not evaluating exactly how much advantage a player did/did not gain in the process. Would the judges in favor of a game loss rule the same if Ajani called them over with a swamp in hand, and was bluffing the crypt incursion most of the game?

There is a partial fix option for this under 2.5 of the IPG: “If an object changing zones is put into the wrong zone, the identity of the object was known to all players, and it is within a turn of the error, put the object in the correct zone.”
I'm not sure if this clause truly applies in this scenario, and the viability of it even if so. It could be argued that by prematurely resolving Emrakul's trigger, Nissa is taking every object in the GY and putting it in the wrong zone, the library. You could try to grab every card out of the library that both players agree was in the graveyard–at the minimum, you know there was an Emrakul in there. This would certainly reduce the ‘feel bad’ for Ajani, since he'd have the opportunity to exile the Emrakul and any noted creatures played that game.

Originally posted by Chase Culpon:

I'm not sure if this clause truly applies in this scenario, and the viability of it even if so. It could be argued that by prematurely resolving Emrakul's trigger, Nissa is taking every object in the GY and putting it in the wrong zone, the library.

This applies only when objects are supposed to move from zone A to zone B, but they moved to zone C instead. The objects were not supposed to move to another zone (yet), so this partial fix doesn't apply here. The cards were supposed to stay in the graveyard (for now), but moved to the library instead. Remember, Crypt Incursion hasn't been cast yet.

Would you also give a GRV if Xathrid Necromancer died and she put the zombie token onto the battlefield quickly, without waiting for confirmation, or if she tapped her Fleshmad Steed without waiting for confirmation after something else died?

I may be wrong, but I want to get my thought process out there so when I am wrong, I know why and can fix it ;)

A couple assumptions I'm making here:
-Ajani was indeed not given a chance to respond. If he had, and choose not to, then this whole situation is a non-issue.
-Nissa is not intentionally trying to gain an advantage by quickly resolving the Emrakul trigger and prevent Ajani from having an opportunity to respond.

So a few things that this isn't:
USC: Nothing here. This isn't cheating because Nissa isn't shortcutting to try to gain an advantage (even if she does end up ahead) and also isn't knowingly breaking a rule to do so.
TE: No communication policy problems here.

So we're left with either no infraction, or something from the GPE. Let's rule out the obvious ones real quick:
L@EC/DEC/Improper drawing @ start-Not applicable.
That leaves us with no infraction, something falling under missed triggers, GRV, or FtMGS.

From the missed trigger guidelines:
A triggered ability that causes a change in the visible game state (including life totals) or requires a choice upon resolution: The controller must take the appropriate physical action or make it clear what the action taken or choice made is before taking any game actions (such as casting a sorcery spell or explicitly moving to the next step or phase) that can be taken only after the triggered ability should have resolved.
This is talking about acknowledging the trigger. Would shuffling the graveyard in here be considered a ‘game action?’ If so, that sets an expectation that Nissa needs to make sure the trigger has resolved before taking said action. It's certainly “an action that can be taken only after the triggered ability should have resolved.”

In either case, the trigger has been acknowledge, which leads us to the later clause:
Once any of the above obligations has been fulfilled, or the trigger has been otherwise acknowledged, further problems are treated as a Game Play Error — Game Rule Violation.

So, then the question becomes is Nissa's fast jamming of her graveyard into her deck a ‘further problem?’ Either improperly shortcutting or flat out refusing Ajani the opportunity to respond is an issue. That leads to the GRV guidelines, and see my previous post for thoughts there.

Sebastian, to your point–if improperly resolving Xathrid Necromancer's trigger or Fleshmad Steed's trigger caused irreversible damage to the game state, I would give out a GRV. 99% of the time it doesn't matter. You can get really pedantic, since grabbing a 2/2 zombie and dropping it onto the battlefield could be seen as acknowledging the trigger on the stack, and it's super easy in either of these cases for the opponent to say “wait, while X trigger is on the stack I do Y.” I'd refer to the out of order sequencing guidelines in the MTR if an issue arises.

Edited Chase Culpon (Aug. 15, 2014 12:14:00 PM)

This situation feels bad to me–if Nissa can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had no idea she had to give Ajani a chance to respond, I will be satisfied with giving her a Warning for GRV. However, this is in essence a death sentence for Ajani, and while I understand that sometimes, infractions can hand a player the win (or a loss), it's particularly feel-bad because he had no time to respond and thus isn't even give a Warning for FtMGS.

There are several variables I'd want to investigate to verify the authenticity of Nissa's mistake–what game in the round is this? If it's beyond the first game, was an additional Emrakul sided in to fight the mill deck? Has she missed any other triggers? It doesn't sit well with me that the one trigger Nissa basically grants her a free win because it's a Warning. If she's aware of the IPG and using it in order to receive a win in exchange for a Warning, that's a Serious Problem and really ought to be investigated.

I agree with John Trout that the HJ will have to decide if this falls under “some infractions that have a higher probability for a player to gain advantage.” I would not feel comfortable giving out more than GPE-GRV Warning to Nissa without doing an investigation and involving the HJ.