“How can I help you?”
Nikolai explains, “A little bit ago, I had 2 spirit tokens die with my Blood Artist in play. My opponent and I both marked down my life gain.” Nikolai points to his life pad to illustrate. “But I missed the life loss side of the trigger.”
”When did this happen?“
”About three turns ago, I think.”
Andrew says, “It’s a missed trigger, right? So he… missed it?”
Nikolai says, “This makes all the difference. If I had marked down his life loss, I would have won this game last turn. But right now, I’m going to lose a game I should have won. What do we do now?”
What do you rule here?
Judges, feel free to discuss this scenario on Judge Apps!
View AnswerPlayers aren’t allowed to partially miss a trigger. Our first instinct may be to treat this like a Missed Trigger. It is important to note that an improperly resolved trigger is not a missed trigger. The Missed Trigger policy says “Once any of the above obligations has been fulfilled, or the trigger has been otherwise acknowledged, further problems are treated as a Game Play Error — Game Rule Violation” (2.1). In a situation of a trigger that wasn’t completely fulfilled, we are dealing with a GPE-GRV.
To correctly “fix” a GRV, we can consider backing up to the point of error. Too much has happened in this game for us to back up all the way to the point of the Blood Artist trigger in question. Can we simply fix the life totals? Let’s take a look at 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 makes a legal choice.
• If a player forgot the turn-based action of drawing a card, that player draws a card.
• If a player forgot to discard or return cards from their hand to another zone, that player does so.
• If an object is in the wrong zone, the identity of the object was known to all players, and it is within a turn of the error, put the object in the correct zone.
The game cannot be backed up. The error occurred four turns ago. Changing Andrew’s life total does not fall within the acceptable four exceptions. We don’t apply any partial fix.
An incompletely resolved trigger is not the same thing as a missed trigger, so it is not OK for a player to notice and not mention the situation like they can with a missed trigger. If the investigation reveals Andrew did notice at the time but didn’t say anything, it would only escape the Cheating infraction if we believe he didn’t know this part of the rules. Education is paramount.
Assuming no cheating, Nikolai will get a GPE-GRV. Andrew will receive a GPE-FTMGS. The game will continue as is.
It is important to remember that “fixing” life totals is not one of our partial fixes for a GRV.