Originally posted by Evan Cherry:

Trying to account for who gets what information is a slippery slope for judges to make calls and be perceived as showing favortism.

So, if I may paraphrase… trying to avoid favoritism by accounting for advantage is often perceived as favoritism.

This is an important take-away for me. Thank you!

Yes, it's a good lesson for me as well.

I still have a question for those who don't want to back up: why exactly?
Those that responded here said that it wouldn't change too much, but the
reality still is that an illegal action has been made. Even if the result
would be exactly the same, shouldn't ensuring players don't violate game
rules be something important to us?

So, if I may paraphrase… trying to avoid favoritism by accounting for advantage is often perceived as favoritism.

I don't quite understand that take-away from what I said… I was unclear.

Backing up or not backing up is the “fix”, not a punishment and that is where determining who benefits from the information is a slippery slope- it will affect whether you backup or not, which can be perceived as favortism. One party will generally benefit while the other is disadvantaged. Try to avoid that discussion in your ruling, and discuss how the complexity of the backup affected your decision.

At all RELs both of the players will be educated (or reminded) about how they broke the rules, and at Competitive & Professional RELs the players will receive penalties to reinforce that education. That is sufficient for how we should handle violation of the game rules.

Choosing not to back up also depends on personal comfort with performing the backup. There's a danger of avoiding backups that are relatively simple if you dwell too much on who gets what information.

Who gets how much information should NOT be a factor in deciding to rewind. The COMPLEXITY of the rewind should be the deciding factor

I should also be even more clear: WHO BENEFITS from the information should not be a factor in deciding to rewind. HOW MUCH information is revealed should factor into deciding to rewind. See Joel & Jack's article for further explanation.

From the article recommended this is a snipped that describes when a partial backup is allowed:

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.

But the article then goes to give this example:

Doomed to back up

Anna casts casts Doom Blade on Nick’s Walking Corpse (a black creature). It is put into the graveyard, and players move on. When you are eventually called to the table, a lot of things have happened since then and you do not consider a backup feasible. What should we do?

We have already determined that we do not consider a backup feasible. So, is this eligible for any of our partial fixes? Because the objects involved were not supposed to change zones in the first place, we cannot apply the partial fix for moving objects into the right zone. So we are going to leave this game state as-is, and issue penalties.

The wording of the exception does not state if the object was meant to move but only if it did.

• Did the Walking corpse change zones? Yes.
  Was it put in the wrong zone? Well yes because it shouldn't have changed zones at all.
  

Assuming we're within a turn and the card was known to all players (clearly it was), why is it now not put in the right zone? I'm a bit confused on this one as it seems to meet all of the requirements outlined in the the exception.

The partial fix for changing zones applies only if a object must be moved because of an action (like a “destroy” spell) and while resolving that action the object hits the wrong zone. If the object should not move at all (like in the example above, the creature can't be a legal target of Doom Blade because it's black, therefore zb E creature can't be destroyed and stays where it is) the partial fix doesn't work.

A partial fix would be possible, for example, if you cast Path to Exile on an enemy creature, and your opponent moves the creature to the graveyard. The creature was moved to the wrong zone (graveyard instead of the exiled zone) so it's possible to partial fix this situation by moving the creature from the graveyard to the exiled zone.

Edit: grammar and such :-)

Edited Auzmyn Oberweger (May 27, 2014 04:22:51 AM)

I understand what people are saying this exception means, my confusion is because the wording on the exception doesn't include the ‘if it should have moved’ clause that the article assumes, it just says if the object moves:

If an object changing zones (the Walking Corpse changed zones when it was put in the graveyard) is put into the wrong zone (the graveyard is the wrong zone because it shouldn't move), the identity of the object was known to all players (clearly it must be for doom blade to have been played), and it is within a turn of the error (assume this), put the object in the correct zone(that would be the battlefield).

The rule is only intended for objects that should be moving zones, but are moving to the wrong zone.

I agree that something in the line of “If an object, while changing zones, is put in the wrong zone” would be clearer, there is definitely some ambiguity in the original wording.