Welcome to Personal Tutor, where we discuss how to maximize our opportunities for player education. Our goal is to transcend the basic answer to create an informative answer that the player will really remember. You may even find this process helps you come to a better understanding of rules and policy yourself.

Our scenario this month comes from Steven Zwanger!

The Scenario:
You are a floor judge on Saturday of a Modern Grand Prix. Angus calls for a judge. When you arrive at the table, he asks you to step away from the table for a question and asks, “So, Nguni has an Ethersworn Canonist. I just cast Goblin Guide. I can still Suspend Rift Bolt this turn because it’s just an activated ability, not actually casting it, right?”


The Basic Answer:
“No. You can't Suspend it.”

This month, we want to explain a rule that most players (and many judges) don't understand, even though it is used regularly. Remember, the goal of Personal Tutor is not giving the “right answer,” but being concise, comprehensible, and educational. So, what do you tell a player about Suspend?

L1s and Judge Candidates, feel free to give your answers immediately. L2s, please wait a day to add your input. L3+, please wait two days.

The act of casting a spell from your hand, in this case Rift Bolt, has several steps. Choosing to Suspend it is one of those steps - but does not happen prior to you actually casting the spell. Suspend is merely an alternate cost for casting the spell. An activated ability is something different - it is something that a permanent already on the battlefield can do and has a very specific formula “Casting Cost” followed by a colon.

As Rift Bolt's Suspend option has no casting cost followed by a colon, therefore it is not an activated ability.

No. You can't Suspend it, because the rules about Suspend tell you that you are allowed to Suspend a card only if you could begin to cast that card by putting it onto the stack, which Ethersworn Canonist's ability forbids since you already cast a nonartifact spell this turn.
By the way, for the sake of completeness, to Suspend a card is not an activated ability but a special action, which means for instance that it does not use the stack and can't be responded to.

I think there are two misconceptions to try and clear up here:

1) Suspend is not an activated ability, but rather a special action.
2) Suspend can only be performed if the spell could have been cast.

To a certain extent I'd also like to reinforce that Angus has the right intuition about activated abilities, but I'm not really sure how far into the coaching territory that falls.

“Suspend is actually not an activated ability - it's a special action. Basically, it replaces casting the spell with putting it into suspend. Regardless, you have to be able to cast the spell in order to suspend it, so no, you can't suspend Rift Bolt this turn.”

My biggest concern with this explanation is using “replaces casting a spell”, which may suggest to Angus it is a replacement effect. I can't really think of a nicer, colloquial way of putting it, though.

No. The official rules meaning for Suspend starts with “If you could begin to cast this card”. While you wouldn't actually cast Rift Bolt, you must be able to begin to cast it in order to suspend it. Since restrictions on casting a spell are checked when you start to cast it, ans since you have already completely cast a nonartifact spell this turn, you aren't legally able to even start casting Bolt, so you cannot Suspend it either.

If the player asks for more details after the match, or they ask the right followup, we can add: Canonist actually means slightly different things when it uses the word “cast”. The restriction it creates is checked when you would begin to cast, so it does apply to suspend. However when it checks whether you have already cast a spell, it looks for spells that were completely cast. It doesn't matter if that spell resolved, was countered, or is still on the stack. What this all means is that you could suspend any number of spells and then cast a spell, but once you cast a non artifact spell, you can no longer suspend spells this turn.

Originally posted by Charles Featherer:

Suspend is merely an alternate cost for casting the spell.

Note: this is not actually the case. When suspending, you do not cast the spell at all - you are simply bound by casting restrictions.

The core question is whether he can suspend or not. The secondary issue is the misunderstanding about activated abilities. I don't think it's coaching to correct his understanding there, he still has to make the connections to his own play.

“Nope, while suspend isn't actually casting a spell, it is a special action that works only when you'd be able to start casting that spell. And suspend isn't an activated ability, those are cost colon effect.”

I think the player would understand that there are some more nuanced sections of the rules, and that some of them are particularly special. Having this in mind, I would probably offer a response like “Suspend is a special kind of static ability, not an activated one, and part of the special way it works is that it works at any time you'd actually be able to cast the spell. If you can't cast the spell, then it doesn't work.”

So, the player comes back with this reply after your concise,
comprehensible, and educational answer;

“So I could have suspended my spell first and then cast the Goblin Guide?”

Sounds like they successfully comprehended my educational answer. “That is a legal play.” ;)

Edited Dan Collins (Feb. 6, 2014 07:57:42 PM)

The answer to the follow-up question is “That's correct, because the act of Suspending a card isn't actually casting a spell. Just remember you can't go back and change what you've already done this turn.”

Originally posted by Michael Shiver:

The answer to the follow-up question is “That's correct, because the act of Suspending a card isn't actually casting a spell. Just remember you can't go back and change what you've already done this turn.”

That last sentence sounds an awful lot like coaching to me.

I don't think it's coaching. It sounds more like pre-empting Angus'
follow-follow-up question of “…well, can I take back casting Goblin
Guide, then?” There's an argument that doing so is not necessary, since
we're at a Grand Prix, and ideally, players are expected to know that they
can't have takesie-backsies…

But in the real world, not everyone at a GP will understand this. So I
think Michael's suggestion is actually a very good approach for the
responding judge. Anticipating players' questions builds rapport and shows
that we share their concerns.

That said, I would personally add something like “If you have questions
about whether a play is legal, please call a judge before you actually take
any game actions.” Instead of simply telling the player what they can't
do, this provides them with a productive avenue for avoiding the same issue
in the future.

I will strongly second what Paul says, especially with his last recommendation. Suggesting ways that players can avoid situations in a positive manner rather than a negative one will almost always be a better experience.

I might respond with something like:
No, you may only Suspend when you may begin to cast a spell, and the Canonist allows you to cast only one spell per turn, which you have done already.

Follow up questions will indicate how effective your response was for that particular player.

It took me a bit to process where you were coming from Paul. I think Jonathan's answer of “That is a legal play” set me in the context of “if I were to do this in the future, would it be legal” as the underlying question as opposed to “could I have done it this way, and might I be able to take it back”.

So, I can definitely see it as not coaching in that context.

With context and English making such strange bedfellows though, I think I still prefer to err on the side of fewer words. “Sure, that would have been a legal play” encapsulates the “yes” and the “this is in the past” aspects without as much potential for introducing my own contexts inadvertently.

I haven't been doing this at Comp for very long, but I've noticed that “that is a legal play” is understood by most players most of the time to mean “I can't coach, so I have to answer what you are asking”, and take it how they will. And I like the idea of incorporating that here for consistency sake. If I only answer bad questions with “that's a legal play”, it seems like it turns into a code phrase for “you're about to do something I think is dumb, you might wanna rethink that”. Maybe I'm over-thinking it though.