Originally posted by Henning Garus:

For the sake of further argument. How about leaving the gamestate as is,
why do we consider that “substantially worse” than backing up?

Strategically speaking, player has a choice for his turn:
casting a 5-drop, at the expense of not playing an ETB tapped land, that will sit in his hand,
or playing an ETB tapped land, at the expense of not casting a 5-drop.

If you leave everything as is, player is hitting two birds with one stone. No good.

Originally posted by yue xiao:

I am Yue Xiao's team too.

About OoOS, an illegal is not free to be an infraction.

Although there is a OoOs (playing the land and the creature tapped), there is no way to change the order so that it becomes legal, so the actions will not be protected by MTR 4.3.

Note also that making a OoOs means stating that your actions have been done in the right order, even if you do not do it, just to get the result.

Still, CR 720 talks about illegal actions, and illegal action is only cast the creature, not playing the land either.

So, back up to the point of error is to go back to soon after the tapped land has entered the battlefield.

Edited Gabriel Jose Pires Soares (Dec. 15, 2017 08:36:48 PM)

Originally posted by Henning Garus:

Will Bumgardner <forum-40318-9cb9@apps.magicjudges.org> schrieb am Do. 14.
Dez. 2017 um 19:48:

> To go a different direction (for discussion purposes), could you just
> replace the wrong land with a Mountain? It's obvious that that's what he
> wanted to play. In fact, he couldn't have done anything else because that's
> all he has in his hand.
>

While this looks like a reasonable fix and is indeed a reasonable fix at
regular REL, it is not on the list of applicable Partial fixes for a GRV.
Which leaves us with two choices: Either perform a backup or leave the game
state as is. The error was caught pretty early, nothing much has happened,
so a backup seems reasonable.

The only question remaining is how far we go back. Which leads to the
question when the GRV occurred: Either AP played a tapped land untapped or
they cast a spell and didn’t pay the correct cost.

Putting a land onto the battlefield tapped is regularly done as a shortcut
for playing and tapping an untapped land, so I could see an argument for
going back to AP having the land in hand.

For the sake of further argument. How about leaving the gamestate as is,
why do we consider that “substantially worse” than backing up?

There is an opportunity cost, in this case, to playing a “not Mountain”. Leaving the board state as is mitigates that cost, and leaves the player in a slightly stronger position going forward. I don't really see a reason to not backup in this scenario, it's just a question of where to back up to.

I think the first thing that we need to identify is what thought process was going through Ames' head when they played their land. Was this a dexterity issue that resulted in the wrong land entering play? Were they incorrect with their interpretation of the Stone QuarryGlacial Fortress. We are left with the question of what is the best fix here?

1. No penalty, fix to the correct land, agree with the reality that this was a dexterity error.
   
2. GRV which stemmed from having a land enter the battlefield untapped, when it should have entered tapped. Backup to prior to the land being played (note, this is functionally identical to 1 except we are assessing a penalty).
   
3. GRV which stemmed from casting a creature without having the mana to pay for it, rewind to just before the spell was cast.
   

The interesting thing, and something that could be explained, is that had the player vocalized what they were doing as they took the physical actions, it makes this all much easier. If Ames had stated “Mountain, Monstrosaur, swing for 5” we have a clear line of play and we can adhere to that very easily (and rule that scenario 1 was reality, and just swap the lands).

With that not being the case, I feel that it's pretty obvious what the player intended to do and their response of having the cards in their hand getting mixed up is more likely than foul play. I am most interested in solution 1 here as a judge, pending the answers to my questioning of the players. My next best solution is option 2, as it is obvious if that land was played it was played untapped with the intent of tapping it for mana immediately.

I am, however, not interested in ruling this is OoOS nor an illegal shortcut (which maybe if it had been vocalized as “Glacial Fortress Monstrosaur swing 5”). I am also not interested in assessing a FtMGS here.

Let's try and put this scenario in a different way.

Ames plays Glacial Fortress untapped, and thinks.
You note that the land should enter tapped.

Would you let Ames put Glacial Fortress back in his hand, and play a Mountain, or would you rule that Ames has played Glacial Fortress, and he must tap it?

Edited Francesco Scialpi (Dec. 19, 2017 04:59:15 AM)

Originally posted by Francesco Scialpi:

Let's try and put this scenario in a different way.

Ames plays Glacial Fortress untapped, and thinks.
You note that the land should enter tapped.

Would you let Ames put Glacial Fortress back in his hand, and play a Mountain, or would you rule that Ames has played Glacial Fortress, and he must tap it?

In the first case, while the player did not vocalize “mountain, monstosaur” their actions (tapping 4 + playing 1 land tapped together to cast a 5 mana spell) coupled with three mountains in hand strongly suggest that this was a dexterity error. As Chris noted above, if the player had simply said “mountain” we can apply a dex fix and swap those two lands without applying an infraction+penalty. Keep in mind also that Netty is tapped out–Ames has very little reason not to play their only spell (a 5 mana spell) on turn 5.

In the “Glacial Fortress–*pause*” situation, we don't have any reason to believe there is a dexterity error, because there is such a wide window between decisions and because nothing about the player's actions suggest they thought the Glacial Fortress was a mountain. In that case, they are likely wanting to get access to white mana and made the mistake of thinking it would be untapped for whatever reason (perhaps forgetting they don't control another plains).

At the core of this question for me is an issue of language barriers: not every player refers to mountains as “mountains.” It's unreasonable for me to apply the dexterity fix only in cases where “mountain” was said because that fix then only works when both players speak the same language (or understand the words spoken in a particular language). In this case, the physical actions speak loudly enough that I believe we can swap the mountain for the glacial fortress confidently.

***

All of this said, for folks considering this question, ask yourselves what benefit the player gains from playing this land now. Though we always “assume no cheating” for KP, I like to think on my own about what questions I might ask to get to that point, and what information would be relevant to my investigation. AP has no play lined up for next turn, so to have 6 lands, on curve, with both colours and still get to play monstrosaur this turn is relevant.

Thanks everyone for the great discussion over the past few weeks. I think we're ready for an answer.

I'll start with Chris Wendelboe's excellent analysis.

I think the first thing that we need to identify is what thought process was going through Ames' head when they played their land. Was this a dexterity issue that resulted in the wrong land entering play? Were they incorrect with their interpretation of the Stone QuarryGlacial Fortress. We are left with the question of what is the best fix here?

1. No penalty, fix to the correct land, agree with the reality that this was a dexterity error.
   
2. GRV which stemmed from having a land enter the battlefield untapped, when it should have entered tapped. Backup to prior to the land being played (note, this is functionally identical to 1 except we are assessing a penalty).
   
3. GRV which stemmed from casting a creature without having the mana to pay for it, rewind to just before the spell was cast.
   

This is an internet forum, and not a real live call, so its difficult to read the situation exactly clearly, but my intention when writing this scenario, and what actually happened when this call happened, is that Ames meant to put an untapped land into play, but in haste, picked the wrong one out of his hand.

This is a dexterity error, and even though it may be nice to apply Chris's option 1 answer, it isn't really a policy-supported solution. We should especially be aware of Chris's parenthetical: option 2 is game-wise identical to option 1, so if we do have a policy supported option, we should take that.

So KP's answer is that this is a GRV. We need to rewind to the point of the error. The error was putting a land into play untapped that should have been tapped. We back up by undoing combat damage if it was actually recorded, returning Monstrasaur and Glacial Fortress to Ames's hand, and untapping Ames's other four lands. Ames receives a Warning for Game Rule Violation, Netty receives a warning for Failure to Maintain Game State.


I want to point out one further option that was discussed when this originally came up, but not in the thread. One could argue that there is a point in the game where Ames has chosen to play Glacial Fortress, but it is still in his hand, waiting to be put onto the battlefield. If it is possible to rewind to that exact point in time, then we could rewind there, and Glacial Fortress would enter the battlefield tapped. My understanding of the rules makes me believe that this is not a legal place to rewind to, but I'll leave that for further discussion.

As with other Gold threads, I'll lock this here and if anyone wants to continue discussion, feel free to open a thread in the Competitive REL forum.