Personally, I think this comes down to the wording of the question originally asked.

Originally posted by Nami:

What's in your graveyard?

This question is asking for details about the contents of a graveyard.
Unfortunately for Nami, it does not ask for any specific details about said graveyard (such as “What are the names of the cards?” or “What are all of the types of the cards?”).

Annie
Just this enchantment and a land.

Annie then responds to the original inquiry with details about the graveyard.
What I notice about her answer is the specific wording of, "Just this enchantment and a land.“
By using the word ”This“ instead of ”A“, it's almost an invitation to read the card.
Perhaps Annie is hoping that Nami would not notice that this particular enchantment is also a tribal (she never stated that it wasn't a Tribal or that Land and Enchantment is an exhaustive list of card types in her graveyard and therefore did not lie).
Even if Nami did notice that the enchantment is Bitterblossom, it's entirely possible that Nami misses the fact that Tribal cards also add to Tarmogoyf's size, we won't know.

Ultimately, Nami should have asked a better question like ”What's the power of that Tarmogoyf?".

Edited Frank Singel (July 16, 2013 10:10:36 AM)

Thanks to everyone for all of your spirited discussion. It's always great to see our community able to disagree on a problem without escalating past civil reasoning. Let's take a closer look at the situation. While Annie clearly spoke in a way that gave Nami the impression that Tarmogoyf was a 2/3, she gave no false information to Nami and is under no obligation to assist Nami with determining derived information, such as the card types of all cards in her graveyard. Therefore there is no infraction here. Since Nami has stated that she will take the damage, it is too late for her to react in any way to the attack and she will lose the game due to having 0 life.


This situation or something similar is put before every judge in their learning process. It happened to me and now it has happened for you! If this answer doesn't sit well with you yet, there are a few things you can do:

First, we always encourage you to talk to your mentor(s) whenever something doesn't make sense. They have likely been around the block and can explain things in terms that you will understand.

Second, to understand the DCI policy for this situation, take a look back to Eric Shukan's post (about halfway down page 3 of comments). Put simply, we can't effectively enforce how questions are interpreted, but we CAN enforce whether statements contain any untrue content. Annie's statement was true, despite the fact that it didn't fully answer Nami's intended question about which card types were in the graveyard.

Finally, when playing matches yourself remember that your opponent wants to win the game too. The best course of action for derived information is frequently to figure it out yourself. If Nami had simply asked to look at Annie's graveyard, she wouldn't be in this situation.

Thanks again for the great responses this week and we'll see you tomorrow with our newest scenario!