This discussion came up yesterday among a few players and myself and the correct fix to this scenario. Adam has 2 Bayou in play and his newly played Misty Rainforest. He shortcuts his next two actions by saying crack the misty and casting Brainstorm. Nancy assumes his plan is to find a blue land and cast the brainstorm and his actions denote that by tapping no additional mana. Adam then peels three cards off the top of his deck and adds them to his hand. As this happens both players realize what has happened and you are called over. Adam explains that he did intend to fetch a blue land first but after marking life total changes got caught up in what was occurring and started to resolve brainstorm. What is the correct fix to this situation and appropriate penalties?

This can't be OOS as the end result is not as it should have been.

I'd issue a GRV DEC with a GL for Adam with no penalty for Nancy. There wasn't an error until the cards hit Adam's hand so this is the error. If he'd resolved the Fetch/Brainstorm in the correct order then we'd ignore any other technically incorrect sequencing (i.e. if the life total had been updated after the Brainstorm resolved).

A corner case would be if the Brainstorm had been revealed before the cards were drawn and the Brainstorm was the only card in Adam's hand, or if the cards were revealed as drawn (i.e. a Courser was in play) as this would make the cards uniquely identifiable and so we could downgrade. In this case I'd want to process a back up (with HJ permission) placing the cards back on top of the library then resolving the fetch correctly.

Edited Marc Shotter (March 3, 2015 07:49:40 PM)

Originally posted by Marc Shotter:

There wasn't an error until the cards hit Adam's hand so this is the error.

I disagree with this. Adam cast Brainstorm, and started to resolve it before paying any mana for it.

Would you say this was a different situation if Adam tapped one of his Bayous to pay for Brainstorm? (ie. paying wrong mana instead of no mana at all?)

Actually after reading the first post again, Adam announced “crack the Misty, cast Brainstorm”, started to resolve the fetchland activated ability by marking the life total change, but then started to resolve Brainstorm before the fetchland activated ability finished resolving.

Was the first error “incorretly resolving Misty Rainforest activated ability” or drawing the cards?

Is the life loss part of the effect of a fetchland?

@Tobias
If he'd tapped a for the wrong mana to cast the brainstorm then yes that would be the first error and I'd issue a GRV GPE and a warning.

Not correctly resolving misty and drawing cards both happen at the same time, but the error is the card draw because you only know the misty hasn't resolved correctly when cards are drawn.

@Gareth
I suspect you know this, but fetchlands have the life loss as part of the cost.

This is not DEC. Quote from the very beginning of the DEC-definition:

“A player illegally puts one or more cards into his or her hand and, at the moment before he or she began the instruction or action that put a card into his or her hand, no other Game Rule Violation or Communication Policy Violation had been committed, and the error was not the result of resolving objects on the stack in an incorrect order.”

This is clearly a GPE-GRV. The origin of the error was resolving Brainstorm before the fetch was resolved, as the fetch had to be resolved for Adam to have the right mana available to cast Brainstorm. Cracking a fetch while casting Brainstorm is a normal OoOS, but you'll have to resolve the fetch before starting to resolve the Brainstorm, as the result would not be the same if done in the wrong order. And having the same result is a prerequisite for an OoOS to be good.

I would give Adam a warning for GPE-GRV for resolving a Brainstorm without any of the right mana available. I'll then take 3 random cards from Adams hand and return them to the library (unless any cards drawn where known to both players, or he'd been smart and kept the cards drawn from Brainstorm seperate from the rest of his hand), shuffle the library (after checking if any part of the library was known), return Adams Brainstorm to his hand and the fetchland to the battlefield and fix the life total. No warning for Nancy, as Adam's actions would have been legal if done in the right order, and a judge was called as soon as the error was done.

Edit: No shuffle.

Edited Espen Skarsbø Olsen (March 4, 2015 04:16:33 AM)

Originally posted by Espen Skarsbø Olsen:

…and the error was not the result of resolving objects on the stack in an incorrect order."

I had missed this part of the DEC rule. Based on that I agree with you your resolution - thanks for the continued learning :)

Originally posted by Espen Skarsbø Olsen:

shuffle the library (after checking if any part of the library was known),

Really? Why would you shuffle here?

A has committed a GRV by casting Brainstorm without the mana to pay for it. If we rewind, we put 3 random cards from A's hand on top of A's library, return Brainstorm to A's hand, and go back to the point where A has finished searching for a blue source (but failing to find), since that is the first point at which Brainstorm could have been cast, and so is the cause of the error. Warning to A, but I don't think I'd penalise N in this situation.

The main question to my mind is whether we rewind to the point where A is still about to search his library due to the Misty Rainforest, since A could have attempted to cast Brainstorm in response to the activation. I don't like this interpretation so much, since A obviously never intended to cast Brainstorm at this time.

The first thing I do is ask Nancy “did Adam have any knowledge of the cards on top of his library?” (due to Scry, etc). If the answer is Yes, then I'll be asking Adam some very uncomfortable questions, to determine if he realized that he needed to draw one or more of those top three cards, before shuffling from the fetch land.

However, let's assume an honest mistake, since a DQ for Cheating avoids the most interesting part of this - how to fix it. (Hint: not everyone will be happy with the outcome.)

I'll go back to lurking now … just had to throw that in there, because people always want to learn more about Investigations.

d:^D

I'm not sure I follow you, Scott. Why would A have had to draw a card before shuffling from the fetch land?

Huw, if he knew one or more of those top 3 cards was the one he really needs at that point in the game, he could Cheat by screwing up the order of fetch and Brainstorm.

Originally posted by Huw Morris:

I'm not sure I follow you, Scott. Why would A have had to draw a card before shuffling from the fetch land?

Just to clear things up, the confusion arises from conflicting interpretations of what Scott meant when he used the word “need”.

It seems Huw understood Scott to mean "We must determine whether Adam realized the rules required him to draw before shuffling“ (which is plainly incorrect, as the rules in fact require him to shuffle first). What Scott meant was ”We must determine whether Adam made the strategic realization that he required one of the soon-to-be-shuffled cards in order to deal with the current gamestate."

Hope that helps!

@Huw if we have to back up to the fetchland resolving and letting him find a blue source then we aren't backing this up. At that point I feel it is to damaging to the game state to allow.

We have a GPE-GRV Adam has illegally cast a brainstorm with no blue mana available in his pool and no ways to get blue mana into his pool.

For the fix we see if a partial fix applies and apply it- none do.
Then we look to see if a back up is possible. To do this we would have to back up to the point of the error. This results in returning three cards at random to the top of the library from Adam's hand , then returning brainstorm to Adam's hand.
Or we do nothing.

I personally believe the best ruling would be to say he failed to find and then proceeded to cast the brainstorm and only back up to Immediately before it was cast(as this is the last time the game was in a legal state) which is right after the fail to find. Adam has priority and the game continues onward with Adam having learned a valuable lesson.

Edited Walker Metyko (March 3, 2015 11:30:06 PM)