In the quarterfinals of a PPTQ, Aleister plays against Nicolas, who controls Pia and Kiran Nalaar and a Thopter token. Johannes, a Floor Judge, is watching the game.

Aleister plays Collected Company, revealing Elvish Visionnary and Reflector Mage. He says “Draw for the Visionnary…”, draws, “… and bounce Pia and Kiran with the Mage”. Nicolas does not appear to have noticed the timing mistake.

Do you intervene? Feel free to discuss variants (timing, card drawn, game situation), but assume no ill intent from Aleister.

I likely intervene - the Reflector Mage trigger is missed as described. It's instinctive to want to apply Out of Order Sequencing, but the sequence as it occurs gives Aleister information that they wouldn't have otherwise had when determining targets for the Reflector Mage.

It's unfortunate, but these are the situations where knowledge of game rules matters and tests player ability.

E: If I'm directly observing the game and can determine that Aleister has not actually seen the card he attempts to draw off the Elvish Visionary, I might be okay with it.

Edited Rebecca Lawrence (Feb. 22, 2016 02:35:30 PM)

As i read this you should step in and tell them whats going on. If he draws a card he can't bounce anything with Reflector Mage.

This being said, this situation can be so different multiple ways because we werent there…
- If he “draws” it the way that just put it in front of him without looking at it.
- If he draws it simultanios saying bounce (he didnt think about the draw one milisecond..)

I think if you don't step in thats fine aswell in this cases.

As far as two players are concerned this is probably a case of OOoS. As far as the IPG is concerned this is a missed trigger.

I would intervene here, even though it isn't a detrimental trigger. Even if the players dont catch the subtle nuance of this, even if they okay with the way these things proceeded, the next time they play someone, they may get called for it by their opponent. They may say “Judge so-and-so watched me do it last time!”, if you dont notice it, its OK, we make mistakes. If you notice it and do nothing, you leave players in need of education without it. And you leave yourself open to accusations of unfairness/bias.

Have you positively impacted the integrity of the game by intervening here?
Or are you just making players think of you as a nuisance? I pretty
strongly believe we are in nuisance territory here.

Players do technically incorrect things all the time. It is not generally
desirable to stop them unless it creates a real problem with the game state.

I'll just throw this out there, for further discussion…

Originally posted by IPG 1, General Philosophy:

If a minor violation is quickly handled by the players to their mutual satisfaction, a judge does not need to intervene.

d:^D

I think as soon as Aleister saw the card he drew it impacts the integrity of the tournament Joshua mentioned. The point is that he might have drawn the counterspell to handle Nicolas' Pia and Kiran Nalaar. If not he might have choosen to bounce the token to prevent the flying threats. Therefore this is not a minor violation here but one which might influence the game heavily. Maybe Aleister did this and thought this is within the rules so it is important to educate here.

If a minor violation is quickly handled by the players to their mutual satisfaction, a judge does not need to intervene.

Yeah i dont think seeing the top of your library is “minor”.

Thanks Uncle for that quote, I knew that this sentence was somewhere in IPG but couldn't fint it :)

@Sandro: seeing top card (to be more precisely - drawing it) isn't an error - not selecting target for trigger is

If Nicolas is fine with that situation, I'm also fine.

I totally agree with Scott and Joshua.

If there is no reaction from Nicolas, it is fair to assume that everything is clear to both players.

And even if it is not 100% accurate to say it is OoOS, I am inclined to consider this case as one.

As long as we can assess that this is nothing fishy behind it, sure, letting the players doing things is fine here.

Edited Théo CHENG (Feb. 25, 2016 01:53:14 PM)

Originally posted by Bartłomiej Wieszok:

@Sandro: seeing top card (to be more precisely - drawing it) isn't an error - not selecting target for trigger is

True.

And im happy im wrong here ;)

For the OP I'd probably assume OoOS and let the game go on as it seems as though Aleister has not considered the card (this is completely a ‘had to be there’ situation):

Originally posted by MTR:

An out-of-order sequence must not result in a player prematurely gaining information which could reasonably affect decisions made later in that sequence.

If there was a meaningful pause I'd probably step in.

Scott Marshall
I'll just throw this out there, for further discussion…

IPG 1, General Philosophy
If a minor violation is quickly handled by the players to their mutual satisfaction, a judge does not need to intervene.

d:^D

This actually worries me as a reason for not stepping in based on the OP. Parsing this statement out:
Minor violation - check
Quickly handled - check
Mutual satisfaction -???

I don't think you can conclude that Nicolas is satisfied with this resolution as he's given you no signals that he's even aware of the error.

Feels like OOOS that the players have happily resolved on their own.

I wouldn't intervene. Sure, target wasn't chosen for the Mage and he resolved the Visionary trigger already, but if both players came to a mutual and reasonable game state such as this, I think it's fine. The intent was very clear regardless of how technically incorrect it was.

If anything, I'd talk with player after their match ends to explain what he/she could be doing next time to prevent a problem from occurring.