We’ve got some nice quality-of-life improvements, including two changes to the missed trigger rules, changes to a deck problem upgrade, and revisiting a ruling from a prior decade. None of that sounds remotely spooky, right? Just don’t split the party.
Who Died and Made You Aristotle?
We have two separate additions to the Missed Trigger rules. The first is the answer to a deeply philosophical question: “If a trigger is missed, did it trigger at all?” For years, the answer didn’t have a lot of relevance, but with the modern “this only triggers once/twice per turn” template, counting can be complicated.
The answer is that the trigger did indeed trigger. The tree falling in the woods still makes a sound, even if nobody is around to hear it. This is both the pragmatic answer – the opponent may have known about it and shouldn’t have that uncertainty – and the one that keeps abuse potential to a minimum. We don’t want somebody “missing” their trigger in the hopes that they can get it later in the turn where it’s better for them.
Rewriting History
The second update to Missed Triggers is a little radical, as it’s rewriting the game rules a bit to make for smoother rulings. Putting a counter on a Saga is a game action. It feels like it should be a trigger, sounds like a trigger, and there’s a trigger immediately afterwards (performing whatever effect is associated with the new saga chapter), but the action itself is not a trigger.
That creates some odd situations, because it makes the action “unmissable” in the sense that it should be handled as a Game Rule Violation, where this much better way of handling it is right over here. But one of the reasons that it took so long to make this change was the question of why it wasn’t a trigger in the first place. What arcane corner of the rules had someone in the design/rules/templating elite cabal noticed that caused them to make the decision? Weere they consciously trying to keep it out of the Missed Trigger rules? Without that understanding, we weren’t confident that making a tweak here wouldn’t trip some odd problem.
The answer came back that it wasn’t anything above and that they’d be happy for us to treat that game action as a trigger, and so we shall. You can miss a saga action now, and have it handled just like a missed trigger.
Your Question is Invalid
One of the lines that has been iterated on a ton of times in the IPG is the “invalid number of cards” deck problem upgrade. There’s been lots of debate about what “invalid” means, with multiple conflicting interpretations floating around out there. The latest version will, fingers crossed, put the ambiguity to rest.
Actually explaining the philosophy of the upgrade is pretty easy. We don’t want people running fewer cards in their deck, as that is hard to notice and increases the odds you’ll draw the other ones. But what does “fewer” mean? Well, that changes according to what game it is, and how many cards you registered. For example, if I’m running 62/13, then in game 2, sideboard to 60/15, is that “fewer”? Obviously not! But we couldn’t use “legal” (a previous attempt), because running 60 in the first game should be upgraded. Plus, sideboards have maximum size rules while decks have minimum size rules. Combine that with different rules for when you could sideboard, and eventually you end up with something technically correct – “invalid” – but not intuitive enough.
The new version solves this problem by creating two definitions; one for pre-sideboard games and one for post-sideboard games, then uses precise language to explain the two. For pre-sideboard games, it’s fewer than the decklist. For post-sideboard games, we look to the game rules instead.
Speaking of Invalid
The partial fix for card-in-the-wrong zone is another section that’s gotten many rewrites over the years. In particular, the current iteration wasn’t symmetrical, because it didn’t handle the idea of a creature with non-lethal damage being put into a graveyard, even while it did handle a creature with lethal damage not going to a graveyard. That was originally intentional – bringing cards back to the battlefield later in the turn is likely to be disruptive – but it’s not intuitive, and several judges asked questions about it. A couple of proposals were floated that I thought were too broad, but had interesting potential to play with. What were we actually trying to accomplish with this particular fix? It’s there so we don’t rewind huge chunks of the game when we realize that a card in the graveyard should be exiled, but it philosophically should apply to other cards moving around incorrectly. But we don’t want to see situations like the classic Wrath of God for 3W suddenly being a partial fix… wait, we have technology for that. So now the rule broadly applies to cards changing zones incorrectly, but only if the zone change itself was the error, not something prior. If the root cause is something else, the partial fix doesn’t apply.
The remaining caveats are still there, and I want to specifically highlight that it still needs to be a minimally disruptive fix. Bringing things back to the battlefield is often not minimally disruptive, so handle with care!
Dark Souls
The Cavern of Souls ruling is… sufficient years in the past to make use feel very old. It’s one of the very few times that the philosophy of the rules came into conflict with the philosophy of card design. That conflict was so unusual that it prompted an article on the Magic website discussing the philosophies at play and why this one was going to be ruled unusually. Cavern of Souls faded out of Standard, and all was good.
But it’s been ahem years, Cavern of Souls has been reprinted, Delighted Halfling is here, and the article is gone so we can’t even point new judges to it. They’re deriving the old, problematic ruling from core philosophies and we can’t blame them for that! We had the choice of writing a whole new article and getting it up somewhere very public, hoping that it would buy us another gulp years, or we could try for a fix. And someone proposed an elegant fix.
The thing about shortcuts in Magic is that the formal defaults defined are usually reinforcements of our principles. But they can also be used to highlight exceptions! And so we have, with a new shortcut that says when a player has a card with multiple mana abilities, default to the most narrowly-applicable one. Delighted Halflings can remain delighted.
Wrapping Up
That’s it for Duskmourn. Tread lightly and pay no attention to the ghouls that make up the high-level judges of Judge Foundry, led by the mostly-not-dead Brook Gardner-Durbin, who I want to thank for their helpful suggestions and concerns. Stay safe! Where did I put all the cute animals again?
The new sentence in IPG 2.1 regarding Sagas states:
“If the turn-based action of putting a lore counter on a Saga is missed, it should be handled as
though it was a missed trigger.”
This doesn’t mention the possibility of failing to apply the replacement effect of putting a lore counter onto a Saga as it enters the battlefield, which suggests that we should *not* treat that type of situation in the same way and instead continue to treat it as a Game Rule Violation.
The wording of this article, however, suggests that the intention was to have that replacement effect covered by the same new sentence as the turn-based action of putting a lore counter onto a Saga.
With this in mind, is the intention here to have different outcomes for missing the aforementioned turn-based action versus missing the replacement effect?
I think it’s fine if they’re different, but I also think that the odds of that getting missed seem vanishingly small, so I’m not going to worry about it too much. If this actually happens, let me know.
This feels fairly trivial, but the shortcut for mana abilities creates some question around Arena of Glory (and other similar cards).
I read this as the player is implicitly exerting Arena of Glory if casting a creature spell in a situation where they are tapping another land for {R}, regardless of what they say otherwise. Is that correct?
I don’t think you can implicitly exert a card (well, you could if you announced the effect of exertion, like Glorybringer, but that doesn’t apply here). I certainly wouldn’t allow that.
Does the tournament shortcut means that by default you are exerting Arena of Glory if you are casting a creature spell?
Any plans to remove all references to the DCI from the MTR?
10.1 says the minimum of players for individual tournaments is 4, but Appendix E suggests otherwise.
Have you think about redefining Loops as “a sequence of events that can be repeated” and then add “loops that can be shortcut must be shortcut”? Currently the MTR defines a loop as “a form of tournament shortcut”, that contradicts the later statement “non-deterministic loops may not be shortcut”. And now that you are there you can add “you must know the gamestate after each iteration of the loop in order to be able to shortcut it”.
I don’t think Arena falls under here. I don’t think you can opt to exert without mentioning it.
The DCI references come out slowly. One day they’ll be all gone.
I don’t think these are actually incompatible, since the team has 4 “players”. I agree that Appendix E is a bit of a mess and should probably be looked at.
I’m reluctant to mess with the loop rules; they’re easy to accidentally mess up. But I’ll take a look and see what I can do. Thanks!
Thanks for the response.
The minimum of players in 10.1 have two entries, one for individual tournaments and other for team tournaments.
Then if you go to 10.2 the minimum number of rounds for team tournaments is 2, which makes sense for 4 teams, but the minimum number of rounds for individual tournaments is 3, which is weird for 4 individual players.
There are three options:
– The minimum number for individual tournaments should be 5.
– The minimum number of rounds for individual tournaments should be 2
– 3 rounds is the correct number for 4 individual players, so the appendix E table should say 4-8 players instead of 5-8.
But you don’t have to announce that you exert either, as far as I can tell. I think that you should, but not sure if you must.
I guess that in most cases this is/becomes visible because the exert ability goes on the stack targeting something.
“701.39a To exert a permanent, you choose to have it not untap during your next untap step.”
Please correct me if I’m wrong here.
You to announce whether you’re exerting when required, as it’s a choice. The new shortcut provides a default, but this isn’t an eligible one, as you didn’t choose to exert to make it available.
For anyone interested, the original Cavern of Souls article can be found via the Wayback Machine.
Tabak, M. (May 25, 2012) magicthegathering.com.
Where dies Arena of Glory fit under the new shortcut assumptions?
I think the need to point out that you’re exerting means there isn’t really ambiguity there, so this wouldn’t apply.
A couple questions about how we should implement treating sagas as a Missed Trigger.
1) This seems obvious, but the intent is that “put a lore counter on this” goes on the stack if the opponent chooses for it to? The alternative is that we put a counter on the saga without giving anyone priority, then the trigger triggers immediately.
2) Are players required to point out their opponent’s missed saga counters? I read no.
3) Are saga lore counters triggers always not detrimental? Or do chapter abilities that are generally detrimental result in a Warning for Missed Trigger for not putting a counter on the saga? These are rare, but The Apprentice’s Folly – Chapter 3 is clearly detrimental.
1) Yeah, it should go on the stack. But since it goes and puts the actual trigger on the stack right after, I don’t think that’s going to matter much from a decision standpoint. If there’s a rash of Stifles (which you would almost certainly want to hold for the subsequent trigger) maybe we’ll revisit.
2) They are not
3) Good question. I think not-detrimental is fine. Looking ahead to the next trigger is a can of worms I am reluctant to open here!
Thanks for the clarifications.
Even if there aren’t stifles, making the add a counter a trigger means enchantment removal will prevent the chapter ability.
Well, in the enchantment removal case, if you didn’t want it to trigger you’d hit it during upkeep, so I think it’s another case where it’s probably not going to matter. If this causes problems, we can tweak it!
How’s this jive with “No player may make choices for the triggered ability involving objects that would not have been legal choices when the ability should have triggered”? We missed the “put the counter on the saga” trigger, but technically we didn’t miss the chapter trigger because it never happened.
e.g., if Anna forgets to uptick her Birth of the Imperium to chapter II, Nora plays a Grizzly Bears, then they both remember “Oh wait, that should have gone to Chapter II,” can Nora sac her Grizzly Bears?
From an earlier response you gave Klopchic I’m inclined to think we’re on “yes she can sac her Bears” here.
I think getting to not being able to sac the bears would require some serious rule contortions. Not opposed, but I suspect it would do more harm than good.
Is there a reasoning as to why the Saga change wasn’t made an exception that does not require a backup, like other the other 5 exceptions we already have for GRVs? I feel like the result would’ve mostly been the same (as in: we do it now and don’t need to back-up anything for it), but we still track the warning for that and don’t have the opponent decide.
There’s a lot more potential for damaging things to suddenly happen if it’s just a GRV exception. Most people think it is a trigger, because the thing they actually care about is! The Missed Trigger remedy works very well for handling it, so it was just a matter of making sure we understood why it was the way it was, and that we hadn’t missed anything.
Regarding sagas, if Ellie’s Urza’s Saga’s third chapter trigger is missed can it be used to create an additional construct (number 2) in Brian’s turn then being used to make construct number 3 before Ellie goes to find her artifact at the start of her precombat main phase?
I’m struggling to parse this a bit. In theory, if the Saga stuck around because the counter was missed, you could continue to make constructs. I suspect what really happens is that Ellie goes to make a construct, they realize the counter was missed, and Brian chooses to put it on the stack then and there (so Ellie wouldn’t have the opportunity for another use).
Note that under the old rules, this was the default approach – if it was too late to rewind, then the saga stuck around for an extra turn.
Missed trigger section in JAR has not changed yet. Can we treat missed saga counter as a missed trigger even in Regular REL? (Is it missed trigger and opponent don’t need to point out?)
Yeah, sure. It’s regular REL. You have a lot of flexibility to do the right thing there!