I've had a similar situation with a Goblin Guide trigger in Modern.

Andrew attacks, forgets trigger, Nancy takes damage. Turn passes.

Nancy untaps, upkeeps, draws. Cast Ponder. Calls judge. Asks to have the missed trigger put on the stack. Of course, she reveals a land.

This is PERFECTLY fine. As some of the more …bold… judges said, “If Andrew didn't want Nancy to manipulate her deck and get a free land draw…he needed to remember his triggers.”

As the previous poster commented, Nancy has no obligation to mention the triggers. And the missed trigger fix allows Nancy to decide.

Cheating requires an action to fit three criteria and the first of them is that the action should be an offense.

Missed Trigger is indeed an offense, and intentionally missing own triggers may be Cheating. However, allowing an opponent to miss a trigger is never a Failure to Maintain Game State or (because it is never an offense) Cheating.

It is explicitely legal to not point out a triggered ability that was missed by an opponent. You can point out the triggered ability later.

The most relevant example of this is probably werewolves that will “spontaneously” transform after blockers were declared if the controller missed to transform them (usually “back”) at the right time.

But… Are we agree with “no MT, no Fix” if there aren´t creatures on bf???

Dec stone has no targets available
Dec stone isn´t change zone (exilie)
No impact in game

All the discusion is “only” if Dec stone may target something, right??

Originally posted by Iván R. Molia:

But… Are we agree with “no MT, no Fix” if there aren´t creatures on bf???

Dec stone has no targets available
Dec stone isn´t change zone (exilie)
No impact in game

All the discusion is “only” if Dec stone may target something, right??

I don't believe so. I believe the consensus is:

- Spell Queller controller gets MT - Detrimental Trigger
- DecStone controllet gets to cast his spell if he wants
- DecStone controller may choose Ormendahl as the target of DecStone if he wants.

The game state is slightly broken, and it would be optimal if the answer was that the DecStone can only target things that were on the battlefield when DecStone was supposed to have been cast, but that's not how the rules are written. Furthermore, as Mark said above, if Andrew (the Spell Queller controller) didn't want his Ormendahl to get exiled, he should have remembered his trigger at the proper time.

First, a disclaimer: this is very much a Corner Case™. However, there are a few points that deserve clarification here.

Most importantly: it is NOT Cheating to ignore an opponent's triggers, and it's legal to wait until a moment when you benefit from placing that trigger on the stack.
Be very careful when teaching this to players, so that they understand what triggers are, and that it's only OK to ignore something if it's your opponent's trigger. I've had too many cases where players ignore something because they think it's a trigger, or think it's like a trigger; I've even heard of players saying “it's OK to forget my triggers!”.
Also, as has been noted, it would be Cheating if the Spell Queller's controller intentionally ignored his own trigger.

The additional remedy text for Missed Triggers that talks about making choices that would not have been legal at the time the trigger should have resolved only applies to the trigger ability, not the incidental effects related to other objects that get dragged in during that trigger's resolution. In this specific case, the only effect we're looking at is “may cast that card without paying”. The fact that the card exiled by Queller has new options for its targeting is incidental.

Note: the original post only implied, and didn't specify, that it's Norman's Declaration in Stone; with that assumption, it's fine for Norman to point out the trigger and ask to put it on the stack after Andrew's Ormendahl can become the target of Declaration in Stone. Andrew won't be happy, but he missed that trigger - and yes, it's detrimental in this example, so he should receive the Warning for Missed Trigger.

One more observation: since players almost always put the exiled spell under the Spell Queller, it would be physically challenging, if not impossible, to sacrifice the Spell Queller and not notice the Declaration in Stone sitting there in the middle of the table. Then again, some people might store their exiled cards in the Red Zone, right? :p

d:^D

While this is often a discussion forum, and I've let discussion extend on this one for a while - make no mistake, it is not about reaching consensus. We now have an ‘O’fficial answer, and there's your “consensus”. :)

d:^D

Scott,

Does the answer change if there were no creatures on the battlefield when the Spell Queller's leave-the-battlefield trigger would have resolved? Would it then fall under the “no impact on game” clause?

Originally posted by Aaron Henner:

Does the answer change if

I'm really torn, there's so many great-but-snarky replies available to me, here. :)

Multiple choice, then; if you choose a snarky response, it's not my fault?
1) No.
2) The answer always changes if the circumstances change.
3) if Andrew owned the Declaration in Stone, and thus would be the one to choose whether or not to cast it when Spell Queller leaves the battlefield, then he could simply ignore it without it being an infraction - but because we can safely assume he chose not to cast it. The clause you're looking at - very much like that “no choices that couldn't be made back when” thingy - only applies to the trigger ability, not the specifics of the spell exiled by that trigger. So, no, not really.

d:^D

Scott,

The original scenario didn't specify whether or not there were other creatures on the battlefield, and didn't specify the owner of the Declaration in Stone. You broke down the scenario into sub-parts (based on owner), I see no difference between me also breaking it down. I was not changing the scenario. I was not even adding anything. I find your snark unwarranted.

OK, so an apology is in order for having a bit of fun at Aaron's expense.

I acknowledge that I didn't address all the various permutations that have been inserted into this discussion, except indirectly through the first sentence of my answer: it's a corner-case, but there's still some value therein. I focused on that portion of it.

Also, I do think that - humor aside - my snarky answer is also accurate.

d:^D

Thank you.
I'm still a little murky on applying “no impact” clause, but it is some guidance.

Thanks Uncle Scott for ‘O’. I wasn't excepted that, but it's nice to have it.
I agree that it's quite corner case but it answers broader question “If there is MT on opponent side, can I wait with bringing it to attention when it is more beneficial to me” that might pop up more often (at least at my area where I have few rules-lawyering players at comp. events). While I was aware that it will not be UC-Cheating due to similar scenario, I was not sure how to interpret additional remedy clause.

Originally posted by Aaron Henner:

Thank you.
I'm still a little murky on applying “no impact” clause, but it is some guidance.

Uncle Scott's reply was not entirely clear to me either, but if I may take a gander:

The difference is who decides what. If Andrew (who is the controller of Spell Queller and Ormendahl) also controls the DecStone which is exiled by Spell Queller, then Andrew controls everything: He controls the trigger, he controls the spell that would be cast off the trigger, and he controls all legal targets for the spell (this last part is less relevant, the first 2 parts are more relevant). In this case, if Andrew forgets his trigger, it is reasonable to assume he forgot it because, at the time, there were no legal targets (assuming we take the case of no legal targets) and he was just like “yeah, whatever, this stays in exile, not important”.

However, in the case where Andrew does not control DecStone (say Nicole controls it), then all of a sudden Nicole has to make a decision based on Andrew remembering his trigger. Thus, if Andrew does not remember his trigger, Nicole is not prompted to make her decision, even if she has no choices in that decision (a distinction: having a decision vs having choices for that decision; if Andrew forgets his trigger, Nicole does not have the former, while if Andrew remembers his trigger, Nicole does not have the latter, and the distinction is important). Andrew is not permitted to make Nicole's decision for her, even if that decision has vacuous choices, and hence the “this stays in exile because I can't cast it” is not Andrew's decision to make, even if it is the only legal option. Therefore, since Andrew did not prompt Nicole to make her decision, Andrew allows Nicole to jump the trigger as she did in this case. Furthermore, if Nicole is rules-savvy, Nicole knows that she can gain a benefit from not prompting Andrew to remember his trigger, in the way presented in this scenario, and Nicole is thus disincentivized to take her decision at the “correct” (i.e. when the trigger should resolve and Andrew should prompt her on it) time.

I think this is what Uncle Scott was trying to get at in his 3rd answer.

Edited Lyle Waldman (Jan. 11, 2017 10:48:27 AM)

I'm afraid I don't understand why this wouldn't fall under the “no impact” clause. The phrase from the IPG doesn't say that the trigger can't call for decisions made by the opponent, and in fact that seems to be a common usage for it (“each opponent sacrifices a creature”, when there are no creatures to sacrifice, etc). Now in this case the choices to be made are not a direct effect of the trigger, but the fact remains- the only possible outcome of the trigger resolving is for nothing to happen.

Moreover, not having this fall under the “no impact” clause leads us to allow the Declaration to target the Ormendahl, which should have been impossible if all the game rules were followed. While we generally aren't supposed to base our infractions on the later outcome on the game, it does provide a sanity-check to see if we're doing something that doesn't make sense. Norman is trying to rules-lawyer his way into a theoretically impossible situation, and allowing that to happen seems to go against a lot of general judging philosophy.