Andrew begins casting Gitaxian Probe by announcing to Nicholas, “Probe you, paying 2 life”. Nicholas points out that he controls Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Although Andrew has several untapped lands whichcould produce the mana necessary to cast the Gitaxian Probe, he does not wish to use them. Nicholas does not want to let Andrew “take back” the Probe at this point, and believes Andrew has committed to casting it.
How would you — the judge — resolve this situation?
Have any infractions been committed here? If so, what are the penalties and associated fixes you’d apply?
View Answer
Here is the game rule that’s important to how we approach this situation:
Comprehensive Rules 117.3c Activating mana abilities is not mandatory, even if paying a cost is.
This also hits an important philosophical point: we generally will never force players to take actions they don’t want to take, though more than a few opponents will try to argue that we should (most commonly this comes in the form of “judge, my creature’s an illegal target for his removal spell, make him hit one of his own creatures with it!”). So even though Andrew *could* tap a land to produce mana to pay for the additional cost imposed by Thalia, he’s not required to, and we certainly can’t and won’t *force* him to. So what do we do if he refuses?
First of all, the casting of Gitaxian Probe is illegal, and we turn to rule 717.1, which tells us how to handle that. The entire attempt to cast Gitaxian Probe is reversed, including any payments made (so if Andrew has already marked the life payment, we need to undo that and return him to his original life total).
Second… Andrew receives a Warning for Game Play Error — Game Rule Violation.
This was a hot topic in the discussion, but the need to issue the infraction is clear. Regardless of whether it came about due to an inability to generate the correct mana or an unwillingness to do so, Andrew has attempted to cast a spell by paying less than the total cost, and that is absolutely GRV. Nicholas, of course, will not receive Failure to Maintain Game State, since he pointed out the additional cost immediately.
It’s also worth pointing out that this “rewind” does *not* require the permission of the Head Judge. In this case, we’re following the procedure specified by the Comprehensive Rules, rather than applying the rewind remedy from the IPG. This comes from the fact that a judge is present at the moment it’s happening, rather than coming in later (say, on Nicholas’ turn when he suddenly remembers his Thalia).
And although there was some debate over exactly where we are — which step of casting, or possibly just after illegally completing casting — please bear in mind that while it’s sometimes interesting for judges to debate, that’s not always a useful real-world metric, since most players know very, very little about the technical intricacies of how a spell actually gets cast, which often makes such discussion fruitless in real-world situations.