Originally posted by Vincent Roscioli:

John Trout
Drawing a card, however, is not derived; hand size is public knowledge.

Be careful. The number of cards in your hand is also derived information, not free information.

Totally right and sloppy syntax on my part….I should have said that because hand size is visible a change in hand size is visible.

Though the issues of triggers and derived information are separate issues, as you rightly point out, I find myself discussing them together with players between rounds and after calls a lot. They both relate to a common concept: what are a player's obligations at a tournament?

Players just don't read the ipg and follow changes the way judges do. The advice given to them by their well-meaning friends before their first competitive tournament is often several ipg edits outdated, and there are mixed signals about what players are obligated to say and do as our policies evolve.

Whenever I make a ruling about player obligations, such as when triggers must be announced and when they are assumed to happen silently, I invite players to see me between rounds if they have questions about how player communication obligations, triggers, derived info, and other differences between fnm and comp rel are impacting their games. Players are largely ignorant of the documents we say they are supposed to be familiar with at comp tournaments, and i enjoy helping them see the competitive edge they could gain by familiarizing themselves with these documents. They often don't see the point of doing so until a judge call comes down in their opponent's favor!

My biggest problem here and I understand how to apply the rules is that the very act of checking power and toughness might remind your opponent of a trigger they missed.

While I do agree that announcing every single trigger or it being considered missed seems tedious and would most definitely lengthen games. The fix to the rule itself might be that the players must announce the power/toughness of each creature during attacks, so that they have the opportunity to miss the trigger (which isn't what we are looking for) but I am hard pressed to say that if one action has been taken then the trigger COULD NOT have been remembered; especially when the player seemed to be short cutting casting all of his creatures at once then resolving triggers.

In the same spirit that magic is not a game of “GOTCHA!” if the game state is easily reparable and the player has shown that they know their trigger and no actions have been taken based solely on the existence or lack there of, of that trigger than the drawing of the card should be allowed.

Mind you these are philosophical stances, coming more from a players standpoint than a judges, and I do understand why the rules are the way they are.

Another big problem is that I can choose not to announce my prowess triggers in the hope that my opponent will miss them and thus make bad decisions based on faulty information, then hide behind the guise of shortcutting and misuse the rules to my advantage. I have even judged in games in which player A asks player B to slow down and announce triggers and player B's answer is “I don't have to.”

Originally posted by William Barlen:

Another big problem is that I can choose not to announce my prowess triggers in the hope that my opponent will miss them

Why, yes, you can - that's a strategic advantage gained through superior rules knowledge. Nothing wrong with that.

Originally posted by William Barlen:

the very act of checking power and toughness might remind your opponent of a trigger they missed

This is also covered by the philosophy behind our MT policy. Sometimes, if you want to know whether or not a trigger has been forgotten (so far), you might have no choice but to ask a question that will remind them of it, and in time to resolve it.

Originally posted by William Barlen:

The fix to the rule itself might be that the players must announce the power/toughness of each creature during attacks

That doesn't really fix it - consider Goblin Rabblemaster; I turn it sideways, say “for 2”, then turn 3 of the Rabblemaster's tokens sideways, too, and say “for 1 each”. I've declared the correct power during attacks. But once those triggers resolve, the Rabblemaster gets +3/0…

In many casual games, I would run through that same attack, and then say “…for 8”; when my opponent raises their eyebrow, I remind them of the Rabblemaster's trigger. All that before they declare blockers. Casually, I'm a pretty nice guy.

No way I'm doing that in a Comp REL event - you keep track of the game, or “you snooze, you lose”. I think that's a fine philosophy!

d:^D

Edited Scott Marshall (Dec. 15, 2014 01:33:26 PM)