Salutations fellow judges,

To lead up to my question, here is the situation, I was discussing the handling of Missed Triggers with some other judges and I brought up the idea of there being unique but noteworthy cases where one would handle the missed trigger differently than normal (see the quoted & bolded text below).

If the triggered ability specifies a default action associated with a choice made by the controller (usually “If you don't …” or “… unless”), give the opponent the choice to resolve it choosing the default option. If the triggered ability is a delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of one or more objects defined when the ability was created, resolve it. When resolving these two types of abilities, the opponent chooses whether to resolve the ability the next time a player would get priority or when a player would get priority at the start of the next phase. These abilities do not expire and should be remedied no matter how much time has passed since they should have triggered.

The other judges I was talking with were not aware of this special case for missed triggers, I had to pull out a printed version of the most recent IPG and show them in order for them to believe me. After reading that segment of the IPG they couldn't think of a situation where this could be applied. I suggested a situation where an Obzedat, Ghost Council delayed trigger ability is missed and not caught until after an egregious amount of turns has passed (e.g. 10 turns). The other judges suggested that my interpretation is incorrect and if I was answering a judge call at a Competitive REL tournament where someone missed an Obzedat trigger 10 turns ago I would not put it on the stack but instead instruct the players to keep playing and do nothing.



I believe my interpretation of IPG section 2.1 (i.e. Game Play Error — Missed Trigger) is correct but I also accept the possibility of me misinterpreting the IPG, I ask you guys to shed light on this situation with thoughtful responses.

Thank You for taking the time to read this, and if you respond thoughtfully, thank you for responding as well.
Have a great day
Sincerely, Sam S.

From the IPG:

If the triggered ability is a delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of one or more objects defined when the ability was created, resolve it.

Obzedat's 2nd ability creates a delayed trigger to return it, which is a zone change trigger. The IPG says to resolve the trigger.

From the APIG:

For example, the delayed triggered abilities that return Aetherling and Obzedat, Ghost Council to the battlefield are included in this category. These triggers are necessary for the creatures’ controllers to be able to continue using them that game. This will be an important concept shortly. We will see in the next description details on how to “resolve it.”

Emphasis mine.

I believe the last sentence of the passage you quoted provides a pretty clear answer to your question:

These abilities do not expire and should be remedied no matter how much time has passed since they should have triggered.

That being said, it's rather unlikely for a trigger like this to remain missed for a long period of time. Players tend to notice fairly quickly when their 5/5 vanishes from the battlefield. To provide a bit of philosophy, here's the relevant quote from the AIPG:

Notably, the opponent gets to choose the “when,” but not the “if.” One reason for this has to do with the fact that many zone-change triggers are, as pointed out above, utterly vital to the continued use of the associated objects. If an opponent got to choose whether these triggers happened at all, this infraction might be a little too harsh on players who, for example, suddenly find their Aetherling exiled forever just because they forgot to return it last turn. From the previous section: “Triggered abilities are common and invisible, so players should not be harshly penalized when forgetting about one.” So, policy has to have some special consideration here.

Also of interest is that even though these abilities don’t expire, players are still under no obligation to remind the opponent of their existence. A player is perfectly within policy by remaining quiet for several turns despite having noticed that his opponent’s Obzedat, Ghost Council never returned from exile. And don’t forget the triggers on Pact of Negation and its buddies. The default action will be resolved even if it’s remembered two turns later.

If you're not aware of the Annotated IPG, it's “a line by line deconstruction of each sentence in the IPG. The IPG is a very dense document with very few extraneous words. Each sentence has meaning, and it’s the AIPG’s goal to call attention to the finer details hidden in those sentences.” You can find it here: http://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg/

Edited Isaac King (March 4, 2017 10:47:04 PM)

While Obzedat is an example, the classic example is Geist of Saint Traft. That Angel token just needs to go away, as soon as it's noticed. Same goes for a lot of tokens that go away at end of turn - like Chandra, Flamecaller's 3/1 Elementals.

d:^D

Sadly, Prized Amalgam return-from-graveyard ability also is a fitting example.

Edited Francesco Scialpi (March 5, 2017 03:10:37 AM)

I think some of the confusion might come from conflating the MT policy in this case with the GRV policy in similar cases. We do have a partial fix involving an object missing a required zone change, but in that case there is a caveat stating not to perform the fix if it would have a substantial impact on the gamestate (and after 10 turns of playing as if the card weren't there, I'd be inclined to see the impact as “substantial” as well).

Not that the GRV policy applies to the MT scenario, but this is probably the source of the confusion over how to handle missed delayed zone-change triggers.

Edited Andrew Keeler (March 6, 2017 09:59:46 AM)