At Regular REL, what should a judge do if a player casts a sorcery during combat as a combat trick? Do I reverse the action because it's illegal, and thus the opponent can block without the trick, and also know the sorcery card in the player's hand? Or do I back up to pre-combat? My instinct says to disallow the sorcery, allow combat to happen as it will, and instruct the player to be more carefully, with the lesson firm in his mind to check the spell's type before casting it.

When performing a backup (at any REL), you should only rewind the illegal
action and those actions that came after it. When the player made his
attacks, nothing illegal had yet happened, so there isn't really any reason
to undo that aspect of the turn.

Nick Short
L2, Chicago, IL, USA

Our job as judges at REL is to make sure things don't go completely to pot,
and to educate players so things don't happen in the future. Back up the
sorcery, and explain to the player what the issue was and to slow down.
While we want well paced play, it isn't by any means a race to windmill
slam your combat trick first. And as a echo to what Nick said only undo
the illegal actions taken, we don't fix misplays, just broken rules.

Patrick Cool
L2, Minneapolis

I do like the line “with the lesson firm in his mind” - sometimes Judges
issue Game Losses, sometimes Players gift them to themselves, but either
way I hope some education took place and that Player will avoid that
particular pitfall in future.


On 22 January 2013 09:13, Patrick Cool <forum-2615@apps.magicjudges.org>wrote: