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The Corrupted Game State - SILVER

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/knowledgepool/?p=826

Anita and Norbert are playing in an Standard PTQ. Norbert is down to just 2 life, and Anita is at 5. Nobert has no creatures in play, Anita attacks with her Kalonian Tusker. Norbert taps his three swamps and three forests and casts his textless promo Corrupt, targeting the Tusker. Both players adjust Norbert's life total, and Anita puts the Tusker into the graveyard.

Anita passes the turn, and for two turns, both players draw only land, and put them into play with no other action. On the third turn, Norbert draws his regular version of Corrupt and reads the card. He notices that Corrupt is a Sorcery and couldn't have been cast during Anita's attack step. He realizes his mistake, turns completely pale in abject horror, and calls for a judge.

When you arrive at the table, Norbert says, “Judge, I totally cheated her out of a win - I didn't realize that Corrupt was a Sorcery until I drew this one!” You believe that his mistake was unintentional. What do you do?

Edited Michael White (Sept. 11, 2013 08:26:52 PM)

Pretty clear it was unintentional given he called it on himself as soon as he discovered.

The infraction is GPE - GRV for Norbert and GPE - F2MGS for Anita. The penalties are warnings for both of them. The shaky part is about fixing. Referencing the IPG, the judge could get permission from the HJ to backup if he believes its relatively easy to do so. Personally, I don't.

It's one of the “feel bad” fixes in my opinion. I'd just leave the game as it is, remind players to be more careful, thank Norbert for calling a judge and thats it.

I think a brief conversation with Anita would be warranted to find out if she knew it was a sorcery at the time it was cast. Maybe she's trying to cheat by baiting him into a more advantageous judge call for herself later? Maybe she thinks getting him a DQ or Match Loss would be more advantageous than just getting the game win. (seems unlikely, but gotta keep those spidey senses sharp)

But failing any sort of ill will on her part, Game Play Error — Failure to Maintain Game State, warning for Anita (for allowing Norbert to cast the sorcery as an instant)

Game Play Error - Games Rule Violation, warning for Norbert. I'd talk to the head judge about doing a rewind, to just before the Corrupt was incorrectly cast. While this was several turns ago, because Corrupt was the textless version, I think it becomes reasonable that nobody would notice that it was played incorrectly, so it's reasonable to think about a rewind.

The players agree on what they drew and when, so there's no confusion about where the land cards go. If Anita agreed that the newly drawn Corrupt (which she may or may not know the identity of) is known, then we know where all the cards belong, and can unambiguously rewind. (if HJ allows)

If Norbert put the card into his hand and Anita can't be sure which one was the card drawn, then we could see put a random card from his hand back on top of the library as the first part of the rewind (and since it was the most recent draw, that also seems reasonable), then put the lands back.

Either way, it looks like we can rewind all actions without it being terribly complex. It feels really strange to think 3 turns could be reasonable, but this seems that way. This looks like the kind of thing where what players would naturally want to do coincides with what policy says we can do. (aside from the warnings)

And since we actually want players calling us, I'd thank him for the judge call, and reassure them that as long as they're careful about the same kind of stuff in the future, the warning doesn't really hurt them in any way.

I don't have much to add about the penalties as I agree with everyone.

I'm not huge on the rewind unless the players have no cards in hand (other than Corrupt, obviously), and this is not specified. There's no way to prove that the lands they've been playing are the cards they drew these turns, otherwise, and rewinding by letting someone draw a card three turns earlier/later seem pretty disruptive (more so than keeping the game state as is, which is probably what it would have been if Norbert had cast Corrupt during his main phase…).

On the other hand, the problem I have with not rewinding is that both players are going to be unhappy with this. Obviously Norbert feels like he deserves to lose this game, but if we say “go ahead, keep playing”, he will have the choice between doing the “moral” thing and conceding and trying to win the tournament (without doing anything illegal). That's not a nice dilemna. But obviously we cannot base rulings on things like that. In the end, I'd probably not rewind and tell both players that the judges are here to help and if they have any doubt about the oracle of a card they should not hesitate.


BTW, this is juste the reason why I'm extremely glad WotC did away with textless promos. Now if only people could stop playing cards in languages they can't read…

As described, the situation sounds rewindable.
Between the error and now, there haven't been that many decision points, only whether to play lands or keep them on hand. Even if there were other cards on hand, those have not been played, meaning that it likely won't matter if they're drawn in a different order.
It should be doable to determine which lands have been played these past 2 turns, so that they can be returned.*
I would be in favor of a rewind.

*Actually, this makes me wonder. What if neither player knows exactly whether the last played land was a swamp or a forest?

This seems like a cut-and-dry case of GRV for Norbert, and FtMGS for Anita, as has already been said multiple times. I'd just like to add that you should probably make a point of talking to Norbert about the importance of knowing how his cards work, and if he doesn't remember text like that well, textless promos may not be a good option for him.

Like many I follow the GRV for Norbert and FtMGS for Anita, I wouldn't back up although it sounds relative simple, it's just too long ago.

I would remind Norbert that if he feels that he truly made a mistake in taking the win away from Anita, that he can always scoop and be a gentlemen.

Originally posted by Niki Lin:

I would remind Norbert that if he feels that he truly made a mistake in taking the win away from Anita, that he can always scoop and be a gentlemen.

See, that's precisely what I feel we DON'T want to do: create social pressure for the players to fix game states in a way other than what the IPG says. The judge should give a definitive ruling, not “here's the ruling, but if you want you may go the other way”.
For those concerned about the injustice of this situation, I will just remind that if Norbert had rememberd how his cards worked, the game state would probably be the same, and that Anita didn't call a judge on a textless promo she didn't know the text of. I would definitely stress the importance of never hesitating to call a judge whenever you're not sure of anything.

I agree with the GRV/FTMGS for Norbert and Anita.

However, I think this could be backed up without too much difficulty. Norbert puts a random card back on top of his library, Anita picks up her land, puts a random card back, Norbert picks up his land, puts a random card back. (If it was two turns of land-go for each player, not just two turns, then rewind another land play and card draw for each player.) For the critical turn, untap Norbert's lands, return Corrupt to his hand, return the Tusker to the battlefield tapped, tap/untap whatever else was tapped/untapped at the time, and go back to Anita's combat phase.

If we can't backup (like if both players had a bunch of cards in hand and “land go” was actually a difficult tactical decision on both players' parts), then instruct the players to continue playing. Either way, also remind them to call a judge if they have questions about a card, and I'd thank Norbert for his honesty in calling himself on a penalty.

Edited Jack Hesse (Sept. 6, 2013 12:51:27 AM)

If I were the Head Judge I would rewind this easily. There are no game actions except land plays and drawing so the rewind is actually not very complex. A judge should consider the randomness of these draws so, for example, a doom blade might be in Norbert's hand at the end of the process, but that game state is still better than the current one in terms of “correctness.”

As others have stated, its a fairly simple GRV and FtMGS with a small investigation, which is unlikely to turn up anything more serious.

This (or an analogous situation) has happened to me countless times as a player. GRV for the Corrupt player and FtMGS for the other player (the innocent player, I guess?). No rewind, because this could have impacted strategic decisions (do you play the land you just drew?). Personally, this is another corner of MTR that I'm not a fan of; I really would like there to be a rewind in MTR for cases like this, but as-is there isn't.

I have to agree with GRV and FtMGS. No rewind, since bluffing your opponent into thinking the land you're holding is actually a spell is an important strategic decision–if you're dropping the land anyway, maybe you're building up to something big you hope to draw. I don't think an investigation would show anything, since Norbert called you himself.

I also agree that textless spells (and, to a lesser extent, foreign language spells, especially when you're just going off the picture) are just plain bad. (Cryptic Command? Seriously? And as I once saw it put, Mana Tithe, because who'd believe that Wizards would make a white Force Spike?)

Hello judges!

Norbert has committed a Game Rules Violation, and needs to be issued a warning for doing so. Anita did not point out the error immediately and allowed it to happen, so she needs to be issued a warning for Failure to Maintain Game State.

Please note that it is the head judge's discretion on whether or not to rewind. In this situation, we feel that it has gone too far to safely back up.

Thank you all for participating, tune in tomorrow for another scenario!

In that case, what would be the maximum number of turns passed that you would be willing to backup in this scenario?

What if both players sandbagged their lands instead of playing them, nobody playing any cards in those 4 turns, would that make a difference?

Generally speaking, one draw per player is the maximum I'd rewind - simply put, because otherwise I could severely change the content of his Hand.

Also, rewinding more than two turns seems to be a stretch. When rewinding (on competetive), I want to be 100% sure to get the gamestate correctly back to where it was. If I am only 99% sure, because the players disagree on something or I believe too much has happened and I might just not get the correct lands tapped, I tend to not rewind the thing.