Consider the following case under Competetive REL:

Anna plays against Nicole. Anna has 9 mana including G, B and W. In her Graveyard are 2 Avacyns Pilgrim and below 1 Thragtusk. Anna is at 3 Life total. Nicole has Deathrite Shaman who is not sick and multiple G and B Mana open. The Board is otherwise empty. In her precombat main phase Anna casts Unburial Rites from her hand targetting one of the Avacyns Pilgrims. Nicole responds immediately by activating Deathrite Shamans ability and removes the Pilgrim wich is targetted by the Unburial Rites and gains two life. Anna turns the Deathrite Shaman sideways to indicate it is exiled. After a few seconds Nicole realizes she has been outplayed and takes a brief look at Annas graveyard stating:“ I would better like to exile the Thragtusk” Anna calls the Judge…..

What would you think is the appropriate ruling here?

Edited Joaquim Neumann (March 4, 2013 01:56:15 AM)

My ruling is “sorry, you made a bad but legal play, you're going to have to deal with it”.

If Nicole needed time to think, she would have been welcome to wait a short while or even say that she was thinking, etc.

I agree with Thomas, the ability has already resolved and it's too late to change the target.

But if Deathrite's Shaman ability is still on the stack, I would still allow Nicole to change the target, as you already know.

Originally posted by David Larrea:

But if Deathrite's Shaman ability is still on the stack, I would still allow Nicole to change the target, as you already know.

Why would you allow Nicole to change the target? If she activated the ability and clearly announced the target, then, after a few seconds suddenly says, ‘No, wait, I want to target Thragtusk!’ (before anything had been done to indicate it has resolved), I would not allow her to change the target. She made a legal (if suboptimal) choice and now she has to live with it, resolved or not.

David I (still) disagree with you in this ruling. I think Jan made the point here: It is not the duty of a judge to help someone who has made a suboptimal decision to take it back. As long as everything is within the rules why should we stop Anna to outsmart Nicole? If Nicole falls for the trap it should be her problem.
I think those kind of different opinions of Judges regarding the same situation are very frustrating for players. A player should be able to expect the same ruling of any Judge in comparable situations.

In the situation I faced, I allowed NAP to change the target because he responded to Unburial Rites and announced targeting the Pilgrim, but after a small period of time and without new information or reaction from his opponent decided to target Thragtusk instead.
For me it was ok to change the target because NAP was still announcing his abbility. After that, since AP was very upset with my ruling, I explained the scenario to a higher level judge who was responsible of GPTs and he agreed with my ruling.

David, can you please explain why even a short amount of time at Competetive REL is ok to change the target when the Pilgrim is already turned sideways (Clearly different on Regular REL when the Game State hasn't progressed)? It is not like the decision to play another Land was the issue in the described situation. I really want to learn this, because from my point of view this is more a philosophy question. In this case when we apply Davids ruling, Anna can be as smart as she wants, the ruling will propably cost her the game and I am not sure if a Judge decision should have such an impact when everything is within the rules, yet bad for Nicole.

I don't see why I should let Nicole take back her decision.
She did not do some illegal play. It might have been sub-optimal (it also might not have been, if she e.g. still holds a Mana Leak in Hand), but it is not my responsibility to let her take back her decisions. She clearly got outplayed here, so even from a ‘who deserves the win’-point of view - which is completely irrelevant to us, anyways -, Anna should get to reanimate her Thragtusk.

She did set up that ‘trap’ for Nicole, and Nicole totally fell for it. I don't think I'm in the position to bust the successfull ‘bluff’, and would like to see why I would be (quote of a document that tells me I am to rewind player decisions if he or she wants me to).

The Situation clearly states that Nicole basically was not aware of the contents of her opponents graveyard and thereby misplayed. It is totally her responsibility to be aware of the gamestate, and if she is not, then I would say she is ‘not skilled enough’ to be aware of it. It did not sound like Anna was making a particular point of hiding the Thragtusk or the fact that she could FB Rites right afterwards. Nicole clearly stated the target of DRS's ability, and then, after checking her opponents GY, realizes she made a mistake. Too bad for her, I'd say.

Also, if she gets to take back/re-target her ability, my thoughts lead me to the problem of when too much time has passed to rewind because of a miss-play. It is ok to re-target, if she looks through her opponents Graveyard, even though she already put her ability on the stack (she gained 2 Life, so she resolved it too!), if that GY is very small (only 3 Cards).
Is it also still ok if the game has progressed further and her opponents GY has, say, 50 cards in it, and therefor it takes considerable time to look through it? If it is not, why is it gamestate-dependant whether or not I am to rule that she may back up her decision (it clearly should not be gamestate-dependant, for consistency-reasons.)?
Is it okay to just ‘take back’ the activation of DRS and wait for Anna to FB the Rites to have it exiled (which is, quite frankly, a way better play than to remove Tusk in resp to the original cast of rites)?
If that is not okay, why not? I still consider her to be in the process of activating DRS (otherwise she would not get to change her target), and if she is in that process (tap forest, tap DRS, say something along the lines of ‘hummmmmmm, target….actually, I don’t want to activate it') I would not have a problem with her taking back the decision of using the ability in the first place.
If she can take back the activation of the ability alltogether after she already confirmed it having be resolved, how far may I take back my decisions alltogether?

Different, but very similar situation: Say Nicole is at 2 Life and has DRS in play (g and b open) and Anna also has DRS in play. Nicoles GY has only creatures, Annas has some creatures and 1 sorcery/instant somewhere mixed in. Nicole acitvates her DRS targeting some creature (clearly announcing it, tapping for g and the DRS), then realizes that Anna can also target an Instant/Sorcery in her GY in resp to kill her (says ‘wait’ or something like that), looks through Annas GY and realizes her mistake. Does she get to take it back?
If not, say we are in the originally described situation again, just that Anna has 10 Mana, a DRS of her own, Nicole is at 2 life and there is some instant/sorcery somewhere in a GY. Why would she get to take back her decision here, since for me as a judge that does not take the gamestate into account to get to a ruling, I would have to decide here in the exact same manner that I did in the original situation.

EDIT: My point basically is, Nicole was clearly not aware of the fact that Anna could reanimate Tusk when she activated DRS. After her DRS-ability was put on the stack/resolved, she suddenly gained awaresness of that fact (because she realized that Rites has Flashback, or because she realized that Tusk is in the GY because the Pilgrim that just got exiled revealed it as the top card, or for whatever other reason, doesn't even matter as long as Anna did not (try to) mis-represent the Gamestate, but that (in my opinion) clearly is too late to get to back up her mistake.

Even had she not resolved her ability (as in, did not write down that she gained 2 Life), I would still rule that she does not get to re-target her DRS since she clearly announced the ability, its target, and payed its cost. Yes, she did that in a rush because she ‘thought’ she can outsmart Anna by making her Rites fizzle, when she actually was baited into it, but a better player would have been aware of the Gamestate (as in, the Tusk in Annas GY) and thereby would have made a better call. That is *exactly* what this game is/should be about, better players make better decisions and thereby win more. It is not my job (more than that, I am told and encouraged *not* to interfere in players misplays) to take that advantage, granted by superior awareness, from the better players.
If players decide to make misplays, they have to live with it, even if they realize their mistake right afterwards.

Edited Philip Ockelmann (March 4, 2013 05:46:45 AM)

The guideline you'll hear from a lot of HL judges is this: if the opponent has had time to react in any manner, then the decision has been made.

In this example, the opponent had time to acknowledge the decision by acting on it - i.e., indicating that the target had been Exiled. No way I'm going to allow a “take-back” at Comp REL, and this clearly falls in that category.

If Anna had said, “I'll Exile that Pilgri… no, wait, Thragtusk is a much better choice”, then I'd be more inclined to allow it. Indecision while communicating can be OK (to a point, obviously); indecision after seeing your opponent's reaction is not OK.

One other guideline that you'll find often applies: if it's OK to allow the “take-back”, we (judges) will likely never know about it. Unless the opponent feels bullied, or is too new to tournaments to know better, they're going to object to a take-back that we probably shouldn't allow. Occasionally, opponents will object to a take-back that's fine, and that means we get to make a judgment call.

Yes, the risk of people being able to get away with the Magic equivalent of “string betting” is high here.