Alvin has no cards in hand and 11 lands in play of a variety of types. He draws Defiant Strike, plays it on an opponents creature, draws Weave Fate, casts it, draws two cards including an Abzan Guide. He looks at his lands, confused, counts several time, and realizes that he has tapped six lands for five mana worth of spells. He confirms this with the opponent, who says to go ahead and untap a land. Alvin untaps one of his two swamps–both of which he had tapped, and which were his only black mana sources in play.

What do you do?

(This actually happened, and I'm quite sure there was no funny business going on–this was 100% sloppy play, not cheating)

At regular? Thank his opponent for being courteous and have them continue play. Remind them to be careful and think before tapping their lands if you feel like it's appropriate. Thank them for calling you over, and to do so again if they have any questions.

Technically, rewinding or leaving the game alone is the “right” answer. But from the JAR: “If you feel that the suggested remedy is not well adapted to your particular situation and you can suggest a more appropriate fix which is accepted by both players, apply that fix instead.”

Rewinding is clunky, not fun, and will likely end up in the same place. Leaving the game-state as it is isn't providing a great experience for either player, especially if it was a simple dexterity error. Since the fix works for both players, and the fix is appropriate, I'd let their proposed fix stand.

Alvin's opponent allowed Alvin a takeback to fix a mistake. This is common at Regular and not a problem, but it's pretty clear to me that Alvin's opponent meant that Alvin could untap a land in such a way that the resulting status of Alvin's lands actually represents a legal sequence of gameplay actions.

If Alvin's opponent would directly tell me that Alvin untapping a Swamp is fine, then I'd back off and let them continue playing, but he'd have to tell me explicitly. Otherwise, I would instruct Alvin to do the takeback as intended, i.e. tap the Swamp and untap another land so that at least the proper number of white and black sources end up tapped. If untapping a Swamp was also an innocent mistake, then this should be fine for Alvin as well.

Sorry, I think I was too obtuse in my situation.

Alvin untapped a swamp after looking that he had drawn Abzan guide. He had tapped out all of his black mana; if the error had been caught before Weave Fate had resolved, and he had to untap a land, it's not clear that he would have known to untap the “correct” land to let him play the creature he was about to draw.

if Alvin untap the swamp it will still end up with a legal game state.

All the spells previously cast didn't require any black mana.
(only white for Defiant Strike
and blue for Weave Fate)
Alvin need the black mana now because he just drew Abzan Guide.

in Regular REL,
if the opponent proposed such a fix to a scenario,
and both players agree to it,
I'm okay with letting Alvin untap the swamp
(although now it enables him to cast the Abzan Guide which he just drew)

after the game, educate both players,
remind them not to play sloppily,
and next time it happens, Alvin might not be playing against such a “nice” opponent.
also let them know that the fix we applied,
is a deviation, which is allowed in Regular REL.

if they were to play in a Competitive REL,
things might be different.

Edited Maykel . (Dec. 9, 2014 07:25:10 PM)

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

Sorry, I think I was too obtuse in my situation.

Alvin untapped a swamp after looking that he had drawn Abzan guide. He had tapped out all of his black mana; if the error had been caught before Weave Fate had resolved, and he had to untap a land, it's not clear that he would have known to untap the “correct” land to let him play the creature he was about to draw.

Eli, I'm going to put this bluntly, not as anything against your ruling/thinking, but because I want people to call me out if my reasoning is flawed.

I didn't mention the black mana specifically because I don't care–I didn't even consider it when responding.

Any time there's a game play error, there's going to be advantage gained by one side or the other. We can't make players unsee a revealed card, etc. When making rulings, the main thing I'm considering at is if something is legal/illegal, not the amount of advantage gained by the mistake. I don't take the board state or contents of hands into account when trying to figure out if something is illegal/illegal. For competitive, we have lots of guidelines to follow to make sure there's a procedure to protect the integrity of the tournament, and be more consistently ‘fair’ throughout the event. At regular, some of that is sacrificed to make it easier for players to play magic, and make the experience more pleasant for more people.

It's important to realize by asking the opponent “are you sure it's okay for him to untap his swamp?” that you're giving away information and giving the opponent an advantage–further damaging an already damaged game. If the active player had not made the error, he may well have left his last black source open regardless of what he was to draw!

If his opponent wasn't in favor of the fix, I'd let the standard fixes apply. At regular REL, I put the play experience before the strict ‘fairness’ of the rules implementation–if both players offer a reasonable and legal solution, I'm not going to get in their way of playing the game. Is there advantage to be gained? Yes, but it's inevitable when errors are made.

If the active player was doing this intentionally to try to gain an advantage, then it's a different situation. I do take the board state into account in investigations.

Edited Chase Culpon (Dec. 9, 2014 09:40:27 PM)

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

Sorry, I think I was too obtuse in my situation.

No, you were not obtuse, I was just being dense about colours again.

Rereading the scenario I would not intervene. Alvin's opponent allowed a takeback knowing that Alvin had already seen two more cards. He didn't have to do that, but he gave Alvin an advantage in this way, and that's just the way it is. Any other action would seem to be more disruptive for the game.

Excuse me if I'm interpreting this a but too simplistic, but if Alvan has tapped 6 lands and used them to cast 5 mana worth of spells, doesn't he merely have a mana floating? I don't see any need for untapping lands here.

You can't have mana floating without announcing it (which also makes it illegal to do the “I tapped to only 2 lands, but have 3 mana available for mana leak” trick). If you pass priority with mana in your pool, you have to clearly announce how much and what colour of mana you have left.

Indeed. One of two things has gone wrong. Either (a) he's paid the incorrect mana for the spell, or (b) he's floated mana and not announced what's left in his pool clearly. And at Regular my money is on (a) 99.9% of the time. (The remaining 0.1% is when someone casts Scapeshift in a Regular REL Modern event :p)

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

Sorry, I think I was too obtuse in my situation.

Alvin untapped a swamp after looking that he had drawn Abzan guide. He had tapped out all of his black mana; if the error had been caught before Weave Fate had resolved, and he had to untap a land, it's not clear that he would have known to untap the “correct” land to let him play the creature he was about to draw.

Your issue with the solution the players have themselves come up with, i.e. that it's “unfair” and gives an advantage (however small) to the player who screwed up in the first place, is pretty easy to understand. Unfortunately it's also part and parcel of judging - this will just happen from time to time, and there's not always going to be anything you can do about it. That kind of unfairness is a result of rulings all the way up to finals of the Pro Tour. While that's unfortunate, we shouldn't let it make us opt for inappropriate rulings to try and avoid it.

With that in mind, what are our options?

A) Let the players' proposed fix stand. At first glance, this is “unfair”, so we'll at least examine the other options.
B) Tell the player he can't untap a swamp, but can untap a different land instead. This is clearly terrible and makes no sense, so let's move on.
C) Perform a full back up, returning the drawn cards to the top of the library. This is arguably the most technically correct fix, and what you would likely have to do at Comp REL, but there's a pretty obvious flaw here - the end result in practical terms is identical to A. The player will tap their mana more appropriately the second time through and they'll be able to cast the Guide anyway.
D) Perform a full back up, and then randomise the library. Again, this is a terrible deviation and is verging on an “in-game penalty.”

So in real terms our options are leave the game as it is, or waste two minutes of the players' time to functionally leave the game as it is. One of those seems obviously better than the other.

Originally posted by Alex Roebuck:

D) Perform a full back up, and then randomise the library. Again, this is a terrible deviation and is verging on an “in-game penalty.”

Can you clarify what you think is an “in game penalty?”

Incidentally, this is what I ended up doing–though, not because I was actively judging, but because the opponent actually asked for my input. I would have let it stand if they hadn't asked (though, conversely, I think they wouldn't have asked if I wasn't literally standing right there)

I'm largely in favour of accepting the player's fix and letting them carry on here, potentially with a passing comment about paying more attention. In the case that one player requested my intervention, as you suggest apparently happened at the end of the situation, I would probably lean towards explaining that as extra lands have been tapped, it means that there is a mana floating and the issue is that the player has not announced it - which would allow the player to choose what was still left in their pool anyway.

I don't like backing up here. Did the extra land get tapped for the Defiant Strike or for the Weave Fate? Were there other cards in hand when either of these spells were cast? If there were, you have to put random cards back on top of the library as you cannot know what cards were drawn, and in this case shuffling the library is a very bad idea - you may be shuffling away cards that the player has had in hand for ages and has been building their plans around, which is what I think Alex meant by invoking the idea of an “in-game penalty”. Basically, I think this is likely to prove to be one of those situaitons where backing up is much more disruptive than not backing up.

In this case, the cards were drawn into an empty hand–I definitely would not have backed up if there had been any other cards.

Basically, they agreed to untap a land, the active player untapped a swamp, the non-active player looked at me and said “This is the fix, right? Should we do this?” And I stepped in–put the two cards back, untapped all lands but the plains from the Defiant Strike (the only tapped white sources were plains), had him tap the lands he wanted for weave fate, had him shuffle, and draw two cards.

The shuffle, I later found out, was a pretty major deviation–the JREL document says not to do it–but, as Alex pointed out, option (C) doesn't really fix anything.

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

Can you clarify what you think is an “in game penalty?”

I don't recall where I first heard the term but when I was new to judging I came across it several times in the context of “things to avoid doing,” and essentially understand it to mean:
any unconventional fix where the result (especially an intentional result) is to create a disadvantage within a game being played, for the player who committed an infraction.

A Warning represents a small disadvantage within a tournament (because of upgrade paths) but not within an individual game. A Game/Match Loss ends a game outright, but doesn't actually mess with the game state itself. Poorly-executed fixes, however, can amount to a “penalty” in the form of actively making it harder for the offending player to win a game. It's generally arbitrary, unquantifiable, and impossible to do in any consistent way, which is why we avoid doing it.

In this situation the desire to shuffle away the Abzan Guide is almost certainly a result of the fact that letting the player play the Guide feels unfair (because, realistically, it is a bit unfair). However, the fact that you (presumably) wouldn't feel inclined to make the player shuffle away two lands in the same situation shows that shuffling is probably not an appropriate thing to include in any fix you attempt - you were more concerned with how much of an advantage the mistake created than with the mistake itself. Shuffling away a “good” card where you wouldn't shuffle away a “bad” one is definitely an example of an in-game penalty.

Some examples are ridiculously obvious, and not the sort of thing a judge would ever consider in the first place, but some are actually pretty easy traps to fall into. They're often the result of any line of reasoning which, rather than going “there was an error; let's fix the error,” goes "there was an error; the error created some unfairness; let's fix the unfairness." It's very natural to think this way, but it's just not where our focus should be.

Edited Alex Roebuck (Dec. 23, 2014 10:07:57 PM)