Welcome back to the Knowledge Pool, this week we have a Silver scenario, that means L2s should wait until FNM before they join the discussion.

Alice is playing against Nicky in round one of a Standard PPTQ. Alice controls two untapped Plains and two untapped Mountains. Alice taps both mountains to cast Veteran Motorist and announces she will scry 2. Nicky confirms. Alice looks at the top two cards of her library and places both cards on the bottom of her library. A spectator watching the match notices Alice forgot to tap one of her plains when she cast Veteran Motorist and calls for a judge.

What do you do?

Edited Joe Klopchic (March 23, 2017 01:22:42 AM)

Since Alice have the mana for casting correctly the spell I would fix the
situation by backing up the play. Make Alice put the cards in the top of
the library in random order and put the veteran motorist into the stack
once again so that Alice can oay for the spe with the correct colour of
mana. And then resolve the spell normally. I would advise Alice and Nicky
to play more carefully in the future and warn them that repeat offenses of
the same kind will incur in a greater sanction next time. I would give
Alice GRV for not using the correct mana to cast the spell and FtmgS to
Nicky.

On Wed, Mar 22, 2017, 17:19 Eric Paré <forum-34340-0698@apps.magicjudges.org>
wrote:

> Welcome back to the Knowledge Pool, this week we have a Silver scenario,
> that means L2s should wait until FNM before they join the discussion.
>
> Alice is playing against Nicky in round one of a Standard PPTQ. Alice
> controls two untapped plains and two untapped mountains. Alice taps both
> mountains to cast Veteran Motorist
> <http://apps.magicjudges.org/api/autocard/?card=Veteran+Motorist> and
> announces she will scry 2. Nicky confirms. Alice looks at the top two cards
> of her library and places both cards on the bottom of her library. A
> spectator watching the match notices Alice forgot to tap one of her plains
> when she cast Veteran Motorist
> <http://apps.magicjudges.org/api/autocard/?card=Veteran+Motorist> and
> calls for a judge.
>
> What do you do?
>
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Ferran Jovell Megias

Ruling:
Alice has clearly committed a GPE-GRV for casting a spell with the incorrect mana. An example very similar to this is given in the IPG under GRV:

A. A player casts Wrath of God for 3W (actual cost 2WW).

so this is pretty clear-cut.

As for Nicky, a GPE-FtMGS fits best because she confirms Alice's spell without noticing the error. The IPG states that a FtMGS is given when the issue is “not caught within a time that a player could reasonably be expected to notice.” Nicky had time to check Alice's casting, and did not call it to attention (a spectator noticed) so this is FtMGS.

Fix:
Although casting a card with incorrect mana is an example from the IPG, no specific additional remedy is listed. A simple backup is given as an option. According to IPG 1.4:

Some remedies state a simple backup may be performed. A simple backup is backing up the last action completed (or one currently in progress) and is sometimes used to make another portion of the prescribed remedy smoother.

A backup here involves two actions: a scry, and a spell incorrectly cast. We first remove the bottom two cards of the library (since we can verify that these two were originally on top), and put them on the top of the library in a random order. Then, we backup through the casting of Veteran Motorist and have Alice cast the spell correctly.*

*Note: I am really having a hard time with this fix. I keep going back and forth between whether this backup would count as a “simple backup” since backing up through a scry could be too disruptive. I scoured all of the resources I have available to me, including this very helpful article (https://blogs.magicjudges.org/articles/2013/08/20/backups-embracing-the-rewind/) and I'm still not sure…

Just trying to clear things up. Would you make Alice cast Veteran Motorist? What if she now wants to make another play, would you let her?

No, Alice does not have the choice of not casting the spell – we don't want to backup past the error. Backups take the players back to the point of error – in this case, while Alice is in the middle of casting Veteran Motorist. According to IPG 1.4:

To perform a backup, each individual action since the point of the error is reversed, starting with the most recent ones and working backwards.

Veteran Motorist is currently being cast, and if you want to get really picky, we back up to step 601.2h of casting a spell:

601.2h The player pays the total cost in any order.

after which point the spell is legally cast and gameplay continues.

However, we can keep in mind that in some cases, opponents are generous to players and allow them to “back up” their decisions. Nicky may decide that she will allow Alice to “undo” casting the Veteran Motorist, but she is not obligated to do so. Although we as judges do not give the player the option to “back up”, the players may agree that this is acceptable, and do so. For example, if a newer player makes a choice that seems obviously ill-informed, and immediately asks to take it back (“Oh, oops! I forgot!”), the opponent may extend some grace and allow the player to undo his or her action. However, the opponent is not at all obligated to allow this. This “backing up” of the player's action is at the discretion of the opponent, and not our decision to make. If left up to us judges, the game remains at the point where the error was made, end of story.

Edited April Miller (March 23, 2017 12:17:27 PM)

Originally posted by April Keeler:

we back up to step 601.2h of casting a spell.

So since we haven't backed up to the point where mana abilities were activated, Alice has to keep the other Mountain tapped?

No, Alice can tap and untap lands to pay for the spell throughout the process of casting the spell – this is out-of-order sequencing so it's still fine.

I don't know if it's ok for me to interject quickly here, but I don't want too much of the wrong message getting out.
If we're rewinding a spell that was cast with incorrect mana, we rewind to the point before the player put the spell on to the stack. We don't generally force that player to use lands/mana they may have had other plans for.
If in this case, it means the player won't cast the spell, so be it. That's something we weigh up when we consider the rewind.

Originally posted by Sean Crain:

I don't know if it's ok for me to interject quickly here, but I don't want too much of the wrong message getting out.
If we're rewinding a spell that was cast with incorrect mana, we rewind to the point before the player put the spell on to the stack. We don't generally force that player to use lands/mana they may have had other plans for.
If in this case, it means the player won't cast the spell, so be it. That's something we weigh up when we consider the rewind.

Putting the spell on the stack was legal though. The illegality came from paying costs incorrectly, which happens pretty much last in the order of casting. As such, backing up to the point of actually paying the cost seems correct in this case.

Originally posted by Bernie Hoelschen:

Putting the spell on the stack was legal though. The illegality came from paying costs incorrectly, which happens pretty much last in the order of casting. As such, backing up to the point of actually paying the cost seems correct in this case.

Sure, however, we would only need to change the situation slightly in order for the player to NOT have the mana to cast it. What if the player doesn't have the right mana let's say 3 mountains and an Arid Mesa that got tapped for the “white”?

The player has already scried 2 to the bottom, if you back up, they get to crack a fetch and see new cards they may well “not” scry to the bottom. Would you in this case leave the game as is? I believe that I would.

I would point out, that the simple backup seems reasonable since I cannot imagine scenarios where the player would decide not to cast the motorist without my being okay with that… (After all, we already know they don't want the cards on the top enough to keep them them…so, not casting motorist is to draw one of them randomly).

I would like clarification on “back up to the point of the error” and the general rule that we don't make magic player pay costs… (in this case, cast the spell at all by using correct mana).

For purposes of backing up, we consider casting a spell as a one unified action. If you cast Terminate targeting Kor Firewalker we wouldn't force you to choose another target. We would back up whole spell.

In our situation finding infraction is simple - we have there GRV with a warning for Alice and FTMGS for Nicky.

Now we need to decide if backup is applicable. It's easy on technical part (we put two cards from bottom of library on top, Motorist goes back to hand and we untap two Mountains). Will it be too disruptive for the game? I don't think so, I assume Alice will replay Motorist correctly. So we should end up with ideal scenario when backing up results in that same line of play but without error.

GRV - W for AP and FtMGS for NAP.
In this case, we should not do a backup because it has a potential to disrupt the game flow.
We would not do a backup if AP had a shuffle effect, like Evolving Wilds. However, in this case AP doesn't have one, so why we shouldn't backup? Scrying is a pretty hard mechanic to backup generally. Like Sean Crain said, we can backup to the point, where mana was paid aka before the motorist was cast and the player do have a choice not to do so.

GRV - W for AP and FtMGS for NAP.
In this case, we should not do a backup because it has a potential to disrupt the game flow.
We would not do a backup if AP had a shuffle effect, like Evolving Wilds. However, in this case AP doesn't have one, so why we shouldn't backup? Scrying is a pretty hard mechanic to backup generally. Like Sean Crain said, we can backup to the point, where mana was paid aka before the motorist was cast and the player do have a choice not to do so.

Why the backing up is not shuffling the two cards into the random part of the library?
The answer assume that Alice will cast the card one more time, thus the backing up is good. But alice might not cast it one more time for she has already know the cards on the top.

Originally posted by yue xiao:

Why the backing up is not shuffling the two cards into the random part of the library?

IPG does not let to shuffle library when backing up if the library wasn't shuffled during the error.

Originally posted by MIPG:

To perform a backup, each individual action since the point of the error is reversed, starting with
the most recent ones and working backwards. Every action must be reversed; no parts of the
sequence should be omitted or reordered. If the identity of a card involved in reversing an action
is unknown to one of the players (usually because it was drawn), a random card is chosen from
the possible candidates. Shuffles are reversed by a single shuffle of the random portion of the
library after the rest of the backup is complete. A card that became legally known to only one
player after the error was committed is not considered random and is returned to the appropriate
location after the shuffle has been completed.