The Archangel of “OMG, that’s a lot of counters!”

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Adam and Netta are playing in a Standard GPT. Netta is at 6 life, and Adam is at 3. Adam has an Archangel of Thune in play with no +1/+1 counters on it. Netta has a tapped Lord of the Void and seven tapped lands in play.

Adam taps his Archangel of Thune and six lands then declares “Attack, and Sphinx’s Revelation, put 3 counters on – I win!” Netta says, ”I’m not sure that’s how that works, hold on a second,” and calls a judge. How do you rule?

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View Answer
First, thank you all for participating this week. We had some interesting discussion here about rewind points, and whether or not a game rule violation had actually occurred or not.

To address the question of whether or not a violation had actually occurred, Adam has demonstrated his intent clearly, that he believes he has won the game by putting 3 counters on his Archangel. Regardless of whether he actually put physical markers on the card or not, his statements are enough to demonstrate what action he was taking, and issue the GRV.

As for the rewind point, the error was that Adam put the wrong number of counters onto the Archangel, and as such, we rewind to that point, and put 1 counter on instead of 3. The question was ambiguous as to whether or not Adam had drawn his cards, if you come across this situation in real life and Adam hadn’t drawn, he most certainly will get to draw his cards as well.

As another reminder, in cases of a Game Rule Violation, the opponent will have frequently committed a Failure to Maintain Game State and need to be given an appropriate warning, however in this case Netta called for a judge immediately and does not receive the warning.