There’s three small changes to the MTR to talk about. Honestly, they’re probably confirming things you already thought were true, and the whole update is like eleven words long, so the ratio of change to explanation is going to be way off.
The easy and obvious one is that your speed is status information. Everyone figured out it should be immediately and this is just adding the confirmation.
Every once in a while, the formal definition of an English word in the Comprehensive Rules conflicts with the use of the same word in a more informal context in the Magic Tournament Rules and the intersection produces an unintended outcome. Such is the case with the word “reveal”. The CR defines it as “showing something to all players” and the MTR talks about it in terms of revealing hidden information. But that leads to a place where if a Two-Headed Giant player wants to reveal their hand to their partner, they need to show it to everyone? That’s not right. So we’re sidestepping the issue entirely and removing the word reveal from MTR 3.13. And, to make it clear, we’re explicitly adding that you can share hidden information you might have with whoever you want (barring other rules preventing you from doing so, such as during a draft.)
Along similar lines, Bribery is defined as taking an action in exchange for an incentive, but it’s a little over-broad, because that includes in-game incentives, and that means “I’ll sacrifice this creature if you sacrifice that creature” is, technically, bribery. That’s clearly not as intended, so we’ve added “outside-the-game” to the incentive/reward description to remove the potential confusion.
So you just read through about 300 words to discover that you’ve been doing the intended thing all along. Consider yourself on the vanguard of judging and enjoy Dragonstorm!
Oh, that change to 3.13 is going to save me a lot of hassel when trying to explain to people “Yes, you can reveal the cards in your hand to just one player and not everyone at the table if you want to”. Thanks!
Cool update to the 2HG section. I definetly need to get some more 2HG games going!
While I see this as a positive change for Two-Headed Giant, this has some conflicting impacts on EDH. I feel that there should be a distinction between revealing hidden information to opponents and allied players. There exists many cards where reveal is to all players or to the owner of a spell/ability. I feel that it would be more positive of a play experience if the reveal keyword was kept on MTR3.13 and there was a clarification that in the case of allied players hidden information is shared. It makes casual games a lot more frustrating with collusion, and further pushes issues of bribery and intentional draws in EDH tournaments. It would be nice to see revealing to an exclusive player being treated as a mechanic/resources with its own value/cost associated with it.
Setting aside that the MTR really doesn’t try to deal with multiplayer, EDH is the format dedicated to making deals and sharing information. Trying to upend that to fix the unfixable collusion problem is a sign that maybe things are on the wrong track.
Sometimes in multiplayer games, people are your allies and sometimes they are your opponents and that shifts over the course of a game. That it can change how you value sharing information seems like a plus to me.
I can understand that perspective when attempting to address the collusion issue, but I do also feel that mitigation is an important aspect to addressing issues. This is more of a smaller aspect I wanted to refer to.
I wonder if perhaps I’m not the only one who feels that selectively revealing information to other players is not fun for a casual setting. It feels like something of high value that should be costed fairly. Information sharing is important, but we also have rules in place with regards to how we share information. For example, we can’t physically reveal our opponent’s cards when controlling then or peeking with a Gitaxian Probe. This is my opinion, but I view optionally revealing information to the table as something that is more appropriate if revealed to all players.
I also feel that reveal as a mechanic is something that would benefit from further exploration in how information is allowed to be reveal. We pay certain costs to reveal information in certain ways. A Telepathy is distinct from a Gitaxian Probe for example. It would be interesting to see cards that enable information gathering/sharing in an environment where revealing information has firm rules. It would be cool to see commander/multi-player focused cards printed where it allowed you to selectively reveal information to individual players, or to allow players to selectively reveal information to you.
I would appreciate it if this perspective could also be considered in this update.
Thanks
What about Opposition Agent in cEDH? Can I reveal the hidden cards or is that still not allowed?
This update didn’t change anything about when you’re allowed to show cards, just that you don’t have to show them to everybody.
This might not be a topic that needs to be taken too seriously.
I think such a negotiation like, “If we can finish this game early, we can have a snack at the cafe downstairs. Are you interested in ID?” satisfies the ‘incentive outside the game’, but can we resolve anythings this?
I would consider that an observation rather than an incentive. Nothing has been offered that the player doesn’t have already, unless the opponent is offering to buy the snack.