Summary of  Tournament Shortcuts

 

This week on Rulesday Tuesday we tackled a topic that’s been much discussed lately, Tournament Shortcuts. As part of the communication portion of the MTR, most of our shortcut problems focused on how the players specifically communicated, and exactly what sort of things we try and avoid by setting up these shortcuts.

Question 1: Adam casts Turnabout targeting himself, and then moves to float the remainder of his mana by tapping his lands. His opponent Nick stops him and asks if he may respond. Adam agrees, and Nick then says, “Ok, I’ll pass priority, your lands untap.” Adam argues that he still gets to float the mana from the rest of his lands. What do we do?

• Clint Herron told us that players can not ask for priority and then do nothing with it per MTG 4.2. On the surface this appears to answer the question; Adam is allowed to float his mana as, if a player tried to take priority and do nothing with it, we give priority back to the player that had it.
• However, Mark Mason then asked the interesting question of if, had Nick not tried to take priority by asking and instead just said “Ok” after Adam casts Turnabout, would Adam miss floating his mana since he didn’t expressly keep priority? After all another shortcut in MTR 4.2 tells us that players are assumed to be passing priority after adding objects to the stack unless they explicitly state otherwise.
• It turns out here that if the tapping to float all the mana is done essentially at the same time as announcing Turnabout, then it can be considered all one action and Adam is allowed to float. However, any sort of pause in this case constitutes a pass of priority.
• So oddly, because Nick tried to trick Adam, he actually gives him the ability to float in this case. It goes to show: trickery never pays.

Question 2: Adam casts and resolves Sire of Insanity and says “Go”. Nick says “Ok, Echoing Truth it back to your hand”. Adam then tells Nick he still has to discard his hand because it’s the end step. Is he correct?

• There was some back and forth here about whether or not the Ok from Nick was saying he will respond after it resolves, or confirmation of Adam’s proposed shortcut (“Go” being a shortcut in the MTR for pass priority to the opponent until the opponent has priority in your end step). However, as Daniel Hall pointed out, deviation from that shortcut would require Nick to be explicit about when he is responding. Because he did not explicitly state that he was acting before the end step, he is assumed to be acting then, and as such will be losing his hand to the Sire of Insanity trigger.
• Mark Mason introduced some side conversation after this regarding how we go about helping players learn after mistakes like this, as Nick would almost certainly be upset by this ruling. In general as judges we want to save that sort of info until after the match and then inform the player as we want to avoid any appearance of outside assistance. That said, if a player explicitly ask how to avoid that mistake in the future during a ruling, the easy fix is to tell them to simply say when they would like to act. “Echoing Truth your Sire at the end of your second Main Phase” is a perfectly good response to Adam’s proposed shortcut, and ends much better for Nick.

Question 3: Adam casts Addle and as part of announcing the spell says he will name Blue. His opponent says “Ok, that resolves”. Adam then says, “Actually, I’m going to name Red instead, I forgot that I’m only at 4 life and don’t want to get burned out.” His opponent argues that he already named a color. but Adam says he doesn’t actually have to choose until resolution. Which color do we decide is named on the Addle?

• Michael Miles nailed the answer here which is that announcing choices that would normally be made on a spell’s resolution is a shortcut proposing that that spell resolve and that choice be made. As such if the opponent confirms the player is held to that choice. The reason for this shortcut is to stop players from fishing for information and gaining an unfair advantage.
• As a final aside, if at any point before resolution the opponent responds in any way then we no longer hold the player to that choice, they are now free to change their decision based on that new info if they like.

Question 4: Adam casts Grizzly Bears and his opponent Nick casts Condescend on it tapping just an Island. Adam looks slightly confused but says “Ok, you scry 2.” At this point Nick tells Adam his spell is countered since he didn’t state he paid the 0 and acknowledged going to the next part of resolving Condescend. Is this correct?

• Yet another useful shortcut in the MTR is that players are assumed to always pay any cost of 0 unless they explicitly state otherwise, after all maybe Adam had a Summoning Trap! So in this scenario Nick doesn’t “get” Adam and the Bears still resolve.
• Following this we had a long discussion about if there were any penalties to be issued here, and for the sake of argument we assumed Nick know about the shortcut and tried to get Adam anyway. While some thought that Nick was knowingly breaking a rule and as such should be investigated for cheating, this is incorrect. At no point did Nick lie about information and as such isn’t in violation of the communication policy that the Tournament Shortcuts falls under.
• This can seem wrong instinctively, but it’s important in these scenarios that walk up to the line of legal that we remember Magic is a game that allows players to bluff and check opponents, even if it might look suspicious.

Question 5: Nick controls a Walking Ballista with 2 +1/+1 counters on it. Adam has 3 basic Mountains in play and taps all of them and says “Devil’s Play your Walking Ballista“. In response Nick shoots Adam for 2 damage with Ballista. Adam says “Ok, I’ll take 2, and use my leftover 2 mana to cast my own Ballista for 1. Nick protests that Adam used that mana for Devil’s Play but Adam says he never announced a value for X and was simply doing it for 0 and floating the rest. What do we do when called over by the players?

• Josh Olendorf and Mark Mason both instantly found the answer to this one. Despite Adam’s best efforts to pull one over on Nick, the MTR is clear that for any unannounced X, players are assumed to be spending all floating mana.

Question 6: Adam casts Lightning Bolt on Nick’s Birds of Paradise. Nick floats a white mana in response. Birds dies and Adam says “Combat”. Nick says ok. Then Adam activates his Raging Ravine and tries to attack. Nick stops him and says that they’re already in Declare Attackers Step and it is too late to fire up Ravine. Is he correct?

• Saving the best for last, we finally came to the much discussed “combat” shortcut. Mark Mason quickly identified that in this case Adam’s proposed shortcut places him in the Declare Attackers step and as such it is too late to man up and attack with Raging Ravine.
• After this simple answer is when the more tricky discussion came out, as we asked how exactly could Adam phrase things in order to enter his beginning of combat without letting Nick know that he planned to man up the Raging Ravine. As it turns out, currently there is no such way. Even a statement such as “Move to my Beginning of Combat Step” is equivalent to moving to attackers unless you explicitly state what you wish to do in beginning of combat. This is important to know, as many though that simply phrasing things differently would allow Adam to do what he wanted, but ultimately unless you say what you’re doing in beginning of combat, any statement will take you straight to declare attackers.

That concluded our discussion for the week. We had some great responses this week that really delved into all the twists and turns that can come up when dealing with communication issues, and tournament shortcuts specifically. As a final take away, it’s important to remember that, in general, we don’t hand out penalties for not following tournament shortcuts, as the way they work is that when players try and skirt them, we simply make them follow them instead. In no scenario above did the player trying to trick the opponent actually get away with what they wanted to do, and this is important to remember when thinking about giving penalties.

Further reading: MTR 4.2 Tournament Shortcuts

Related article: Tournament Shortcuts