Over the past few years, I’m seeing an increasing number of requests for [O] (official) answers, to the point where people are asking them for all kinds of things that don’t really require [O] and it’s a synonym for “correct”. That does a disservice to a ton of great judges out there, who can give […]
The Five Worst Triggered Abilities of All Time (So Far)
So I spent a lot of time buried in triggered abilities these last few months, studying all sorts of structures, templates and philosophies. Fingers crossed it’s paid off; we’ll see over the upcoming weeks. When you do that much studying, you learn the rhythm of things, and it’ll let you pick up on what works […]
Missed Triggers 3 – The Bonus Disc
Third time’s the charm. First of all, don’t panic. What looks like a lot of new words maintains much of the previous philosophy. There’s only one change of substance, and a bunch more guidance. I’m sure adding 4000 words of my own ramblings also makes it seem bigger than it is; feel free to do […]
Gatecrash Policy Changes – For Players
I’m trying to make it a habit of summarizing the rules changes that are of interest to players. These are obviously not technical descriptions – see the full MIPG/MTR for those – but should give you the information you need to play in Magic tournaments without getting into trouble or finding yourself at a big […]
Gatecrash Policy Changes – For Judges
Apologies for the delay. As you can see from the article on dailymtg, we wanted to make sure we took plenty of time to communicate the significant changes, which meant coordinating a bunch of articles, among other things. There’s a couple of notable changes in this update, and then a few minor tweaks. The big […]
MTR/IPG updates delayed to February 4
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. […]
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 […]
The Tricks the Brain Can Play
There was a high-profile DEC infraction involving LSV and Sam Black this weekend. From a technical standpoint, it isn’t all that compelling. Drawing Extra Cards is handled very strictly; it’s abusable and people get twitchy around card draws. It’s very hard to fix without giving the player who committed the infraction an advantage, and it’s […]
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 […]