Hello,

I was spectating a match on a PPTQ this weekend, and i saw this scenario:

Active player has no cards in hand and has on the battlefield:
2 Catacomb Sifter
1 Eldrazi Scion token
1 Grim Haruspex

He activates the scion ability and declares to the opponent: “Im gonna stack my triggers: scry, draw, scry ok?”, the oponnent agrees.

He resolves the first scry putting on bottom, then draw a card, then scry again leaving the card on top.

After that, i asked the players to stop, called the judge and explained to him the problem(He wasnt supposed to draw a card, because the Grim Haruspex ability doesnt work with tokens).

I want to know your guys opinion on what would be the best way to fix this problem.

Thanks in advance.

The question as asked appears to be a GRV that can't be rewinded as
the scry effects are going to allow cards to go to weird places. The
rewind isn't going to magically end up at the correct game state.

More broadly the situation could have been avoided by a spectator
being faster on pulling the trigger: Announcing an illegal trigger is
when anyone can step in and ask the game to be paused while a judge is
fetched.

On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 8:33 AM, Eder Carvalho
<forum-25365-d4a4@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was spectating a match on a PPTQ this weekend, and i saw this scenario:
>
> Active player has no cards in hand and has on the battlefield:
> 2 Catacomb Sifter
> 1 Eldrazi Scion token
> 1 Grim Haruspex
>
> He activates the scion ability and declares to the opponent: “Im gonna stack
> my triggers: scry, draw, scry ok?”, the oponnent agrees.
>
> He resolves the first scry putting on bottom, then draw a card, then scry
> again leaving the card on top.
>
> After that, i asked the players to stop, called the judge and explained to
> him the problem(He wasnt supposed to draw a card, because the Grim Haruspex
> ability doesnt work with tokens).
>
> I want to know your guys opinion on what would be the best way to fix this
> problem.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
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–
Gareth Pye - blog.cerberos.id.au
Level 2 MTG Judge, Melbourne, Australia

Seems like a straight-forward Hidden Card Error (HCE) to me - the player has an excess card in hand. Except… he confirmed it with his opponent first, so it's not HCE. Too bad, that'd be an easy fix!

I'm not as concerned as Gareth about backing this up - it's not ideal, but the mechanics aren't terrible. Set aside the top and bottom cards (separately), plus any others that are in a known position. Here's where it gets weird - the top card of the library should not have been seen - the card that was drawn is the second Scry card. So let's shuffle that top card into the random portion of the library, restore the card(s) set aside, then put a randomly chosen card from hand on top of the library - as though he'd Scry'd that card like he should have, and left it on top.

And, of course, if a “fetch” land or similar library manipulation effect is available, then Gareth's solution is what I'd do (i.e., nothing).

d:^D

I'm confused by 2 parts of your reply, Scott…

1) You mention putting back a “random” card, but Eder said AP was empty handed before the bad draw.

2a) Since it was AP's only card in hand, would you then allow them to choose top or bottom?

2b) Even if AP does have other cards in hand, why do we make them scry to the top? I recognize the potential for benefit by letting them choose, but if we rule out cheating it doesn't seem like we should base the resolution on who it helps more.

Originally posted by Matt Marheine:

AP was empty handed before the bad draw

ohhhh, missed that (important!) detail… that makes this much cleaner.

Rewinding this means we shuffle the 2nd Scry card - the one he should not have seen - into the random portion. Then we put the bottom card(s) back on the bottom, and the card in hand on top of his library. Since we're rewinding a GRV, we allow him to finish the effect he was resolving when the mistake happened. (Unlike HCE's “do not repeat” language.)

And, on further consideration, your 2b) is also valid - again, since we're rewinding for a GRV, we end up just before the 2nd Scry 1 effect, so he should continue with that.

Thanks, Matt!

d:^D

I had a problem with the fix presented by Scott because it resorted to “l@ec fix”. If backing up a scry means shuffling the card that shouldn't have been seen onto the random portion of the library, sure. In my mind, backing up a scry meant putting the card back in the appropriate position.

Lucas, it may *appear* that returning the card to the appropriate position
“undoes” the scry, until you think about information, and realize that the
identity of that card wasn't known before the scry. Putting it back on top
doesn't reverse the scry, because we go from an unknown card on top to a
known card on top. To return the game to its original state, we must
restore the randomness of the library, and shuffling the scried card into
the random part of the library is what accomplishes that.

The top of the deck was ABC, A went to the bottom, B to hand and C
stayed on top. Shuffling away C, putting B back on top and letting the
player scry would be the back up to the start of the incorrect draw.

This feels fine because we know B's identity as the player had no cards in hand.


If the player had any cards in hand at the start then I'd feel pretty
bad about letting the player scry away a random card from his hand.

Originally posted by Eder Carvalho:

He activates the scion ability and declares to the opponent: “Im gonna stack my triggers: scry, draw, scry ok?”, the oponnent agrees.

He resolves the first scry putting on bottom, then draw a card, then scry again leaving the card on top.

After that, i asked the players to stop, called the judge and explained to him the problem(He wasnt supposed to draw a card, because the Grim Haruspex ability doesnt work with tokens).

What led you to wait for him to actually draw the card? The best way to fix this is to avoid it. As soon as the player announces “scry, draw, scry,” he's announced an illegal trigger, so we judges can step in before cards get drawn!

Edited Eli Meyer (March 7, 2016 09:46:59 PM)

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

What led you to wait for him to actually draw the card? The best way to fix this is to avoid it. As soon as the player announces “scry, draw, scry,” he's announced an illegal trigger, so we judges can step in before cards get drawn!

I do not want to speak for Eder here, but I can easily imagine that it took some time to actually figure out what is happening. Note that Rally is a really compex deck with lots of interactions and it is not always easy to follow players' actions and verify their legality instantly. Especially in later rounds when everyone is mentally worn out.

BTW, for these reasons, I see the Rally deck as a “cheater's heaven”. Of course, I do NOT mean that anyone playing Rally actually cheats.

So, about the tardiness to catch the mistake:

I approached the table in the middle of the process, and only realized something could be wrong when i saw no creatures in the player graveyard, plus i wasnt a judge in the scenario, just a spectator, and this made me a little more hesitant to stop the players and ask what was going on, my bad.

The fix proposed by the judge was similar to the one proposed by Scott (minus the part about checking if the player had any “fecth” land to abuse this situation, but since he immediately scried again that seems unlikely), it kept the first scry on the bottom, shuffled the rest, put the card draw on top and then let the player scry, and while this seems like a good solution, its a bit on the complex side to fix, so its not easy to recommend as the best solution.

Thanks for all the responses.

Awesome. Thanks everyone for explanations and input.

Should we document this? It is not very clear (document-wise) how to backup scrying, and since it is now evergreen, it could be added as a “howto” fix, either on the IPG itself or the AIPG.


edit: clarification.

Edited Lucas Horta (March 8, 2016 08:24:01 AM)

Because of the confirmation from the opponent on the draw trigger (which negates HCE) is this a double GRV?

No, it's still FtMGS for the opponent even if they confirmed the draw.

Originally posted by Lucas Horta:

It is not very clear (document-wise) how to backup scrying

It does include this in any shuffle resolutions. They just word it differently so it covers more cases. When it asks for a shuffle it says “Care must be taken before shuffling to make sure that there are no “legally known” cards in the library.” The scry wasn't legal so unless some other action gave him that information then it's an illegally known card.