Welcome back to another week of Knowledge Pool. This week we have another Silver scenario, so L2s should wait until Friday to join in.

Abel is playing in a Standard PPTQ against Nick. Abel taps 4 Plains, declares ‘Cast Gideon, Ally of Zendikar’, and puts a card from his hand onto the table. He then says ‘make a knight’, and puts a 2/2 Knight Ally token into play, and says ‘your turn.’ After he draws for turn, Nick is evaluating the board state and notices that the card in play is Gideon of the Trials, not Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. The players call for a judge, and when you arrive you verify that there is in fact a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar in Abel's hand, he simply put down the wrong card.

What do you do?

Edited Joe Klopchic (Sept. 21, 2017 05:02:36 AM)

There seems to be two backups/partial fixes that are possible and I am not sure which way to go.

On one hand if you back up to the point of error - N places a random card back on his library and A now has the option of playing either Gideon in his hand. This could also be a partial fix with A simply swapping the Gideons from his hand and the board.

On the other hand…. As tapping 4 - mana to play a 3 mana spell is not inherently a game error to me the real error is activating Gideon of the Trials and placing a Knight token into play.

If I call a Lightning Bolt a Lightning Strike and have paid 2 mana I still get the bolt and have a mana floating - to me that's a simple mistake in my English. Miss-activating a legally played Planeswalker seems to be more of the error and a back up would be to this point.
- Random card from N on top
- Remove Knight token
- A now has Gideon of the Trials and 1 floating White mana.

A - Warning for GPE - GRV
N - Warning for GPE - FtMGS

I am open to being incorrect of course but this is how I see it - Enlighten me please!

I think we have to at least consider a TE-CPV, because the player called a Gideon of the Trials a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, which is a violation of MTR 4.1 by misrepresenting “the name of any visible object.”

It's very clear to me that what was *intended* to happen was Abel meant to cast GAoZ, accidentally put down GotT and activated a GAoZ ability, but because the mana costs are almost identical, I think what really happened was that Abel cast GotT, misrepresented it as GAoZ, and then tried to activate an ability that shouldn't have been activated.

The *root* cause of the infraction was the misrepresentation, so I would say Abel gets a Warning-TE-CPV. There's no FMGS for Nick, because FMGS is only applicable when the opponent commits a Game Play Error.

Although it makes intuitive sense to me to consider a backup to the point of casting Gideon, we have to think about it a little more carefully. The remedy for CPV says “A backup may be considered in cases where a player has clearly acted upon incorrect information provided to him or her by his or her opponent.” Nick hasn't acted, unless we want to make a case that there is an action that Nick *would* have taken against a GotT that they decided *not* to take against what they thought was a GAoZ. I might talk to Nick away from the table about his cards in hand and find out if there is any action he would have taken against the Gideon (counterspell, removal, etc.) Depending on the type of response Nick has, I would back up to the earliest possible time Nick could have used that response.

All that said, this feels like a pretty clunky solution (especially re: the backup), so I too am interested in hearing other thoughts!

EDIT: I didn't realize that players are obligated to announce if they're floating mana. That being the case, since Abel did *something* incorrect when they cast GotT for 2WW (either played the wrong card or paid the wrong cost), it seems much more like a GRV/FGMS and backup to right before Gideon was cast.

Edited Logan Anbinder (Sept. 21, 2017 05:46:35 AM)

There don't seem to be many responses this week, so I am going to chime in a bit earlier on Friday than I might otherwise. This is a bit of a frustrating situation in that I believe there is an obvious, non-disruptive, and all around satisfactory solution to this issue (just swap the Gideon cards) that would work great at Kitchen Table REL but has no support at Comp REL.

There are a bunch of thought exercises we could go through to determine how to fit this situation into an established infraction (I'll go into some of those below), but I think the fact that it is difficult to nail down exactly what infraction occurred—especially given the somewhat obvious, albeit unsupported fix—should indicate that policy is lacking applicable philosophical guidance for this scenario. In light of this, in the very limited circumstances of this scenario, as head judge, I would be inclined to authorize a deviation from written policy. I would authorize the partial fix of putting Gideon, Ally of Zendikar onto the battlefield and putting Gideon of the Trials back into AP's hand. I would explain to both players that this fix falls outside the bounds of written policy, explain my prerogative as head judge to deviate from the written policy, issue no penalties, remind both players to be more observant in the future, and allow the game to proceed from Nick's draw step.

I think that there are two key pieces of information to consider here: (1) both players had a shared perception of reality: AP cast Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, activated its ability to make a token, and passed the turn; and (2) since AP has the correct card in hand, there is an obvious (though unsupported) means of making metaphysical reality match the players' perception of reality. The deviation essentially accomplishes the same result as a backup while avoiding any potential disruption caused by rewinding through a draw step.

Below, I will discuss why I don't think this situation fits well into established infractions.

GRV

Perhaps the knee jerk reaction is to say that a GRV must have occurred somewhere. For this to be the case, it would mean that AP cast Gideon of the Trials and then activated an ability that it doesn't have. (If we wanted to be supremely pedantic, then the first GRV was actually that AP floated 4 mana, cast a 3 CMC spell, and then passed priority without declaring the floating mana. Let's not go there.)

Now the question becomes: Did AP really cast Gideon of the Trials? AP floated requisite mana and announced Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. He then (unintentionally) revealed a card with the name Gideon of the Trials. Does that really mean Gideon of the Trials was cast? And affirmative answer to this question seems quite unsatisfactory in that it ostensibly puts more weight on the relatively thoughtless action of plopping a card on the table than it does on the more intentional actions of tapping mana and communicating with the opponent. Had either player called out the mistake at this point, then the obvious solution seems to be “Oops, I revealed the wrong card; here's the correct card from my hand.” The fact that both players then also proceeded with the rest of the turn under the shared understanding that the card on the table was in fact Gideon, Ally of Zendikar makes the proposition that AP really unintentionally cast a different spell seem unreasonable.

In this regard, I also think the fact that the unintentionally revealed card was Gideon of the Trials is a bit of a red herring. If you believe that AP cast Gideon of the Trials, then I would ask you to reimagine this scenario, except the revealed card was Glory Seeker, not Gideon of the Trials. In that case, would you also believe that AP actually cast Glory Seeker? So in this situation, did AP really violate a game rule or did he “simply put down the wrong card”? The answer seems pretty clearly to be the latter.

For these reasons, I don't believe this situation fits cleanly into a GRV. However, if we were determined to fit this situation into a GRV, then the only obvious infraction is a GRV for creating a token with Gideon of the Trials. In this case, policy would have use rewind only to the point of activating the ability. So we are saying (despite all evidence to the contrary) that AP really cast Gideon of the Trials, not Ally of Zendikar, and the game will proceed from APs main phase. This rewind is is strictly in line with the letter of the law, and yet it seems to be the least intuitive and most disruptive option available. All in all, this is just a bad choice.

CPV

“See, the thing about CPV is that it's never really CPV….” But, jokes aside, the next possible infraction is a CPV for misidentifying the name of a public object. I think we are back to asking ourselves whether the card in play is really Gideon of the Trials or if AP cast Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and “simply put down the wrong card.” I think we have pretty well established the arguments against this stance. I think calling this situation a CPV would do more to pay lip service to the IPG than it would to actually address the problem. Let's not call it something it really isn't just so we have a defined infraction to point to. Furthermore, given that NAP did not take any actions based on the supposedly incorrect information furnished by his opponent, policy would provide no grounds for backing up at all. We'd just leave Abel with a Gideon of the Trials and a Knight token. Again, this could fit strictly within the IPG, but we're stretching to reach this Infraction, and other available solutions seem much more satisfactory and less disruptive.

As an important final note: Ultimately whether the remedies outlined in policy “feel” right is irrelevant to determining what infraction has occurred. The real issue, as I have explained, is that in the particular facts of this scenario, either of these infractions presupposes that Abel “really did” cast Gideon of the Trials. I don't believe that to be the case, and therefore, I don't believe either of these infractions can apply.

Edited Edward Bryn Pitt (Sept. 23, 2017 02:41:33 AM)

I'm going to chime in and say that I agree with Bryn. This scenario portrays a situation in which both players shared an identical perception of reality, even if it didn't match the visible board state. From the perspective of both players up until this point, they thought that Gideon, Ally of Zendikar was cast and put in play, not Gideon of the Trials. I'm personally fine with just swapping the cards out with the obligatory GRV/FtMGS warnings for putting the wrong card in play. Yes, I understand this isn't policy supported. Yes, I understand the dangers of creating our own partial fixes. However, the rational for rewinding to the point of error here doesn't make sense as the actions and decisions of both players up to this point were already based on a reality in which Gideon, Ally of Zendikar was in play. All things considered, I expect both players would be amicable to this solution.

I expect the official answer to be GRV/FtMGS with a rewind. For clarity, the root problem was putting the wrong card down while declaring “Gideon, Ally of Zendikar” as being cast, not making a Knight with Gideon of the Trials. If you want to rewind this, you should rewind to the cast (where the error occurred) and swap out the cards.

I've come across similar situations in the past where a player has done something to the effect of “Bolt you”, revealing a card that doesn't do that and then soon after (without any draws in the middle) realising the error and calling me over. The ruling at the time was that they'd just revealed a card in their hand, but that what both players believed had happened had happened (and the correct card was moved to the correct zone).

I went down the route of required zone change partial fixes; casting Gideon, AoZ would require him to move zones (twice, no less; Gideon OTT has just been revealed) but realised this would result in us having Gideon AoZ with his starting loyalty. This is fine in this scenario, but in a general sense might not work. If counters have been placed on (or removed from) objects this way, partial fixing it might cause problems.

Until the error is caught, both players believe there is a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar in play as well as a Knight token. That's what they cast and that was a legal course of events; they just revealed the wrong card. I'm inclined to just make the game state look like how the players (justifiably!) believe it should look and issue GRV/FtMGS (though it honestly feels very pedantic to do this).

Thanks everyone for the excellent discussion this week.

You all talked a lot about what infraction this should be, and Nathaniel ended up identifying our solution.

Abel announced and cast one spell, but represented it with the wrong card. This is a GRV. The first error occurred when Abel but the wrong card on the stack.

Abel receives a Warning for Game Rule Violation, and Nick a Warning for Failure to Maintain Game State. Back the game up to the point of the error, including returning a random card from Nick's hand to the top of his library, tapping any appropriate lands, removing the Knight token, and returning Gideon to Abel's hand and untapping Abel's lands.

I'll also address the deviation that a couple of you brought up.

It's certainly possible to swap the cards. It is definitely a deviation, and I don't think it meets the Significant and Exceptional standard to apply it. Especially in this case, where after completing the back-up, it is fairly certain that Abel will simply play the correct Gideon and the game will continue as expected. If I tried, I could envision a scenario where swapping the cards is correct, but I would highly advise not going down that route unless absolutely necessary.