This just happened at a PTQ that I attended and the situation led to a lively discussion between all of the judges present. I'd love to get some outside input!

Player A has an Ephara, God of the Polis in play with devotion equal to 8. (Detention Sphere, Detention Sphere, Ephara, and Daring Skyjek) Player A attacks with Ephara and the Skyjek. Player B casts Bile Blight targeting Skyjek and Player A responds with a Deputy of Acquittals, returning the Skyjek to hand.

Here's where it gets tricky:

Player A says “There's a moment there where Ephara stops being a creature and so you don't take damage from her.” (INCORRECTLY AND BY MISTAKE) Player B agrees. No life total changes are marked. Player B takes their turn, drawing a card, casting a creature and passing. Player A untaps and realizes what happened and calls a judge.

What do you rule? Do you fix the life total? Was damage dealt? What are the penalties and why?

I'm not sure if I should include what the official ruling was or not so I'll leave it out for now. Thanks!

Edited Ellis Gyöngyös (Feb. 15, 2014 12:30:05 PM)

Sounds like a pretty clear CPV.

Derived information is information to which all players are entitled access, but opponents are not obliged to assist
in determining and may require some skill or calculation to determine. Derived information includes:
• The number of any type of objects present in any game zone.
• All characteristics of objects in public zones that are not defined as free information.
• Game Rules, Tournament Policy, Oracle content and any other official information pertaining to the
current tournament. Cards are considered to have their Oracle text printed on them.

Ephara's characteristics are derived information. By making a statement about Ephara not being a creature Player A has MISTAKENLY misrepresented Ephara incorrectly.

We can back up to the point of communication error, which seems to be somewhere in the Declare Attackers/Declare Blockers step/Combat Damage step, whenever the statement was made.

This is a moderately messy backup, and being more than a turn I wouldn't do it.

If you did:

Tap A's cards that untapped during their Untap step
Return B's creature and untap their lands from casting it
Return a card from B's hand to top of their deck randomly
Tap whatever was untapped during B's turn
Return to wherever in combat the misinformation happened.
Continue from there.

Doesn't sound like anything happened post-combat Main Phase or in the End Phase on either turn.

The Bile Blight and Deputy of Acquittals were legal actions that resulted in the miscommunication, they wouldn't be rewound.

If we don't backup, we don't change anything. No life total changes, no damage dealt.

Player A receives a Warning for CPV. No penalty for Player B. Remind players to play more carefully.

Actually, I would consider this to be a GPE-GRV for player A(and no TE-CPV), since player A removed Ephara from combat(or otherwise did not have it deal combat damage), and removing a creature from combat is not covered by another GPE.

Even though player A made a comment about Ephara that is not true (saying it stops being a creature), the game state itself is corrupted and actually reflects this fact, therefor player A did not represent free/derived information incorrectly, the game state simply happens to be incorrect, similarly to how mistakenly putting a creature into your graveyard does not represent free information incorrectly, even if you confirm it is now in the graveyard.

Overall, I would issue a Warning for GPE-GRV to player A, and a Warning for GPE-FtMGS to player B(unless he intentionally ignored the error), since he did not point out A's error, and and it involves an effect/action he does not control.
As a remedy, I would either back the situation up completely or perform no partial fix.
A backup seems reasonably easy to perform, and the point you'd back up to would be the point immediately before the error occured, just before Deputy of Acquittals's trigger returns Daring Skyjek to its owner's hand.
If no rewind is made, the game continues, with no partial fix being made. No damage was dealt by Ephara, and no life was lost as a result.


Best regards,
Sebastian Stückl :)


PS: Can we please give the players real names? “A” and “B” is a bit awkward.
If possible, “A~” should be the active player, “N~” the non-active player

Edited Sebastian Stückl (Feb. 15, 2014 02:29:38 PM)

I agree with Sebastian - it seems to me that player A's false statement is related to the game state or rules, not Ephara's oracle text or abilities. “There is a moment…” suggests to me that he thought there would be some period in the game where the devotion to White/Blue would dip below 7.

That said, you should probably ask what Player A meant by that statement to confirm. Regardless, I have a hard time buying the CPV here - seems much more like a GRV/FtMGS.

Excellent points. I was thinking it over last night, and I'd like to switch my case to GRV.

A reasonable CPV example is this:

N- “How big is your Tarmogoyf?”
A- “It's a 5/6 (mistakenly, as it is a 6/7 or something)”

Information asked, incorrect information given. No real effect on the game other than incorrect information.

I would rule a GRV on this:

N-“How much damage do I take from Tarmogoyf”
A- “5 (it should be 6).”

They've mistakenly assigned 5 damage from a creature that is 6 power. Information (and math) is the issue here, but the game rules are being broken. Tarmaogoy's P/T are set by game rules.

Ephara is an attacking creature. Player A has mistakenly removed an attacking creature from combat mistakenly thinking the game rules have done so, but in fact Ephara was always a creature according to the game rules. The game rules were broken, so this is a GRV Warning for Player A.

The opponent went along with it and had the opportunity to count devotion during the whole Deputy of Acquittals part. Because they did not catch the error immediately, they should receive a Warning for FtMGS.

My thoughts on whether and how it is backed up do not change. We definitely do NOT change life totals if we decide not to back up.