Nissa controls a Phyraxian Revoker naming Sensei's Divining Top. Ashaya controls Sensei's Divining top and activated its first ability, proceeding to look at the top 3 cards of her library and putting them back after deciding what order she wants. Ashaya then plays a Wooded Foothills and says “Fetch?” when Nissa realises she shouldn't have been able to use Sensei's Divining Top and calls a judge.

How do you handle this situation?


We've been chatting about this here in the UKISA Judge Community and would love some input from other judges.


We seem to all agree that this is a GRV for illegally activating the ability of Sensei's Divining Top, the fix is not so clear.

The proposed fixes:

L@EC has also occurred and so we shuffle the top 3 cards into the randomised portion of the library (but only penalise for GRV).

The top three have been legally manipulated following an illegal activation, and so we can't apply the L@EC fix because L@EC has not occurred.


Furthermore, we discussed the possibility of backing up and how we should backup. Do we shuffle the top 3 and put them back or do we shuffle the unknown portion of the library (including the top 3)?

A thread which was brought up can be found here: http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/10461/?page=1#post-65734

In particular, from the second-to-last post

We will put back the two cards being Scry'd, and shuffle them into the random portion of the library (Looking At Extra Cards has also occurred, along with the GRV, so we apply that remedy here, too). Then, *after* the shuffle, we'll undo the card draw by putting a random card from Aidan's hand on top of his library. We'll put the Serum Visions back in the graveyard, and untap any lands tapped to play it.

If this is still true, then perhaps the IPG could be a little more specific?

Penny for your thoughts?

Edited Winter (May 10, 2016 05:13:42 PM)

Hello!

After reading the situation, the first thing that call my attention is the moment when the error is caught, Ashaya put an ability on the trigger and the ability is from a “Fetch Land”.

My experience told me, avoid backups if there's a fetch land involved in the battlefield.

So, the ruling seems to be okay, GRV because an effect has change the game rules and a player break them, this mean a Warning. The fix? Players keep playing from the moment when Ashaya calls the fetch ability.

Any other comments?

Greets! :D

I think you shouldn't avoid any backups with fetchland on the battlefield.
Only those which include returning cards on the top of the library, since
you can provide the player with information they shouldn't have when
deciding whether to activate it, or not.

In this case, there is no such danger. So (provided that those 3 cards were
not previously known), I would just rule GRV, and backup to the activation
of Top, by shuffling those 3 cards to the random portion of the library and
returning the Foothills to her hand.

2016-05-11 11:54 GMT+02:00 Cristóbal Vigar Guerrero <

I'll keep that in mind when I'm dealing with this situations, thanks for the advice.

From L@EC:

A player can accidentally look at extra cards easily and this infraction handles situations where a dexterity or rules error has led to a player seeing cards they shouldn’t have. Once those cards have joined another set, the infraction is handled as a Hidden Card Error or Game Rule Violation

As the cards were manipulated (not just looked at) and have joined different sets (hand and Library) (edited - sorry I'd misunderstood the initial post with this comment) this can't be L@EC. From HCE:

Be careful not to apply this infraction in situations where a publicly-correctable error subsequently leads to an uncorrectable situation such as a Brainstorm cast using green mana. In these situations, the infraction is based on that root cause

Given that the Sensei's Divining Top activation was a publicly correctable error this can't be HCE either.

So we're left with GRV - none of the default fixes apply so we're left with simple back up or leave the game state as is. I'd agree with David and perform the back up (with HJ approval of course). The only issue here is that Ashaya knows and has ordered the top three cards, randomising those into the unknown portion of the library eliminates the error.

Edited Marc Shotter (May 12, 2016 02:56:58 AM)

They haven't joined any different set. They were at the top of the library
the whole time. They were never put into a hand, and they couldn't have
join a zone they were already part of. Therefore, What can prevent us from
applying L@EC is the following sequence:

This penalty is applied only once if one or more cards are seen in the same
action or sequence of actions.

So, if we argue, that playing and activating a fetchland is a part of the
same sequence, you can resolve it as L@EC. But I'm not really a big fan of
this interpretation, because it doesn't feel to me like activating and
resolving top can be considered one sequence with playing and activating
fetchland, mainly because the information gain from resolving top might
have an important impact on whether or not to play and activate the
fetchland.

2016-05-11 13:39 GMT+02:00 Marc Shotter <

Am I correct that Ashaya is now using a fetchland which will handle randomizing the library anyway? I see no real issue in not “backing up” at all and simply assessing a GRV here. The end state is that the library will be randomized just as thoroughly if we backup or not, and this way saves a little bit of time.

But her decision to play a fetchland and activate it is likely based on
incorrect information. She might have played and activated the fetchland
because of her knowledge of the top three cards, and if the game state
would have been correct (she would have no knowledge of the top three
cards), she might have chosen a different line of play - perhaps playing a
different land.

Main goal of GPE remedies is restoring the game state to the uncorrupted
state (of course while adhering to the resctrictions we are facing when
applying them), which in this case a backup accomplishes. So, for me, it is
preferred to leaving the game state as it is.

2016-05-11 15:44 GMT+02:00 Christopher Wendelboe <

Originally posted by Christopher Wendelboe:

Am I correct that Ashaya is now using a fetchland which will handle randomizing the library anyway? I see no real issue in not “backing up” at all and simply assessing a GRV here. The end state is that the library will be randomized just as thoroughly if we backup or not, and this way saves a little bit of time.

Also note that if we backup, Ashaya will have one more untapped land to use for another (useful and legal) thing.

David, you're assuming the information here, so if we start considering eventual scenarios we can get a lot of them. So, why considering that kind of possibilities based in something that actually don't know is useless I think.

Joaquín, so backing up to a perfect game state previous the error is a bad idea from your point of view? Or I just miss understood your answer? (Or you're being sarcastic?)

Originally posted by Cristóbal Vigar Guerrero:

Joaquín, so backing up to a perfect game state previous the error is a bad idea from your point of view? Or I just miss understood your answer? (Or you're being sarcastic?)

I wasn't even answering any question, just stating a fact ;)

I would issue a GRV and possibly a FtMGS, and would not attempt to fix this. There's not a good way to backup a Divining Top activation. The order of those cards was only known to one player, and there is no guidance in the IPG for backing up through library manipulation other than to approach unknowns with extreme caution. Also, the point of error here is the activating of the top, not the resolution of it. I don't believe LEC fits the situation because we have activated Divining Top (the error itself), resolved the activation (related to, but not itself an error), and activated a fetch land.

That aside, why go for the backup up with shuffling the “extra” cards away when the library is about to get re-randomized anyway? Also consider this - would you be willing to rewind an illegally cast Ponder that was resolved without a shuffle? If so, is returning a card and shuffling away the top three cards the way you would do this? If not, then why apply this logic to Divining Top? If we treat the error as a GRV, is there something that tells us to shuffle away cards that were otherwise legally seen post-error?

The fact that AP is gonna crack his fetchland due to an information obtained trough an illegal action should be considered.

I suggest GPE - GRV with a back-up, shuffling the three seen cards with the library, AP untaps the land used to pay Tops' ability then puts back in hand Wooded Foothills.

Edit : Well that's odd. We're basically doing something that AP was going to do, we're simply letting him keeping a precious ressource : fetching. Even if resolving Tops' ability is a legal action, we shouldn't let him gain an advantage from an illegal action - which is in fact, activating Tops-.

Still, I believe that GPE - GRV + FTMGS is the proper infraction here, but we should let the game state at it was.

Edited Maxime Hoube (May 11, 2016 10:38:18 AM)

I would also like to add, for people in the LEC camp, that if everything was done as a single batch of actions where NAP has no opportunity to stop AP before it got to this point… it's still not LEC. LEC is pretty much just errors of dexterity or accidentally seeing cards you shouldn't have. There's an argument to be had for HCE in this case (if the opponent confirmed none of APs actions), but again, as for the fix… there is none. Issue the warning and move on.

Edit: I actually think the HCE clause on publicly correctable errors leading to uncorrectable situation excludes HCE from being issued here. Also, if we catch the error while the player is still looking at the set of 3 cards during the resolution of top's ability, there's still nothing HCE can do to fix that anyway (no excess cards, nothing to be revealed, etc.), so I'm going to stick with GRV.

Edited Nathaniel Bass (May 11, 2016 11:43:34 AM)

Regarding L@EC, I don't think it only covers dextrecity errors.

In the examples in the IPG you can actually find “A player activates a Sensei's Diving Top that is no longer on the battlefield, and sees 3 cards before the mistake is noticed”. I would argue that this example is pretty similar to what happened here: an ability that couldn't be activated was activated a produced a L@EC. Therefore, I would apply the remedy right now (which is, most likely, pretty pointless unless there's a stifle involved), and issue L@EC-Ftmgs. This remedy could potentially be good for Ashaya, but there is no way we could “undo” the looking of those extra cards (unless we cast Lobotomy :P). We should just apply the remedy that is commanded by the IPG.

I think is important to note that if we do this, we're applying the infraction and addiotional remedy provided by the IPG. This is important, because “this procedures exist to protect officials from accusations of unfairness, bias or favoritism” (IPG 1.2).

EDIT: This is not an example of the current IPG, sorry for that.

Edited Joaquín Ossandón (May 11, 2016 01:42:24 PM)