Lots of interesting (and also diverging) opinions.
My point of view on this is that it's important for us as judges to give players as consistent an experience as we can (1) within events and (2) from one event to another.
The MTR is unequivocal. “Once your decklist has been accepted by a Tournament Official it may not be altered.” This should, in my opinion, be our starting point.
If we allow a change of decklists in an event, then maybe five minutes later someone comes up and asks for a change and we don't allow that, it can cause players to feel they've been treated unfairly. And if the player who changed his decklist assumes it's OK and then shows up to another event a few weeks later and is told it's not, that is also confusing and a bad player outcome. Thirdly, if different judges have different points of view on this, players can also get different outcomes within an event — especially if a judge's ruling that a player may not change his decklist gets appealed and the head judge hasn't thought through and communicated the policy.
Some people discussed customer service. I totally agree with Brian here. We need to give good customer service to everyone in the tournament, and that means that people who take that extra minute to check they've got their decklists correct before they turn them in should benefit from that, just the same as people who know the rules of the game can benefit from, say, putting triggers on the stack in the right order. And good customer service at our event can result in deferring the problem to a future event.
A number of people mentioned the exemption/downgrade for a player calling a judge on himself. There are two points here. MIPG section 1 states "If a player commits an offense, realizes it, and calls a judge
immediately and before he or she could potentially benefit from the offense, the Head Judge has the option to downgrade the penalty…". (My emphasis)
This requires three ingredients.
- A player commits an offense
Calls a judge immediately
Calls a judge before he or she could potentially benefit from the offense
- If a player has a legal decklist but wants to change his land mix, or switch a card around, or whatever, he has not committed an offense.
If a player does not call a judge immediately, he cannot benefit from this exception.
And if the player could potentially have benefitted from the offense, he is also not able to benefit from the exception. This would include if he could have discussed his sealed deck construction with others.
It's worth remembering that the player must call a judge
immediately.
I don't agree that this is a “default to fall back on” if we can't find the player's list conveniently — it's our responsibility as judges to educate players that their decklists need to be valid before turning them in.
For Constructed events, best practice is to collect all decklists at a player meeting or at the beginning of round 1 rather than when the players register, to avoid situations such as what Shawn described.
My thought is that this rule is the right rule, but isn't being applied consistently at different events. I earnestly encourage judges to think about this and if they've been in the habit of allowing late changes to decklists, please consider including in your announcements at your next few events that decklists are final once turned in.