Welcome back everyone!  This week we’re tackling a GOLD question.  These questions are going to be more difficult situations that may have more than one answer that is correct under policy.  Please be kind and professional in your discussion even if you disagree, let us know how you arrived at your solution (what questions you might want to ask etc), and ultimately what you would do to fix it.  Everyone regardless of level is free to chime in immediately.

Also thanks @Garrison for sharing this situation that actually happened at an event.


You are the head Judge of a 10K run at competitive REL.

Nate, empty handed on UB Tempo, is playing against Alice who is at 2 life on Domain.  Alice controls a  Up the Beanstalk and Nate controls Faerie Mastermind .

Alice taps out to cast  Sunfall  and Nate says it resolves.  The players move their creatures to exile and Alice goes “Oh I have a Up the Beanstalk do you mind if a draw? It should have triggered”  Nate goes “yeah you can draw but if you drew a card then that means my Faerie Mastermind would have triggered so can I draw a card for that?”   Alice agrees and they both draw a card.

Nate draws a Negate  from the Mastermind trigger and calls you to the table and explains the situation.  Nate would like to know if they are allowed to cast the Negate to target the Sunfall they previously said resolved.

What do you do?

 

My gut reaction is sadness. My final reaction is Alice committed missed trigger, no penalty for either player, Nate may Negate Sunfall. 

 

I think the best way for me to start working this out is acknowledging what would have happened had a judge been called the moment the Beanstalk missed trigger was caught. Alice committed a Missed Trigger, and Nate is given the option to put it on the stack. In many cases Nate would say no, and the game would continue on. If this were a year or so ago, that would be the only option. More recently however, the IPG received an update to MT with what we could shorthand as the 'Chalice Backup.' From the IPG...

 

--If the player is in the process of, or has just completed, an action that indicates the trigger has been missed, and completing that action would change the effect of the trigger, a simple backup may be performed on that action. --

 

I think it's up for debate what exactly defines "changing the effect of the trigger," but I think that having a Faerie Mastermind trigger or not due to Sunfall would arguably change the effect of the Beanstalk draw. 

 

With that in mind, still in a mindscape where we've come to the table before Alice or Nate have drawn their cards, I think it acceptable to back up the Sunfall's resolution before putting the Beanstalk trigger on the stack. In this scenario, Alice draws a card, then Nate draws Negate from Faerie Mastermind, and we've established this as before the resolution of Sunfall. Nate is allowed to cast Sunfall.

 

That all said, the only difference here is they already drew the cards and may have worked in a more vague place on the stack to draw them. It’s my belief that, by both of them drawing a card and agreeing to it, that they performed a simple backup for us. Whether they realized it or not, we’ve reached the same point.

 

I have a sinking feeling that I could explain myself better, but am having difficulty doing so.

 

Edited Benjamin Christ (Sept. 9, 2025 03:51:31 PM)

Nate can play the negate

It seems pretty clear to me that the players decided to do a small rewind to resolve triggers properly. Are they allowed to do that? 

From the IPG general philosophy: "if a minor violation is quickly handled by the players to their mutual satisfaction, a judge does not need to intervene". This situation seems to fit perfectly, as missing a draw trigger is definitely a minor violation.

So we have resolved the triggers with Sunfall still on the stack (otherwise there would be no faerie mastermind in play to draw a card). Play resumes from here and Negate can be played.

Of note, this is the "proper" way things should have gone so I feel this is in no way unfair to either player. If we let the players draw the cards but not allow the negate we would be giving a significant advantage to Abby ( of note, the one who made the mistake).

Now, if they called me when Abby noticed the up the beanstalk trigger, I would have ruled a missed trigger after the sunfall resolved and would have gone through the usual "do you want your opponent to put it on the stack now...yadda yadda yadda", but this is not the case. The policies are there so we are consistent and don't get tempted to "fix" the game state, but once the players agree to bring the game back on track properly, we don't need to intervene. Sometimes it can have unforeseen consequences.

I believe leaving the game state as is would be ideal, as much as it would be detrimental for the UB Tempo player.

First thing to note is policy allows players to resolve issues themselves that they can mutually agree upon. This is a mutually agreed upon resolution for the missed triggers so one potential answer is leaving the game state as is because there is no more infraction to fix + the gain of this new information will drastically change decisions once reversed.  From IPG Section 1, "If a minor violation is quickly handled by the players to their mutual satisfaction, a judge does not need to intervene."

These players mutually agreed to resolve the Missed Trigger to their satisfaction, and the new gain of information, while beneficial to the UB Tempo player, should not be considered as argument for a backup. If a judge was called over about the Beanstalk trigger after Sunfall resolved, the UB Tempo player would have the option to put it on the stack, but without the Mastermind in play, most likely they would deny putting the trigger on the stack.

IPG section 1.0

If a minor violation is quickly handled by the players to their mutual satisfaction, a judge does not need to intervene.
If the players are playing in a way that is clear to both players, but might cause confusion to an external observer, judges are encouraged to request that the players make the situation clear, but not assess an infraction or issue any penalty.
In both these situations, the judge should ensure that the game progresses normally. 

It sounds like the players have agreed to resolve the situation themselves by performing a simple backup in order to put the triggers on the stack & resolve them.

and Alice goes “Oh I have a Up the Beanstalk do you mind if a draw? It should have triggered”
Nate goes “yeah you can draw but if you drew a card then that means my Faerie Mastermind would have triggered so can I draw a card for that?”
Alice agrees and they both draw a card.

The players have not acknowledged or represented the backup of Sunfall's resolution in their backup.
However in order for the triggers to occur as resolved, the players would have had to rewind before Sunfall.
I would tell the players "by resolving both draw triggers, you have returned the game state to where Sunfall is currently on the stack"
Nate would be able to cast their Negate

 

We [the judge community royal we] would handle things differently if we were called over to handle the missed trigger or attempt to reverse a decision - neither of which would have cause for a backup.
IPG 1.4 covers backing up, but we are not proposing a backup.
The players have already proposed & incompletely executed a mutually agreed upon backup, we are now clarifying the situation per IPG 1.0 and ensuring that the game progresses "normally".

 

Post edited several times for line break readability

Edited Benjamin Yao (Sept. 10, 2025 12:44:44 AM)

Originally posted by Benjamin Christ:

My gut reaction is sadness. My final reaction is Alice committed missed trigger, no penalty for either player, Nate may Negate Sunfall. 

 

I think the best way for me to start working this out is acknowledging what would have happened had a judge been called the moment the Beanstalk missed trigger was caught. Alice committed a Missed Trigger, and Nate is given the option to put it on the stack. In many cases Nate would say no, and the game would continue on. If this were a year or so ago, that would be the only option. More recently however, the IPG received an update to MT with what we could shorthand as the 'Chalice Backup.' From the IPG...

 

--If the player is in the process of, or has just completed, an action that indicates the trigger has been missed, and completing that action would change the effect of the trigger, a simple backup may be performed on that action. --

 

I think it's up for debate what exactly defines "changing the effect of the trigger," but I think that having a Faerie Mastermind trigger or not due to Sunfall would arguably change the effect of the Beanstalk draw. 

 

With that in mind, still in a mindscape where we've come to the table before Alice or Nate have drawn their cards, I think it acceptable to back up the Sunfall's resolution before putting the Beanstalk trigger on the stack. In this scenario, Alice draws a card, then Nate draws Negate from Faerie Mastermind, and we've established this as before the resolution of Sunfall. Nate is allowed to cast Sunfall.

 

That all said, the only difference here is they already drew the cards and may have worked in a more vague place on the stack to draw them. It’s my belief that, by both of them drawing a card and agreeing to it, that they performed a simple backup for us. Whether they realized it or not, we’ve reached the same point.

 

I have a sinking feeling that I could explain myself better, but am having difficulty doing so.

 

Apologies if I don't quite get the formatting right on a reply, forums aren't my strong suit. I noticed a typo. "Nate is allowed to cast Sunfall." should be "Nate is alowed to counter Sunfall."

Originally posted by Benjamin Yao:

It sounds like the players have agreed to resolve the situation themselves by performing a simple backup in order to put the triggers on the stack & resolve them.

The players have already proposed & incompletely executed a mutually agreed upon backup, we are now clarifying the situation per IPG 1.0 and ensuring that the game progresses "normally".

My question would be: when did the players explicitly agree to a simple backup, as opposed to agreeing to put the trigger on the stack now? It is very plausible that Alice is shortcutting calling a judge over to ask Nate if they want to put the trigger on the stack now, which Nate seemingly would have agreed to.

Originally posted by Abhi Vaidyanatha:

Originally posted by Benjamin Yao:

It sounds like the players have agreed to resolve the situation themselves by performing a simple backup in order to put the triggers on the stack & resolve them.

The players have already proposed & incompletely executed a mutually agreed upon backup, we are now clarifying the situation per IPG 1.0 and ensuring that the game progresses "normally".

My question would be: when did the players explicitly agree to a simple backup, as opposed to agreeing to put the trigger on the stack now? It is very plausible that Alice is shortcutting calling a judge over to ask Nate if they want to put the trigger on the stack now, which Nate seemingly would have agreed to.

To me, it all hinges on Nate drawing with Faerie Mastermind. The whole "Mastermind would still be on the battlefield" deal means that they are resolving this triggers with sunfall on the stack (which would be the "natural" course of action). Alice also agreed to that so they implicitly are doing a small backup as this is the only way this situation can happen

Originally posted by Francesco Falcone:

To me, it all hinges on Nate drawing with Faerie Mastermind. The whole "Mastermind would still be on the battlefield" deal means that they are resolving this triggers with sunfall on the stack (which would be the "natural" course of action). Alice also agreed to that so they implicitly are doing a small backup as this is the only way this situation can happen

Yeah agreed, this completely checks out. Nate very likely would have declined to put the trigger on the stack in a typical missed trigger judge call (with no Faerie), so this leaves the backup as the only possibility. After you figure that out, I think the hardest part of this call is the customer service aspect of clearly communicating to Alice why the Sunfall was able to be countered here. I can imagine a few versions of an improper explanation leaving Alice confused at what happened.

Thanks everyone for the great discussion.   I really love seeing us work together to reason out our answers.  Unlike other weeks there is no one right answer but just varying philosophical approaches to the problem.

 

As always these are very difficult and can be super nuanced based on the details.  Small information tidbits players might give us during an actual investigation may drastically change our decision.  I don't think any of the answers here are out of line with a reasonable fair decision.  Either way we decide will change the outcome of this game drastically which is why making sure players know to call us as early as possible when a problem is noticed is often best.


If you are curious how the actual situation was solved in situ Franscesco described it perfectly.

Great job everyone!