When Speeds Collide

| bimmerbot

You are the only judge at a Limited GPT. Andy calls you to the table and says: “Last turn Nina attacked with those two creatures.” He is pointing at a tapped Lightning Shrieker and a tapped Zurgo Bellstriker. “She dashed the Zurgo, and then forgot to shuffle the Shrieker and return the Zurgo to hand, just saying go.” You ask some questions and find out Andy has drawn a card for his turn, played Anticipate and was in the middle of casting a creature when he noticed Nina did something wrong. After a brief investigation you conclude no cheating has happened. What do you do?

Judges, feel free to discuss this scenario on Judge Apps!

Answer
There is actually a little more going on than you’d might think at first glance. Lets get to it…

There are in fact two missed triggers and we will need to tackle each one separately and even a little differently:

  • The Zurgo Bellsmasher’s Dash is a delayed trigger that causes a zone change. This kind of trigger will resolve without using the stack, but Andy gets to choose whether this will happen now or at the beginning of the next phase, in this case that would be the combat phase. As per the IPG:

If the triggered ability is a delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of an object, resolve it. For these two types of abilities, the opponent chooses whether to resolve the ability the next time a player would get priority or when a player would get priority at the start of the next phase.

  • The Lightning Shrieker’s ability is a normal missed trigger. And even though it causes a zone change, does not fall under the same remedy as a delayed zone change trigger. Here Andy can choose if he wants the trigger to be put on the stack or leave the shy dragon in play. If he chooses to put it on the stack it will go to the bottom, under the creature currently being cast. As per the IPG:

If the triggered ability isn’t covered by the previous two paragraphs, the opponent chooses whether the triggered ability is added to the stack. If it is, it’s inserted at the appropriate place on the stack if possible or on the bottom ofthe stack.

There are two infractions, even though both happen at the same time, do not share a root cause. This description is reserved for when an error occurs and infractions chain off of it. Espen Skarsbø Olsen puts it really well in the first part of his post:

Nina missed two triggers that should have triggered at the same time. Two different triggers, with different actions and different sources. Different partial fixes as well. The only common thing is that both triggers would trigger at the same time. This would all point towards giving two Warnings.

And that is where we can stop analyzing this scenario. There are two triggers that are missed. They have a slightly different remedy but are both generally detrimental. Two different warnings for ‘Game Play Error – Missed Trigger’ are in order.