{"id":2708,"date":"2012-11-13T10:03:46","date_gmt":"2012-11-13T16:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/?p=2708"},"modified":"2015-02-05T16:03:16","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T00:03:16","slug":"tournament-tuesday-life-totals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/2012\/11\/tournament-tuesday-life-totals\/","title":{"rendered":"Tournament Tuesday: Life Totals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is an older &#8216;change&#8217; than the Missed Trigger update a little while back, but it&#8217;s one we haven&#8217;t really covered. One of the toughest things for a Judge to figure out is a life total discrepancy; when Player A says he&#8217;s at one life total, and Player B insists that he&#8217;s at another. In cases like this, it&#8217;s up to the Judge to figure out which player is right. So how can you avoid sticky situations like that? The first one is to keep track of life totals in a very methodical manner; many people choose to use dice to keep track of their life totals, but this isn&#8217;t ideal. Dice can be knocked over, leading to arguments about how you weren&#8217;t at 18, you were at 16. The preferred method that most any Judge will suggest is using a pen and paper; this way you can keep track of your life total and your opponent&#8217;s very clearly, and it&#8217;s nigh impossible for it to accidentally get changed because somebody bumped the table. On top of that, it&#8217;s easy for a Judge to look at a lifepad and see the changes in life totals, making it easier to figure out where a discrepancy began.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of changes in the totals, another easy way to prevent a lot of headache for yourself and the Judges is to announce life total changes every time they occur. When your opponent swings at you, you should verbally confirm &#8220;That puts me at 12&#8221;. That way, if there&#8217;s something wrong and you SHOULD be at 10, or at 13, or what have you, a Judge can be called immediately. It&#8217;s a lot easier to figure out a discrepancy right when it comes up, rather than several turns and 20 minutes later. So, in conclusion: Use pen and paper to keep track of your life total and your opponent&#8217;s; verbally announce and confirm every change in life total; and immediately call a Judge if something doesn&#8217;t add up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is an older &#8216;change&#8217; than the Missed Trigger update a little while back, but it&#8217;s one we haven&#8217;t really covered. One of the toughest things for a Judge to figure out is a life total discrepancy; when Player A says he&#8217;s at one life total, and Player B insists that he&#8217;s at another. In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[282,13],"tags":[],"language":[1196],"class_list":["post-2708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication-policy","category-tournamentrules","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2708"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4678,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2708\/revisions\/4678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2708"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=2708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}