One thing we haven't consider is that (strange and all) a player can tap his/her land to add mana to the pool, have the mana there and then activate the second ability (draw), them the other player point out that the cost the ability is tap three zombies and lose 1 life. And after all of this the player still has 2 mana in the pool.

It may be strange but possible or am i wrong?

Theoretically, that's possible.But you and I and everyone else knows that the player didn't float two mana. So we shouldn't try and use that as some sort of solution or fix. That's not fair on anyone.

Side note - when players have mana floating in their mana pool, they are obliged to announce how much mana, and what type, whenever they pass priority. So if the player tapped two swamps, said “activate the draw ability”, tapped 3 zombies, and drew a card, all without announcing the two black mana, that would be a Game Rule Violation (Comp Rules 106.4a).

Originally posted by Ricardo Ruiz:

One thing we haven't consider is that (strange and all) a player can tap his/her land to add mana to the pool, have the mana there and then activate the second ability (draw), them the other player point out that the cost the ability is tap three zombies and lose 1 life. And after all of this the player still has 2 mana in the pool.

It may be strange but possible or am i wrong?

Many many years ago, it used to work that way.

- Player taps two lands, then casts Terror on White Knight -> Terror back in your hand, two mana floating in your pool.

(I can remember at least one match at Italian Nationals, that was decided by mana burn following an illegal play).

- Player announces Terror on White Knight, paying two mana -> Terror back in your hand, untap your lands.

Nowadays, the action of tapping for mana and casting a spell is considered to be “atomic” (as in ACID properties of a transaction, if you know what I mean), i.e. “all or nothing”.

Honestly, I think it's way better now.

Mark and Francesco i totally agree with you

I'm just saying that since nether ability was announce, it is plausible (almost not really, but plausible still) to have this scene working.

If we go by how we cast spells and abilities, announcing them is the first step, that didn´t happens here so if we go to the star of the problem we don´t know what ability Antoine is casting, and the argument that it is clear that it is the first one vanish on the spot.

Them we have to backup to the point of announcing the ability and here we have nothing tap, one card less and a horrible backup. When clearly the best solution at this point is correcting the payment of the ability that was correctly executed (Antoine even subtracted the life)

Edited Ricardo Ruiz (July 3, 2017 08:49:10 AM)

My final 2c on this one.

My view on HCE (or DEC) vs GRV questions has always boiled down to one heuristic:

What was the first illegal action visible to the opponent or a spectator that the player took?

If that action itself was the HCE, then its HCE. If it was not, then it is GRV.

Visible to the opponent/spectator is very important here. This has been repeated many times in this and other threads: the opponent had no way of knowing anything was going wrong until the card was drawn. Not verbally announcing which ability was activated is not illegal, and partially paying for the wrong ability is not clearly illegal, as finishing the payment is possible. From outside AP's mind in this scenario, the illegal thing is the drawn card, so this is HCE.

The one misstep that I think many may be taking is the fact that we are rewinding the rest of activating the ability. If this is just HCE, why apply the rewind all the way?

This is because after we apply the HCE fix, AP still hasn't legally activated an ability, and we aren't going to force him to finish paying for an ability. The cleanest end result is to roll this fact into the fix, and untap the lands and creature. It's completely possible to just apply the HCE and then wait for the player to ask what they are allowed to do, but it is certainly a better player experience to apply the rewind and get the game back to an understandable state.

With Joe's last post I think we can close this.

If anyone has got a justification for re-opening, that isn't just going over what was previously said please use the “Report” link