Is this allowed to play around tappers:

“I want to leave my main phase”
"Tap your Gutter Skulk with my Debtor's Pulpit“
”Play Tenement Crasher. I want to leave my main phase."

Edited Toby Hazes (June 10, 2013 08:48:36 AM)

I'd ask the player exactly what he meant, but in this case, I think that if he's clear that he's passing priority in his main phase, then he's simply taking advantage of knowing the rules better than his opponent. Seems good.

I would not allow this; I would rule that the tapping happened in the Beginning of Combat step.

In one of his rule blogs (to which I don't have the link handy), Toby explained at great length how the “Combat?” shortcut should be applied very liberally, i.e. unless the active player makes it really very much extremely abundantly clear that he wants to deviate from that shortcut, we should apply it. The reasoning was that a) any wording that allows you to easily weasel out of the shortcut would effectively render the shortcut moot (because every “serious” player would just learn the required verbiage), and b) we would create feel-bad moments when players fall prey to some linguistic trickery instead of genuine tactical mistakes or genuine gaps in their rules knowledge.

I feel that all these arguments hold here, as well, and that saying “leave my main phase?” is linguistic trickery rather than making it extremely, abundantly clear what he's trying to do. Especially since he is very obviously trying to trick his opponent.

Basically, what AP would have to say for me is something like “pass priority? so if you do react now, I can still play sorceries or creatures before combat”.

Demanding that a player make passing priority in the main phase clearer
than “I want to leave my main phase” is pretty extreme. I don't think the
documents or philosophy support such a position at all.

I'm with Sean and Joshua on this one. “I want to leave my main phase” cannot be applied as “I pass priority up to and including in my beginning of combat step”.

AP: “I want to leave my main phase”
NAP: “Sure, I'll tap your Gutter Skulk”
AP: “OK, play Tenement Crasher, go to Combat?”
Judge: “DBAD (don't be a dirtbag).” (or, simply, “NO.”)

Seriously - this just isn't how the game is played. Unless the NAP wants to keep the game in your first main, then you're moving to the Combat Phase.

As soon as I find that Toby post that Sebastian referred to, I'll add it in here. In the meantime? Really, just … just NO.

To me it's tricky, this falls under the type of behavior I already tried to point out earlier: trying to say something specifically in such a way that you could gain advantage of it.

I think during a competitive REL this behaviour is okay, but I don't think it's sportsmanship neither. Magic should not become a game of who is capable of wording things in such a way that he deludes his opponent into thinking he means something else.

Question: What would you do if Nizbit calls for a judge claiming he feels that Ariana meant she wanted to skip to the declare attackers phase with her statement? It's a pretty easy answer, most of us would say: “Though luck Nizbit, but it's clear to us that the main phase is not totally over yet hence she can cast the Tenement Crasher”

But here comes the problem:
What if Nizbit doesn't speak English? How can we be sure of that as a judge? Even if he speaks English, he might have communication/verbal/hearing problems… In all those cases this situation gets harder to assess, we would probably lean towards: okay let's take that back chaps and remind Ariana to use clear communication, we would overlook the game as a judge so that we can help Nizbit if he really has language or simular problems…

And while we are on it: How can we be sure that Ariana is good in English, even she could say something along the lines like “I wanna leave my main phase” and mean: “okay I'm ready for battle”. What if we find out she is translating to literally from her native language,…

EDIT: All I'm trying to say with these extended examples is that you as a judge should also take into account things you that you can't measure or claim that how somebody is saying things is the exact way what she/he means to communicate. There is a big difference between speech and communication. Maybe a topic we could learn more about as judges.

Edited Niki Lin (June 10, 2013 09:49:29 AM)

If the opponent says “Sure. Before attackers (or ”after that“ or any phrase
suggesting that they aren't in the main phase anymore) I tap Gutter Skulk,”
it's very clear that he intends to leave the main phase as well. Since the
NAP is driving the bus at this point, I really don't think it's that
unreasonable for him to key in on at least one person at the table saying
“combat” or “attacks” or some other indication of progress of the turn.

Are we building this ruling off the fact that there is generally no reason
for AP to offer priority before the combat step? I can certainly come up
with some plausible reasons that have to do with “beginning of combat”
triggers (the angel and boros minotaur from GTC for example), but that may
not apply here.

I also think this is a vanishingly rare scenario, since I don't think I've
ever actually seen both players fail mention combat or attacking as part of
this sequence at Competitive. (At Regular I'm very comfortable telling AP
not to be a dirt bag.)

Is it really a judge's job to stop the weird angle shots at Competitive,
especially when there exist reasons that a player might validly want to be
clear about moving out of his first main phase in the format?

Players should play Magic. Not word games. Judges should also be encouraging the former, not the later.

There's a time and a place for “mind tricks”. Unclear communication isn't one of them.

I agree with Sean and Josh here, and I strongly disagree with Scott and Brian. The active player is trying to mind trick his opponent using a superior understanding of the rules on how priority works. I see no persuasive reason why this should not be allowed at Competitive REL. The player is not misrepresenting any information about the rules or the state of the game, he is merely trying to take advantage of his opponent's ignorance of the mechanics of the rules. To me, this is perfectly acceptable within the guiding philosophy of Competitive REL. From MTR 4.1:

The philosophy of the DCI is that a player should have an advantage due to better understanding of the rules of a game, greater awareness of the interactions in the current game state, and superior tactical planning.

On a side note, I think active player could also achieve his aim simply by stating “I pass priority” during his Main Phase when the stack is empty. It is then up to the non-active player to pass priority to move the game to beginning of combat, and if he interrupts without giving any indication that he wants to pass priority before acting, or that he wants to act during beginning of combat, I would rule that he acted during the main phase.

“There's a time and a place for “mind tricks”. Unclear communication isn't
one of them.”

Brian, I could not agree more, and this comment jarred something loose in
my internal logic. I now think that I entirely missed the mark initially by
considering this a communication issue at all. The communication itself is
actually pretty irrelevant.

I think the real clincher here, upon further consideration, is that NAP
should be the one dictating what step we are in precisely because AP has
passed priority, regardless of which step he specified or whether Combat
shortcuts are being implicitly invoked.

If NAP says “Oh, I was doing that before attackers, not during your main
phase,” then he was. At worst, he was attempting to shortcut over AP's
Begin Combat priority when AP didn't want to, but whatever. We can rewind
to that priority if we really need to. A shortcut over a presumed
do-nothing priority is incredibly common (like the AP's Draw Step priority,
that people skip 100% of the time), and it's pretty easy to assume that was
what actually happened, regardless of language.

Originally posted by Robert Hinrichsen:

I agree with Sean and Josh here, and I strongly disagree with Scott and Brian. The active player is trying to mind trick his opponent using a superior understanding of the rules on how priority works.

What in this situation demonstrates “superior rules knowledge”? Because it doesn't seem there's really anything here in terms of the player demonstrating “superior” knowledge of the actual steps or phases in the turn. Just a player trying to use some clever wording against his opponent, in order to try to “mind trick” his opponent. Whether one says “Leave the main phase” or “Ready for combat”, there's no real functional difference in what is being accomplished. (Edit: Joshua has covered this very well, and is precisely right on the reasons why.)

That's not rules knowledge, unless we're trying to aim for the maximum amount of pedantic detail when it comes to policy. This is verbal gymnastics. There is no reason to encourage this kind of behavior.

Edited Brian Schenck (June 10, 2013 12:20:05 PM)

Originally posted by Robert Hinrichsen:

On a side note, I think active player could also achieve his aim simply by stating “I pass priority” during his Main Phase when the stack is empty. It is then up to the non-active player to pass priority to move the game to beginning of combat, and if he interrupts without giving any indication that he wants to pass priority before acting, or that he wants to act during beginning of combat, I would rule that he acted during the main phase.

To add a little bit of historical perspective here…

Many, Many moons ago we would have allowed this kind of trick (i.e. putting a player back in his/her main phase). The goal of this play always been the same: to use a technical communication issue to bypass logical and reasonable play. Allowing (if not encouraging) this kind of behavior was not fun for anyone, and doing so led to people not wanting to play in events.

One might inquire: “What if the AP wants to do something in Beginning of Combat?” To which I respond:

I have only ever seen ONE case where the AP had a valid reason to want to get to the beginning of combat step. The AP had used Tectonic Edge to destroy a land and wanted his opponent's mana pool to empty before animating a land and declaring attackers. (No white mana, no path to exile.) In this situation, the player knew what he wanted to do, had a solid understanding of why he needed to do it in a certain way, and brought a judge to the table to ensure communication was clear BEFORE there was a problem.

THIS is my definition of superior rules and tactical knowledge, and this is the kind of behavior that I want to encourage.

Similarly, if the AP wants to act during “beginning of combat”? Then the AP should simply say so when the NAP passes, or say so beforehand. I see no reason to allow this kind of “tricky” communication exploit to work. The only reason to state things in such a manner is to be unclear in order to gain an advantage from interpreting your communication to mean whatever you want. If we allow the statement “I want to leave my main phase” to mean passing to beginning of combat, then we should also give a GRV as soon as the AP tries to attack without stating that they're going from Beginning of Combat to Declare Attackers. After all, one cannot attack in Beginning of Combat, right?

-Justin Miyashiro
L1 Fort Collins

Sent from my iPad

Originally posted by David Hibbs:

One might inquire: “What if the AP wants to do something in Beginning of Combat?” To which I respond:

I have only ever seen ONE case where the AP had a valid reason to want to get to the beginning of combat step.

We can go even further than that on both ends.

There is very, very little that the AP wants to do at the beginning of combat that they can't do just as well in the first main phase while losing no advantage. A few “play this only during combat” abilities exit. Otherwise, the opponent can only play Instants, so it makes no functional difference when the instant happens.

From the NAP perspective, the only situation I can think of where they might want to act unprompted in first main is when they have mana floating - already a suspect proposition. Otherwise, they have no reason not to be acting in the beginning of combat.

So there is no playing around tappers, and we come down hard on “well, what if I phrase it this way” attempts to discourage players from even bothering to try. There's no “superior rules knowledge” involved here - superior rules knowledge means that you can see a larger decision tree as options open up to you, not that you can engage in pedantry to try to confuse a less precise opponent.