I’m in the process of pulling together the changes for the Gatecrash update to the policy documents. Many of you have emailed me with suggestions for improvements, but I figured that I’d throw open a blog post to let people put suggestions in the comments for stuff they’d like to see tweaked.
This isn’t really the place for calls for radical changes to the frameworks, but to point out stuff like there’s still a mention of “lapsing” in the document or suggest wording improvements for clarity. So, if something’s confusing or you can see a way to improve things, talk about it here!
I would really like to see a clearer definition of beneficial triggers. There is still some confusion from my players about what is/not beneficial. My “rule of thumb” is if the opponent wants to put it on the stack it’s probably not beneficial, although I know that doesn’t always apply.
Thanks for opening this up for suggestions.
Hi Toby,
I would like to see the following edits to the Missed Trigger section:
*) Mention delayed triggered abilities
*) If I understand correctly, attacking creatures should only get the Battlecry/Exalted bonus if the attacking player remembers the trigger BEFORE the opponent starts assigning blockers (always assuming there is a significant enough pause, etc.). However, the MT definition as written says something different and should be modified accordingly (“A trigger is considered missed once the controller of the trigger has taken an action after the point at which a trigger should have resolved [..]”)
Cheers, Stefan
We’re adding a bunch of details to make the trigger stuff clearer. Hammering it out now.
I’d like to see “Failure to Reveal” back in the IPG. I know it was rolled into GRV, but I don’t like that it is an exception that recommends an upgrade. Removing a rule only to add an exception doesn’t really reduce the number of things a new judge has to learn, it just makes something less obvious.
I’d like to see three other clarifications, none of which materially change the IPG:
1. As previously discussed, “and/or” in the definition of a missed trigger needs to be “and.” Either that, or just change the whole “doesn’t acknowledge and/or forgets to announce” to something along the lines of “does not communicate” which boils down the whole essence of what we want: communication of trigger events.
I’d reword it thus:
> A triggered ability triggers, but the player controlling the ability forgets to announce its effect and doesn’t demonstrate awareness of the trigger’s existence. If a triggered ability has been partially or incorrectly resolved, instead treat it as a Game Play Error — Game Rule Violation.
This wording avoids the ambiguously distributive “doesn’t” by moving that clause after the conjuction, and changes the conjunction from the logically-inclusive-“or” to a simple “and” which makes proper sense. Additionally, we make announcement primary and acknowledgement is a fallback measure to avoid a missed trigger. This clearly describes the event as currently ruled. Granted, sweeping changes might replace this paragraph entirely, but that’s what I’d do to fix its current implementation.
2. Also, as previously discussed, the Cheating – Fraud penalty for life total discrepancies isn’t part of the IPG. It should be, and it should be in a place where it is clear that the responsibility to communicate one’s own triggers is trumped by the responsibility of both players to avoid life total discrepancies.
I’d add the following note:
> … However, ignoring opponent’s missed triggers is not Fraud.
> Failure to point out a discrepancy in a recorded or announced life total as soon as it is noticed, will be considered a Cheating – Fraud penalty, without exception.
> A player must be aware that he or she has committed an error in representation in order for the infraction to be Fraud… etc.
3. The exception for downgrading a DEC penalty from game loss to warning should clarify that the “identity” of cards requires them to have been revealed, or must be the only card(s) in hand, or must not have touched the unknown cards in that player’s hand. Basically, explicitly state the process currently being used to determine whether the identity of a card is known. The IPG should provide judges with the means to make consistent rulings.
I’d reword it thus:
> If the identity of the card was known to all players before being placed into the hand (for example, Enlightened Tutor resolves, the player reveals a legal card, but places it in his or her hand instead of the top of the library), and the card can be returned to the correct zone with minimal disruption, do so and downgrade the penalty to a Warning. Knowing the position of the extra card(s) in hand is not enough to uniquely identify it (and thereby apply a fix and downgrade the penalty), so long as it has come in contact with any previously unknown cards in the player’s hand.
This way, it is clear what is meant by “identity” in the current rules: we mean, basically, can all players name the card, or give a description that would allow us to uniquely identify it. Additionally, the explanation of the heuristic “did it touch unknown cards in hand?” leaves room for one other obviously easy fix: does the player have one card in hand when he/she is supposed to have zero? We can–but don’t have to–downgrade that as well.
These suggestions come from high-profile cases where the community at large was confused about the ruling issued. I think those deserve clarification such that the rules more clearly support the rulings.
1) is being fixed.
2) is already pretty clear. I haven’t seen anybody else confused by the difference between discrete and continuous events.
3) seems to be adding a bunch of stuff that’s irrelevant because of “before being placed into the hand”. Why do we need all those caveats about it’s nature after it goes into the hand?
Hi Toby,
Thanks for posting this!
Could you look into publishing a “tracked changes” version of the IPG that clearly shows additions, changes, and deletions compared to the past version? Microsoft Word has some functionality for this, as well as various Unix utilities. Even if it only got posted, say, on your blog and the Judge Wiki as an unofficial resource, I think it would be a huge help for judges who want to focus on the most recent changes.
Yawgatog used to do this for each version, but appears to have stopped. There is a tracked-changes version, since we use it extensively during the writing, but that one has a whole bunch of revisions, rerevisions, etc.
It shouldn’t be too hard to generate a diff, but I’d have to see how WotC feels about releasing the Word version – they’ve stopped distributing those.
Have you tried http://www.qtrac.eu/diffpdf.html ? It looks like it should be able to diff the pdf. Haven’t run it through yet to see what sort of output it produces. May be worth looking into.
I tried a couple utilities back in September, but didn’t have much success just feeding in the PDFs. I don’t think I tried the one you linked, though, which looks promising. I’ll give it a shot later when I’m on my actual computer.
Thanks for thinking about this! I’ll also talk to Yawgatog about possibly starting to do diffs again.
Is the priority pass as written in comprehensive rules all bad for communications ?
I mean; I should NOT have to reveal that I want to respond to my own spell (or ability) before I have asked if my opponent wants to respond to my spell ? Think of it; when you cast a spell and want to respond to it with another spell (or instant ability of a permanent you control) it is acting informative towards your opponent if you first look up at him and show him the card. If you do that under current priority rules the opponent easily can see that as you not holding priority and will refuse it when you two seconds later say”…and I hold prio……and do….this.”. Its about how communication goes; when you make a hidden game card from hand become open information(you have been looking at it all match because its in your hand, while opponent might never have seen the card before ever in life) you DO want to allow the opponent a pause to read our card (and understand all the mana payments used to cast it) before he can decide to respond or not, and become ready to receive information about the second card (or ability of something). The stack as a game zone become more “visible or real” in game play through that if you land your sorcery/instant card in the graveyard after getting the confirmative response from opponent that he 1)understands the card you just showed him and how you paid costs to play it, and 2) does not want to respond, then 3) you can not respond to your own spell because you landed it in the graveyard and not on the table that would otherwise indicate that something more might happen with this stack before resolving any spell in it.
No matter how much we want to retain prio and respond to our own stuff we cant just throw several things at our opponent in practically same sentence, things need to be properly announced individually. I think the flip-side of it is pretty good too; it favours respones to own spells/abilities in that we now have info on wether opponent wanted to counterspell or otherwise respond to our first cast spell. I think this makes magic become even more magical/skillrewarding.
Um, if you wait to see if the opponent responds, it’s too late to respond to your spell. They pass and it resolves. Simply announce that you’re holding priority when you pass over the spell for them to read.
I most certainly know how to respond to my own spells under the rules we have today.
What I was trying to explain is that there might be improvements to be had if the rules regarding priority is changed.
Instead I get a reminder about how the rules currently work.
Two people talking past each other is what we have here.
Ah, well, that one you’ll need to take up with the folks in charge of the Comprehensive Rules. They would deal with something like this.
Hi Toby,
I know this isn’t really what you’re looking for on this post, but I have a proposal for a small modification to the Missed Trigger policy. (This would be a minor shift in philosophy, with an accompanying change to policy.) What would be the best way to submit something like that to you?
Thanks.
Email through the judge center is fine.
Has it ever occurred to the people that produce and preside over mtg with rules that there is a connection between card-prints, comprehensive rules/ipg/mtr and the Judges whos main task is to resolve disputes between the only factor they cannot directly shape: the players ???
From what Toby write here it seems to me that there is more or less a complete break between the work of card-makerers, rules writers and the Judge/dci part; that is one heck of a mindblowing idea to have in my head !
All the way from when some card maker person at wotc comes up with an idea like Cavern of Souls, to straightening it out, compare it to comprehensive rules and ipg, until the last day it leaves the last constructed format it is part of, and even on that day some judge somewhere in this world has to allow some player the right to name a creature type for it even though it was cast and overlooked by both players many game actions ago, SOMEONE being part of that chain must manage to point out the potential of abuse in how it can play out between these players that WotC cannot directly controll or shape.
I dont even know if the rules job that Toby does is via more or less full employment with WotC. If it isnt, but is free work motivated by own interest, then I cannot possibly “aim at” Toby with what I write here, because then he probably is doing a fantastic job.
I mentioned Cavern of Souls, and such it might seem that the only problems are of individual kind, that is not so. I mentioned how the prio system works as an example, which obviously is a much more general thing. And that is what recognises a good rule book; that new cards can enter a framework of rules that is able to recognise every aspect of a card no matter how colorful (in figurative sense) the new card is. 2012 has had numerous changes to the missed trigger rules; there is nothing Einstein’ish to see when you look at what has changed from one edition to the other, but still it takes full 12 months and we still probably havent reached how it should be !!!
Those in charge should become far more ambitious with the rules of MtG, the less good they are the more friction we will have between players worldwide on every level of play.