Can someone please explain to me why we're putting Alfred's trigger on
the stack? What makes this a situation where we should intervene?

On 20 July 2013 04:03, Elliot Van Wormer
<forum-5069-d1df@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

Originally posted by Devin Smith:

Can someone please explain to me why we're putting Alfred's trigger on
the stack? What makes this a situation where we should intervene?

In the first post it said “Several turns later, Mr Nigma notices the Beacon of Unrest in the graveyard and calls you over to resolve the situation. During your investigation, you discover that the Obzedat, Ghost Council is still exiled.”

Since we are already there dealing with one situation that requires attention, I do not believe in leaving things that require a solution to go un-addressed. If I were the judge coming to this call and during my investigation discovered that Obzedat was still in exile and should not be I could give both players GPE-FtMGS warnings because of it, but would most likely only give the GPE-FtMGS to the opponent and give a GPE-Missed Trigger warning to the controller of Obzedat.

In the IPG under Additional Remedies for section 2.1 GPE - Missed Trigger it says “If the triggered ability is a delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of an object, resolve it. For these two types of abilities, the opponent chooses whether to resolve the ability immediately or at the start of the next phase. These abilities do not expire and should be remedied no matter how much time has passed since they should have triggered.
If the triggered ability creates an effect whose duration has already expired or the ability was missed prior to the current phase in the previous player's turn, instruct the players to continue playing.”

Therefore, Obzedat would stay exiled due to the last sentence.

Edited Elliot Van Wormer (July 19, 2013 02:50:04 PM)

“Judges should not intervene in a missed trigger situation unless they intend to issue a Warning or have reason to
suspect that the controller is intentionally missing his or her triggered abilities.”

Is Obzedat's delayed trigger Detrimental? No, so we shouldn't do anything about it unless the players bring it up.

Originally posted by Elliot Van Wormer:

But would most likely only give the GPE-FtMGS to the opponent and give a GPE-Missed Trigger warning to the controller of Obzedat.

In the IPG under Additional Remedies for section 2.1 GPE - Missed Trigger it says “If the triggered ability is a delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of an object, resolve it. For these two types of abilities, the opponent chooses whether to resolve the ability immediately or at the start of the next phase. These abilities do not expire and should be remedied no matter how much time has passed since they should have triggered.
If the triggered ability creates an effect whose duration has already expired or the ability was missed prior to the current phase in the previous player's turn, instruct the players to continue playing.”

Therefore, Obzedat would stay exiled due to the last sentence.

We never issue FtMGS penalties to players for their opponent's missed triggers. A player is never required to point out their opponent's missed triggers. Also that last sentence you quoted is a separate paragraph in the IPG. The trigger that returns Obzedat is a delayed trigger that changes the zone of an object; it will always get resolved if it is discovered. As per the IPG we give the opponent the choice of resolving it immediately or at the start of the next phase.

Thank you Alex for pointing those things out to me. I do appreciate the learning opportunity here and will correct my thinking accordingly.

Originally posted by Elliot Van Wormer:

Also, Obzedat coming back from exile is not a may effect, it was supposed to happen at the beginning of Alfreds next turn after he was exiled. Obzedat should either come back then at that point or at the beginning of Alfreds next turn.

Elliot, there are specific instructions to carry out when a card is in the wrong zone as a result of a missed trigger….

“If the triggered ability is a delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of an object, resolve it. For these two types of abilities, the opponent chooses whether to resolve the ability immediately or at the start of the next phase.”

Yes I see this Bob, Thank you. I am studying the MTR and IPG almost daily now and hope to become more and more familiar with them.

So if Beacon of Unrest remains in his graveyard, are we OK with him playing Snapcaster and flashing it back? That seems unfair…

Whenever players mess up a game, SOMEONE is almost always a little ahead or a little behind, for whatever reason. Fairness doesn't come into it and there is little we can do about it.

In this case, the opponent had the opportunity to spot the misresolved Beacon, so they are (partially) at fault.

And what if the opponent Diluvian Primordial's the Beacon? The argument can go both ways :)

It seems to me that there are two questions being asked in this Knowledge Pool scenario: (1) What do to regarding the Beacon (which is fairly straight forward); and (2) what to do regarding the Obzedat, which I think is a lot less straight forward than people have suggested.

The Beacon is fairly simple - Alfred resolved it incorrectly, and Mr Nigma failed to notice this. This results in a GRV for Alfred, and a GRV-FTMGS for Mr Nigma. As several turns have passed I would be uncomfortable rewinding the game to correctly resolve the Beacon - even if the players have literally played zero cards since then. Shuffling it in now would be a partial fix, so is not an option. Therefore I would leave it where it is.

The Obzedat is trickier however. The question says that "I" noticed the Obzedat. It doesn't say that the players noticed it.

Judges should not intervene in a missed trigger situation unless they intend to issue a Warning or have reason to suspect that the controller is intentionally missing his or her triggered abilities.

If the players haven't noticed the Obzedat (and I believe that there's nothing shady going on) I believe that I should say absolutely nothing about the Obzedat and leave it in exile. If either player asks about the forgotten Obzedat then I will give Mr Nigma the option to resolve the trigger immediately or at the start of the next phase as normal.

Mark, I think the way you are going to know Obzedat is exiled is that you will ask the players where Obzedat is now. There is no need to worry about reminding them of the missed trigger. You will necessarily do so during the course of a good investigation, and that is fine.

I'd like to thank everyone for the interesting discussion on this scenario and congrats to everyone who got the correct answers!

One point we would like to cover is the concern that some judges brought up later in the discussion - should we be doing anything about the Obzedat, Ghost Council, given that we were called over for the issue with the Beacon of Unrest? As was noted, unless the players bring up the issue, we should not address it, as we are not going to be giving any penalties regarding the card and don't (at least initially) believe anyone was intentionally missing the relevant trigger. However, it is highly likely that the topic of the Obzedat would come up during questioning regarding how the Beacon ended up in the graveyard (we would need to establish that it resolved normally, leading us to the card it put onto the battlefield - and that Alfred subsequently exiled - and then failed to bring back).

On with the answers!

Alfred receives a GPE – GRV and Mr Nigma receives a GPE-FTMGS for the Beacon of Unrest being in the graveyard. Examining our Additional Remdies, we encounter “If an object changing zones is put into the wrong zone, the identity of the object was known to all players, and it is within a turn of the error, put the object in the correct zone”. Since we are not within a turn of the error, we do not apply this additional remedy – the Beacon of Unrest stays in Alfred’s graveyard. Note that there is nothing in this scenario that would cause us to deviate and shuffle the Beacon in - we want to handle situations consistently and we do that by adhering to the policy written in the IPG in normal situations such as this one.

Neither player receives a penalty for the Obzedat, Ghost Council still being in exile – it coming back onto the battlefield is not detrimental. Again, we examine our additional remedies to see if there is anything else to do. This leads us to “If the triggered ability specifies a default action associated with a choice made by the controller (usually “If you don't …” or “… unless”), resolve it choosing the default option. If the triggered ability is a delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of an object, resolve it. For these two types of abilities, the opponent chooses whether to resolve the ability immediately or at the start of the next phase. These abilities do not expire and should be remedied no matter how much time has passed since they should have triggered.” As such, Mr Nigma gets to choose whether the Obzedat, Ghost Council comes back into play on Alfred's side now or at the beginning of the next phase.

Thanks to everyone for participating and tune in tomorrow for another exciting scenario!