Here is a question that came up at a GPT I was judging. Dragonlord Dromoka is on the battlefield and its controller is tapped out, and the opponent quickly casts and resolves Anticipate in the end step. The player is fairly new to competitive magic and I do not suspect cheating.

It is fairly clear that this is a GRV and a Warning, but what is the fix, if any? The fixes from the IPG would be to either leave the board state as is, which seems to have a huge potential for abuse and to advantage the Anticipate player quite a bit, or to rewind this, taking the two cards form the bottom of the library and a random card from hand, shuffling them together, and putting them on top of the library, which seems problematic, especially if the Anticipate player chooses not to use the spell on their own turn. Neither option feels right to me, so I'm not sure exactly what is right here. Either fix leaves more cards incorrectly known than makes me comfortable, too.

I was spared this decision when the Anticipate player said that since he couldn't cast it in the end step, he just wanted to cast it in his upkeep anyway, so the “rewind” was just the same spell in the next turn before anything relevant happened. Given that this did not happen, though, what should the fix have been?

Edited Eliana Rabinowitz (June 14, 2015 09:11:42 PM)

I think you're right that rewinding would be problematic, and have a huge potential for abuse, for the reason you stated. The anticipate player might be happy at a random card going back, or he might want 2 of the 3 cards, and choose not to cast anticipate at all.

At the same time, I find it hard to believe the player cast and completely resolved a spell (that involves picking up his library to put cards on the bottom) without his opponent noticing. So I think his opponent is just as much at fault here.

For those reasons, I would be inclined to leave the game as is, give the penalty, (and potentially FtMGS, depending on discussion with the players) and have them play on, after reiterating that all spells should be confirmed by the opponent before resolving.

Well, the Dromoka player was tapped out and so was probably a bit less than attentive, and the Anticipate player resolved the spell very, very quickly , presumably because he saw that the other play was tapped out and so could not respond.

I guess leaving the board state as-is is the best choice, but that is still a massive advantage for the Anticipate player and also has an enormous potential for abuse. That mana he tapped to cast it is utterly useless with Dromoka on the battlefield, so he essentially gets a free Anticipate, which feels very abusable to me.

It does have huge potential for abuse, while there isn't much of a “fix” in this situation it's important to watch for this kind of thing throughout the rest of the tournament and if it keeps happening you might just have someone who is knowingly cheating.

I agree with Joe. Yes the non-activate player gained an advantage, but the alternative of rewinding feels much worse to me. If you suspect any kind of malicious intent, the whole scenario is different. As it stands, both players are responsible for the current game state since the activate player didn't immediately realize what was happening, and prevent anticipate from fully resolving. The activate player being tapped out and controlling Dromoka doesn't excuse them from paying attention for the remainder of their turn or their opponent's next turn.

Edited Arjun Gambhir (June 16, 2015 02:19:51 PM)