I had a fun one today. I would love to get other's opinions.

Aleesha passes the turn. Natasha casts Encase in Ice on Aleesha's Thunderbreak Regent. The dialog was as follows…

N: Encase your Regent
A: Sure, Regent trigger.
N: Take three.

Natasha then untaps. Before drawing for turn, she surveys the board, and sees that the Thunderbreak Regent is enchanted, but untapped.

N: You forgot to tap the Regent.
A: No, you missed your trigger.
A&N: Judge!

J: Hi, what's up?
N&A: Tells the story
J: (to N) Did you say anything about tapping before your upkeep?
N: No, I thought that would be implied by saying, “I'm encasing your Regent.”
J: (gives ruling)

Before I give my ruling (and the head judge's because you know this gets appealed), I'm curious to see how others would rule in this position.

OK, I can't use spoiler tags to hide our ruling, so I'll post it after we get a few responses.

Cheers

Edited Bret Siakel (April 11, 2015 05:41:57 PM)

I'd go with missed trigger here. It's the triggers controller who is resposible to make sure their opponent takes the appropriate action at the appropriate time. That didn't happen here, so the trigger is missed.

With what has been said, I would rule and uphold that the trigger has been missed.

This feels analogous to Living Weapon triggers; you have to announce it.

This is a trigger that results in a visible change to the game state. That
change didn't happen when it was supposed to, so the trigger was missed.

Originally posted by Charlotte Sable:

This is a trigger that results in a visible change to the game state. That
change didn't happen when it was supposed to, so the trigger was missed.

There is the clause in there about making it clear what would happen, but there's no indication that “tap your Regent” was said.

So I'm on missed trigger as well.

I'm assuming because it wasn't mentioned that it wasn't already used that way previously in the match? If they'd used the same language and just fixed it themselves earlier in the match, then that'd change things a little.

Chris - I was a judge that originally took the call with Bret. I can neither confirm nor deny that it was the first Encase in Ice cast in the match.

As either floor or head judge I would also rule GPE-Missed Trigger with no Warning for the reasons stated above.

It's frustrating for NAP but so many of these he-said-she-said issues come up because of poor player communications. NAP assumed something that AP did not. Sorry NAP, hopefully next time you'll communicate more clearly.

Edited Chris Vlastelica (April 13, 2015 10:02:30 AM)

Urgh - this feels like the most rules lawyery of rules lawyery situations. Almost exactly the opposite of what the old new Missed Trigger policy was striving for.

The Missed Trigger policy strives to make it clear when a player has missed a trigger. Any subset of rules will have angles that people can shoot, and angles that people could shoot but choose not to.

As an example, I remember an era when people would frequently not use anything to represent a Germ token for their Batterskull (or other Living Weapons–yes there are others). Then, our policies changed and this became an angle that people could shoot, and now frequently do. Players evolved and adapted to this, and now most players understand that they need to put a token out there for the trigger to not be missed.

These types of blue aura tap triggers have been a potential angle to shoot as well. I've heard of it happen before, and given the playability of Encase in Ice, it may be something that we see happen more frequently. Clearly this is a case where we should be ruling Missed Trigger; the aura has a trigger that has a visible effect on the game (tap enchanted creature). If that action isn't carried out, it is missed.

Now this isn't an angle that is normally gone for. Players will typically tap their own creature just as they would in the face of a creature with a activated tapping ability (Benalish Trapper et al). However, ultimately it is the responsibility of the Encase in Ice player to either tap the creature or tell the opponent to tap their creature at the appropriate time.