So, Panglacial Wurm is weird. I've found the following confirmed elsewhere:
-You can cast him from the deck and use abilities like Millikin or Selvala, Explorer Returned to pay for it. The milled or drawn cards will be milled or drawn from the deck in the middle of the casting, after you've seen them, before you shuffle your library.
-If you discover you don't have the mana to cast Wurm, you can (as with other spells) decide not to cast him after all and undo the game to the point right before you started casting him. If, however, cards changed zones as a result of the aforementioned Millikin etc., those cards stay in their new zones because it's a revealing of hidden information maybe? and you get the mana, life, etc. off the card draw. You can do this even if you know originally you don't have the mana for it?, turning fetches into opportunities to scry (sorta) before your Selvala draw.
Now, my question is what happens if I use a different mana ability to get Darksteel Colossus headed toward the graveyard -- Skirge Familiar or Thermopod or something, depending where it is at the time. Colossus has a replacement effect that shuffles it into the library. Does this mean that, in the middle of searching my library with a fetchland, attempting to cast Panglacial Wurm, starting to pay by discarding/saccing Darksteel Colossus, I get a shuffle in the midst of casting Wurm?
Most importantly: Wurm is the reason you need to keep your library in order while searching through it. If you start to cast Wurm and fail, it goes back in where it was before. If I were able to start casting Wurm from my library, shuffle my library with Colossus as above, then fail to pay the mana cost for Wurm and thus start to undo the action, where in my library does Panglacial Wurm end up?
Private Mod Note
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"It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes... Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
--Buck v Bell, 1927. This case, regarding the compulsory sterilization of inmates at mental institutions, has -- somehow -- never been overturned. Just a wee PSA for ya.
Well if you crack a fetchland and begin to shuffle your library you may cast Panglacial Wurm as you've said. The first step to casting a spell is to move the card to the stack. While there you begin to pay with Skirge Familiar which shuffles your library. Then if you realize you cannot pay the casting is undone with Wurm going back into your library and you have one black mana in pool. Then you finish resolving the fetchland.
Most importantly: Wurm is the reason you need to keep your library in order while searching through it. If you start to cast Wurm and fail, it goes back in where it was before. If I were able to start casting Wurm from my library, shuffle my library with Colossus as above, then fail to pay the mana cost for Wurm and thus start to undo the action, where in my library does Panglacial Wurm end up?
I think the simple answer to your question is that the rules don't currently address this scenario. Here are the relevant CR sections:
Casting Spells
601.2. To cast a spell is to take it from where it is (usually the hand), put it on the stack, and pay its costs, so that it will eventually resolve and have its effect. <snip> If, at any point during the casting of a spell, a player is unable to comply with any of the steps listed below, the casting of the spell is illegal; the game returns to the moment before the casting of that spell was proposed (see rule 717, “Handling Illegal Actions”).
601.2g If the total cost includes a mana payment, the player then has a chance to activate mana abilities (see rule 605, “Mana Abilities”). Mana abilities must be activated before costs are paid.
601.2h The player pays the total cost in any order. Partial payments are not allowed. Unpayable costs can’t be paid.
Mana Abilities
605.3a A player may activate an activated mana ability whenever he or she has priority, whenever he or she is casting a spell or activating an ability that requires a mana payment, or whenever a
rule or effect asks for a mana payment, even if it’s in the middle of casting or resolving a spell or activating or resolving an ability.
605.3b An activated mana ability doesn’t go on the stack, so it can’t be targeted, countered, or otherwise responded to. Rather, it resolves immediately after it is activated. (See rule 405.6c.)
405.6c Mana abilities resolve immediately. If a mana ability both produces mana and has another effect, the mana is produced and the other effect happens immediately. If a player had priority
before a mana ability was activated, that player gets priority after it resolves. (See rule 605, “Mana Abilities.”)
Handling Illegal Actions
717.1. If a player takes an illegal action or starts to take an action but can’t legally complete it, the entire action is reversed and any payments already made are canceled. No abilities trigger and no effects apply as a result of an undone action. If the action was casting a spell, the spell returns to the zone it came from. The player may also reverse any legal mana abilities activated while making the illegal play, unless mana from them or from any triggered mana abilities they triggered was spent on another mana ability that wasn’t reversed. Players may not reverse actions that moved cards to a library, moved cards from a library to any zone other than the stack, caused a library to be shuffled, or caused cards from a library to be revealed.
Shuffle
701.16a To shuffle a library or a face-down pile of cards, randomize the cards within it so that no player knows their order.
Per 601.2g, mana abilities (such as discarding Darksteel Colossus to Skirge Familiar) must be activated before a cost is paid to cast a spell. Upon activation, as per 405.6c, all other effects (like the replacement effect from Darksteel Colossus) happen at the same time as the mana generation, which is necessarily before the paying of the costs for Panglacial Wurm. Therefore, Darksteel Colossus is shuffled into the library prior to costs being paid for Panglacial Wurm. Then, as per the Illegal Actions rule, you cannot reverse the shuffling after discovering that you cannot pay the cost.
My recommendation, then, is that the Wurm be shuffled into the library, even though the library has already been shuffled by Darksteel Colossus. Here is my logic. Technically, since you weren't able to cast Panglacial Wurm, the game reverts back to when you hadn't cast it, so it essentially never left your library. According to the game, it should be in the exact same position when you activated the mana ability that made you discard Darksteel Colossus. This being the case, Panglacial Wurm should have been included in the shuffle. The deck is considered randomized after a shuffle, so shuffling again to put the Panglacial Wurm in a random location in the deck does not change the state of randomization. Therefore, it should be shuffled in.
I would add that if it is easily demonstrative that you cannot cast the Wurm, and you attempt to do it and reverse it as an Illegal Action, that could be considered an infraction. For example, if on T1, you crack a fetch, then pull the Wurm out on the stack as if to cast (even though you have no lands in play), that is demonstrably impossible to do. This could be construed as Stalling under certain circumstances and Cheating in a worst case (if someone could construe that you benefit somehow from your actions). An honest mistake where you thought you had enough mana is one thing. Where it is clear to any observer that you do not have enough, I would stray away from those actions.
I think this is, to some degree, like a replacement effect that reads somewhat like so: "If you would search your library, you may instead cast this card from your library and then search your library." Gatherer indicates that the casting comes first. After that, you pick up where you left off in the actual search effect, so no matter what, you appear to have to shuffle afterwards.
I think this is, to some degree, like a replacement effect that reads somewhat like so: "If you would search your library, you may instead cast this card from your library and then search your library." Gatherer indicates that the casting comes first. After that, you pick up where you left off in the actual search effect, so no matter what, you appear to have to shuffle afterwards.
The search effect does complete after, because if you find the card you are looking for, then you're no longer searching (the effect that caused you to search is complete). However, the last note on Gatherer states that the library must remain in a particular order due to Millikin because the order affects what is milled. So while you are correct that you would need to shuffle afterwards, order is important here, and Darksteel Colossus randomizes that order and "deletes" the placeholder where Panglacial Wurm was. Hence the dilemma.
The search effect does complete after, because if you find the card you are looking for, then you're no longer searching (the effect that caused you to search is complete). However, the last note on Gatherer states that the library must remain in a particular order due to Millikin because the order affects what is milled. So while you are correct that you would need to shuffle afterwards, order is important here, and Darksteel Colossus randomizes that order and "deletes" the placeholder where Panglacial Wurm was. Hence the dilemma.
Well, according to the C.R. 717, effects that caused a library to grow, shrink, shuffle, or be revealed cannot be reversed. Reversing legal mana abilities appears to be optional, too. However, there is also the fact that rule 601.2e, which references 701, is applied before a spell's costs are paid and/or mana abilities are activated.
So the way I see it, one of two solutions are appropriate:
1. The mill effect is not reversed when the action is undone, Millikin remains tapped, and Darksteel Colossus remains in the library when the spell is undone. The player will (I think) still have the black mana and colorless mana in his mana pool from the two mana abilities that were not reversed.
2. Disqualification.
Realize that you can't cast Panglacial Wurm for B. (Who would've thought that?)
Undo the casting. Realize that you don't know where to put your Panglacial Wurm. Doesn't matter since you'll end up shuffling anyway for the fetch, right?
Wrong. As you're still searching, decide to cast your otherPanglacial Wurm. (Because why wouldn't you have two?)
I would say that the aforementioned "shuffle the deck again with Panglacial Wurm" method should work here: Just remove the second wurm from the deck before the shuffle to make sure you keep track of it (they'll be moving it to the stack anyway). The main problem seems to be that they "should" know what the top card is before they casts the second wurm and doing the shuffle messes with that. It is not ideal, but then these super-contrived situations are designed to break the rules so a "best fit but not ideal" solution is fine.
A better solution if you (the judge) are called to the situation early might be to replace the Panglacial Wurm with a placeholder card when you go to cast it. It would have to be a card that clearly doesn't belong in the deck, like a basic land match, or a card that is not legal in the format, or simply a DFC Checklist card with "PANGLACIAL WURM" written on it. This way you can shuffle Colossus into the deck and keep track of where the Wurm should be without having to shuffle the deck again if you fail to cast it.
And of course if the situation devolves into attempting to cast multiple wurms to try and fish for an ideal top-card to mill, that starts getting into Slow Play territory very quickly.
Well, according to the C.R. 717, effects that caused a library to grow, shrink, shuffle, or be revealed cannot be reversed. Reversing legal mana abilities appears to be optional, too. However, there is also the fact that rule 601.2e, which references 701, is applied before a spell's costs are paid and/or mana abilities are activated.
The fact that they cannot be reversed is an element of the dilemma. You have two conflicting things: mandatory shuffling of the library when the library order is supposed to be maintained. With regards to 601.2e, the legality of the casting has nothing to do with the whether you have the mana to cast it. The game doesn't even know if you have the mana yet because the cost hasn't been determined. Legality deals with timing restrictions (e.g., oops, that's a sorcery? I thought it was an instant!), targets (e.g., that has hexproof?!), etc.
So the way I see it, one of two solutions are appropriate:
1. The mill effect is not reversed when the action is undone, Millikin remains tapped, and Darksteel Colossus remains in the library when the spell is undone. The player will (I think) still have the black mana and colorless mana in his mana pool from the two mana abilities that were not reversed.
2. Disqualification.
I agree with your result on #1, but where does Panglacial Wurm go? This was the dilemma proposed by the OP and the one I was attempting to address in my initial response to the OP. For #2, on what grounds would a player be disqualified? Nothing in the Infraction Policy would dictate disqualification.
For #2, on what grounds would a player be disqualified?
Ostensibly for cheating, but... can you break a rule that does not exist? That is quite the mind-bender.
(Also, for it to be cheating, a player has to be aware that it is, in fact, cheating.)
I noted above that the most likely infraction would be Stalling, as attempting to cast Panglacial Wurm ineligibly accomplishes only slowing the game down. Cheating requires both requisite knowledge of what one is doing (as you noted) as well as being able to gain an advantage from it. Shuffling Darksteel Colossus doesn't gain any advantage, as the mana ability could be activated any time, and the deck is already being shuffled due to the search effect that allows the casting of Panglacial Wurm. Same can be said for the mill affect mana ability (unless an advantage could be construed from milling while Panglacial Wurm is on the stack, i.e. no chance of milling the creature card itself). So what advantage does the player gain? If there is no demonstrative advantage, then they cannot be DQed for cheating. One might could then argue that in milling, the player was gaining an advantage by making a card shift zones while knowing Panglacial Wurm could not be cast, but that seems a stretch (unless the deck is very GY-centric).
Anyway, I don't take the OP as discussing someone who knowingly puts Panglacial Wurm on the stack with not enough mana. It's more of a "oops, I miscounted, now what do I do with this card???"
I noted above that the most likely infraction would be Stalling, as attempting to cast Panglacial Wurm ineligibly accomplishes only slowing the game down.
The actions (tapping Millikin, discarding Darksteel Colossus) are irreversible, so there's no opportunity to waste time by repeating them.
Agreed, but what if you played an opponent who, every time he searched his library, he feigned to cast Panglacial Wurm. So in Modern, this could feasibly be the first several turns of the game, and each time he plays this cute game of "put Panglacial Wurm on the stack? On darn, no mana for it. Ok, so where did it go? And now I can resume my search..." I would call a Judge so fast.
Also, in the case of Selvala, Explorer Returned, you don't know how much mana you're getting. In a Competitive 2-player game you could be getting GG, G or nothing.
That's a cute scenario where the mana is unknown yet could yield both results (castable vs. uncastable).
So the way I see it, one of two solutions are appropriate:
1. The mill effect is not reversed when the action is undone, Millikin remains tapped, and Darksteel Colossus remains in the library when the spell is undone. The player will (I think) still have the black mana and colorless mana in his mana pool from the two mana abilities that were not reversed.
2. Disqualification.
I agree with your result on #1, but where does Panglacial Wurm go? This was the dilemma proposed by the OP and the one I was attempting to address in my initial response to the OP. For #2, on what grounds would a player be disqualified? Nothing in the Infraction Policy would dictate disqualification.
Panglacial Wurm would return to its original zone. CR 717 goes out of its way to specifically say what happens to an illegal spell, so returning the Wurm to the library (which would be shuffled anyway) wouldn't really conflict with the part of 717 that prevents library actions from being rewound.
EDIT: It just occurred to me what you meant. You mean that Panglacial Wurm has an assigned position in the library when it returns, and the "Blightsteel" shuffle plus less than steller memory of how many cards were above the Wurm equals a complicated matter. But I would suggest that the Wurm's assigned position is randomized by the "Blightsteel" shuffle. Besides that, the library will be shuffled again because the attempted cast was made after the search but before the "search" shuffle
-You can cast him from the deck and use abilities like Millikin or Selvala, Explorer Returned to pay for it. The milled or drawn cards will be milled or drawn from the deck in the middle of the casting, after you've seen them, before you shuffle your library.
-If you discover you don't have the mana to cast Wurm, you can (as with other spells) decide not to cast him after all and undo the game to the point right before you started casting him. If, however, cards changed zones as a result of the aforementioned Millikin etc., those cards stay in their new zones because it's a revealing of hidden information maybe? and you get the mana, life, etc. off the card draw. You can do this even if you know originally you don't have the mana for it?, turning fetches into opportunities to scry (sorta) before your Selvala draw.
Now, my question is what happens if I use a different mana ability to get Darksteel Colossus headed toward the graveyard -- Skirge Familiar or Thermopod or something, depending where it is at the time. Colossus has a replacement effect that shuffles it into the library. Does this mean that, in the middle of searching my library with a fetchland, attempting to cast Panglacial Wurm, starting to pay by discarding/saccing Darksteel Colossus, I get a shuffle in the midst of casting Wurm?
Most importantly: Wurm is the reason you need to keep your library in order while searching through it. If you start to cast Wurm and fail, it goes back in where it was before. If I were able to start casting Wurm from my library, shuffle my library with Colossus as above, then fail to pay the mana cost for Wurm and thus start to undo the action, where in my library does Panglacial Wurm end up?
--Buck v Bell, 1927. This case, regarding the compulsory sterilization of inmates at mental institutions, has -- somehow -- never been overturned. Just a wee PSA for ya.
I think the simple answer to your question is that the rules don't currently address this scenario. Here are the relevant CR sections:
Per 601.2g, mana abilities (such as discarding Darksteel Colossus to Skirge Familiar) must be activated before a cost is paid to cast a spell. Upon activation, as per 405.6c, all other effects (like the replacement effect from Darksteel Colossus) happen at the same time as the mana generation, which is necessarily before the paying of the costs for Panglacial Wurm. Therefore, Darksteel Colossus is shuffled into the library prior to costs being paid for Panglacial Wurm. Then, as per the Illegal Actions rule, you cannot reverse the shuffling after discovering that you cannot pay the cost.
My recommendation, then, is that the Wurm be shuffled into the library, even though the library has already been shuffled by Darksteel Colossus. Here is my logic. Technically, since you weren't able to cast Panglacial Wurm, the game reverts back to when you hadn't cast it, so it essentially never left your library. According to the game, it should be in the exact same position when you activated the mana ability that made you discard Darksteel Colossus. This being the case, Panglacial Wurm should have been included in the shuffle. The deck is considered randomized after a shuffle, so shuffling again to put the Panglacial Wurm in a random location in the deck does not change the state of randomization. Therefore, it should be shuffled in.
I would add that if it is easily demonstrative that you cannot cast the Wurm, and you attempt to do it and reverse it as an Illegal Action, that could be considered an infraction. For example, if on T1, you crack a fetch, then pull the Wurm out on the stack as if to cast (even though you have no lands in play), that is demonstrably impossible to do. This could be construed as Stalling under certain circumstances and Cheating in a worst case (if someone could construe that you benefit somehow from your actions). An honest mistake where you thought you had enough mana is one thing. Where it is clear to any observer that you do not have enough, I would stray away from those actions.
The search effect does complete after, because if you find the card you are looking for, then you're no longer searching (the effect that caused you to search is complete). However, the last note on Gatherer states that the library must remain in a particular order due to Millikin because the order affects what is milled. So while you are correct that you would need to shuffle afterwards, order is important here, and Darksteel Colossus randomizes that order and "deletes" the placeholder where Panglacial Wurm was. Hence the dilemma.
So the way I see it, one of two solutions are appropriate:
1. The mill effect is not reversed when the action is undone, Millikin remains tapped, and Darksteel Colossus remains in the library when the spell is undone. The player will (I think) still have the black mana and colorless mana in his mana pool from the two mana abilities that were not reversed.
2. Disqualification.
Thoughts?
I would say that the aforementioned "shuffle the deck again with Panglacial Wurm" method should work here: Just remove the second wurm from the deck before the shuffle to make sure you keep track of it (they'll be moving it to the stack anyway). The main problem seems to be that they "should" know what the top card is before they casts the second wurm and doing the shuffle messes with that. It is not ideal, but then these super-contrived situations are designed to break the rules so a "best fit but not ideal" solution is fine.
A better solution if you (the judge) are called to the situation early might be to replace the Panglacial Wurm with a placeholder card when you go to cast it. It would have to be a card that clearly doesn't belong in the deck, like a basic land match, or a card that is not legal in the format, or simply a DFC Checklist card with "PANGLACIAL WURM" written on it. This way you can shuffle Colossus into the deck and keep track of where the Wurm should be without having to shuffle the deck again if you fail to cast it.
And of course if the situation devolves into attempting to cast multiple wurms to try and fish for an ideal top-card to mill, that starts getting into Slow Play territory very quickly.
The fact that they cannot be reversed is an element of the dilemma. You have two conflicting things: mandatory shuffling of the library when the library order is supposed to be maintained. With regards to 601.2e, the legality of the casting has nothing to do with the whether you have the mana to cast it. The game doesn't even know if you have the mana yet because the cost hasn't been determined. Legality deals with timing restrictions (e.g., oops, that's a sorcery? I thought it was an instant!), targets (e.g., that has hexproof?!), etc.
I agree with your result on #1, but where does Panglacial Wurm go? This was the dilemma proposed by the OP and the one I was attempting to address in my initial response to the OP. For #2, on what grounds would a player be disqualified? Nothing in the Infraction Policy would dictate disqualification.
I noted above that the most likely infraction would be Stalling, as attempting to cast Panglacial Wurm ineligibly accomplishes only slowing the game down. Cheating requires both requisite knowledge of what one is doing (as you noted) as well as being able to gain an advantage from it. Shuffling Darksteel Colossus doesn't gain any advantage, as the mana ability could be activated any time, and the deck is already being shuffled due to the search effect that allows the casting of Panglacial Wurm. Same can be said for the mill affect mana ability (unless an advantage could be construed from milling while Panglacial Wurm is on the stack, i.e. no chance of milling the creature card itself). So what advantage does the player gain? If there is no demonstrative advantage, then they cannot be DQed for cheating. One might could then argue that in milling, the player was gaining an advantage by making a card shift zones while knowing Panglacial Wurm could not be cast, but that seems a stretch (unless the deck is very GY-centric).
Anyway, I don't take the OP as discussing someone who knowingly puts Panglacial Wurm on the stack with not enough mana. It's more of a "oops, I miscounted, now what do I do with this card???"
Agreed, but what if you played an opponent who, every time he searched his library, he feigned to cast Panglacial Wurm. So in Modern, this could feasibly be the first several turns of the game, and each time he plays this cute game of "put Panglacial Wurm on the stack? On darn, no mana for it. Ok, so where did it go? And now I can resume my search..." I would call a Judge so fast.
That's a cute scenario where the mana is unknown yet could yield both results (castable vs. uncastable).
EDIT: It just occurred to me what you meant. You mean that Panglacial Wurm has an assigned position in the library when it returns, and the "Blightsteel" shuffle plus less than steller memory of how many cards were above the Wurm equals a complicated matter. But I would suggest that the Wurm's assigned position is randomized by the "Blightsteel" shuffle. Besides that, the library will be shuffled again because the attempted cast was made after the search but before the "search" shuffle