I was attending a tournament today when the follwing situation arose. I was not on staff for this event, but I witnessed it happen. I'm interested in whether there's something about trigger policy I don't understand, or if this was a bad judge call.

Player A controls Horizon Chimera. He draws his card, then makes a move as to cast a spell. However, after tapping his mana he goes into the tank, and comes out remembering that he had forgotten his Chimera trigger. Having tapped mana already, he calls for a judge. The judge comes over and he explains that he had forgotten his trigger, but there had been no game events before he remembered it which would fill the role of “the trigger must have resolved before this could have happened”; all he had done was tap mana and nothing else. Player B (the opponent) confirmed this story. The judge ruled that since Player A had forgotten his trigger, even for a moment, even though no game events had occurred, the trigger had been forgotten and no life could be gained.

I was under the impression that the trigger rules worked such that it doesn't matter what the reason is, as long as there is no indication that the trigger was missed by game actions (e.g. casting a Sorcery for an upkeep trigger), that the game could be rewound and the trigger put on the stack. Either this was a bad call by the judge, or I've been misinformed. Can someone clarify this for me? Thanks.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

I was under the impression that the trigger rules worked such that it doesn't matter what the reason is, as long as there is no indication that the trigger was missed by game actions (e.g. casting a Sorcery for an upkeep trigger), that the game could be rewound and the trigger put on the stack. Either this was a bad call by the judge, or I've been misinformed. Can someone clarify this for me? Thanks.

Since we weren't there, we can only go by your description of the incident and the ruling, and by that description, the ruling sounds incorrect. The infraction is “Missed Trigger”, not “Forgotten Trigger”, and the definition of Missed Trigger focuses on demonstrating awareness of the trigger by a particular point in time; it makes no mention of forgetting the trigger in the definition. There are examples in the IPG that talk about a player forgetting a trigger and then doing something else that moves the game past the point at which the player should have demonstrated awareness, but in those examples it's the “doing something else”, not the forgetting, that makes the situation a Missed Trigger.

IPG
Definition
A triggered ability triggers, but the player controlling the ability doesn’t demonstrate awareness of the trigger’s
existence the first time that it would affect the game in a visible fashion.

Edit to add: By the way, the IPG does not allow rewinding the game for a Missed Trigger. Depending on the exact circumstances, the trigger might be skipped, put on the stack, happen immediately, or happen at the beginning of the next phase. However, in the scenario you described, it sounds like the trigger wasn't missed, so none of those remedies are applicable. In the scenario you described, the trigger is still on the stack and will resolve at the correct time.

Edited Carsten Haese (Sept. 29, 2013 12:27:23 PM)

Carsten,

Going by your reasoning, if you rule that the trigger hasn't been “Missed”, then we're still in the player's draw step. The triggered ability is still on the stack, and the player has tapped some lands. How do you feel about the fact that this would cause the player to “lose” a bunch of mana for his turn?

Originally posted by Jason Wong:

Carsten,

Going by your reasoning, if you rule that the trigger hasn't been “Missed”, then we're still in the player's draw step. The triggered ability is still on the stack, and the player has tapped some lands. How do you feel about the fact that this would cause the player to “lose” a bunch of mana for his turn?

That's where this becomes a had-to-be-there situation. It sounds like the player was “visibly thinking through” his next action, and we do generally allow players to undo actions they haven't committed to. Since he hasn't announced a spell yet or used the mana for anything, I'd be inclined to let the player untap those lands.

The idea to determine whether a trigger was missed or not is to find out if the player actually forgot it (then it's missed) or didn't forget it (then it's not considered missed).

How I see what happened:
The player went to make a play in his mainphase, but then remembered about the trigger. He can remember something he forgot only. The trigger is missed and not gonna happen.

I think it's important to emphasize with this as with so many other rulings, one has to be there to know which way we would rule.

That said, I usually consider a trigger missed only when there was a visible change to the game state or a player gained information. If a player's hand is on their library, but they haven't lifted a card, then the upkeep step triggers are not yet missed. Tapping land to do math isn't a really significant change to the game state (indeed, MTGO lets you alt-u to undo it) unless the player is looking at their opponent, trying to gain information in some way.

Originally posted by Philip Böhm:

The idea to determine whether a trigger was missed or not is to find out if the player actually forgot it (then it's missed) or didn't forget it (then it's not considered missed).

Well I feel a big difference between the current Missed Trigger policy and previous ones is that whereas previous ones followed the philosophy “It's missed unless you can prove otherwise” the current philosophy is “It's not missed unless you can prove otherwise”.

As the current gamestate is possible with the trigger still on the stack, I would say it isn't missed.

Edited Toby Hazes (Sept. 30, 2013 10:06:37 AM)

Perhaps a clarification as to my particular involvement would be helpful here. I was Player A. I have told you everything I told the judge at the time, the only difference being that I told him in Japanese and we're speaking here in English. Does that help at all? The information here is indeed complete.

I wonder if, in the course of your explanation, you conveyed that you had, in fact, forgotten the trigger. Or given the judge the impression that you did, in fact, move into the next step or phase. I feel that the way our current policy is written, if there is doubt and absence of clarity, we are more able to give benefit of the doubt and not rule that a trigger is missed until some game actions show that it clearly was. However, if in the testimony of the player, a confession of having missed the trigger is present, then it should be fine to rule that the trigger was missed in fact.

Our current policy does actually allow for the player to temporarily forget their trigger, as long as they then remember it before the appropriate point in the bullet point list in the policy - in this case, before the player had explicitly moved to the next step or phase or taken an action which could not have been taken with the trigger on the stack.

As several people have pointed out, neither of these things appear to have happened here. The player admits to having briefly forgotten to gain a life and then remembering almost immediately (and certainly before anything in the game had progressed in any way) should have no bearing.

This kind of situation is exactly why I always establish the game state prior to giving a ruling.

A simple question along the lines of “what part of the turn are we in?” should clear this up.

If he's tapping mana for Main-phasey things, then the trigger is missed. If he's tapping mana for draw-steppy things (flash, instants, floating mana for fun) then its assumed to be in response to the trigger being on the stack.

Either way, he either gets a card, or gets his mana to use for his main. I think most people would very obviously know whether they were tapping mana for their main phase or are tapping mana in their draw step.

@James: As noted in the OP, I did mention that I had forgotten the trigger. However, as I understood the policy (and as Kim seems to have clarified), that should be irrelevant to the ruling. The judge of the event, however, used the same logic you did, which is why I was wondering how legit that logic is.

That said, I had no activated abilities on my board or cards in my hand which I could cast at instant speed. My opponent did not know this, but the judge could have seen my hand in making the ruling and thought “if he's tapping mana he must have changed phases”, which is also not a legit ruling AFAIK.

Edited Lyle Waldman (Sept. 30, 2013 11:02:54 PM)

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

That said, I had no activated abilities on my board or cards in my hand which I could cast at instant speed. My opponent did not know this, but the judge could have seen my hand in making the ruling and thought “if he's tapping mana he must have changed phases”, which is also not a legit ruling AFAIK.

A ruling should never be based on hidden information (except for Cheating infractions). In this case, as has been pointed out, you took no action to indicate you had missed the trigger. Tapping mana is usually not considered a relevant game action, until that mana is used. Also, note that it is called “missed” trigger, not “forgotten” trigger. See Kim's response.

I would say the trigger was not missed. Tapping lands is not in my opinion an action which alone can indicate that the turn has progressed to the first main phase. You can tap your lands in your draw step and you can choose to untap them and not cast anything, unless something like Burning Earth was in play.