Welcome back to this week's Silver scenario. As always L3+'s please wait until Wednesday for your answers. Good Luck and think carefully about our new standard dominate friend Vivi.
You are the Head Judge of a Standard RCQ. Alice has 5 cards in hand and controls Vivi Ornitier with two counters. In her second main phase she taps her last mana, and activates Vivi’s ability generating 2 blue mana, and taps Vivi to cast Winternight Stories from her graveyard. She says "trigger, you take 1" and puts a 3rd counter on Vivi. Both players mark the life total change. She draws 3 cards and discards an Island and Spell Pierce.
Her opponent Nick perks up from thinking about his own plays and says “Wait how did you cast that? You activated Vivi precombat to cast Winternight Stories the first time. That's how it got it’s second counter. Judge! She didn't have the mana to cast Winternight Stories and I don’t know which cards in her hand she drew off of it!”
What do you do?
Edited Matt Muckle (Aug. 18, 2025 03:23:44 PM)
A: Alice receives a warning for a Game Rules Violation. Nick receives a warning for Failure to Maintain Game State.
I'm pretty much going to echo Dennis and Andrew here since you both were spot on.
Backup by returning Winternight Stories to the stack and untapping the mana used to cast it. Return the Spell Pierce and Island to hand. Pick 3 cards at random to add back to the top of the library from Alice’s hand. Remove a counter from Vivi and correct life totals. Untap Vivi. Untap the Island. Return Winternight Stories to the graveyard.
At first glance many might be wanting to issue a Hidden Card Error here because there are cards in Alices hand that don’t belong and we don’t know which ones. However, the root cause of this issue was publicly correctable in that Alice had to activate Vivi to get the mana. This is similar to the example of casting brainstorm with only green mana. We don’t want to incentivize opponents to not say anything in an attempt to get a harsher penalty. Thus if they can correct it before it happens and don’t, we issue a GRV instead.
Nick receives a FtMGS, as we want to remind him to pay attention and catch issues before they become a problem. We also want the ability to track if this is a repeat issue over the tournament that might require further investigation.
Edited Matt Muckle (Yesterday 12:41:08 PM)
I'd start by doing my best to reconstruct what scenario played out in reality. I'd try to verify the prior events of the turn by getting an account from each player. If Alice can reasonably demonstrate where the mana to cast the front half came from, or walk through how it happened on a previous turn, etc., then we don't have an infraction and can continue with the game.
If Nick is correct about this being an illegal second activation of Vivi that led to the casting of winternight stories, the infractions are Game Rules Violation - Warning for Alice, and Failure to Maintain Game State - Warning for Nick.
As there are random elements and multiple actions involved, we cannot perform a simple backup.
There is no applicable partial fix.
I'd consider a full backup. Given the standard format and how unlikely it is for there to be shuffle effects at play here, I believe that leaving the game state as-is would likely be significantly worse than backing up.
I would again verify the sequence of evetns with both players, talk through the backup process fully before executing, then back up to just before illegally casting the winternight stories:
(I've so far left out investigation for cheating for the sake of GPE discussion)
Edited Andrew Cropper (Aug. 18, 2025 03:56:19 PM)
I'd start by asking Alice if she activated Vivi's ability earlier in the turn. Nick clearly hasn't been spending his whole attention, and it's possible that he's confused the timeline of game actions here.
Assuming Alice did in fact activate the ability already in the precombat main phase, we're dealing with a Game Rule Violation. It might be tempting to think that this is Hidden Card Error, since Alice has extra cards in hand and we have no way of knowing which ones are the extras with publicly available information—but remember, it isn't Hidden Card Error if the opponent had the opportunity to intervene before it was committed, and Nick had ample opportunity to stop Alice after she activated Vivi's ability but before Winternight Stories resolved. Alice will receive a Warning for Game Play Error--Game Rule Violation and Nick a Warning for Game Play Error--Failure to Maintain Game State.
The root error here is that Alice illegally activated Vivi twice in a turn. This can't be fixed with a simple backup, nor does this fall under any of the partial fixes, so I'd consider a full backup. This backup would involve reversing card draws, so I'd check the board state for ways that Alice (or Nick) could change which cards are on the top of Alice's library—ways to shuffle, scry, surveil, mill, etc. (Ideally, after putting cards from Alice's hand back on top during the backup, she'll draw them again once the game resumes.) If the coast is clear, I'd describe the steps of the backup to the players before we actually perform the backup; while they can't appeal my ruling (since I'm the head judge), it's still good practice for making sure that everyone understands what's happening and gives the players a chance to point out anything I might have missed before we start moving cards around.
1) Alice moves Winternight Stories from exile to the stack.
2) Alice returns the discarded Island and Spell Pierce to her hand.
3) We take 3 cards at random from Alice's hand (if there were any cards in her hand that Nick knew were there before the Winternight Stories was harmonized, we exclude them from the selection here) and put them on top of her library.
4) Nick gains his 1 life back and Alice removes a +1/+1 counter from Vivi.
5) Alice untaps Vivi and the land that was tapped to cast Winternight Stories, and moves Winternight Stories to her graveyard.
One might say that since Alice tapped the land before activating Vivi, we should only back up to the moment of error and leave the land tapped with one mana in Alice's pool. I'd argue that the exact order that Alice did that batch of actions originally (tapping the land, activating Vivi, tapping Vivi, moving Winternight Stories from the graveyard to the stack) doesn't really matter, she could have easily done it in a different order to the same effect; it's covered by Out-Of-Order Sequencing, and it doesn't really make sense to back up some parts of the batch but not others.
After doing the backup, I'd give the players a time extension and have them resume play.
A: Alice receives a warning for a Game Rules Violation. Nick receives a warning for Failure to Maintain Game State.
I'm pretty much going to echo Dennis and Andrew here since you both were spot on.
Backup by returning Winternight Stories to the stack and untapping the mana used to cast it. Return the Spell Pierce and Island to hand. Pick 3 cards at random to add back to the top of the library from Alice’s hand. Remove a counter from Vivi and correct life totals. Untap Vivi. Untap the Island. Return Winternight Stories to the graveyard.
At first glance many might be wanting to issue a Hidden Card Error here because there are cards in Alices hand that don’t belong and we don’t know which ones. However, the root cause of this issue was publicly correctable in that Alice had to activate Vivi to get the mana. This is similar to the example of casting brainstorm with only green mana. We don’t want to incentivize opponents to not say anything in an attempt to get a harsher penalty. Thus if they can correct it before it happens and don’t, we issue a GRV instead.
Nick receives a FtMGS, as we want to remind him to pay attention and catch issues before they become a problem. We also want the ability to track if this is a repeat issue over the tournament that might require further investigation.
Edited Matt Muckle (Yesterday 12:41:08 PM)
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