Howdy folks, and welcome back to the Knowledge Pool. We're starting up 2019 with a silver scenario. L2s should wait until Friday to join in the discussion. Enjoy!

You’re the head judge of a local modern PPTQ. At the end of Ned’s turn Alfie casts Vendilion Clique, targeting Ned with the triggered ability, it resolves and Alfie chooses to have Ned discard Lightning Bolt. On Alfie’s turn, in his pre-combat main phase, he casts another Vendilion Clique, again targeting Ned with the triggered ability. The Clique’s ability resolves, and Ned chooses to have Alfie discard Boros Charm. Ned reminds Alfie that the Clique is legendary, and as Alfie is putting his one of his Cliques in his graveyard, he rereads it and realizes that Ned didn’t draw a card from either trigger. Alfie calls for a judge and tells you that Ned has been Clique’d twice and he discarded the card both times and didn’t draw any cards.

What do you do?

Edited Joe Klopchic (Jan. 2, 2019 01:14:38 PM)

Let's unpack this series from the beginning: (Caveat: I read “discard”, I'm thinking the card is now in the graveyard.)

-First Clique resolves, and the players make TWO errors in resolving the spell. The Bolt is discarded, not tucked to the bottom of the library, and Ned fails to draw from the Clique.
-After a significant time has passed (Alfie's Untap-Upkeep-Draw-1st Main phases), the errors are somehow repeated with a second Clique, this time a Charm being discarded and another failure to draw by Ned.

Fix:

-Working backwards seems to be the fairest and least disruptive solution here. With the Head Judge's permission*, rewind to just before casting the second Clique, returning the Boros Charm to Ned's hand, and the Clique to Alfie's hand. Also, don't forget to return the other Clique to the battlefield if needed, depending on which one was sent to the graveyard for legendary rule. Then, have Ned draw the card from the first Clique's resolution, and move the Bolt from his graveyard to the bottom of his library.

-Both players will receive Warnings here, Ned for GRV and Alfie for FtMGS from the first Clique errors. I'm still mentally debating a second GRV for Ned from the second Clique errors, but if I can “umbrella” both under a single GRV Warning I'd prefer doing that.

Key Point:

-Backing up past the second Clique's casting shouldn't be considered, even though the only substantial change would be returning a random card from Alfie's hand to the top of his library. The errors from the first Clique can be resolved fairly without a rewind.

Support: IPG 2.5 (Game Play Error - Game Rule Violation), 2.6 (Game Play Error - Failure to Maintain Game State, and 1.4 (Backing Up)

*Or, in certain situations, with an authorized Team Leader's permission.

It is a GRV. And s one With an aditional remedy If a player failed to draw cards He/she does. I Made a simple Back up Returning the last card discarded First. Then Ned draws a card. And the resolve the State based action (legendary rule) and las resolve the trigger of the second vendillion.
Alfie gets a warning for GRV and Ned gets another warning for FTMGS.

Originally posted by Kerry Blanchard Jr.:

With the Head Judge's permission*

Just so everyone is on the same page, Knowledge Pool generally assumes that you're the Head Judge/TL that is making the decision so we can avoid needing to make this distinction on every scenario.

Originally posted by Kerry Blanchard Jr.:

Caveat: I read “discard”, I'm thinking the card is now in the graveyard.

This is correct. Both cards selected with clique were discarded, rather than put in the correct place.

Edited Joe Klopchic (Jan. 2, 2019 01:21:15 PM)

Can't this just be handled with two partial fixes?

and the infraction falls into one or more of the following categories, and only into those categories

The only errors here were putting the cards in the wrong zone and failing to draw the cards. These errors are both fixable under partial fixes. Alfie may complain they didn't get to discard whatever was drawn for the first Clique but it's their responsibility to know what their cards do…

There certainly isn't a “simple back up” available although it would be possible to do a backup.

If an object is in an incorrect zone either due to a required zone change being missed or due to being put into the wrong zone during a zone change, the identity of the object was known to all players, and it can be moved with only minor disruption to the current state of the game, put the object in the correct zone.

So the two cards being put to the graveyard instead of bottom of library can be just moved to the correct zone.

If a player failed to draw cards, discard cards, or return cards from their hand to another zone, that player does so.

Ned draws cards to replace those they didn't draw.

I like the “summarization” of Tim Boura, and I will go his way 100% with this only change =

Player A: GrV warning, Player B: FtMGS: warning
back up
resolve first vendillion correctly and move cards accordingly; then: the second vendillion clicque is on the battlefield, his trigger is on the stack.
Now player A chooses which vendillion to sacrifice for the legendary rules and the game moves forward.

*there is a level of abusability and I'm inclined to ask Player A: “how long have you been playing Vendillion Cliques?”

Thanks everyone for the responses this week. Tim Boura's analysis was fairly accurate.

Starting with infractions, everyone agrees that this is a Game Rules Violation. Kerry is correct that we should issue GRV warnings to both players. Ned took incorrect actions based on Alfie's card, so both players recieve a warning for GRV.

As for fixes, everyone agrees that all of the errors are available as partial fixes for a Game Rules Violation. Since that's true, we don't consider a full back-up, but we should consider a simple back up.

According to the IPG, a simple back up only requires reversing one action, so we shouldn't reverse both putting Vendillion Clique into the graveyard as well as putting the last discarded card back in Ned's hand. That's the answer Knowledge Pool is going with, but it is up to judge interpretation and judgement. I wouldn't call a simple back up to during, but not before, the last Clique's trigger resolving incorrect.

Both players Receive a Warning for Game Rules Violation. Ned incorrectly put the chosen cards for the Vendillion Clique into the wrong place, and Alfie both didn't correct that, and didn't have Ned draw cards. Apply four total partial fixes, putting the Lightning Bolt then Boros Charm on the bottom of Ned's library, then have Ned draw two cards. The game continues in Alfie's main phase.