Lights, Turtle, Action - The Knowledge Pool

You are the head judge of a GPT. You are watching a match when Nancy casts Act of Treason on Arthur’s Meandering Towershell. She attacks and exiles it, then passes the turn. When Arthur enters his declare attackers step he places the Meandering Towershell in play tapped and attacking. They both go to record the life total change. What do you do?

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Answer

Thank you everyone for your responses. Many of you, off the bat, nailed this one exactly correct.

By putting the turtle in play and attacking with it Arthur receives a warning for a Game Rule Violation. The ”return to the battlefield attacking” trigger is controlled by the player who attacked with it on the previous turn, that’s Nancy. Since this was Nancy’s turtle and she didn’t stop Arthur from attacking with the she will receive a Failure to Maintain Game State Warning.

The fix is that we are going to rewind to the beginning of the combat step. To do that we need to correct the life totals then place the turtle back in the exile zone. Once everything is back to a working game state we are going to remind both players to play more carefully.