Written by Alex Roebuck<\/em><\/p><\/div><\/p>\n Each infraction in the IPG has a fairly comprehensive entry furnished with a title, a category, the definition and scope of the infraction, and the associated penalty. It also gives specific examples of the infraction, instructions on how to fix the game state when the infraction occurs, and explanations of underlying philosophy \u2013 why it\u2019s an infraction in the first place and why we address it the way we do. Sometimes we get a few \u201cif\u201ds and \u201cbut\u201ds that explain certain circumstances where a particular infraction doesn\u2019t apply or when a non-standard penalty should be issued.<\/p>\n One IPG entry, however, is more complex than it seems:<\/p>\n \u201cA player violates the Player Communication policy detailed in section 4.1 of the Magic Tournament Rules. This infraction only applies to violations of that policy and not to general communication confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n In order to provide definition and scope, the entry on Communication Policy Violation directs the reader to another document: the Magic Tournament Rules (MTR). In this article, we\u2019re going to have a look at the contents of MTR\u00a74.1 and discuss what exactly the policy permits and prohibits. We\u2019ll have some dos and don\u2019ts for players along with some tips for judges on identifying CPV, understanding why it\u2019s such a rare infraction, avoiding pitfalls, and applying policy correctly at Competitive REL events.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are three kinds of information in Magic: free, derived, and private.<\/p>\n According to MTR\u00a74.1:<\/p>\n Derived information includes:<\/p>\n Everything else is private information.<\/p>\n In essence, the three types can be characterised as follows:<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a quick example involving questions your opponent might ask about the creatures you\u2019re playing.<\/p>\n Q: How big is it? \u00a0Q: How many of them do you have in your deck? Now we know how to tell the three kinds of information apart, we need to know how to handle each of them.<\/p>\n A player who violates any of these rules has committed a Communication Policy Violation (CPV). CPVs can be difficult issues to deal with, as poorly communicated information can cause players to severely alter their plays. A player who makes a bad play because they were given bad information is going to feel extremely slighted \u2013 they\u2019re effectively being penalised for their opponent\u2019s mistake. For this reason CPVs are a possible justification for backing up a game, which in turn means the potential impact of issuing a CPV ruling can be huge. Fortunately they\u2019re also very rare.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The list of what constitutes free information might seem like it includes a lot, but in reality the nature of free information means not many such questions are asked. It\u2019s important to familiarise yourself with the criteria for free information, though, as some things which seem like free information actually aren\u2019t (e.g. the type of counters on a permanent is free information, but the quantity is derived \u2013 your opponent will have to count them for himself).<\/p>\n Free information concerns the bare facts of the game. \u00a0Because of this, the restrictions on how free information must be communicated are relatively tight \u2013 players must provide free information to each other completely, correctly, and without contamination. Their very nature means questions about free information aren\u2019t especially common (besides checking life totals) but these restrictions do mean that players need to report free information very accurately, and must not try and gain an advantage by being \u201csneaky\u201d with their answers.<\/p>\n In the event that a player is genuinely unable to answer a question about free information (perhaps they can\u2019t remember the name of a foreign-text card they just played or they can\u2019t remember if they\u2019ve played a land this turn) they should call a judge.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If a judge asks a player about the game, it\u2019s not because the judge is trying to gain a tactical advantage or decide how to block, it\u2019s because they want to assess the situation in order to help make a correct ruling. Players shouldn\u2019t feel uncomfortable sharing information with a judge. Providing judges with good information protects players from being the victim of a bad ruling and from unfair accusations of dishonesty.<\/p>\n A judge who suspects a player has answered a question incorrectly or incompletely should, without being too leading about what they\u2019re expecting to hear, prompt the player to clarify their answer. Lying to a judge is a very serious offence, but judges should be aware that people do make genuine mistakes and are often influenced by subjective bias, so calibrating your Spidey Sense is important.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This particular rule is the most interesting part of the policy, with implications that reach quite a lot further than is initially obvious. While derived information must not be provided incorrectly, it doesn\u2019t say derived information has to be provided completely (free information still does because of the earlier stipulation). This is primarily a common-sense rule which reflects the fact that questions about derived information can often be very open ended and an exhaustive answer would therefore be extremely long-winded.<\/p>\n Example \u2013 Adrian controls a Vampire Nighthawk<\/a>. Nelson asks \u201cwhat\u2019s that?\u201d Adrian provides one of the following two answers:<\/p>\n a) It\u2019s a 2\/3 flyer<\/p>\n b) It\u2019s a black 2\/3 Vampire Shaman creature called Vampire Nighthawk with flying, deathtouch and lifelink. Its converted mana cost is 3; it adds 2 to my devotion to black; and it\u2019s an uncommon from Zendikar illustrated by Jason Chan.<\/p>\n Clearly, nobody is ever going to give the second answer \u2013 it\u2019s just not natural to answer questions that way \u2013 so logically it\u2019s unfair to penalise the first answer based on its brevity alone. Yet it\u2019s easy to envisage a scenario where the omission of \u201cdeathtouch\u201d from Adrian\u2019s answer could lead Nelson to be quite unhappy when he blocks it with his Consecrated Sphinx. It\u2019s also not much of a leap to imagine that Adrian deliberately omitted \u201cdeathtouch\u201d from his answer to try and coax Nelson into making that exact mistake. So how do we handle the inevitable judge call?<\/p>\n The main thing to remember is that applying rules consistently is important. If we\u2019ve established that it doesn\u2019t make sense to penalise the omission of \u201cvampire\u201d then it\u2019s completely inappropriate to penalise the omission of \u201cdeathtouch.\u201d The fact that one is more tactically important than the other isn\u2019t relative to the ruling; neither is the fact that Adrian might have done it deliberately. Why? Put simply, because the policy doesn\u2019t mention those things. If we\u2019re looking for deeper justification we should consider that judges don\u2019t make rulings based on the assumption that players play optimally, and that communication policy is tailored to suit the way players actually communicate during a game of Magic. Furthermore, we shouldn\u2019t construct policy that places Adrian in a position where he has to help Nelson win. It\u2019s not fair to oblige Adrian to point out to Nelson, however indirectly, that blocking the Nighthawk might be a bad tactical move \u2013 after all, Nelson could have just read the card (or asked a judge for Oracle text) and figured that out for himself.<\/p>\n In short, \u201cincomplete\u201d does not equal \u201cincorrect.\u201d When a player says the Nighthawk has flying and names no other abilities, his answer is incomplete. When the opponent clarifies \u201cdoes it have any other abilities?\u201d and the player answers \u201cno,\u201d the answer is now incorrect. The distinction is important.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Example \u2013 Audrey is attacking with several creatures whose power and toughness have been modified by multiple effects from different sources. Nina is in the process of choosing how to block, and asks Audrey \u201chow big are they?\u201d because she\u2019s having difficulty keeping track of the various +1\/+1 counters, battlecry triggers, and a Coat of Arms. Audrey could choose to capitalise on this confusion by refusing to answer, hoping Nina makes a mistake \u2013 she doesn\u2019t have to give up the answer.<\/p>\n The stipulation that players must not represent free or derived information incorrectly doesn\u2019t mention private information, and therefore doesn\u2019t apply to it. Quite simply, this means players are generally free to lie about private information and future game states as much as they like.<\/p>\n Example \u2013 Amy casts Surgical Extraction<\/a> targeting Emrakul, the Aeons Torn<\/a> in Norman\u2019s graveyard. Amy exiles the one from the graveyard, and then begins searching Norman\u2019s library. She pulls out one Emrakul, then another, at which point Norman says \u201cthat\u2019s it, I only play 3\u201d and reveals his Emrakul-less hand. Amy stops searching and returns Norman\u2019s deck. Several turns later, Norman uses his fourth Emrakul to win the game. There has been no infraction \u2013 the contents of Norman\u2019s library\/decklist are private information and he was not required to present them faithfully.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With certain other infractions, Slow Play for example, it\u2019s often the case that if you\u2019re trying to decide whether or not to issue the infraction then the answer is yes \u2013 the mere fact that you\u2019re having to think about it means something is wrong. With CPV, however, you\u2019re usually right to be hesitant. You\u2019ll often have judge calls where there may have been some misunderstanding and one player feels disadvantaged by this, but that doesn\u2019t automatically make it CPV \u2013 the infraction has a very specific meaning, as we know, so you need to be certain that rules have actually been broken before you go issuing any penalties.<\/p>\n Here are a few things you should think over before issuing a penalty for CPV for a miscommunication between players:<\/p>\n \u2022 What kind of information was presented?<\/p>\n If it\u2019s not free or derived, we\u2019re definitely not looking at CPV. If it is free or derived, you need to be certain you know which as this will be crucial to your ruling. Remember that most questions players ask each other will be based on derived information \u2013 free information is generally obvious enough not to need clarification.<\/p>\n \u2022 Incomplete does not equal incorrect.<\/p>\n Corrupting free information will result in a CPV, but presenting incomplete versions of derived information is permitted by policy. If a player has presented derived information, you need to be sure that they said something that\u2019s actually false rather than just telling their opponent something other than what they really needed to know.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not uncommon for situations to arise that seem unfair or shady, but that don\u2019t fall within the scope of CPV (or any other infraction). Avoid the temptation to try and \u201cfix\u201d these by making an infraction fit just because you don\u2019t like the situation.<\/p>\n \u2022 It\u2019s probably not CPV.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In order to correctly apply the rules that govern it, we need to think about what constitutes communication in the first place. In everyday life most communication is non-verbal. Non-verbal communication is important in Magic too. Players often tap lands for mana or tap creatures to attack without being explicit about whether that\u2019s what they\u2019re doing.They might indicate the target of a spell by pointing at or touching the card in question, and they might pass priority with the nod of a head or end their turn with a hand gesture. Generally these are not the things that cause confusion \u2013 players tend to have a good judgement for what they can communicate with or without speaking and are usually good at vocalising what they need to. For this reason, it\u2019s normally only verbal communication that can result in a CPV.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n MTR\u00a74.1 is not the end of the MTR\u2019s word on communication. There are certain other aspects to communication issues which are not covered in CPV \u2013 the most important being tournament shortcuts and out-of-order sequencing (MTR\u00a74.2 and MTR\u00a74.3 respectively).<\/p>\n That\u2019s enough communicating for now. Hopefully this article has been helpful for you – please feel free to leave feedback in the JudgeApps forum. Thanks for reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" L2 Alex Roebuck provides a comprehensive primer for understanding and applying the often-misunderstood CPV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":2011,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[37,5],"tags":[160,149,45,162,161],"language":[180],"class_list":["post-1936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education_development","category-rules_regulations","tag-alex-roebuck","tag-communication","tag-competitive","tag-cpv","tag-mtr","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1936"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2012,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936\/revisions\/2012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=1936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}3.7. Tournament Error \u2014 Communication Policy Violation<\/h2>\n
Types of Information<\/h2>\n
<\/p>The following are free information:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
![\"Tarmogoyf\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/files\/2014\/06\/Tarmogoyf.png\")
Q: What\u2019s that?
\nA: My Tarmogoyf.\u00a0This answer is free information.<\/p>\n
\nA: It\u2019s a 3\/4.
\nThis answer is derived information.<\/p>\n
\nA: Four. Duh.
\nThis answer is private information. It\u2019s also a little bit rude.<\/p>\n\n
Questions about Free Information<\/h2>\n
<\/p>
\nExample \u2013 Andrew controls a Vesuvan Shapeshifter which has become a copy of a few different creatures over the course of several turns and most recently became a copy of Brine Elemental<\/a>. Neil asks Andrew, \u201cWhat did Vesuvan Shapeshifter copy last?\u201d (an example of a past game action which affects the gamestate \u2013 free information) Neil replies, \u201cIt entered as a copy of Squire<\/a> and then became a copy of Tarmogoyf<\/a> two turns later.\u201d Even if that statement is correct, Neil has failed to answer the question, and has committed a CPV.<\/p>\nQuestions Asked by a Judge<\/h2>\n
<\/p>Of course, their opponent is three feet away from them, so players may wish to step away from the table and speak quietly. This is a request players shouldn\u2019t worry about making and judges should be happy to accommodate. Leaving the table in the middle of a game, especially for an extended period, is quite unusual for players, so judges who are dealing with particularly complicated or taxing judge calls should consider having a second judge remain at the table with the other player if floor coverage allows. It simultaneously removes the temptation to cheat and the possibility of being accused of cheating, making both players feel a little more at ease with the situation.<\/p>\n
Presenting Information (in)Correctly<\/h2>\n
![\"???\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/files\/2014\/06\/not-nighthawk.jpg\")
<\/p>\nClassified Information<\/h2>\n
<\/p>Leading on from this \u2013 the fact that players aren\u2019t obliged to assist each other with derived information \u2013 we have a slightly more controversial implication of the policy. Whilst it does stipulate that players must not represent derived information incorrectly, it doesn\u2019t say they have to provide it at all. The fact that players are explicitly obliged to provide free information, combined with the lack of a similar instruction for derived information, implicitly means \u201cI don\u2019t have to tell you\u201d is a perfectly legitimate answer to quite a lot of questions, quite a lot of the time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>It\u2019s understandable that many people will view instances such as the above example as \u201cunsporting.\u201d This is a trap that many people fall into \u2013 to think of sporting and unsporting a binary aspect of behaviour. In reality there are many examples of behaviour which is neither sporting nor unsporting, and most competitive behaviour falls into this category. Aside from anything else, Unsporting Conduct has a very specific definition in the IPG \u2013 hence the capital letters \u2013 and the above examples simply don\u2019t fit. Additionally, there are several other points that validate this unhelpful behaviour. First, players should not be obliged to help their opponents win. Second, we have to allow for the possibility that the player is refusing to answer because they\u2019re also having difficulty working it out \u2013 they don\u2019t want to risk giving the wrong answer and receiving a penalty. Finally, it is established philosophy that \u201ca player should have an advantage due to better understanding of the rules of a game\u201d (MTR\u00a74.1). We directly undermine that principle if we penalise a player for employing their rules knowledge effectively.<\/p>\n
The Right Diagnosis<\/h2>\n
![\"It's](\"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/articles\/files\/2014\/06\/Its-not-CPV.jpg\")
\u2022 Are you trying to justify a penalty that isn\u2019t there?<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s Communication Anyway?<\/h2>\n
<\/p>There\u2019s always the potential for mistakes to be made, though, so it\u2019s important to be emphasize that players are expected to communicate clearly and to discourage certain practises. Players should be vocal where possible, avoid \u201ccommunicating\u201d with silence and passiveness, and should not assume that a pause from the opponent is an acknowledgement of any kind. If players are ever unsure about something, they should clarify it with their opponent. If the players\u2019 understanding of the current game state has completely desynchronised, judges should consider (as a last resort) backing the game up to the last point at which players were agreed upon the gamestate \u2013 even if they\u2019re not intending to issue a penalty.<\/p>\n
Further Reading<\/h2>\n