Welcome back, everyone. Over the course of the next few weeks, we’re going to be going over the Judging at Regular REL document. This is the document that judges use at regular REL events, like Friday Night Magic and Prerelease events. If you want to read it for yourself, you can find it here. Don’t worry, it’s not that long of a document (it’s only two pages).

Today, we’re going to be looking at someone who has forgotten one of their triggers. This is probably one of the most common mistakes you run into. If it’s an opponent’s trigger, you don’t have to say anything. You may want to say something to be sporting, but you are not required to do so. If the trigger uses the word ‘may’, then we simply treat it as though the player chose not to use the ability, and you continue playing.

Otherwise, it’s going to be up to the judge if the trigger is added to the stack or not. Generally, the trigger will happen unless it happened so long ago that it would be disruptive to the game. There’s no hard and fast rule here to decide if the trigger will be put on the stack, it’s going to be up to the judge to decide that. If all that’s happened after the trigger was missed was a player drawing a card and then playing a land, you’re going to be getting the trigger. The more that’s happened between the trigger being missed and the trigger being noticed, the greater the risk of the player not getting the trigger.

Remember, we handle missed triggered slightly differently at Regular REL than at Competitive or Professional REL. You may have heard of other ways to determine how to handle missed triggers, but that’s not how we handle things at Regular REL. If you want to read it for yourself, then please click the link at the beginning of the article and read for yourself.

Today’s Tournament Tip written by Nathan Long