While the latest version of the missed trigger policies are pretty great, there is still a problem, and I think it needs to be addressed. Fortunately, the problem is a communications one, and it can be fixed without touching triggers at all.

The following example is pretty specific because it underlines all the difficulties, but it is far from a corner case. I think portions of this problem happen in many games of Magic.

Albert controls a 2/2, two creatures with exalted, and the land with exalted. Niels is at 9. Albert attacks with his 2/2, and when damage is assigned, he says “Take 4.”. Niels determined that Albert missed his trigger from his land, and happily writes down 4 damage. Next turn, Albert swings the same way.

Here is the problem. Niels needs to know what triggers have resolved to decide whether or not to block, but at competitive, *It is impossible for Niels to determine the state of the game*. Any questions Niels asks Albert do not need to be answered because the power of the creature, and the number of triggers that resolved are considered derived information. Furthermore, Niels is responsible for knowing this information, and more problems can arise when he attempts to find out.

Niels says “I'm ready to block.” Albert says “OK.”
Niels points at the 2/2 creature and says “That creature's power is 2.”
Albert calls for a judge, and explains what happened. The judge assesses a communications policy violation. Statements about derived information must be true. The judge investigates further, and asks why this happened. Niels explains that he is trying to determine whether or not a trigger has been missed so he can decide if he must block. Niels has just confessed to intentionally violating a rule to gain advantage in the game, and gets disqualified for cheating.

As far as I can tell, this is all what policy tells us to do. I firmly believe that the player should be able to determine the state of the game, especially when we are going to hold them responsible for it!

The fix: Information about the existence and resolution of triggers that have no target, choice, or visible representation is free information.

With that communication policy change, Niels could simply ask how many exalted triggers have resolved, and all the other problems vanish.

Thanks for your time,
Greg Schwartz

Isn't that relevant piece of information already free information?

Free information consists of this (and more):

Details of current game actions and past game actions that still affect the game state.

I would consider the information how many exalted triggers have resolved already as free information.

Especialy because the information “how many triggers have resolved” doesn't fall under anything that is listed as derived information. It's neither a number ob objects or characteristics of an object in a public zone.

If I'm wrong, guide me why my assumption is wrong.

Wasn't there a general statement made that players should assume that triggers have resolved until they are missed? I'm not sure why any of this is important, given that context. It seems like anything we do here only serves to encourage players to “juke” the policy, rather than play the game.

On Mon Jun 17 17:59, Gregory Schwartz wrote:
> While the latest version of the missed trigger policies are pretty great, there is still a problem, and I think it needs to be addressed. Fortunately, the problem is a communications one, and it can be fixed without touching triggers at all.
>
> The following example is pretty specific because it underlines all the difficulties, but it is far from a corner case. I think portions of this problem happen in many games of Magic.

The new policy doesn't allow you do that. You have to assume you are blocking with the triggers having resolved. When you come to damage you might get a bonus whereby your opponent has forgotten, but you're not entitled to be able to block on that basis. If your only winning line is your opponent forgetting you can gamble that he has, but if he has not forgotton you have no redress. This is explicit and deliberate in the current policy.

If you really want the gamestate to be clear then you can ask “have these exalted triggers been put on the stack and resolved”. This will definitely make the gamestate clear to everyone.

Matt

As with any strategic decision, a player can assume whatever they want when making their decisions and ask questions to gather information. Now based on past turn, there is a chance that they'll forget 1 of the exalted triggers, so I'm safe to block, am I willing to risk losing the game over that if I have no other way of preventing the damage if none of the triggers are forgotten?

If I ask so how many exalted triggers, am I risking them realising there are more exalted triggers than they remembered last turn? They also may choose not to answer that question.

So it really comes down to how confident am I that my opponent will miss one exalted trigger and whether I'm willing to take that risk, or assume that all the triggers will resolve. Welcome to competitive Magic.

I don't really see a problem with this scenario, neither do I think I would DQ a player for badly trying to determine how many exalted triggers have resolved (if any). I really do not believe that the player is intentionally trying to misrepresent derived information.

Originally posted by Mark Brown:

As with any strategic decision, a player can assume whatever they want when making their decisions and ask questions to gather information. Now based on past turn, there is a chance that they'll forget 1 of the exalted triggers, so I'm safe to block, am I willing to risk losing the game over that if I have no other way of preventing the damage if none of the triggers are forgotten?

If I ask so how many exalted triggers, am I risking them realising there are more exalted triggers than they remembered last turn? They also may choose not to answer that question.

So it really comes down to how confident am I that my opponent will miss one exalted trigger and whether I'm willing to take that risk, or assume that all the triggers will resolve. Welcome to competitive Magic.

They may not choose to answer the question, because of the fact that it is free information. Moreover, the missed trigger policy very clearly has the philosophy that an opponent does not have the right to benefit from the player's missed trigger. On occasion, they will have to risk making the player aware of the trigger in order to get a concrete understanding of the game state.

I don't really see a problem with this scenario, neither do I think I would DQ a player for badly trying to determine how many exalted triggers have resolved (if any). I really do not believe that the player is intentionally trying to misrepresent derived information.

I could see myself DQing for this, but it would be highly dependent on the situation.

I agree that this is a sticky situation, but a simple “So you're attacking for four, can I block?” in this scenario is enough to clear up the gamestate. You are implicitly asking for how many triggers have resolved without specifying about the possibly forgotten one, since you have the last round as a reference this does not seems shady at all to me.

Niels: ‘declare blockers’.
Albert: ‘ok.’
Niels: ‘how big is that guy?’
Albert: ‘figure it out yourself, that is derived information.’
Niels: ‘ok mr. DB, how many exalted-triggers resolved?’
Albert: ‘uhm….’

Albert has to tell him how many resolved, since this is, by what Martin quoted, free information:

Originally posted by Martin Koehler:

Free information consists of this (and more):

Details of current game actions and past game actions that still affect the game state.

Albert: ‘three then…’
Niels: ‘judge - can I talk to you away from the table?’
Niels (to the judge): ‘judge, I believe my opponent missed one of his exalted-triggers last turn on purpose, so his creature would be 4/4, hoping I’d not notice the third exalted-trigger, so he could sneak in lethal this turn'.

Investigation, with possible DQ for cheating for Albert, since he may not ‘intentionally forget’ his trigger to gain an advantage, even if it is not a detrimental one.

Edited Philip Ockelmann (June 18, 2013 03:31:51 AM)

A small caveat: under the current(post february 8th) rules for cheating, Niels has to think that what he is doing is illegal in order for it to be cheating. It seems likely that Niels believes his assertion is a legal assertion. If that is the case a DQ is not going to occur.

Just try to convince me that you know that you don't have to announce triggers without visual representation, must not answer to questions about derived information, that a creatures current power/toughness is derived information, but you do NOT know that there is GPE - Missed Trigger, which is an infraction.

That might happen….but it would take quite a bit of convincing.

EDIT: misread the post, was meant as an answer to my ‘accusation’ of Albert possibly cheating.

Edited Philip Ockelmann (June 18, 2013 03:40:34 AM)