This is not a wild-west sized update; it’s a few technical tweaks for clarity, fixing some edge cases, and one new piece of policy that’ll only be relevant for a few tournaments.
Keeping it Out in the Open
There’s a few tournaments that use open decklists, and in some cases, players physically exchange those lists at the start of the match. But, what happens if I give you the wrong one? Halfway through the game, I play a card that wasn’t on my list and a judge gets called. What to do? To this point, there’s been no policy guidance for this.
Philosophically, it’s a decklist error, and after much hunting around to see if we could do something to mitigate it, the ultimate conclusion was that the penalty had to be in line with a decklist error, too. There’s too many places where a decision might have been made to be able to provide guidance to assess the impact, let alone try to mitigate it. Fortunately, it only applies to a few high-level tournaments, so it’s unlikely to come up much.
Quick Hits
- There were some questions after the last update about how exactly to apply opponent-chooses decisions in Deck Error. The wording got update to make it clear that the opponent decides when immediately, but how when the appropriate time comes.
- While we were in there, we cleaned up handling companion-based errors to parallel how we handle normal deck errors. That should cut down on needing to remember a separate process there.
- There was an edge case where someone discovered that they were playing too many copies of a card in their opening hand, but the upgrade specified “once the game had started” and that was technically not the case at that point. That wasn’t the intent, so the game start requirement was dropped. This shouldn’t have any impact beyond this particular corner case.
- The morph upgrade got some more text clarifications. The morph needs to be on the battlefield; if it’s back in hand, then upgrade doesn’t apply (there had better be one in hand at that point, though!) Also, if the error is about to be discovered (an effect has been played that’s going to reveal it), it’s too late to self-report.
A Few Refreshers
These aren’t quick hits, in the sense that they aren’t any new policy, but it’s worth highlighting them as they’ve recently been relevant.
- Cavern of Souls is back in Standard, so a reminder that, in one of the very few cases where there’s an override to policy philosophy, we assume that they chose the uncounterable mana when they can. Sadly, the original article on Wizards’ website doesn’t seem to be available any more, but Wayback Machine to the rescue. Recommended reading!
- The Amalia Benavides Aguirre loop came up at the Pro Tour! There was some question as to whether the interaction with Wildgrowth Walker constituted an unbreakable loop if her power was greater than 20. The answer is a qualified yes, but not immediately, as the player can’t continue to choose to leave the card on top and must try to end the loop by making a different decision. So the likely outcome is that they eventually run through every card in their library and at that point are out of options to break the loop. But while the normal outcome is the same, it may be quite different if the opponent has options to break the loop; they can wait until the deck is in the graveyard before doing so.
- Technically, players should have their double-faced card with the front face forwards in sleeves, but there’s no penalty for failing to do so. Simply remind them and, as long as everything is clear, move on.
Wrapping Up
That’s it for Thunder Junction. Thanks to Steven Zwanger, Joe Steet and Joe Klopchic for their suggestions and help wrangling policy this update. See you all with Bloomburrow!