I wrote this in hopes of putting on a site like MTG Cardmarket, or StarCityGames, but after some thought I wanted to put it in the judge apps forum. So keep in mind this wasn't originally written for a judge audience.

A Judge Test Example
The following is an example of question someone might find on a Magic Judge Test:

Andy (Active Player) is playing a game of Magic against Nancy (Non Active Player). Andy controls a Weldfast Engineer, a 3/3 Beast Token, and a 1/1 Servo Token. Andy has not cast a spell this turn. Nancy controls a 1/1 Snake Token and has only a Grasp of Darkness in hand with 2 Swamp untapped. Nancy is at 3 life. In Andy’s precombat main phase, he declares: “Move to combat?”. According to MTR Section 4.2, which of the following is true?

A) Andy has invoked a tournament shortcut for combat, and has passed priority to Nancy at the end of the first main phase. The Weldfast Engineer trigger has not yet been put on the stack.
B) Andy has invoked a tournament shortcut for combat, and has passed priority to Nancy in the beginning of combat step. The Weldfast Engineer trigger has been missed.
C) Andy has invoked a tournament shortcut for combat, and has kept priority in the beginning of combat step. The Weldfast Engineer trigger has been put on the stack, waiting for targets.
D) Andy has invoked a tournament shortcut for combat, is in the declare attackers step and has priority. The Weldfast Engineer trigger has been missed.

The correct answer is B.

The “Combat” Shortcut
Magic at competitive levels has a bunch of shortcuts, all outlined in section 4.2 of the Magic Tournament Rules. One of these shortcuts is specifically for combat, and reads: “A statement such as “I'm ready for combat” or “Declare attackers?” offers to keep passing priority until an opponent has priority in the beginning of combat step. Opponents are assumed to be acting then unless they specify otherwise.”

There’s also a blog article written on May 26th, 2016 on the Magic Judges site that talks about it in length: http://blogs.magicjudges.org/whatsupdocs/2016/05/26/attacking-blocking-and-shortcuts/

When you ask your opponent to move to combat in any way (not just the phrases mentioned in the MTR), you are offering to pass priority at the end of your main phase, as well as in the beginning of combat step. Because of this, any beginning of combat triggers that require acknowledgement are considered missed.

Confused? Lots of people are!
This is where it starts to get dicey. First, let's be clear that certain triggers are not missed. For example, Toolcraft Exemplar's trigger doesn’t have to be acknowledged until it affects the visual game state (damage/life total change). Triggers that go on the stack that affect the visual game state or require targets, must be acknowledged at the time of the trigger. More information can be found on this in the MTR as well as the IPG. In the judge test example above, Weldfast Engineer’s trigger targets, and therefore must be acknowledged by Andy at the time of the trigger. If Andy uses the tournament shortcut, he has missed Weldfast Engineer’s trigger.

So what’s the correct way of handling this situation? The answer, is to hold priority in the beginning of combat step. To do this, Andy would need to use a complete sentence that mentions moving to combat and placing triggers on the stack. Something like: “Move to combat, and trigger my Weldfast Engineer?”

The Fundamental Flaw - Helping your Opponent
Let’s look in more depth at our example with Andy and Nancy. Let’s assume no players miss any triggers and all attacks and blocks are done optimally. Nancy is dead on board if Andy goes to his beginning of combat step. The Weldfast Engineer will trigger, making the Servo a 3/1, and even with the removal spell, Nancy will take 3 damage from one of the two remaining creatures and die. However, if Nancy casts Grasp on Andy’s Engineer in Andy’s precombat main phase, and she blocks Andy’s 3/3 Beast Token, Nancy will only take 1 damage and live at 2 life. So again, assuming all triggers are remembered, and attacks and blocks are done optimally, this situation comes down to whether or not Nancy kills Weldfast Engineer in the main phase or the beginning of combat step.

So, let’s assume Andy uses the correct method of announcing this trigger: “Move to combat, and trigger my Weldfast Engineer?”. The problem with this wording is that Andy has never given priority to Nancy at the end of his main phase and now he’s reminded Nancy that his Weldfast Engineer is going to trigger. This gives Nancy the chance to say something like: “Hold on, before you exit your main phase, Grasp your Engineer.” There’s nothing Andy can do here, he has to give Nancy the chance to have priority at the end of his main phase. Not doing so would be against the rules. Andy has to remind Nancy that his Engineer is going to trigger, before it even goes on the stack! In other words, Andy has to help his opponent by giving up relevant information.

Some of you might be thinking, what if Andy uses a phrase like: “Move to the end of my main phase?”. This could certainly work, but it has a flaw as well. First, according to the blog article, this still invokes the combat shortcut. “This shortcut is true for any statement that would imply that you want to leave your first Main Phase, no matter how carefully it has been worded.” Second, it’s going to raise some flags in your opponent's mind unless you use the same verbiage every turn, which is certainly unrealistic. Magic is a game of bluffing and hidden information, and doing things in an inconsistent way will raise flags in your opponent’s mind. The moment you deviate from the norm, you’re helping your opponent see something they might not normally see.

Furthermore, the Shortcut is Outdated
A few paragraphs within the blog article I’d like to highlight:

There are actually very few situations which could lead AP to have to act in Beginning of combat while they could just as well act in Main Phase one:
A few (mostly obscure) spells and abilities can only be cast/activated during combat
AP needs to empty NAP’s mana pool.
AP needs a beginning of combat trigger to have resolved to be able to play on.
…
The existence of this shortcut is based on the fact it’s never in NAP’s interest to act before he has to. And we do not want NAP to be in a situation where he was perceived as acting in Main Phase one unless he actually intended to.
This admittedly potentially requires AP to reveal some additional information about the game state or their intent. This is an acceptable trade-off to achieve the goals this shortcut was designed to achieve primarily: Make sure NAP acts whenever they intend to act.

When this shortcut was first created, there were a lot less triggers happening in the beginning of combat step. In the bullet points above, it doesn’t really take permanents that trigger at the beginning of combat seriously. It calls them “mostly obscure”. Even though this article was written last year, we’ve had key cards like Goblin Rabblemaster, Flamewake Pheonix and now cards like Weldfast Engineer and Toolcraft Exemplar all doing things in the beginning of combat step. I do not think we can accurately describe Goblin Rabblemaster as “mostly obscure”; it was format defining. Since 2013, there have been 21 cards that have triggers at the beginning of combat. Before that, there was 8.

The beginning of combat step is getting more and more triggers, and because of this the tournament shortcut is causing more and more problems with angle shooting and missing triggers unintentionally. It amazes me how many people don’t even know about this shortcut, but even those that do still mess it up at times.

Players should not have to remind their opponents of triggers that have not yet gone on the stack. It’s time to revisit the value in this shortcut.

Edited Brad Brown (Feb. 14, 2017 01:51:39 PM)

Originally posted by Brad Brown:

It’s time to revisit the value in this shortcut.

This is a fine piece of writing. I agree on your point about beginning of combat triggers becoming more common being a central problem in this narrative. Do you have any suggestions on how the shortcut should be “revisited”?

I don't really see the problem here. Andy says: “Go to combat, trigger Weldfast Engineer target my <whatever>”. Nancy can respond at any point in this sequence equally: Whether in 1st main or in BoC, Nancy is restricted to instant-speed effects. If Andy wants to be really game-y with this, we had a thread on here last week which seemed to indicate that “Go to combat, trigger Weldfast Engineer” is sufficient, and wait until Nancy accepts that shortcut to declare a target, is equally sufficient (although this actually benefits Nancy, so Andy is disincentivized to do so although he is allowed to, strictly speaking).

To Riki's point, though, I just reread GPE - MT in IPG and would like to propose a simple revision based on this example: In the example, Andy controls only 1 artifact creature, his Servo token. In IPG, there is an exception to MT for targeted effects where the exception is “target opponent”. I would extend that exception to any case in which a) there is no immediate visible impact on the game state and b) there are only n legal targets, no matter what the target is, where n is the minimum number of targets the trigger requires (e.g. for Weldfast Engineer 1 target, for Ulamog the Ceaseless Hunger 2 targets, etc); the trigger would still have to be remembered at the appropriate time, when it would become relevant to the visible game state. For example, in this instance, the trigger would resolve naturally, targeting the Servo token, because that is the only legal target. I think this is probably the most common place for MT to come into effect, because “obviously I'm targeting my Servo token, it's the only legal target, duh”.

The question then becomes: “At what point should Nancy cast her Fatal Push if she wants to stop Andy from doing his thing?” At which point my answer is: Nancy should not play Magic assuming Andy is an idiot. If Nancy does not give Andy the credit he deserves as her opponent and gets punished for it and loses, then so be it. By not killing the Weldfast Engineer in 1st main phase, Nancy says to Andy (figuratively speaking): “I think you're a big dummy and will forget to kill me, and I'm willing to bet my chance to win this game on the fact that's you're a dummy, so let's see how big of a dummy you are.” So Nancy should take that bet: If Nancy doesn't kill the Engineer and she loses the game, I think I'm OK with a rules system that supports that, and that's my proposed fix.

Edited Lyle Waldman (Feb. 14, 2017 02:35:28 AM)

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

To Riki's point, though, I just reread GPE - MT in IPG and would like to propose a simple revision based on this example: In the example, Andy controls only 1 artifact creature, his Servo token. In IPG, there is an exception to MT for targeted effects where the exception is “target opponent”. I would extend that exception to any case in which a) there is no immediate visible impact on the game state and b) there are only n legal targets, no matter what the target is, where n is the minimum number of targets the trigger requires (e.g. for Weldfast Engineer 1 target, for Ulamog the Ceaseless Hunger 2 targets, etc); the trigger would still have to be remembered at the appropriate time, when it would become relevant to the visible game state. For example, in this instance, the trigger would resolve naturally, targeting the Servo token, because that is the only legal target. I think this is probably the most common place for MT to come into effect, because “obviously I'm targeting my Servo token, it's the only legal target, duh”.

The reason why “target opponent” is an exception is because 100% of the time when the IPG is used, there will only be one opponent. Having different sets of rules for different board states would cause the policy to become more complex than is worth the trade-off.

Originally posted by Jeff S Higgins:

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

To Riki's point, though, I just reread GPE - MT in IPG and would like to propose a simple revision based on this example: In the example, Andy controls only 1 artifact creature, his Servo token. In IPG, there is an exception to MT for targeted effects where the exception is “target opponent”. I would extend that exception to any case in which a) there is no immediate visible impact on the game state and b) there are only n legal targets, no matter what the target is, where n is the minimum number of targets the trigger requires (e.g. for Weldfast Engineer 1 target, for Ulamog the Ceaseless Hunger 2 targets, etc); the trigger would still have to be remembered at the appropriate time, when it would become relevant to the visible game state. For example, in this instance, the trigger would resolve naturally, targeting the Servo token, because that is the only legal target. I think this is probably the most common place for MT to come into effect, because “obviously I'm targeting my Servo token, it's the only legal target, duh”.

The reason why “target opponent” is an exception is because 100% of the time when the IPG is used, there will only be one opponent. Having different sets of rules for different board states would cause the policy to become more complex than is worth the trade-off.

Fair. But there are similar exceptions made elsewhere in IPG. For example, under GPE - HCE:

Originally posted by = IPG 2.3:

If cards are placed into a public zone, then their order is known and the infraction can be handled as a Game Rule Violation. Order cannot be determined from card faces only visible to one player
unless the card is in a uniquely identifiable position (such as on top of the library, or as the only
card in hand.)

While not entirely analogous in full, I would like to draw an analogy to the last part of this section, where an exception to HCE is made for the case where the extra card is known because it is the only card in a hidden zone which was previously empty (in this example, the hand, although I presume this extends to other hidden sets as well due to the “such as” wording). In this case, an exception is made because “it's the only card in hand, obviously that must be the extra card, duh”. Likewise I'd make the analogy of “obviously I targeted my thing, it's the only legal target, duh”. The analogy isn't perfect, but I feel like it's close enough to allow the exception on the grounds of precedent.

Originally posted by Riki Hayashi:

Originally posted by Brad Brown:

It’s time to revisit the value in this shortcut.

This is a fine piece of writing. I agree on your point about beginning of combat triggers becoming more common being a central problem in this narrative. Do you have any suggestions on how the shortcut should be “revisited”?

Hey Riki, this is a tough one, I've thought about it a lot, heard a lot of debate, etc. I think the short answer is that whatever the change is, is going to be a culture change for a lot of magic players.

Personally, I think the shortcut should remain, but the shortcut “keyword” should just be limited to phrases involving the word “attacks”. The word “combat” should mean moving to start of combat where as “attacks” means I want to move to declare attackers. However, I know there are far superior and knowledgeable judges who probably are best suited to answer this.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

The question then becomes: “At what point should Nancy cast her Fatal Push if she wants to stop Andy from doing his thing?” At which point my answer is: Nancy should not play Magic assuming Andy is an idiot. If Nancy does not give Andy the credit he deserves as her opponent and gets punished for it and loses, then so be it. By not killing the Weldfast Engineer in 1st main phase, Nancy says to Andy (figuratively speaking): “I think you're a big dummy and will forget to kill me, and I'm willing to bet my chance to win this game on the fact that's you're a dummy, so let's see how big of a dummy you are.” So Nancy should take that bet: If Nancy doesn't kill the Engineer and she loses the game, I think I'm OK with a rules system that supports that, and that's my proposed fix.

So Magic is a game of hidden information (unlike say Chess). You have a hidden hand, hidden decklist (in most cases), and a hidden library. I understand giving credit to my opponent and I'm certainly not going to treat them like a big dumb idiot, but the philosophy around the rules of magic is that each player is going to look after themselves and shouldn't have to look out for the opponent. Therefore, I shouldn't have to remind my opponent about triggers before they go on the stack. That's my biggest argument here.

Edited Brad Brown (Feb. 14, 2017 05:51:49 AM)

An explicit statement such as “Move to the (or my) beginning of combat step?” is clear and intentional of where you are passing priority until.

While whether or not players should have to remind their opponents of a trigger is debatable (I personally see it as not that different from playing a spell or activating an ability), the clarity of the game state being at stake makes me believe the rules should regard these situations as a matter of play skill and remembering what happens and when vs being able to obscure a game action in the hopes of landing your opponent in a “gotcha” moment. If you state clearly that you are moving to the beginning of your combat step and the opponent takes no action, then they've clearly forgotten about your trigger, giving you a chance to play it. If they explicitly are waiting for it because they remember it, they should have an opportunity to deal with it prior to entering your declare attackers step.

What is a solution that still provides both players with an opportunity to play out the game based on skill and memory rather than obscurity and tricks? I've seen a lot of people complaining about the shortcut, but I haven't heard any proposed solutions that haven't already been considered and picked apart to be shown as unfavorable.

I guess I'm confused about the motivation of this shortcut. What's the
difference between me saying “Move to combat?” You're essentially asking,
" Move to combat ?" You're not asking to move to
Attack. You're asking if the NAP is going to use their priority in MP I or
if you can move on in the game. Maybe I haven't played long enough, but I
also don't see how this pressures the NAP to act sooner then they'd like to.
This seems fundamentally different than the examples provided in the blog.
I feel like this is a clear case of the English and the rules meshing
pretty well.

Tyler,

The issue comes from those who do not natively speak English. If you are in a tournament with those who speak a different language, you need the rules set so one player can't use vocabulary to gain an advantage over another.

Originally posted by Andy Peterson:

The issue comes from those who do not natively speak English. If you are in a tournament with those who speak a different language, you need the rules set so one player can't use vocabulary to gain an advantage over another.

This is the reason why we want all phrases like attack, combat, etc, to mean the same thing. Players use these words interchangeably, and making different ones mean different things would be counter-productive towards a game that can be played around the world by people whose command of the English language varies.

Real situation I had in a PPTQ of mine that I believe demonstrates why the shortcut exists.

AP: Combat?
NAP: Sure
AP: Cast Through the Breach
NAP: Hold on, Judge!

If you can think of a new MTR shortcut that A: addresses the ambiguity of combat and attacks, so as not to trap players into not being able to crew their vehicles and such, and B: Prevents the line of play cited above, I'm all ears. But, as it stands the current policy as written works really well to prevent these sorts of situations.

Originally posted by Benjamin Lurie:

Real situation I had in a PPTQ of mine that I believe demonstrates why the shortcut exists.

AP: Combat?
NAP: Sure
AP: Cast Through the Breach
NAP: Hold on, Judge!

If you can think of a new MTR shortcut that A: addresses the ambiguity of combat and attacks, so as not to trap players into not being able to crew their vehicles and such, and B: Prevents the line of play cited above, I'm all ears. But, as it stands the current policy as written works really well to prevent these sorts of situations.

Basically, right now even if I use the phrase “I'd like to pass priority in my main phase so that I can move to the beginning of combat step”, you're still using the shortcut, even though you're explicitly saying what you want to do. I think there just needs to be an update so exceptions can be applied if stated explicitly.

I believe the flaw is not in the shortcut, but in the Missed Trigger policy.

While the current form is far more permissive than before, it is really complicated and confuses a lot of players (“he didn't announce that one!”).

I feel the “solution” to this supposed “problem” is a stricter MT policy, as in “announce it when you put it on the stack or it's missed”.

Originally posted by Brad Brown:

Basically, right now even if I use the phrase “I'd like to pass priority in my main phase so that I can move to the beginning of combat step”, you're still using the shortcut, even though you're explicitly saying what you want to do. I think there just needs to be an update so exceptions can be applied if stated explicitly.

This sentiment is raised regularly in discussions about the shortcut. The obvious questions is: Why? Why do you want to do this? What's the game action? Because as stated the phrase does nothing to move the game forward. It only serves to slow it down and/or lead to confusion.