Two turns later, Nadine carefully re-reads Phyrexian Revoker, and notices that it specifies the named card must be nonland. Nadine calls a judge.
Investigation reveals that both players believed the choice was legal at the time (perhaps being used to Pithing Needle, which can name lands).
What is the appropriate infraction, penalty and remedy?
View Answer
The first thing we need to do here is identify the infraction.
Phyrexian Revoker requires the named card to be nonland, and Inkmoth Nexus is a land. Adam has thus failed to correctly carry out the instructions in the Revoker’s ability; no other Game Play Error covers this, so it’s Game Play Error — Game Rule Violation, and Adam will receive a Warning.
And because the error went unnoticed for several turns, Nadine should also receive a Warning, for Game Play Error — Failure to Maintain Game State.
As to the remedy: it’s true that most of the time, Game Rule Violation boils down to rewinding everything or rewinding nothing, but there are two types of situations in which a partial fix is permitted. This is covered in section 3.6 of the IPG:
If not caught within a reasonable time frame, or backing up is impossible or sufficiently complex that it could affect the course of the game, the judge should leave the game state as it is after applying state-based actions and not attempt any form of partial ‘fix’– either reverse all actions or none, with the following exceptions:
- If a player made an illegal choice or failed to make a required choice for a permanent on the battlefield, that player does so.
- If a player forgot to discard or return cards from their hand to another zone, that player does so.
It’s clear that what’s happened here is an illegal choice made for the Phyrexian Revoker. Thus, the remedy is to have Adam make a legal choice for it.
Now that he knows for certain Nadine is playing it, can Adam name Garruk, Primal Hunter?
If this were a different infraction, the answer might well be different; Missed Trigger, for example, doesn’t allow players to make choices involving any object that wasn’t in an appropriate zone at the time the trigger “should have” happened.
But Game Rule Violation has no such clause, so Adam must simply make a legal choice for Phyrexian Revoker, which he can do by naming any nonland card in Standard:
CR 201.3.If an effect instructs a player to name a card, the player must choose the name of a card that exists in the Oracle card reference (see rule [CR 108.1]) and is legal in the format of the game the player is playing. (See rule [CR 100.6].)
Garruk, Primal Hunter is a nonland Standard-legal card, so if he wants Adam can name it and the Revoker will apply to Garruk and his activated abilities.