Quick post for everyone waiting for the new policy docs: they’re going to be delayed a week and released on Feb 4. It’s nothing problematic – the documents are done – but, a few days ago, Wizards asked for a little extra time to get their ducks in a row and we’re happy to oblige. […]
Category: Policy
Gatecrash Triggers to Watch Out For
The full visual spoiler is out, so it’s time for a quick spin through Gatecrash to look for generally detrimental triggers. Keymaster Rogue Leyline Phantom Spark Trooper That’s it! I’d watch out for Spark Trooper, but things should be pretty clean. Given that there’s a hundred triggers in the set (thanks David Lyford-Smith!), only having […]
Call for Changes: Gatecrash IPG/MTR
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 […]
Out of Order Sequencing and Triggers
It’s the Star City Invitational in LA this weekend. One of the things I plan to talk about with judges is the fact that OOOS is still relevant in making rulings. It’s a natural behavioral tendency when new rules come along to start with the strictest interpretation of them possible. It makes sense – people […]
Bob Fear
There’s lots of talk about the new trigger policy. That’s good, as it helps us triangulate to what the players are happy with, which is the main goal. As should be obvious from various somewhat contradictory desires (“I like not having to point out opponent triggers, but I don’t want to look like a jerk”) […]
Trample
Trample is kind of a pain. Its a set of rules where the ‘obvious’ play doesn’t interact well with the physical representation of the game. Remembering to trample over isn’t a skill we’re interested in testing, but we don’t want to see that damage resurface out of nowhere after strategic decisions may have been made […]
Horsemyths
I had some good conversations over the past few weekends with Patrick Chapin (congrats on the induction, Pat!) about the rules for infinity in Magic and, specifically, how they interacted with the Four Horsemen deck. I’m not going to hash out the reasons for the existence of the non-determinate looping rules – there’s an excellent […]
The Jackie Lee DQ
Normally, judges are discouraged from commenting on DQs for a few reasons. It can affect an ongoing investigation, and we don’t have a lot of interest in escalating what may be a he-said-she-said situation. In this situation, though, the investigation has concluded, and we can talk about it based entirely on what Jackie wrote in […]
On the Origin of Delayed Triggers
One interesting thing that has popped up lately are triggered abilities that do nothing except set up a delayed trigger (DTAs). They’re few and far between – recent examples include and – and almost all, if not all, are “something died, do something with it later.” The important trigger is clearly the second one – […]
Things Players Need to Know About the September 20 Policy Changes
Most policy changes are small things around the edges that only impact a tiny handful of weird situations, or tweak how a judge handles situations where something has gone wrong. However, it’s worth having a summary of changes that players should know about, as it may affect their tournament experience. Share with your players! In […]