Transcript of Judging to Protect Players' Skill Advantage
- 1. Judging to Protect Players' Skill Advantage By: David
Elden
- 2. Just what are we protecting? The philosophy of the DCI is
that a player should have an advantage due to better understanding
of the rules of a game, greater awareness of the interactions in
the current game state, and superior tactical planning [MTR 4.1].
As judges, we have a duty to protect this edge, while also keeping
players with weaker rules knowledge from being taken advantage
of.
- 3. Block with Treetop Village
- 4. MTR 4.3 Out-of-Order Sequencing Due to the complexity of
accurately representing a game of Magic, it is acceptable for
players to engage in a block of actions that, while technically in
an incorrect order, arrive at a legal and clearly understood game
state once they are complete. Example: A player declares a blocker,
animates a Treetop Village, and then attempts to block with that
Treetop Village.
- 5. Bolt Jace
- 6. MTR 4.3 Tournament Shortcuts A tournament shortcut is an
action taken by players to skip parts of the technical play
sequence without explicitly announcing them. A player who chooses a
planeswalker as the target of a spell or ability that would deal
damage is assumed to be targeting the planeswalkers controller and
redirecting the damage on resolution. Players can (and often do)
make use of tournament shortcuts without knowing the technical
details that allow them.
- 7. End of turn, I'll Giant Growth my bear.
- 8. End of turn, I'll Giant Growth my bear. It's perfectly legal
to cast Giant Growth in the end step. It's not illegal to make a
suboptimal play; if it was, there wouldn't be a skill component in
the game at all. Besides, it isn't always clear what the best
strategic play is. If the player clearly intended to cast the spell
in the end step, that's legal, and there's no going back even if
the result isn't what they may have had in mind.
- 9. If I counter the bolt, what happens with the
Reverberate?
- 10. If I counter the bolt, what happens with the Reverberate?
Floor judges can answer questions about the rules and interactions
between cards [MTR 1.8]. Players may not seek strategy advice or
play advice [IPG 3.2]. Judges must avoid assisting players with
derived information about the game state [MTR 4.1].
- 11. If I counter the bolt, what happens with the Reverberate?
If a player asks a question, either answer it or say you can't.
Don't answer a related question or attempt to predict a follow up.
Give an explanation of the relevant rules. E.g., A spell with no
legal targets is countered when it tries to resolve. Ask the player
to repeat the question. When all else fails, say you can't answer
and ask for them to rephrase the question.
- 12. If I Cancel the Shock, what happens with the Fork?
- 13. A word on asking players to rephrase There's a good chance
the player doesn't understand why you can't answer it. No player I
know would ask a judge to commit Outside Assistance. You should
give some indication of how to rephrase the question. I like to
request that they refrain from using specific card names.
- 14. She didn't know her guy lived?
- 15. She didn't know her guy lived? Based on the conversation,
it's pretty obvious that Amy did intentionally ignored a mistake to
gain an advantage that's Cheating. We can DQ without proof of
action as long as we're reasonably sure the tournament integrity
has been disrupted.
- 16. We're in the end step, right?
- 17. We're in the end step, right? When you talk to her, Nicole
admits she noticed right away that Amy forgot to return a creature.
She intentionally ignored a misplay to gain an advantage.
Ordinarily, that's Cheating, but the misplay was a Missed Trigger.
For these errors, the opponent bears no responsibility to call
attention to them. There's nothing in policy that says a player who
doesn't call attention to a Missed Trigger is somehow locked in to
that choice. Everything Nicole did was completely legitimate.
- 18. Questions? Please be gentle... The latest version of this
presentation can be found on my blog at
blogs.magicjudges.org/ftw