I promised Scott Marshall that I’d write a piece about Scry and the game state. I did that and it was pretty boring. Turns out that once you get beyond “yes, everyone has to point it out,” “no, making it work some other way would be a gigantic can of worms” and “yes, there is a change to the game state (a player has new knowledge; the game state is not just what’s physically visible)” there’s not a whole lot to say.

But that got me to thinking about why people were so worried about this. Sure, people will miss the occasional scry attached to a spell, but that’s not a reason to start panicking about the crumbling of policy underpinnings (seriously!)

What I think it comes down to is that players and judges alike are too worried about Warnings. There’s a stigma attached to them that isn’t warranted, and that makes everyone uncomfortable around them. Judges should never be reluctant to give them out, and players shouldn’t feel the need to appeal simply to avoid the Warning. I think we need to dive a bit into why we have Warnings, and what they mean.

A Warning is simply a reminder to a player that they aren’t playing technically-precise enough Magic and need to be a bit more careful in the future. Obviously, full precision is impossible. People are imperfect and Magic is complicated. But, we take that into account in defining the criteria needed for an error.

A Magic tournament is fairly binary. You either win or you don’t. There’s a little fudge factor; the goal is to win, but it’s possible that placement is acceptable. If you do win the tournament, the fact that you got a Warning along the way is irrelevant. Nor does it hamper a player. The existence of a Warning means nothing in terms of reaching the goal. It’s a reminder that you might need to tighten up your play, but you should be doing that anyway!

A Warning doesn’t carry any particular stigma. I’ve given out many Warnings that haven’t changed my opinion about a player. It’s the underlying action that really counts – if something happens that’s ‘convenient’ or sketchy, but not at a level that rises above a mild concern, that sort of thing gets noted. But, that’s orthogonal to the Warning, which doesn’t carry that kind of baggage with it.

There’s the upgrade path, of course; get enough Warnings and some of them may turn into Game Losses. But, this happens rarely. The numbers for upgrade are chosen so that it takes some serious carelessness to get an upgrade. Realistically, think about how often you’ve upgraded a repeat Warning in your judging career. Once? Twice? Never? The fear is that it happens a lot, but the reality is that it’s a rare occasion and when it happens it’s the product of someone being excessively sloppy.

Thinking Warnings are more than they are leads to judges being reluctant to issue them. That’s a much worse outcome, as the educational reinforcement is lost and the judge gives an appearance of not caring. Hopefully this helps people understand what a Warning really means and why it’s appropriate even for potentially minor stuff.