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 – […]
A quick check of RTR
No guarantees I haven’t missed anything here, but it looks like the detrimental triggers are: (It’s a weird one, though) Weird, that’s a white, blue, black, green, gold, hybrid, artifact and a land. Only red doesn’t have exactly one. Most of these are not recurring triggers, which are the most at-risk for forgetting. Rig is […]
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 […]
Missed Triggers 2 – More DVD Commentary
Well, Here We Are Again It’s been 6 months since we released the revamped trigger policy. On the whole things have gone well, since the fundamentals – if you miss triggers they may not happen, your opponents don’t have to point them out – have proved to be popular. We avoided making any changes to […]