Doing Something Different... Policy Update in the Philippines

So what happens during policy updates? Have you attended one?

Now the depth of every update may vary, but one thing is for certain, it is very important to the point that we schedule a meeting for it.

The practice in the Philippines may actually be a bit different, or is it?

Well, it is best to hear it from Ian Mervin Go, a Level 2 judge from the Philippines, who facilitated the Rivals of Ixalan Rules Update held at Cedric’s Boardgame Cafe, Quezon City, Philippines.

Ian Mervin Go

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What: Rivals of Ixalan Rules Update (PH) + 2018 Kickstarter Party
When: 21st January 2018, Sunday
Where: Cedric’s Boardgame Cafe, Quezon City, Philippines

Hi guys!
Sorry this took a while. Life got me busy. Anyways.

So I’ll be doing a small recap on what happened during our small get-together.

A little tidbit for our international friends. Here in the Philippines, when we do a rules update, it also becomes a small reunion for us. So we always try to include food, drinks, and maybe a reason to celebrate. We usually do it over dinner, so we end up getting a very long table, several small ones, or a small event venue.

For this one, we included the 2018 Kickstarter Party to the rules update. We were not able to have a Christmas Party (sad), so we had a Kickstarter one instead.

We ordered the food early so that the early birds can eat while we wait for others. Once we have almost everyone, we started.

I like reading the release notes and I know a lot of people don’t, so I tried my best to make this update easier for everybody. Even though I tried to make it shorter by just including things I think is interesting, I don’t think I was 100% successful. Because based on the number of slides, it was still pretty long. 😮

I started the discussion with our newest keyword, Ascend. I showed them the long CR text and summarized it into a few sentences, then I followed it up with the only Ascend card with a “may” in its upgrade clause, Expel from Orazca.

Next up is the Card specific notes. I started with the Elder Dinosaurs. Tried to explain each one briefly, since most of them are only attractive for Commander players.Etali, Primal Storm, Ghalta, Primal Hunger, and Zacama, Primal Calamity, are the ones with interesting rulings.

With Etali, Primal Storm, you choose the order the spells go on the stack, and they can affect how some spells will work.
Ghalta, Primal Hunger cares about the total power of your creatures. Include the negative ones.
And for Zacama, Primal Calamity, all it cares about is that it gets cast. Regardless where and how.

After that, I proceeded to the non-Elder Dino cards. I went alphabetically, but placed the more difficult / interesting ones at the end.

Blood Sun and Warkite Marauder both deal with Layers (CR 613).
Crafty Cutpurse got me digging through CR 616.
Rekindling Phoenix’s token has a triggered ability that targets. If there are no cards named Rekindling Phoenix in your graveyard, you don’t have to sacrifice the token.

Next up is the Policy Update.

They added the City’s Blessing, which is a player status as is Monarch. These are considered as free information.

From the “Policy Changes for Rivals of Ixalan” by Toby Elliott:

“So how do we handle ascending? It’s not a trigger, so it can’t be missed. At some point, it just happens. If a player takes an illegal action because they forgot about it (or didn’t notice), treat it like any other Game Rule Violation – consider a backup, or leave the game as is. They still have the city’s blessing, though.”

The Magic Tournament Rules (MTR) also received updates.

In Competitive REL, players can’t use dice and other objects that are easily changed to keep track of Life, Poison counters, and Energy counters (MTR 2.14). Pen and paper is recommended, and it is also a good habit to use these as it can help you get to a correct board state in case there are discrepancies.

They also made silver-bordered cards “real cards”, though only legal in formats that say they are (MTR 3.3). Future proofing I suppose.

We also had a brief discussion about Bribery (MTR 5.2), specifically paragraph three and five. I was also surprised to read this. There was also a question on “Why is it legal to make an offer in the finals?”, and Joel Bantiles said “The reason behind that is because their agreement won’t affect any other players.”

Once everyone is satisfied, in mind and in stomach, we proceeded to the next part of our party: Raffle, giveaways, and games!

We always try to make our gatherings fun, and I hope most of you guys too.

Until my next write up, thank you for reading!

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Thank you Ian Mervin Go for sharing! 🙂

There you go fellow judges, a policy update meeting can very much be a mini-reunion or a social gathering.
This may actually increase the number of attendees during policy updates meetings.
Do you have any interesting stories about your policy updates experience? Please comment below.

Photo Credit to: Victor Viguilla and to see more of his photos during the said meeting, click the link here.