So if the trigger wasn't missed, then the target is chosen after the Dig
Through Time has been played.
However, the trigger should be on the stack before the Dig Through Time.
The missed trigger policy seems to be talking about when a player needs to
demonstrate awareness of a trigger, but it doesn't seem to change when the
trigger actually occurs. If that's the case, then Nate can choose the
target for the Snapcaster Mage, but the Dig will still resolve before the
trigger. So the Pyroblast couldn't be cast on the Dig.

Is this correct or am I missing something?

As many of us noted, it's just odd that Nate is doing nothing; Show and Tell isn't Eureka, so he can't be waiting for Annie to put something else into play from S&T. About the only explanation I can imagine is, he's waiting for Annie to make the mistake that she makes, so he'll have more information when choosing his trigger. Yuck.

Is that Cheating? No, not really - it's not something I'd ever want to encourage, but calling it Cheating requires both that Nate is breaking a rule, and that he knows he's breaking that rule. With enough dancing & hand-waving, we could probably argue for the rule-breaking, but not the knowledge on Nate's part.

What should happen:
Annie: S&T, resolves, puts Omniscience on the battlefield (OTB);
Nate: puts Snapcaster Mage OTB, announces the target for the ability.

What could happen, without problem:
Annie: as above;
Nate: puts S-Mage OTB, waits;
Annie: targeting?
Nate: chooses target, now that he knows “it's time to do so”.
(edit) Annie could then respond to that trigger by playing Dig - sort of what Shawn referred to…

What did happen, apparently:
Annie: as above;
Nate: puts S-Mage OTB, waits;
Annie: assumes Missed Trigger, or forgets it herself, announces Dig Through Time.

Technically, Annie can't cast Dig here, because she doesn't actually get priority while there's a trigger that needs to go on the stack - that happens when a player would get priority, but before they actually get priority.

If there's a technically correct way for Nate to target Pyroblast after Annie casts Dig, and still target Dig with that Pyroblast, I'm not seeing it - so you're on the right track there, Shawn. Maybe if he claims he missed the trigger, and Annie allows it to be put on the stack - but shouldn't we add it to the stack at the appropriate place (not possible any more), or on the bottom?

So … am I missing something? (Entirely possible, my attention has been on some code changes needed before 3… 90 minutes left, better get back to it!)

d:^D

Edited Scott Marshall (Aug. 25, 2015 02:33:14 PM)

So if Annie says something like “my priority?” and gets an affirmation then we can rule Nate missed their Trigger?

I can't think of any way in which I would rule that Nate made a legal play by casting Pyroblast here. However, by not explicitly resolving the trigger (it is legal to cast Dig Through Time for free with Snapcaster's trigger on the stack in this situation), it is not missed. While it is not Annie's responsibility to remind Nate of his triggers, it is both players' responsibility to maintain a clear and unambiguous game state, and in this case that means it is Annie's responsibility to clarify if the trigger is on the stack or not, and what the target is, before simply assuming that Nate missed his chance.

Which is a long way of saying, back up the game to the point at which SCM's trigger is on the stack, targetting Pyroblast. Annie has priority. I might consider handing out TE-CPV, but otherwise no penalty.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

I can't think of any way in which I would rule that Nate made a legal play by casting Pyroblast here. However, by not explicitly resolving the trigger (it is legal to cast Dig Through Time for free with Snapcaster's trigger on the stack in this situation), it is not missed. While it is not Annie's responsibility to remind Nate of his triggers, it is both players' responsibility to maintain a clear and unambiguous game state, and in this case that means it is Annie's responsibility to clarify if the trigger is on the stack or not, and what the target is, before simply assuming that Nate missed his chance.

I think the expectation you set here does not mesh with what is stated in the various paragraphs of the “Philosophy” section of MIPG 2.1, and might be a higher standard in that respect. While I agree in principle that it would be good for Annie to ask about the Snapcaster Mage trigger, and believe that would be sporting of her, I don't see that she needs to clarify anything here.

One thing I would suggest investigating here is Nate's understanding of the Snapcaster Mage trigger: Does he recognize that it is a targeted trigger, and that targets are chosen for triggers as they are put onto the stack? Because a lot of people don't understand the timing of this choice, and Nate might be such a person. (It gets worse when a “may” is also involved.) A follow-up question on Nate's understanding of his card might be warranted here, especially based on the way things are communicated in the original scenario.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

Which is a long way of saying, back up the game to the point at which SCM's trigger is on the stack, targetting Pyroblast. Annie has priority. I might consider handing out TE-CPV, but otherwise no penalty.

While I think there's very clearly some communication issues here, or perhaps.some rather competitive behavior present, I don't see anything that suggests a violation of MTR 4.1 is present in this situation.

While a kneejerk reaction would pull us towards this being MT it is always important to realize why the trigger is missed. What action, from the controller of the trigger, made it clear that the game state had moved to a point where the trigger could not have happened anymore.

Since the AP cannot force the gamestate forward, and NAP points to the trigger when AP tries to move the gamestate forward, he has shown awareness of its existence at the first time he would have to. It might be that NAP was tanking about choosing a target for his trigger and the feel of time is very different if you are thinking and waiting. AP might feel like he waited the sufficient amount of time, while NAP felt that only a moment had passed.

This is definitely not a missed trigger, because NAP hasn't taken any game actions indicating that he had passed priority, and hadn't acknowledged any game actions that could only happen after the trigger.

NAP also definitely doesn't get to cast Pyroblast here - there's no universe in which he gets to have resolved that triggered ability without first having explicitly announced a target for it.

For me, the punchline is: I'm not sure I see any infraction here, but I do want to back up.

I don't think it's appropriate to assess an infraction for AP here for casting Dig Through Time when she had no indication that Snapcaster Mage's ability had triggered (since it is possible for NAP to miss it), and I don't like the idea of “sanctioning” NAP's abnormally long silence and lack of communication by penalizing AP.

It could be appropriate to assess a GPE-GRV to NAP here for attempting to cast Pyroblast without having properly acknowledged and resolved Snapcaster Mage's ability, but I'm not sold on it.

Since NAP acknowledged the triggered ability when he needed to, then it isn't missed. Since NAP hasn't finished putting that ability on the stack, AP doesn't have priority to cast Dig Through Time. I don't like the idea of telling the players to resume playing with the triggered ability on the stack targeting Pyroblast, and Dig Through Time on the stack on top of that, because it feels weird to declare that AP cast Dig Through Time in response to the triggered ability when that wasn't necessarily AP's stated intention.

What feels the most right to me is to back up the Dig Through Time, clarify that the Snapcaster Mage's trigger is on the stack targeting Pyroblast, and proceed from there. If AP casts Dig Through Time in response to the triggered ability, then we're at the same place as we would be in the above paragraph (where we only back up the illegal casting of Pyroblast), so in practice these two approaches are ultimately interchangeable.

I don't let NAP choose a different target for Snapcaster Mage's ability, because at the moment that NAP demonstrated awareness of the ability, they also indicated their intended target. The fact that this choice of target was based on leaked information by their opponent is irrelevant to the policy being applied here (so long as I'm ruling that AP didn't commit any infraction). Pyroblast is a legal choice of target, and there was no CPV or GRV leading up to it, so it stays where it is.