Hey there folks, welcome to our newest installment of the Knowledge Pool! This scenario is at a silver level, meaning it requires a decent grasp of policy but doesn't delve deeply into the philosophy of said policy. Without further ado, here's the situation. Good luck!

Abel is playing in a Modern GPT against Nick. Abel taps 2 swamps and 2 forests, declares ‘Cast Garruk Wildspeaker’, and puts a card from his hand into play. He then says ‘plus 1’, untaps both swamps, and passes the turn. After Nick draws for turn, he is evaluating the board state and notices that the card in play is Garruk Relentless, not Garruk Wildspeaker. The players call for a judge, and when you arrive you verify that there is in fact a Garruk Wildspeaker in Abel's hand, and he simply put down the wrong card. How do you handle the situation?

Abel made a mistake of dexterity by placing the wrong card on the table. If
I was called over immediately, I'd issue no penalty and have Abel swap out
the Garruks.
However, quite a bit has happened since this error was made, and both
players have had ample time to notice it. In the given scenario, I'd rewind
to the casting of Garruk, allowing Abel to put Wildspeaker on the table in
place of Relentless. Because Abel announced Wildspeaker and intended to
play Wildspeaker, putting Relentless onto the battlefield was the first
illegal action here.
Abel receives a warning for a Game Rule Violation, and Nick receives a
warning for Failure to Maintain Gamestate. Both players are reminded to
play more carefully and may more attention to the board state.
On Jun 26, 2013 8:02 AM, “Patrick Vorbroker” <

Hard call really. If it was caught immediately the easy fix would be to just swap the Garruks, as I'm fairly sure dropping the other Garruk was an error of dropping it by accident. The most I'd assess is a GRV, and even then probably not. It's clear Wildspeaker was intended and the card was in hand at the time, and errors of dexterity happen.

However, a good amount of time has passed in this case, so as nothing else has really happened, I'd rewind to the point of the error: Abel putting the wrong Garruk into play. Issue Abel a warning for GRV, and Nick a warning for Failure to Maintain Game State, as he didn't point out the illegal play.

@Charlotte: Is it illegal and a GRV to cast a Garruk Relentless but to declare it as a Garruk Wildspeaker if every other action taken when casting the spell was legal? What is binding about how Abel spoke when casting the spell? To provide some similar examples, what do we do if:

a) Abdel taps UU, says “Cast Negate targeting Jace the Mind Sculptor”, then puts a Counterspell into their graveyard? Both players play as though Jace is countered, play then continues for a turn. Abdel still has Negate in hand.
b) Abdel casts a morph, and says “Cast Akroma”. Play continues until after his opponent draws, then the caster taps 3RRR and reveals Zoetic Cavern. Abdel has akroma, angel of wrath in hand.

I don't really understand where in policy it allows us to consider an otherwise legal spell cast illegal because of what the player utters, and I feel this as a precedent is dangerous in the way it could be abused or interpreted. As a result, I think the first illegal action in this case would have been the Garruk “+1” and if I were to rewind, I would rewind to that point.

Edited Darcy Alemany (June 26, 2013 05:56:22 PM)

Darcy: Certainly it is. You must announce what spell you are casting
and put it on the stack. (601.2a)

If you announce A and put B on the stack, that's a GRV.

On 27 June 2013 06:57, Darcy Alemany
<forum-4776-aa02@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

Why is it legal then to cast a spell without saying what spell it is? And what about the situations I proposed, are you saying we should rewind in those situations as well?

Edited Darcy Alemany (June 26, 2013 06:51:38 PM)

Darcy: It's not, technically, but no one plays technically perfect magic.
If a player just drops a card onto the table without announcing it, but
chooses targets etc and pays the right cost, then we assume it's what he
wants to cast.

If Nick really thought and played as if the physical card was Wildspeaker, I think rewinding the game state, which includes a draw, is more dispruptive than simply replacing the correct physical card, assessing GRV to active player and FTMGS to nonactive.

Honestly, if either player were to object to this fix, that would suggest that bigger problems exist, as they were aware that the card in play was not Wildspeaker.

Would a Head Judge be deviating from policy to act this way?

If we assess a GRV we have one of two options.

1) full rewind
2) leave the game state as is.

any other (partial) fixes are deviating from policy

Hi Cameron

It would be a deviation, but I personally do not see a problem with it. Both players acted as if it was Wildspeaker and to all intents and purposes that is exactly what the card is. They even activated the Wildspeaker ability!

I would do as you suggested and switch the card out. AP gave some info to NAP about having Relentless in hand. Oh well, he should more careful in the future.

I am not even sure I would assess a penalty. Sometimes the easy fix and common sense solution is the right one, even if it is a slight deviation from policy.

Policy is there to ensure a consistent ruling from all judges and while policy can't cover every corner case this one doesn't meet the “significant and exceptional” circumstances requirement of the IPG for deviation. I agree with Charlotte in this case, rewind to the casting of Garruk and let him play the Wildspeaker like he intended. There has certainly been an error in this instance and both players have had ample time to detect the problem; GRV warning to Abel and FtMGS warning to Nick are appropriate.

Abel has commited a GPE-GRV for failing to correctly pay the cost to activate an ability. He also untapped two lands when he wasn't supposed to. These are two separate violations but only one penalty applies because the root cause is the same. Nick has commited GPE-F2MGS because he didn't notice the illegal action until later on.

If I were head judge, I would back up the game to the point when the planeswalker resolved. Return a card at random from Nick's hand to his deck, tap his lands that became untapped, tap Abel's 2 swamps, and fix the number of loyalty counters on his Garruk. The game continues and Abel has priority from there.

Abel didn't commit any rule violations by announcing Garruk Wildspeaker and accidentally playing Garrul Relentless instead. He put a spell on the stack and legally paid all costs to cast that spell. CR 601.2 doesn't say anything about players being required to correctly say the name of a spell or ability they're putting on the stack. I'd just give him a caution that he needs to be more careful when he's verbally announcing spells he's going to cast. Also I would make a note of this with the HJ or team lead incase Abel does something like that again.

(EDIT: Oh yeah. Both players get warnings for their infractions and a time extension for the investigation :)

Edited Eric Paré (June 27, 2013 12:17:01 AM)

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 1:15 PM, Eric Paré <
forum-4776-f251@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

> CR 601.2 doesn't say anything about players being required to correctly
> say the name of a spell or ability they're putting o n the stack. I'd just
> give him a caution that he needs to be more careful when he's verbally
> announcing spells he's going to cast.


The PCP has something to say about declaring the identity of a card in a
public zone incorrectly.


–
Gareth Pye
Level 2 Judge, Melbourne, Australia
Australian MTG Forum: mtgau.com
gareth@cerberos.id.au - www.rockpaperdynamite.wordpress.com
“Dear God, I would like to file a bug report”

I second the call for a rewind. I know lots of us don't like to back up card drawing, but the procedures for doing so exist for a reason. Since the casting of the Garruk, there has been one play (Abel's illegal untap), and a couple of game actions that happen automatically (Nick's untap and draw). If 3 things happening qualifies as “too much for backup”, then I don't think you can argue for backing up virtually anything.

As for where to back up to…that's tricky. Errors of dexterity do happen, and I would be inclined to excuse them if they were caught immediately. But this very clearly wasn't caught in a timely fashion, and as such allowing a take-back-sy has a lot of potential for abuse. For example, what if Abel was hoping the difference wouldn't be noticed for a couple turns? Then this would net him a free loyalty counter on his Relentless. I would thus only force a backup to right before the illegal +1. At that point, I would treat the Wildspeaker/Relentless mixup like any other attempted take-back: if Nick wants to let Abel take back his most recent play, I'll let it go, but if Nick doesn't want to allow it, then the Relentless stays.

Edited Colleen Nelson (June 27, 2013 12:47:49 AM)

I would assess a GRV to Abel and FtMGS to Nick.

Policy (for GRV) says “If the error was discovered within a time frame in which a player could reasonably be expected to notice the error and the situation is simple enough to safely back up without too much disruption to the course of the game, the judge may get permission from the Head Judge to back up the game to the point of the error”. I definitely think this fits the category of simple enough to safely back up. However, the information we have gives us a deceptive reason to consider not backing up. What backing up does is allow Abel to make different decisions between before casting the Garruk and Nick's draw step (i.e., make a beast instead of untap lands). Assuming both players thought it was Wildspeaker, this seems surprisingly reasonable and was my first instinct, despite being a deviation from policy and, as Alex Mullins mentioned, not being “significant and exceptional” in the “he just flipped over a table with 3 matches on it” kind of way. But, here's the catch:

If we just swap Garruks, Nick now knows that Abel has Garruk Relentless in hand. This calls for the use of more information. If Abel publicly showed the judge that he had the Wildspeaker in hand and wants it to be in play, this seems like an acceptable consequence. However, if the judge came over and asked to see or coincidentally saw the contents of Abel's hand, then this becomes more difficult. In this latter case, swapping the Garruks provides what feels like unreasonable information. Also, if we set the precedent for swapping in that case, then not swapping should tell Nick that Abel doesn't have Wildspeaker in hand. Having our fix necessarily give a player information on another player's hand seems bad. It is for this reason, and for now this reason only, that I would actually back everything up to before the Garruk was cast and let Abel either cast the Wildspeaker or do something else, even though this gives him information about what Nick will do if he casts Wildspeaker and untaps two Swamps.