Articuno is playing High Tide and is in the process of combo’ing off. With storm count of 17, she casts Brain Freeze targeting Nuzleaf. Nuzleaf checks his library and determines it has fewer than 54 cards, so both players agree that Articuno’s ice beam Brain Freeze will mill Nuzleaf’s whole library. Nuzleaf takes his library, turns it upside down, and puts it into his graveyard. Then Nuzleaf says, “Oh yeah, Emrakul trigger” and points out an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in the middle of his graveyard.

Articuno says, “OK, I’ll respond.” Articuno casts Intituion and finds three Cunning Wishes. Articuno casts Cunning Wish and puts Blue Sun’s Zenith into his hand. Finally, Articuno casts Blue Sun’s Zenith for X=1, targeting Nuzleaf. At this point, Articuno and Nuzleaf realize that something has gone horribly wrong. What do you do?

Reveal Discussion!

Zach Apony handled this call at EE4, and they have shared it with quite a few other judges since then. Kudos to them for doing a great job publicizing a complicated but also realistic scenario.

To get the ruling itself, I believe that the best way to tackle this ruling is to ask what went wrong. Two major possibilities present themselves:

Nuzleaf improperly resolved Brain Freeze (by treating it as a single spell instead of many). Nuzleaf blew past his Emrakul’s trigger by putting his whole library into his graveyard.

These are two very different infractions with extremely different remedies, so picking the right one is absolutely crucial.

The definition of Missed Trigger does tell us that a player “must take the appropriate physical action…before taking any game actions that can be taken only after the triggered ability should have resolved.” On the surface, this sentence seems to fit this situation perfectly: Nuzleaf put some cards in his graveyard after also putting Emrakul into his graveyard. This is a game action that can be taken only after Emrakul’s trigger should have resolved.

If Nuzleaf had been putting cards into his graveyard three at a time, this reasoning would certainly apply, and we would have a Missed Trigger that was pointed out far too late. Rough beats for Nuzleaf, he’s about to die.

But…that’s not what actually happened here. Instead, Nuzleaf put his whole library into his graveyard at once, then immediately mentioned his Emrakul. This points towards Nuzleaf treating the stack as a single spell that said “mill 54 cards”, which leads us straight into Game Rule Violation territory.

Another angle to consider is our policies around shortcuts. Articuno and Nuzleaf effectively agreed to shortcut “mill cards three at a time, repeat this process 17 times” to “mill 54 cards.” However, CR 716.2a tells us that a shortcut “can’t include conditional actions, where the outcome of a game event determines the next action a player takes.” So their shortcut is actually invalid. Since one of the comprehensive rules has been broken, we have a Game Rule Violation on our hands. Thanks to Erik Mulvaney for raising this idea in the Northeast Slack. (This approach is still a bit weird, though, because it suggests that the shortcut only became invalid retroactively…)

Given that the appropriate infraction is GRV, should we back up? There are two axes to consider: whether we can actually perform the backup, and how impactful the backup will be on the game.

Mechanically, the backup is somewhat involved — we need to rewind to the point where Emrakul’s trigger is on the stack above a number of Brain Freeze copies; the judge will have to ensure the players properly calculate how many Brain Freezes have resolved and how many copies remain. This also involves returning Blue Sun’s Zenith to Articuno’s sideboard, shuffling three Cunning Wishes back into her library, and putting an Intuition back in her hand. But, ultimately, these are all doable. Moreover, no random elements are involved.

The second axis is more interesting. Both players have gained a substantial amount of information: Nuzleaf’s whole library has been revealed, and Nuzleaf now knows that Articuno has an Intuition in hand. However, the rubric we use is not simply how much information is being gained, but how impactful that information will be on the game state and the players’ future decision trees. In this case, Nuzleaf’s line of play is likely to remain the same. It’s also quite likely that Articuno will once again try to win the game by casting Blue Sun’s Zenith with the Emrakul trigger on the stack (albeit at a different time).

Putting it all together, I believe a backup is warranted — and that’s exactly what I instructed Zach to do at EE4.

Regardless of whether you believe this is Missed Trigger or Game Rule Violation, this scenario is a great reminder of the idea that we should first determine what infraction has occurred, and then figure out the appropriate fix. It’s very tempting to come up with a desired solution (“I think that Nuzleaf should end up resolving his Emrakul trigger!”) and backtrack to an infraction that lets us apply that fix. But this produces rulings based on feelings, rather than the IPG itself, which contradicts the whole purpose of formalized policies!