Originally posted by Felix Hasenfratz:

I think that is not exactly what i assume to be happening. I'd read it as “make a copy, use its trigger to untap the original, hope you forget your trigger assume you do not choose to make me lose 1 life, and then repeat X times”
Therefore i would consider the decision to make use of the trigger to be a game choice different from what the loop proposed.

If she'd had empty the warrens is a high storm count, she'd be stuck with a ton of those triggers on the stack and nothing to do about it. Because she made a bad decision, that had sub-optimal consequences for her.

But I think her shortcut is at best “make a copy, untap, (either hope you forget, or she forgot herself, or remembered and chose no life loss, but I don't think it matters which)” repeat X. And at worse just unclear. Which makes it a bad shortcut, or an interrupted shortcut. It's incumbent on the shortcutter to make it clear what's happening. And it's incumbent on the other player to make their side clear as well. Clarity is not what happened here.

Why are we expecting Asha to remember her opponent's triggers and assume they actually happen as part of her shortcut?

I've seen “Triggered abilities are assumed to be remembered until otherwise indicated” quoted, but this seems like a misapplication of that. Or if we are going to force it to apply, I think we are just as justified in deciding that the triggers were remembered, but they chose to not have them lose life since they didn't propose a change to the shortcut. (remember, Asha isn't responsible for remembering the trigger)

If we're going to allow someone to block a Pyrehart Wolf with one creature as a trigger check, why wouldn't we allow this shortcut as well?

Forcing her to lose to lifeloss feels like a variation on rules lawyering to me. Both from an application of the rules, and from the philosophy behind them.

If there would be an empty the warrens + copies there would be a very different shortcut. I don't see any possibility to relate on this because the original scenario was a loop (wich can be ended at any point and can be continued at the end any further number of times).

If i got the quoted part wrong that mean that we would let A take it back if there was a mandatory trigger such as Soul Warden (or to match the loss of life Poisonbelly Ogre) because his opponent added something to the loop. The proposed loop was declined in that case. If i get the quoted right this is not going to happen.

In my opinion the point to decide whether to let A take back the 999999999 iterations of the loop or not is if the ‘yes’ to a may-trigger in general is a game choice or game action in the following meaning

CR 716.2b
Each other player, in turn order starting after the player who suggested the shortcut, may either accept the proposed sequence, or shorten it by naming a place where he or she will make a game choice that’s different than what’s been proposed

In my opinion it is one and we can say that the shortcut is declined (1 life is lost). If one points out that this is not a choice or action i would clearly say he cannot withdraw from his shortcut. (lose x life)

I do not understand how we can say that enforcing the trigger is rules lawyering, when it is a straightforward interpretation of the game effects involved, but somehow Asha playing into one of the loopholes in the current policy to willfully deny existence of an effect she knows would otherwise lose her the game, simply because we do not put onus on players to acknowledge their opponent's effects, is not.

Put another way, I don't believe that just because players aren't responsible for their opponents effects that we should ever interpret their actions as “I'm using this shortcut to hope you forget this effect that I know would make me lose the game”.

Edited Rebecca Lawrence (April 30, 2015 09:02:35 AM)

To me, the proposed shortcut has to be interrupted by the fact that A would loose life, and therefor eventually the game, before the loop would come to halt already. Why?

Because multiple reasons within CR 726.2A:

At any point in the game, the player with priority may suggest a shortcut by describing a sequence of game choices, for all players, that may be legally taken based on the current game state and the predictable results of the sequence of choices. This sequence may be a non-repetitive series of choices, a loop that repeats a specified number of times, multiple loops, or nested loops, and may even cross multiple turns. It can’t include conditional actions, where the outcome of a game event determines the next action a player takes. The ending point of this sequence must be a place where a player has priority, though it need not be the player proposing the shortcut.

Emphasis mine.

A) for the shortcut to be acceptable, A needs to describe the predictable results of the sequence. Which she does not if she looses life, for she will never have 1000000 Tokens.
B) for the shortcut to be acceptable, A needs the shortcut to end at a point where a player has priority. Which shie does not if she looses life, as the shortcut will be broken by her death by SBAs, which is not a point where either player has priority.

I agree that the shortcut has to be interrupted by the fact A would lose life.
But i think the part

Originally posted by Philip Körte:

CR 726.2A:

At any point in the game, the player with priority may suggest a shortcut by describing a sequence of game choices, for all players, that may be legally taken based on the current game state and the predictable results of the sequence of choices. This sequence may be a non-repetitive series of choices, a loop that repeats a specified number of times, multiple loops, or nested loops, and may even cross multiple turns. It can’t include conditional actions, where the outcome of a game event determines the next action a player takes. The ending point of this sequence must be a place where a player has priority, though it need not be the player proposing the shortcut.

A does not need to describe the predictable result. He does need to describe all included changes to the current game stat as it is. The "and the predictable results of the sequence“ reffers to the ”choices, for all players, that may be legally taken based on the current game state … ". This makes the shortcut acceptable to me.
A never mentioned loss of life. –> Loss of life is no outcome of his shortcut –> A has priority and may declare attacks but may not propose a shortcut were N loses the game. Neither may he porose a shortcut where he himself lsoes the game.

Originally posted by Nathaniel Lawrence:

I do not understand how we can say that enforcing the trigger is rules lawyering

What exactly was the proposed shortcut?

After the first iteration of that shortcut, did she end up in the same place she expected to be? Not likely. Why would we force her to stick to continuing her shortcut when the game state was different from what was projected here when we don't normally do that? Where else do we do this for proposed future actions? (as opposed to just having to suffer the effects of what you did)

Originally posted by Chris Nowak:

Why would we force her to stick to continuing her shortcut when the game state was different from what was projected here when we don't normally do that?

This is the biggest reason I come down on the side of the life loss being an interrupted shortcut. In this case, if AP were doing the proposed actions one at a time, instead of in a shortcut, her opponent would point out that she loses a life after the first iteration, and she would be able to adjust her plan accordingly.

If we rule that she is dead, all we are doing is teaching players that shortcuts (even ones you propose yourself) are bad, and you should just do everything explicitly, to make sure that you don't stuck into a spot that you wouldn't normally just because of a shortcut. That's the exact opposite of how we want players to approach the game, and runs counter to the philosophy of shortcuts (making the game quicker without materially changing the result).