Welcome back to the Knowledge Pool. This week we have another Silver scneario, so as always, L2s should wait until Friday to jump in. Enjoy!

Amy is playing against Nigel in a Modern PPTQ, with her Eldrazi deck. She controls an Eldrazi Monument, an Eldrazi Displacer, and an Eldrazi Skyspawner, and several lands. Amy untaps, draws, then attacks with all of her creatures. While thinking about blockers, Nigel notices that Eldrazi Monument should have triggered and calls for a judge. Amy admits to missing her trigger, but also asks if she can use her Displacer to blink her Skyspawner to make a token to sacrifice. What do you do to fix the situation, and can Amy do what she wants?

Edited Jeff S Higgins (Jan. 16, 2018 10:17:14 AM)

Assuming Amy didn't miss it on purpose, she has committed a GPE - Missed Trigger, and since Eldrazi Monument is a detrimental trigger, it will upgrade to a Warning for Amy.

Nigel can choose whether or not to put the Eldrazi Monument trigger onto the stack immediately.

When it resolves, Amy must sacrifice a creature that would have been a legal choice if the trigger had resolved at the correct time, so she cannot blink the Skyspawner to create a token to sacrifice. Since she can sacrifice a creature, the Eldrazi monument “if you can't” section doesn't apply. (Added in edit).

Once Amy has sacrificed a creature, combat continues where they left off.

Edited Callum McFadyen (Jan. 10, 2018 06:09:59 PM)

I mostly agree with Callum's answer as described above. I'm just going to go with a tad different answer.
Missed trigger - Warning since detrimental. Nigel gets the choice of the trigger going on the stack or not.
Where my answer differs is : Is she allowed to blink the skypsawner. My answer is going to be yes. Yes she is allowed to respond to the trigger going on the stack. Therefore she can blink the skyspawner with her eldrazi displacer and create a token (eldrazi scion). However, she will not be able to choose the token for the sacrifice because the IPG disallow that “if the ability instructs a player to
sacrifice a creature, that player can't sacrifice a creature that wasn't on the battlefield when the ability
should have triggered”
That is my answer!

Edit : Sentence structure and general grammar.

Edited Maxime Emond (Jan. 10, 2018 09:13:37 PM)

You may be right, Maxime. I wasn't sure if she could, as I am not sure if the game considers a blinked Skyspawner the same object. It probably should, since it is from a ruling perspective not a normal game perspective, but I am not 100%.

My reasoning is twofold Callum, both from other judging experience.
The first one came up in a standard PPTQ where a player forgot his The Scarab God 2nd Trigger (the graveyard one). As everybody probably know by now this is a required zone changed trigger, and even if missed it has to be resolved. the keyword here is resolved.

The IPG states : “Three types of triggered abilities do not expire and resolve immediately if they are discovered: (one of which is) A delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of one or more objects defined when the ability
was created. For this trigger, the opponent chooses whether to resolve the ability the next time a
player would get priority or when a player would get priority at the start of the next phase.”

Notice how the IPG uses the word “resolve” twice. This means that the trigger ability is resolved without using the stack, therefore you don't have time to respond to it. For the current scenario, the IPG states that “If the triggered ability isn’t covered by the previous two paragraphs, the opponent chooses whether the
triggered ability is added to the stack”

the fact it is added to the stack means the IPG specifically wanted players to be able to respond to it, much in the same way as activating a blinkmoth/inkmoth nexus in responce to a glimmervoid missed trigger is a perfectly fine solution.

That is why i'm saying that she can respond by blinking the Skyspawner, but she wont be able to choose the token since it was not on the battlefield at the time the trigger from the Eldrazi monument would have resolved.

In your Scarab God example though, they can just resolve it in the next phase, giving them a chance to do something beforehand. I see what you mean though, can we get a confirmation on the fact that the delayed trigger resolving doesn't get put on the stack? I had always assumed it did.

Originally posted by Maxime Emond:

the fact it is added to the stack means the IPG specifically wanted players to be able to respond to it, much in the same way as activating a blinkmoth/inkmoth nexus in responce to a glimmervoid missed trigger is a perfectly fine solution.

That situation is a pretty sad outcome indeed.
Here is an interesting read:

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/whatsupdocs/2015/03/12/pt-fate-reforged-head-judge-report/

I agree that you can activate nexus in response to glimmervoid missed trigger, and I would think twice (or thrice) before deviating, since I am not a high level judge.

Still, I wouldn't bring this situation as an example of “perfectly fine”.

Thanks for the responses this week. Once again we had a quick correct answer.

Callum McFadyen is correct.

Amy receives a warning for Missed Trigger since Eldrazi Monument trigger is detrimental. The trigger may look like it has a default action, but since it says “if you can't” instead of “if you don't”, the trigger will go on the stack instead of being resolved immediately. Ask Nigel if he wants the trigger to go on the stack, and if he does, Amy can respond to the trigger. In regards to Amy's question, the IPG says “No player may make choices involving objects that would not have been legal choices when the ability should have triggered.” This means that the additional new token will not be a legal choice, and since Eldrazi Skyspawner becomes a new object when it changes zones, it won't be a legal choice either.