I was watching this video from last year's eternal weekend, and around the 41 minute mark an interesting misplay happens. Stephen Houdlette has a Jace, the Mind Sculptor in play. His plan it to cast Ancestral Recall, use Jace's 0 ability to Brainstorm, and pass. However, after drawing for Ancestral, he loses track of where he is in the turn. He looks at his hand thinking he's just activated Jace puts two cards back, and says “go.”

Unfortunately, we can't hear the judges on the audio and the announcers were very confused, so I'm not sure what the ruling was. It seems to me this should be a GRV with a rewind, but the judges don't appear to have rewound the match.

It's also worth noting that Houdlette had two Dark Confidant on the field. Fabiano appears to think that a partial fix should be applied–Houdlette resolves Ancestral correctly and puts the two cards back in his hand, then passes the turn. At that point in the game, winning to blind Confidant flips is pretty much Houdlette's only way of losing. However, that partial fix appears unsupported. Re-drawing cards that mistakenly ended up on the top of the library appears to slip through the cracks of the IPG's rules for partial fixes:

Originally posted by IPG:

If a player forgot to draw cards, discard cards, or return cards from their hand to another zone, that player
does so.
If an object changing zones is put into the wrong zone, the identity of the object was known to all players,
and it can be moved without disrupting the state of the game, put the object in the correct zone.

Was anyone there who can tell what the ruling was? And, given the current IPG, what are people's thoughts on what the best solution is?

As described, it's *apparently* a GRV for incorrectly resolving Ancestral Recall; this is a simple situation, so I'd be OK with Backing Up, putting those 2 cards back in Houdlette's hand, and letting him then take any further actions he wishes - including activating Jace, or just passing the turn.

HOWEVER!!! - yes, that's a huge However - we weren't there, and shouldn't speculate about the actual ruling, nor second-guess what the judges on site would do.

Originally posted by Forum Protocol:

Challenging the decision of another judge without a first-hand account is improper and potentially leads to flaming. Without the full story, no-one should be passing judgement on a situation. If you heard of an odd ruling you'd like to confirm or correct, please stick to the particulars - no need for names, places, dates.

(Forum Protocol can be found here.)

Also, while I have nothing but respect for Mr. Fabiano - his opinion on what judges should do or should have done is only that, the opinion of a commentator (he's not a certified judge, as far as I can tell); this is not an expert in our policies.

So, “what are people's thoughts?” - please, be considerate when addressing that question.

d:^D

Edited Scott Marshall (Sept. 30, 2014 03:46:48 PM)

As I said, I have no idea what the ruling was, so I can't and won't argue about it–especially since the IPG was updated in between the time that video was taken and the time I was certified! That's why I specifically was asking for a ruling based on the most recent IPG, though I'm also very interested to know how the judges reached their decision at the time. I apologize if anything in my post seemed critical of the judges on the floor, who obviously had a better idea of what's going on there!

I can't take the time to watch the video, so I'll just respond to the situation at hand. Resolving Recall like a Brainstorm is a GRV. Houdlette's opponent (let's call him Nate) had an opportunity to bring up the error (while Houdlette was putting cards back and looking at his hand) but didn't, so that's FtMGS for Nate. I don't support any partial fixes here, it's pretty clear that none of them apply to the letter (even though I do feel that “drawing cards but returning them” is pretty close to “not drawing cards”). However, the only decision that was made between the error and the time the judge was called was Houdlette passing the turn. I think that's about as “a minimal decision tree” as we can expect, so I'm comfortable with rewinding. I understand that this likely means Houdlette will change his decision, but at the same time he would have probably done the same assuming his opponent interfered when he should have (when the first card was put back), so I feel both players are bought-in to ensuring the situation resolves itself as naturally as possible.