This subject came up in February judge meeting - discussed situations, and some of the proposed approaches feel a bit “exploit prone” to me. I would like to engage in a little edge-finding exercise to figure out just how far a player is allowed to take this.

The issue is that (according to some but not all judges) AP retroactively gets to decide the game is in his second main phase. The premise is that AP has control over his turn and that it's NAP's responsibility to ask for clarification in case of ambiguity.

(I originally planned on quoting the relevant parts of the February judge meeting but would mean quoting half the thread. Why didn't I just keep posting in that thread, then? Well… it was a choice between two evils.)

I believe it's considered “tech” among Vintage players to declare a null attack even if you have no creatures if you're holding Mana Drain (or want to bluff it) and you want to carry over the mana to your next turn. If I understand correctly what's been said here, the “correct” play is instead to not declare a null attack at all (unless you want to bluff), and if you end up Mana Draining something, simply say “Go.” Your opponent might then mistakenly assume that you forgot your trigger and “wisely” keep his mouth shut about it, and then you get to spring the trigger at the start of M1 in your next turn.

Also, (not that it sees Competitive play, but) Maddening Imp got a little more awkward:

AP: I tap these two Llanowar Elves for mana to cast this Elvish Visionary, draw, go.
NAP: I tap my Maddening Imp. Please attack with everything.
AP: What?! Oh, uhm… well, you can't do that! You see, this was M2.
Judge: Indeed. Carry on.

Thoughts?

Edited Jochem van 't Hull (April 25, 2014 05:40:47 AM)

If you're about to make a play that is strongly or completely dependent on what phase it is then you need to know what phase it is before you start doing it. Yeah, sometimes that will involve asking your opponent and possibly giving away your plans, but a “1st Main” and a “2nd Main after null attack” are pretty much indistinguishable if no one has come out and said something. Making a technically specific play into a board state where one of the technical details isn't clear is just a bad idea.

From the rules perspective precombat main phase can't end until players pass in succession. So, there's no way for players to go into postcombat without explicitly acknowledging this.
MTG MTR even has a shortcut for such cases: “No attacks”.

I have to agree with Alexey here. While I can appreciate wanting to give
the active player control over where they are in their turn, they have that
control already. In this case they have failed to communicate it. And
while I can appreciate that there is some shortcutting going on, I think
it's a bit of a stretch to say that everything that has happened in the
game by default happens in the 2nd Main unless otherwise stated.

The clearest comparison I can think of is upkeep/draw effects, like
Vendilion Clique. We don't allow the active player to rush through the
upkeep/draw steps and deny their opponent the ability to cast things in
those steps when they might want to, I don't see why we should enable the
active player to silently skip his or her first main phase in the same
fashion.

I'd heavily inclined to agree that you can't change phases without doing something. Most phases have a clear action that is taken to clearly delineate movement into the phase. Beginning phase has untapping, First main phase has drawing, Combat has the declaration of attackers, second main phase has resolution of combat, end step has discard or and the overall pass of priority with the keyword “Go”.

All player assumptions and Tournament Shortcuts exist to clearly delineate when we have moved from one phase to the next. Without declaring “no attackers” or “in second main phase”, a player has no reason to believe that the game has shifted from first to second main phase. Without use of a tournament shortcut or obvious play otherwise (such as declaring attackers or discarding a card) we can not expect players to know that the game has passed a certain point. I also am not comfortable with players having to ask every time a card is played after the draw step, “Is this before or after attackers?”. I don't think you can move to the second main phase without expressly doing so.

Edited Marc DeArmond (April 25, 2014 12:27:38 PM)

First, I'm closing this thread; it's a duplication of another thread, and an unnecessary continuation of something that's already long since been explained.

I'll admit that I'm a bit disappointed, as this thread stems from another thread, but the ongoing arguments in both threads seem to have ignored what I really said, in that other thread:
http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/8468/?page=2#post-52039