Hi guys! I have a quick question regarding a situation that came up at a Regular REL event I was playing at last night.

The format is Legacy. Both players are highly experienced in Magic; Player A is training for his L1 and Player B is training for his L2. Both players have played multiple PTQs, GPs, and so on.

Player A casts Natural Order, sacrificing his creature. Player B goes into the tank, and while Player B is thinking, Player A says “I'm just going to get an Elvish Visionary”. Player B says “OK, you can get your Elvish Visionary”. Player A searches his deck for a Progenitus and puts it into play.

Upon questioning Player A, it is reasonably obvious that Player A lied here to gain an advantage in the game, although he did not know about the prescribed shortcut in MTR 4.2 regarding announcement of choices made on announcement.

Question 1: If this happened at Competitive, would this be a TE-CPV (Warning), or due to the malicious nature of Player A's play, would you upgrade? If so, what would you do?

Question 2: Given that this was at Regular (and hence the MTR and IPG are not in effect), how do you handle this?

There is no choice made during announcement, nor during resolution. The
spell puts a creature card onto the battlefield. What you say you are
going to get has no bearing on anything. Just like if you tell someone
what you are going to tutor for.

In both cases, no infraction and no penalty or fix

Small point here. MTR is still in effect at Reg REL.

Originally posted by Shawn Doherty:

There is no choice made during announcement, nor during resolution. The
spell puts a creature card onto the battlefield. What you say you are
going to get has no bearing on anything. Just like if you tell someone
what you are going to tutor for.

In both cases, no infraction and no penalty or fix

Really? Mind explaining to me what the difference is between this situation and, say, Pithing Needle (which is the classic example of the shortcut from MTR 4.2 being applied)?

The card doesn't ask you name a creature card on resolution. It asks you to search for one. There's not even a choice involved in the text of Natural Selection. You just search for a green creature card. If a player bluffed a search for Elvish Visionary but none was present in the deck, would you then declare that the player is failing to find? Or if a player casts Demonic Tutor and says “I'm just gonna search for a basic Swamp,” would you somehow try to hold the player to that?

The card doesn't ask you name a creature card on resolution. It asks you to search for one. There's not even a choice involved in the text of Natural Selection. You just search for a green creature card. If a player bluffed a search for Elvish Visionary but none was present in the deck, would you then declare that the player is failing to find? Or if a player casts Demonic Tutor and says “I'm just gonna search for a basic Swamp,” would you somehow try to hold the player to that?

Originally posted by Josh Stansfield:

If a player bluffed a search for Elvish Visionary but none was present in the deck, would you then declare that the player is failing to find?

No. I would say it's a TE - CPV, though, same as this (which makes me think that an upgrade for malicious intent would not be applicable here, if even any infraction is appropriate). If a player would like to try this sort of bluff, they could phrase it in a different way, for example “You know, if you let this resolve, I might just search for an Elvish Visionary”, which I think even holds up to the Pithing Needle test, as you have implied to the opponent that the choice is not finalized and hence can be changed.

Or if a player casts Demonic Tutor and says “I'm just gonna search for a basic Swamp,” would you somehow try to hold the player to that?

The difference with Demonic Tutor (or Vampiric Tutor, or Diabolic Tutor, etc) is that you don't have to reveal the card. I'm going to explain this very poorly, but I hope I get the point across: The idea is that if a card is revealed, then its identity is known and it has a game impact. If a card is not revealed, then the identity of the card is unknown, same as if you drew a card off the deck. This has strategic implications for the opponent: for example, if you have 1 card in hand and previously cast a Mystical Tutor for a Force of Will, drew that Force of Will, and never since cast a Force of Will, I know that card in your hand is a Force of Will, and I don't have to play around, for example, Swords to Plowshares. However, if the card is hidden information, the card could be anything, even a basic Swamp, which means that the opposing player has to play around (or, conversely, not play around) theoretically everything. The strategic difference here means that I would treat hidden tutors such as DT or VT differently from revealed tutors like GSZ.

There are also advantages to this interpretation from a logistical standpoint (in terms of running an event on schedule), especially for formats which involve a lot of searching and shuffling like Legacy and Modern, but I'm not going to get into those since they're probably irrelevant.

Edited Lyle Waldman (Sept. 12, 2014 02:54:50 PM)

I can understand how this concept can be confusing. I'm trying to best
explain why you are misunderstanding the idea of what a choice is. If it
said “Name a card. Search your library for a card with that name and put
it on the battlefield” (or something like that), then you would be making a
choice. As worded, you do not make a choice. I hope that provides enough
understanding for you.

Shawn

Originally posted by Shawn Doherty:

I can understand how this concept can be confusing. I'm trying to best
explain why you are misunderstanding the idea of what a choice is. If it
said “Name a card. Search your library for a card with that name and put
it on the battlefield” (or something like that), then you would be making a
choice. As worded, you do not make a choice. I hope that provides enough
understanding for you.

Shawn

That makes sense, I guess. It seems like very pedantic logic, but I guess Magic rules are occasionally pedantic. Thanks for the explanation.

Edited Lyle Waldman (Sept. 12, 2014 03:04:01 PM)

Lyle, what part of the communication policy did someone violate to issue that CPV?

The policy is very specific about being required to make a choice. For a choice to be made the card has to say “make a choice, choose 1, Name a card, ect…”

In this scenario Natural Order does not require the AP to make a choice.

So in short the player can lie about his decision on what green creature to get.

Originally posted by Nick Rutkowski:

Lyle, what part of the communication policy did someone violate to issue that CPV?

The policy is very specific about being required to make a choice. For a choice to be made the card has to say “make a choice, choose 1, Name a card, ect…”

In this scenario Natural Order does not require the AP to make a choice.

So in short the player can lie about his decision on what green creature to get.

I was under the impression that choosing which card to NO for was a choice.

In the English language making a choice and deciding to do something are similar enough that the difference does not matter.

In the Magic language unless a card specifically instructs a player to make a choice, they are not making one. Much like the difference between “choose a creature” and “target a creature” Those two are very similar in the English language but very different in the Magic language.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

Shawn Doherty
There is no choice made during announcement, nor during resolution. The
spell puts a creature card onto the battlefield. What you say you are
going to get has no bearing on anything. Just like if you tell someone
what you are going to tutor for.

In both cases, no infraction and no penalty or fix

Really? Mind explaining to me what the difference is between this situation and, say, Pithing Needle (which is the classic example of the shortcut from MTR 4.2 being applied)?

The difference is that saying what you're tutoring for is just a description of the action you are going to take - the action itself is getting it out of your deck. Naming something with Pithing Needle is the action.

The key difference from a policy-making perspective is that naming a creature with Natural Order doesn't even guarantee that such an action is legal. What if a player were to name Craterhoof Behemoth, but remember while searching that they'd sided one out, and the other is in their hand? Likewise, I don't think we'd want to force a player to fail to find if they crack Evolving Wilds and name Swamp, only to fond out that the only basic lands left in their deck were Plains.

Just one other note: I don't think we'd want announced searches to be binding, just from a tournament logistics perspective. Imagine toward the end of a round, one player said “Crack Flooded Strand for Volc. Down to five. Supreme Verdict. Go.” and his opponent binned a pile of Goblins, untapped and drew before the UWR player (who was still performing the physical search) declared “Whoops. The Volc got wasted earlier, I'll get Tundra instead.” With current policy, there is no issue here - the players finish their game in time. If announced searches were binding, the Goblins player would call a judge, and there'd be a big brouhaha about whether to back up the Supreme Verdict.

Edited Glenn Fisher (Sept. 12, 2014 06:14:57 PM)