Alvin attacks with Grim Lavamancer, points to the card and says “trigger”. Nathan reveals the top card of his library. It is not a land and is put back on the library. An outside observer notices the interaction, halts the match and calls over a judge.

The judge confirms that both players derped and thought it was Goblin Guide and sees that Alvin does have one in his graveyard. The judge believes neither player is trying to gain an advantage from this.

My guess here is GRV for Alvin, ftmgs for Nathan, shuffle unknown parts of his library and continue. Is this correct, or would Nathan receive LEC, or no warning, or…?

Edit: Would anything change if a land was revealed and drawn? (My guess is no. The identity of the card is known to all players by being revealed before it was drawn. No additional penalty. The known card is put back into the library and shuffled.)

Edited Mark Johnson (Sept. 11, 2014 07:34:18 PM)

What rule did Alvin violate?

Alvin clearly announced an imaginary trigger, which is a GRV. Applying the
shuffle fix from L@EC is a good idea and hand out the warning for GRV and
one for FTMGS as well to the opponent.

Yeah, should read twice before I reply.

Many judges I know certainly joke how things are never TE-CPV, but it certainly needs to be under consideration. There was no trigger to mishandle (thus, no GPE-GRV can occur), the game state became corrupted because the AP misrepresented free/derived information on the field (primarily through putting a non-existent trigger on the stack), which, is nearly text book TE-CPV.

While I am not certain in my application of the IPG here, I would be very comfortable handing out a TE-CPV to the AP, and a downgraded GPE-LEC to the NAP, mostly in order to apply the LEC fix of bringing the NAP library to a random, unknown state.

Edited Charles Ferguson (Sept. 11, 2014 11:48:50 PM)

Applying CPV here would be a stretch, I don't know where it is stated that there needs to be a trigger to begin with in order to apply GRV.

Regarding L@EC, we don't actually have to file the infraction as L@EC in order to apply the L@EC fix as long as there's an infraction that fits better ( GRV ) and it caused extra cards to be seen that needs to be fixed.

Originally posted by Mark Johnson:

Edit: Would anything change if a land was revealed and drawn? (My guess is no. The identity of the card is known to all players by being revealed before it was drawn. No additional penalty. The known card is put back into the library and shuffled.)

There would be no additional penalty even if the card would be unknown because there was a GRV before the extra card drawn. Therefore this has no potential to be DEC (DEC only applies if the drawing of a extra card is the first moment where you can notice a mistake which is not the case here because of the wrong trigger). The difference between the drawn card beeing known is that a random card is returned if the card would not have been revealed. In this case with the card beeing known your fix is correct.

GPE-GRV never fit better than other GPE. GRV is the one we use when no other fit with the situation.

This infraction covers the majority of game situations in which a player makes an error or fails to follow a game procedure correctly. It handles violations of the Comprehensive Rules that are not covered by the other Game Play Errors.

Originally posted by Pascal Gemis:

GPE-GRV never fit better than other GPE. GRV is the one we use when no other fit with the situation.

True, but the first infraction we have (putting a wrong trigger on the stack) fits nowhere else and DEC can only be applied if

IPG/Drawing Extra Cards/Definition
A player illegally puts one or more cards into his or her hand and, at the moment before he or she began the instruction or action that put a card into his or her hand, no other Game Play Error or Communication Policy Violation had been committed, and the error was not the result of resolving objects on the stack in an incorrect order.

Edited Markus Dietrich (Sept. 12, 2014 03:07:10 AM)

I would call this LEC, as the first game action that is visibly illegal is revealing the top card of the library. I don't believe that “placing” a nonexistent trigger on the stack qualifies as GRV territory as it's only really a state of communication that gets us there.

Originally posted by Nathaniel Lawrence:

I would call this LEC, as the first game action that is visibly illegal is revealing the top card of the library. I don't believe that “placing” a nonexistent trigger on the stack qualifies as GRV territory as it's only really a state of communication that gets us there.

I believe this is an L@EC infraction for the same reasons quoted above. I will add that Nathan receives the infraction because he was the player that revealed the card.

Let's say Alvin attacks with a Hazerider Drake, points to it and says “trigger,” thinking it's a Harbor Guardian. Nathan doesn't notice either, and draws a card. Because Alvin confirmed the draw, the penalty is not DEC. Philosophically, why (besides the severity of the penalty) would OP's situation be handled as L@EC? (I may be answering my own question here.)

Note that we presume that saying “trigger” where none exists does not constitute a GRV until that imaginary trigger is actually acted upon. See this Knowledge Pool answer.

Edited Aaron Huntsman (Sept. 12, 2014 03:21:25 PM)

I'm in the LEC camp, since we don't generally consider the creation of an invisible trigger an infraction itself.

I'm not in the CPV camp… I don't think announcing a trigger is a game action (you're not really doing anything), it's not a visible object, and it doesn't match the other free information criteria. I could kinda see an argument for misrepresenting the derived information about an object on the stack, but I think that's still a stretch here.

It feels a bit bad to give them the LEC since they didn't make the initial mistake, but they took the action. They should have been sure it was a legal one. (part of why there's the double GRV example with putting a card in exile, and not just FtMGS in that case)

It does bother me that someone could abuse the normal flow of a game if they intentionally did stuff like this. But presumably a little application of the Spidey Senses and some investigation would go a long way here.

Originally posted by Nathaniel Lawrence:

I don't believe that “placing” a nonexistent trigger on the stack qualifies as GRV territory as it's only really a state of communication that gets us there.

If this is not a GRV for making up a trigger, then I think it has to be CPV, for making up a trigger. AP has clearly tried to place a Goblin Guide trigger on the stack, so I don't think we can fault NAP for L@EC. This is HIGHLY abusable behavior, and if it's not an infraction, then we have no way to track it, and the whole point of warnings (I think this should be a warning) is to say, “Hey, you're not supposed to do this, don't do it again.” If they don't do it again, great, and if they do, we should be investigating (players often won't make the same brain fart mistake twice in one day).

I would rule this as a GRV, for putting a nonexistent object on the stack. If someone wants to convince me that this is CPV, I would like to hear some arguments. If someone wants to convince me this is L@EC for NAP, it's going to take a lot of work, since I strongly believe AP is responsible for NAP's error.

Precisely because its abusable behavior, you should be on the lookout for the possibility of Cheating, but if your investigation led you to believe it was an honest mistake, and not an intent to deceive the opponent into taking an illegal action you should proceed from there. At that point, the infraction itself was revealing a card that was hidden to both players. This falls under L@EC as has been already pointed out and the players should also get the standard “play more carefully” talk.