A pound of the cure

| bimmerbot

Angela and Nigel are playing in a Modern Masters 2015 sealed PPTQ. Angela taps out to cast Banefire with X=5, targeting Nigel’s Swans of Bryn Argoll. Nigel says, “Sure.” As Nigel is reaching for his Swans, Angela grabs the top five cards of her library and puts them into her hand. Nigel immediately raises his hand, “Woah! Judge!”

What do you do?

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

Answer
As most of you correctly surmised, Angela has committed Game Play Error – Drawing Extra Cards.

Importantly, Nigel saying “Sure” to acknowledge the resolution of Banefire does not constitute confirmation of Angela’s draw. Nor does the misunderstanding of the interaction of Swans’ ability with that of Banefire’s “If X is 5 or more” clause constitute a prior Game Rules Violation. The first thing wrong in the game is that Angela has cards in her hand that should not be there, and the identities of those cards was not known to Nigel prior to the infraction.

As such, none of the escape or downgrade conditions for Drawing Extra Cards are met, and Angela will receive a Game Loss.

We thought that this situation would trip up many more of you than it did. It’s always gratifying to see the impact of an education project on display as it was this week.