At a recent tournament where I was playing, a couple interesting situations happened. At the time I asked the on-site judges ahout it, but I'm interested in what all of you have to say. I was not playing in either of these cases, but I was a spectator in both. Both of these situations are hypothetical, but are extensions of things that actually did happen.

1) In Player A's precombat main phase, he says “not final” and begins tapping his creatures, as if to declare an attack. He does not say “beginning combat”, “declaring attackers”, or anything else to indicate he's actually moving to combat, but begins motioning towards declaring attackers. He then untaps his creatures, activates his manland (which was not a creature before this point) and attacks. You are called as a judge, what's your ruling? In particular, what phase of the game was Player A in when he said “not final”?

2) Player A controls a Torpor Orb. Player B announces Vendilion Clique. Immediately, without giving any time for Player B to respond, Player A throws his hand on the table. Player B writes down Player A's hand, then reminds Player A of his own Torpor Orb and tells him to pick his hand up. You are called as a judge. Has Player B done anything illegal?

In my opinion:

1) Since he didn't say anything about leaving his main phase, I would assume he was still in the main phase. The fact that he then untaps all his creatures and activates his manland, confirms this in my opinion. If his enemy wants to do something in the beginning of combat phase, he has the chance to do so after the manland activation.

2) Did player B just announce Clique, or did he actually cast it? Either way, MTR 3.12 allows players to reveal their hands, so B is not required to call a judge when A reveals his hand. B is also allowed to take notes as he sees A's hand. Neither player has committed an infraction. Player B didn't even have to remind player A of his Torpor Orb.

1)
I generally allow players to think about combat decisions by actively moving cards around, as long as it is clear when theyre just thinking and when not . The active player in your scenario is making that clear with a statement, no problem here. Considering the step were in, he is just thinking about possible attacks, so he is in precombat main as long as he does not indicate that he wants to move to combat. If he is finally declaring his attacks (for me it sounds like that is what happened, correct me if Im wrong) without saying anything beforehand, this is a way of saying “combat”, and the opponent can still react at end of main/beginning of combat. If he does not, the attack stands.

2)
For me this is fine. Players are not recommended to stop their opponent from stupid plays, just from illegal ones. They also have to point out Infractions they notice (except for missed trigger). Revealing the hand is not illegal in any way, so it is fine for B not to stop it and even to take advantage of it. As long as no other communication happened I can not penalize someone here. Might be not sporting, but not unsporting.

Edited Leon Strauss (Aug. 13, 2014 04:05:37 PM)

Originally posted by Tobias Rolle:

Player B didn't even have to remind player A of his Torpor Orb.

Just to clarify, he would not be allowed to just resolve his clique trigger. That would be a GRV, if he knew Torpor Orb was there we would have a stern talk and very likely some paperwork to do in the end.

Edited Leon Strauss (Aug. 13, 2014 03:50:56 PM)

Originally posted by Leon Strauss:

Just to clarify, he would not be allowed to just resolve his clique trigger. That would be a GRV, if he knew Torpor Orb was there we would have a stern talk and very likely some paperwork to do in the end.

Of course, so in a way he does have to remind him about the Torpor Orb, you're right.

Originally posted by Tobias Rolle:

Of course, so in a way he does have to remind him about the Torpor Orb, you're right.

Well, since Vendillion Clique's trigger doesn't actually require him to take a card, he could act like he's just not taking anything by saying something like “Ok, your turn,” which wouldn't remind A about his Orb.

Edited Tristan Killeen (Aug. 13, 2014 04:28:40 PM)

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

At a recent tournament where I was playing, a couple interesting situations happened. At the time I asked the on-site judges ahout it, but I'm interested in what all of you have to say. I was not playing in either of these cases, but I was a spectator in both. Both of these situations are hypothetical, but are extensions of things that actually did happen.

1) In Player A's precombat main phase, he says “not final” and begins tapping his creatures, as if to declare an attack. He does not say “beginning combat”, “declaring attackers”, or anything else to indicate he's actually moving to combat, but begins motioning towards declaring attackers. He then untaps his creatures, activates his manland (which was not a creature before this point) and attacks. You are called as a judge, what's your ruling? In particular, what phase of the game was Player A in when he said “not final”?

2) Player A controls a Torpor Orb. Player B announces Vendilion Clique. Immediately, without giving any time for Player B to respond, Player A throws his hand on the table. Player B writes down Player A's hand, then reminds Player A of his own Torpor Orb and tells him to pick his hand up. You are called as a judge. Has Player B done anything illegal?

In 1), A is in main phase. He's just thinking (even actively moving cards) about attacks, and the course of game actions clearly reflects this. No infraction, no penalty, move on.

In 2), love that one :D B hasn't done anything illegal, even if A thinks a bit before showing his hand, as long as B doesn't declare something like “Vendilion to you” (in that case, we are between GPE-GRV, with optional FtMGS to A if doesn't remember Torpor Orb, or USC-Cheating for B, if we can determine he knew about the Orb). It's perfectly fine for A to reveal its hand, for B to take advantage of a mistake. No infraction, no penalty.

Interesting, for the first scenario I would say we're in Beginning of Combat.

1. I would say declare attackers. If I was the opponent and wanted to tap something, when should I do that? I wouldn't wait until his creatures are tapped and he says final, that seems too late. So I'd have to interrupt him tapping creatures. Just like by not interupting the combat/attack shortcut, we move to declare attackers and it's too late for manland activation.
If we allow otherwise, the shortcut loses it's purpose (preventing such gotchas.)

Edited Toby Hazes (Aug. 20, 2014 05:21:39 AM)

On 15/08/2014 09:57, Toby Hazes wrote:
>
> 1. I would say declare attackers. If I was the opponent and wanted to
> tap somethin, when should I do that? I wouldn't wait until his
> creatures are tapped and he says final, that seems too late. So I'd
> have to interrupt him tapping creatures. Just like by not interupting
> the combat/attack shortcut, we move to declare attackers and it's too
> late for manland activation.
> If we allow otherwise, the shortcut loses it's purpose (preventing
> such gotchas.)
>
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Well one cannot presume the players are in the combat step at all there
are other reasons to tap creatures such as convoke and the player could
be doing that incorrectly in which case would would reverse the tapping
of creatures. I think players should communicate if there are any
discrepancies as to what is happening.

Graham

Is it possible the player in question is a visual person, and needs to think about how a certain attack will leave him vulnerable after combat, so he needs to SEE which creatures would be tapped by actually doing so in his Main Phase while he thinks?

We allow judges basic lands during exams to accommodate visual thinkers. If that's the player's purpose, I'm completely fine with it. The lack of anything remotely resembling “attack” or “combat” means I wouldn't take this as a shortcut.

Would you not allow someone who turns 3 creatures sideways during Declare Attackers, immediately untaps one, and says “not this one” to have take-backsies as long as he wasn't fishing and his opponent hadn't done anything?

Originally posted by Evan Cherry:

Is it possible the player in question is a visual person, and needs to think about how a certain attack will leave him vulnerable after combat, so he needs to SEE which creatures would be tapped by actually doing so in his Main Phase while he thinks?

We allow judges basic lands during exams to accommodate visual thinkers. If that's the player's purpose, I'm completely fine with it. The lack of anything remotely resembling “attack” or “combat” means I wouldn't take this as a shortcut.

Would you not allow someone who turns 3 creatures sideways during Declare Attackers, immediately untaps one, and says “not this one” to have take-backsies as long as he wasn't fishing and his opponent hadn't done anything?

- He's welcome to do so if he says something like ‘still main’.

- The problem I have with ‘not final’ is that it implies that a certain configuration could be final. It's not just hypothetical. It's for realsies but not final. For me it resembles attacks in spirit.
If he said nothing I could see it being main, it could be convoke indeed or whatever. ‘Not final’ is simply too loaded imo

- yeah no problem there.

Edited Toby Hazes (Aug. 16, 2014 08:42:31 AM)

My initial instinct was right with you Toby, but after thinking about it some more I'm on board with it not being in Combat yet. It's just not clear, and I'm not going to force the players into one step or another. It literally is not the shortcut as defined in the MTR. Unless they've already worked out an accepted shortcut during their match, but I highly doubt that happened.

It may be that AP is just trying to decide whether they need to cast a creature to attack with or have as a defender or something, etc.

If called over to sort things out, I'd definitely ask them to be clearer in their communication.

Hi there.

Are you all fine with the second scenario? I'm just curious, because Martin Juza was DQ'ed for something very similar in 2009. He cast Clique, his opponent showed his hand and Juza wrote it down. Then he announced himself as a target. If I recall correct, the judges back then decided he cheated, because he basically used his clique twice, once on his opponent (just looking) and once on himself. Don't corner me on this, though.

I think this case is very similar, since player B “uses” his Clique to gain information (he should not be able to see player A's hand) without having the trigger.

So this is different for you?

Edited Juergen Wierz (Aug. 19, 2014 03:38:06 AM)

Originally posted by Juergen Wierz:

DQ'ed for something very similar in 2009

Be careful citing examples from FIVE years back; policy continually morphs, as we do our best to improve.

Also, I'm fairly certain there were other details in that incident that influenced that decision.

d:^D