So, without peeking at others' responses:

Failing to discard is a GRV. So that's a warning for Nathan and FtMGS for Alice.

There is a partial fix supported by the IPG.

Originally posted by IPG:

If a player forgot to draw cards, discard cards, or return cards from their hand to another zone, that player does so.

I'm very tempted to say that he picks up the land, discards it the card in his hand, done. It would be justified under a liberal reading of…

Originally posted by IPG:

If an object changing zones is put into the wrong zone, the identity of the object was known to all players, and it can be moved without disrupting the state of the game, put the object in the correct zone.

…since, arguably, the land should have gone to the graveyard but instead went into play. I'm sure that's not literally correct, but there is precedent for a liberal interpretation of this rule.

But I'd rather avoid a backup. The reason is this section of the tournament rules:

MTR
Whenever a player adds an object to the stack, he or she is assumed to be passing priority unless he or she explicitly announces that he or she intends to retain it. If he or she adds a group of objects to the stack without explicitly retaining priority and a player wishes to take an action at a point in the middle, the actions should be reversed up to that point.

If we back up to Nathan's turn, there technically was never a point at which both Bolts were on the stack at once. We have to back up to a point with one bolt in hand, one on the stack, and two known cards on top of the library. This gives Nathan a chance to resolve the Jeskai triggers correctly, draw something else, and discard Bolt.

Edited Eli Meyer (March 13, 2015 01:58:42 PM)

Well, let's see… first mistake is drawing for the second trigger before discarding for the first, which I can only say would be GPE - DEC. Second mistake is not discarding for both triggers, which would be GPE - GRV.

I'm really tempted to say that is DEC, although it could be OoOS as well. I'm inclined to think that OoOS doesn't apply here because the ascendancy player has a card in their hand that shouldn't be there. What if they tried to discard the second card drawn? This provides them an avenue they shouldn't have had.

I think the root cause of this problem is that the player drew two cards when they should have drawn 1. We could argue that the player neglected to discard for the trigger before the second card was drawn, and the failure to discard would thus be the root cause of the problem, but I don't think this is the case. When the card was drawn, the player has done nothing they weren't supposed to do. They drew the first card for the trigger, which is a legal action. Then they drew a card, which is not a legal action. The discard being missed happens when the player plays their land, a legal action, and had they not drawn the second card at this point it would have been a GPE - GRV - W.

Final verdict, I would rule DEC - GL.

Well, I see it this way:

From MTR 4.2:
• Whenever a player adds an object to the stack, he or she is assumed to be passing priority unless he or she explicitly announces that he or she intends to retain it. If he or she adds a group of objects to the stack without explicitly retaining priority and a player wishes to take an action at a point in the middle, the actions should be reversed up to that point.


So the game assumes Bolt (trigger Ascendancy), Bolt (trigger Ascendancy). Did a trigger get missed?

According to IPG 2.1, it did not.
• 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. Note that casting an instant spell or activating an ability doesn’t mean a triggered ability has been forgotten, as it could still be on the stack.

So then we can now assume an implied order which explains him drawing the first card, but putting both Bolts in the graveyard demonstrates they both resolved and Nathan thinks it's the same time. Since he drew two cards, this is the first action he has taken that is illegal since it should be draw—discard when each trigger resolves. Therefore we assume (if he wasn't cheating) he was trying to resolve the second trigger legally since he hadn't moved the Bolts to the graveyard by the time he drew his cards.

Since he was only entitled to draw one at that point and he instead drew two, that is GPE:DEC—GL to Nathan and GPE:FtMGS—warning to Alice.

From IPG 2.3:
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.

From IPG 2.6:
A player allows another player in the game to commit a Game Play Error and does not point it out immediately.

-Matt Sauers
L2, Indianapolis

So, getting the (somewhat) obvious out of the way, Nathan gets a GPE-GRV, Alice gets a FtMGS, and be careful to give these folks a proper time extension since they're so close to the end of the round.

As for the fix, I feel that (given the current information) a backup is proper here. Obviously we need to make sure that there aren't any fetches in play first, but if not, our backup is simple enough. Put a card from Alice's hand back on top of her library, have Nathan pick up the land he played and then put both of his cards back on top of his library in a random order, put the lightning bolts back on the stack, then have him resolve the triggers properly, one at a time. We don't have to have him return the bolts to his hand, and as such his course of play will almost certainly remain unchanged. Remind him to be careful about that in the future and then get them back to playing promptly. There's plenty of things that could make this backup *awful*, but from the information given this looks like we've been thrown a pretty simple series of actions to rewind through.

Having him discard one is also an acceptable partial fix, and others have noted that, if you squint at the IPG just right, you can throw that land card in the graveyard as well, but I think the rewind is fine here.

Edit:

Originally posted by Matt Sauers:

that is GPE:DEC—GL to Nathan

I'm not quite sure about the DEC ruling, but even if it is, I don't think this is game loss territory. As per the IPG "If the identity of the card was known to all players before being placed into the hand, or was placed into an empty hand, and the card can be returned to the correct zone with minimal disruption, do so and downgrade the penalty to a Warning."

We know that Nathan had an empty hand here, so I'd say we can certainly downgrade this.

Edited Robert Kajer (March 13, 2015 03:50:52 PM)

Originally posted by Robert Kajer:

Having him discard one is also an acceptable partial fix, and others have noted that, if you squint at the IPG just right, you can throw that land card in the graveyard as well, but I think the rewind is fine here.

If a partial fix applies, is a backup even allowed by the most recent version of the IPG? My reading is that a backup is only an option if none of the partial fixes fit the situation.

Originally posted by Chuck Pierce:

If a partial fix applies, is a backup even allowed by the most recent version of the IPG? My reading is that a backup is only an option if none of the partial fixes fit the situation.

Ah, you're absolutely right there. I guess then it comes down to whether or not we can consider the land to be “placed into the wrong zone” or not. If the IPG can be read that way, we go for the partial fix, certainly. If not, then we'll have to settle for the backup (or the halfway partial fix if we have other reasons not to backup)

It may be strange, but at first I want to be sure, how many cards Nathan had had before the decribed situation occured.
So, Nathan drew his card for turn (1+X) , where X is the amount of cards he had had before he drew for turn
Nathan plays 2 LB (1+X-2)
Nathan says “Ascendancy” and draws (1+X-2+2)
Nathan plays land (1+X-2+2-1)

Nathan currently has one card in his hand (1+X-2+2-1=1)
That means Nathann had 1 card before draw for turn at the beginning of the case.

So, the moment before Nathan casts 2 Bolts, he has had only these 2 Bolts in hand.

Now the interesting thing happens -

1st Ascendancy trigger - he should draw and discard = 0 cards in hand
2nd Ascendancy trigger - he should draw and discard = 0 cards in hand

Instead of that, Nathan not only inproperly resolves the 1st and the 2nd trigger (GPE - GRV), but draws two extra cards and plays one of them (land).

IPG tells us to perform:

1 - complete fix

So we are at the moment Nathan put two Bolts on stack. The problem is that he knows the two top cards and while resolving Ascendancy trigger, he may decide not to draw.

2 - partial fix

Ask Nathan to discard the remaining cards seems to be fine, but Nathan will get a “free card” - a land, and most of all, it will be on battlefield.

3 - meditate

I like that variant, but Alice will be greatly disappointed with two extra card Nathan has drawn. I dont like girls-in-grief so
this variant isn't our best choice.


I would prefer the 1st variant (complete fix), but let's make that fix more complete - I think the best variant is to put the land Nathan played and his remaining card in hand onto the top of the deck, shuffle it and ask Nathan to resolve two triggers of Ascendancy one by one. The game state we would like to achieve wont change - 0 cards in Nathan hand whether he decides to draw and discard or not, 2 Warnings - GPE-GRV for Nathan and GPE-FTMGS for Alice

Edited Egor Dobrynin (March 13, 2015 06:23:29 PM)

Apologies for the long answer. My ruling would be:

• Nathan - Game Play Error: Drawing Extra Cards (Game Loss) - IPG 2.3
  
• Alice - Game Play Error: Failure to Maintain Game State (Warning) - IPG 2.6
  

The sequence of events as described in the question is that Nathan casts two copies of Lightning Bolt without an immediate acknowledgment of the trigger. That's fine; he doesn't need to do anything about the triggers until they have a visible impact on the game (e.g. attempting to resolve a trigger to draw a card) and he is allowed to maintain priority and cast the second Lighting Bolt in response to the first. I will assume that he also paid the mana cost for these two spells. He says “Ascendancy”; this is also fine. He is showing awareness of the trigger and we can use context to determine that he is now attempting to resolve one of the triggers (at this point both Lightning Bolt cards are still on the table). Next Nathan draws two cards. This is the first explicitly illegal action. It is not okay for Nathan to draw two cards at this time. Even if I assume that both players have agreed that there are two objects on that stack that each allow Nathan to draw one card he is not allowed to draw both at the same time and skip the discard after the first card. So now that I know that a rule has been broken I look at what the appropriate infraction should be. In a way the remainder of the scenario is almost a red herring. Other things happen later that should not have happened but that does not change the fact that something wrong is going on with this discrete action and that we can find the appropriate infraction. He is Drawing Extra Cards. There is an object further down the stack that allows him to draw that second card but right now he is (or at least should be) trying to resolve the first ability and that ability allows him to draw a single card. The Annotated IPG has a good passage illustrating what is happening (emphasis added):

The “no other GRV or CPV” clause tends to give newer judges a lot of problems. They tend to over-analyze when the error occurred. For example, activating Liliana Vess’s second ability allows you to search for a card and put it on top of your library. If a player accidentally puts the card into his or her hand instead of on top of the library, this is Drawing Extra Cards. Some newer judges might argue that there is a GRV right before it, saying “They resolved the ability incorrectly, therefore it’s GRV, not DEC.” An easy way to remember the correct infraction is: if the first opportunity an opponent had to possibly notice a problem was when the card hit the hand, it is DEC. In the case of the Liliana example, everything is fine with the game until the card goes into the hand.

If you are in Alice's position your first opportunity to stop anything from going wrong is when you see Nathan putting two cards in his hand. If I get called at this moment I can see that he is drawing an extra card. For it to be another penalty, such as a Game Rule Violation for not discarding the first card, there would have needed to be a chance for Alice to get a chance to stop Nathan from drawing his second card. If Nathan strung it out by says “First trigger, draw one. Second trigger, draw one.” Alice could interrupt and call a judge because of the GRV before Nathan draws the second card. When applying the penalty I see if I will downgrade. The Philosophy section of the IPG states:

If the identity of the card was known to all players before being placed into the hand, or was placed into an empty hand, and the card can be returned to the correct zone with minimal disruption, do so and downgrade the penalty to a Warning.

I interpret the wording of the philosophy as meaning that I should not downgrade. Can we make the case that the cards can be identified and/or are going to an empty hand? Sure; we can see he has a single card in hand now and can count card cards back to see when he cast the second Lightning Bolt it emptied his hand. Can we also return the cards to the correct zone with minimal disruption? I don't think so. From the Annotated IPG:

As a rule of thumb, if it takes more than two seconds to completely consider all the impacts of moving the card, and decisions that may have been made based on that card being in its owner’s hand, then it is not minimally disruptive.

This is also the point of the game where Alice gets her GPE:Failure to Maintain Game State. Because she allowed Nathan to continue after drawing his two cards she did not catch the GPE in time to stop the game state from deteriorating.

So, next, Nathan plays a land. This implies he is resolving everything in the stack and regaining priority. This means that Nathan has now improperly resolved one or two triggers (I think there can be some wiggle room on whether he completed two badly or one very badly) by not discarding anything. The Lightning Bolts also need to resolve but this is probably just acceptable Out-of-Order Sequencing. I would rule that Nathan failed to discard twice (two triggers) and therefore committed GPE:GRV twice but that since the DEC is a harsher penalty and I think all three have the same root cause (“forgot trigger requires discard”) I will only apply the DEC. I think they have same root cause because if the trigger didn't have a discard Nathan's sequence of plays would have been an acceptable shortcut.

Reading some of the more recent responses, I'm intrigued by the “put the land in the graveyard” partial backup.

In order for that to apply, we'd have to consider playing the land itself to be a GRV, because only then would it be changing zones and going to the wrong zone. (ie, they were discarding the card, but it landed on the battlefield instead)

But as far as the player's line of play was concerned, playing the land was legal… it was in his hand, and the stack was empty (he'd already resolved the triggers, just badly). We don't generally re-engineer a player's actions in order to make sure a GRV happened.

I think it's pretty clear they did the same thing for both triggers… drew without discarding. And as that was their intent, I think that's really what they did, so work with that.

As much as I want to get that land out of there, I don't think it fits policy.

Answering without having read the other responses yet.

The game progressed correctly up to the point when Nathan drew his second card. Acknowledging the trigger(s) from the Ascendancy and drawing the first card are all legal actions and up to that point there's no infraction. The first time we notice that something is wrong is when he draws his second card. That means the infraction is DEC, and since the card was drawn into a non-empty hand and the identity of the drawn card is not known to all players, there are no grounds to downgrade the penalty. Nathan gets a Game Loss and, since the game has ended, there's no additional remedy required.

TL;DR: GL for GPE-DEC for Nathan. No remedy.

Originally posted by Egor Dobrynin:

So we are at the moment Nathan put two Bolts on stack.

I don't think this moment ever happens.

MTR
Whenever a player adds an object to the stack, he or she is assumed to be passing priority unless he or she explicitly announces that he or she intends to retain it. If he or she adds a group of objects to the stack without explicitly retaining priority and a player wishes to take an action at a point in the middle, the actions should be reversed up to that point

I read this as indicating that the Bolt Bolt Draw Draw sequence was a shortcut but not the actual gamestate. If we back up, it should be Bolt, Draw, Bolt, Draw.

So, for maximum confusion, I will throw in yet antother view :-)

The infraction is GPE – DEC. Why? There is a clause that states that the infraction is not DEC if a GRV has happened before, which many have referred to in this thread. But up to the point where Nathan draws his second card, there is no indication that such a GRV may have happened. In hindsight, we know that he failed to discard at that point, which would qualify as a GRV, but there is no way Alice could have caught the GRV before the DEC happened. And the whole point of the „not GRV“-thingy is that players cannot sit on a GRV they noticed until it becomes a Game Loss for DEC. Example: A has Thalia in play, N plays Think Twice and forgets to pay an additional mana. We don't want A to keep quiet about this until N draws and what was a GRV – warning becomes a game loss for DEC, hence the clause that states that the infraction is not DEC if a GRV happened before. In our case, there is no point at which Alice could have realized that Nathan commited a GRV and is going to draw an extra card, so I'd rule DEC here.

Penalty: Usually a game loss. I'd argue that there is reason to consider a downgrade here, as the situation is somewhat unusual, and very similar to what is mentioned under the philosophy section. While Nathan did not draw the extra card into an empty hand and the identity of the card was not known to everyone, everyone involved could easily tell which two cards are in the wrong zone at the moment, and it would be a very easy fix to just put them in the graveyard. So, I will suggest a downgrade to a warning here, and now I'll duck and cover :-D

TL;DR: DEC – warning, put the two cards into graveyard.

While Nathan clearly failed to resolve Jeskai Ascendancy properly, the sequence of actions did not involve an error until that second card was placed in hand; as such I instinctively lean to issue DEC for this problem, and do not consider the usual DEC exception case of “a GRV occurred prior to the card being drawn”.

However, reviewing the IPG again about DEC leads me away from this infraction as it also includes a clause for “resolving objects on the stack in an incorrect order”, which sounds more closely related to what happened here.

So with that noted, I fall back to GRV. Nathan is getting a Warning for failing to resolve Jeskai Ascendancy triggers correctly. Alice will receive a FTMGS - Warning for not noticing the problem.

A “partial fix” applies here - Nathan failed to discard. He does so now. The game continues from that point.

(Incidentally, I had initially drafted up a backup plan, thinking we should still be crafting a backup before looking to the partial fixes - reading the IPG reveals that this is now the opposite, and we do a partial fix if we can, only backing up if none apply. Read the docs, kids! It's useful!)

Before reading other responses:

First, I'd have to do a bit of investigating to make sure I understand the sequence of events correctly. It sounds like Nathan started his turn with one card in hand, drew a second one, played both of them (both lightning bolts), and then drew but incorrectly failed to discard.

There's a couple things going on here. First, the technically correct sequence of events would be - Nathan plays his first bolt, resolves his first Ascendancy trigger, resolves his first bolt, plays his second bolt, resolves his second trigger, resolves his second bolt. This in itself is fine, if there were no other problems, Nathan's actual play could be considered OOoS. (As long as he draws 2 and discards 2, leaving him with an empty hand).

The first error Nathan commits is failing to discard for both of his Ascendancy triggers. Then, he plays a land for the turn, which he only had in hand due to the improper resolution.

Nathan has committed a GPE - GRV, for failing to discard. Even though he forgot two triggers, I would consider this a single infraction. Alice had an opportunity to prevent the game state from getting worse, but didn't catch the error until she had taken some of her own actions, and so has committed a GPE - FtMGS. Both players will receive a Warning.

Now on to the fix, which I suspect is the Gold part of this scenario. The error Nathan committed was forgetting to discard (twice), and there's a supported partial fix for this - the player discards a card now. In this case, we can only partially apply the partial fix, as some of the to-be-discarded cards have already been played.

The other general fix for GRVs is a backup. However, backups should only be considered when no other partial fix applies, and only if they won't disrupt the game state. In this case, neither of those fits - there's an applicable fix, and I think this would be disruptive. Why? the correct backup would be to re-tap Alice's permanets, return the land from battlefield to hand, return one card at random from hand to top of deck, move one bolt from graveyard to stack, the other from graveyard to hand, and the stack is currently Bolt, trigger (in process of resolving). Nathan discards a card from hand. He now has the option to discard his 2nd bolt, or if he doesn't, when he plays it, he has the option of drawing/discarding 1, or not, given new knowledge about what's on top of his deck.

I believe the correct fix is to have Nathan discard directly from his hand. Yes, it's a bit feel-bad for Alice that he got a free land out of the deal, but that's the policy-prescribed fix, and the situation does not warrant a deviation. Had she caught the error in time, he would not get the free land.


Now, to read 4 pages of discussion…

Originally posted by Isabelle Grieb:

In our case, there is no point at which Alice could have realized that Nathan commited a GRV and is going to draw an extra card, so I'd rule DEC here.

You're raising a really good point here. I had overlooked a part of the annotated IPG.

The annotated IPG states (2.3 Drawing Extra Cards):

An easy way to remember the correct infraction is: if the first opportunity an opponent had to possibly notice a problem was when the card hit the hand, it is DEC.

This seems to be what you're referring to when you mention the first opportunity at which Alice could possibly have noticed there's a problem.

However, I think the first opportunity that Alice could have noticed a problem is actually after the second draw.

Nathan has 0 cards in hand when he starts resolving his Ascendancy triggers. If his intention were just to mill two cards, he might draw two cards (at the same time) and then immediately discard two cards (at the same time) - this would be out-of-order sequencing, not an infraction.

Alice doesn't know what Nathan's intent was (“Does he want to mill two cards, or did he forget he has to discard both of them, or is he just looting out of habit?”), so the first chance she had to know that something was actually amiss is when he plays that land, indicating that he didn't resolve his triggers fully - out-of-order or not.

Edited Mani Cavalieri (March 14, 2015 08:00:10 AM)