Nora sighs and says, ”Fine… I’ll miss you guys!“ as she puts the two cards under the Angel. She slides the beast token off to the side then back to the same spot while saying, ”Goodbye, old beast… Oh, hello new beast! Nice of you to join us.“
Austin then taps an empty pink sleeve representing a token. ”Attack.“ Nora asks, ”What’s that again?“ and Austin replies, ”It’s a 3/3.” Nora thinks for a moment, looks at the Ghor Clan Rampager in her hand, sees that Austin is at 1 life and has only the untapped Angel to block, then declares “No blocks” and marks her life from 4 to 1. Then Austin says, “Ok, flash back Geistflame for the win!“
Nora groans and says ”Awww, I totally forgot about Geistflame, because it’s so random that you would play it in the first place!“ But when Austin grabs his graveyard to cast Geistflame, he says, ”Doh! I got that token from my Huntmaster of the Fells, didn’t I? It’s actually a 2/2 wolf… I got confused because of all the beast tokens.“
”JUDGE!“ is then shouted in stereo.
What do you do?
Judges, feel free to discuss this scenario here!
[expand title=”View Answer”]Thanks to everyone who participated in this discussion! David Zalesky was quick to point out that this is, in fact, a Tournament Error – Communication Policy Violation, because Austin has provided incorrect free and/or derived information. You could argue either way: ”He implied it was a token named Beast“ (free information), or ”He stated his Wolf token was 3/3 instead of 2/2″ (derived information), but it doesn’t much matter. Either way, the infraction, penalty and fix are the same.
Definition
A player violates the Player Communication policy detailed in section 4.1 of the Magic Tournament Rules and summarized below. This infraction only applies to violations of that policy and not to general communication confusion.
Additional Remedy
If the situation is simple enough to safely back up without too much disruption to the course of the game, the judge may get permission from the Head Judge to back up the game to the point of the incorrect information. Each action taken is undone until the game reaches the point immediately prior to the error. Cards incorrectly placed in hand are returned to the location in the zone from which they were moved (if the identity of the incorrectly drawn card is not known to all players, a random card is returned instead). Once the game is backed up, it continues from that point.
Alex Mullins added a small but important piece of information; the head judge must approve a backup if we feel one is appropriate.
And Sebastian Rittau called attention to some of the things to take into consideration in your decision of whether to back up.
We see that some information has been gained (Nora is reminded of the Geistflame, Austin can probably figure out that Nora has some kind of trick for next turn, etc.), but most of us agree it’s not too complicated to simply back up the game. Even if you don’t back up the game, issue a warning for TE:CPV to Austin for incorrectly representing the power/toughness of his creature. Back up to the point of the incorrect information being given, which was ”It’s a 3/3“ during the declare attackers step in this case. Return the Geistflame to the graveyard (if it was actually moved to the stack), undo combat damage by putting Nora’s life to 4 again, and return to the declare attackers step where the 2/2 is attacking. We don’t force any previously taken game actions after that point where the CPV occurred. Allow Nora to block if she wishes, and allow Austin to choose whether to cast Geistflame and how to cast it if he wishes.
And of course it’s a good idea to do a little investigation, but considering that Austin was the one who noticed the error and called it on himself as soon as he noticed, when he would have just won the game if he had remained silent, it’s probably safe to assume this error was unintentional.[/expand]