In the Magic Judge subreddit, someone recently asked if Flickerwisp's delayed triggered ability (“Return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control”) is considered detrimental. I wanted to get an Official ruling on this if possible.

For what it's worth, I think that the delayed triggered ability is “generally detrimental”, since Flickerwisp would be Vindicate-with-legs without the delayed trigger.

I would like to point out that this portion of the IPG is relevant:

“If the triggered ability is a delayed triggered ability that changes the
zone of an object, resolve it. For these two types of abilities, the
opponent chooses whether to resolve the ability immediately or at the start
of the next phase. These abilities do not expire and should be remedied
no matter how much time has passed since they should have triggered.”

You can not “forget” Flickerwisp to make it an infinite Terminate. Once
either player recognizes the exiled card should have come back, it will.

Because we don't take the game state into account and because it's coming
back anyway, I would not rule this as generally detrimental.

Originally posted by Cj Shrader:

Because we don't take the game state into account and because it's coming
back anyway, I would not rule this as generally detrimental.

Without attempting to answer the original question (waiting on O), I just want to point out that presence of a fix does not imply absence of a penalty. For most circumstances, I'd say the opposite is the case.

Edited Joshua Feingold (March 4, 2013 10:42:54 PM)

Inspired by Toby's recent post, I wanted to add that Opinions on this would be welcome.

So far, I've heard 4 judges weigh in on the issue, and the votes are split 2-and-2, so some other opinions would be appreciated.

I suspect Flickerwisp's ability should be detrimental to match up with others (like Angel of Serenity, which is indeed detrimental for Warning purposes).

If you for some reason failed to give a warning to a player who accidentally forgot his own Flickerwisp's ability that would have returned his own permanent, it probably wouldn't largely impact the integrity of the tournament.

Edited Josh Stansfield (March 7, 2013 02:03:11 AM)

I don't really see how it would be detrimental. The ability has no restrictions on its use, and from a game design perspective Eventide involved a lot of permanents that you could extract extra value from by “resetting” them with a flicker effect. Since we don't consider the gamestate when looking at an ability's classification, I have a hard time considering this one a drawback when so many of its useful cases would not be bad for the controlling player.

Even just going by the simple litmus test of “Does this creature as printed get better or worse without the ability?” - he pretty clearly gets worse, since even used offensively the ability is a great boon to its controller. So there's that too.

Edited Rebecca Lawrence (March 7, 2013 02:11:18 AM)

The general rule of thumb that I use in determining whether an ability is beneficial or detrimental is, “Would the card be played more if the ability was not there?”

Flickerwisp's delayed trigger is a tough one using this rule of thumb. The ability to bring back a Titan, an Angel of Serenity or a Thragtusk is pretty amazing. However, the ability to permanently exile another target permanent is incredible.

If the delayed trigger was not there, I can see the card being played more… a lot more, across all formats in which it is legal. Therefore, I would have to say that it is a detrimental trigger.

Also consider why we give Warnings at all. We don't really care to track when a player is missing his own triggers when it's good for him, but it's certainly in the game's best interest to track when a player is missing triggers that he'd rather not resolve (e.g., Flickerwisp an opponent's permanent).

And a player is far less likely to forget to return his or her own permanent from Flickerwisp anyway, so I wouldn't expect the warnings for what seems like a “good” trigger at that moment to start running rampant. :)

Would you play Flickerwisp without its return ability? Absolutely!
Therefore, detrimental, therefore a warning.

Originally posted by Charlotte Sable:

Would you play Flickerwisp without its return ability? Absolutely!
Therefore, detrimental, therefore a warning.

The thing I don't like about using this judgement is that in this instance the ability becomes an entirely new ability. Instead of Cloudshift we have Unmake. It's not like it's just a detriment that's tacked on to the ability; it turns into a completely different ability that is used in a completely different way.

In regards to detrimental triggers is there an official reference for what is considered a detrimental trigger or some sort of guidelines that are commonly used?

From the IPG:

The controller of a missed trigger ability receives a Warning only if the triggered ability is usually considered detrimental for the controlling player. The current game state is not a factor in determining this, though symmetrical abilities (such as Howling Mine) may be considered usually detrimental or not depending on who is being affected.

So it seems logical that Flickerwisp's delayed trigger applied to its controller's own creatures would not be considered detrimental. The point is, do we look at these cards in a vacuum and say "this ability is generally detrimental“ without considering what they might apply to? Shouldn't we look at the whole class of ”flicker" effects as being symmetrical? The IPG provides enough leeway to apply common sense in these situations.

Angel of Serenity is more intriguing because it's not a delayed trigger, and because it can be both detrimental and non-detrimental depending on the targets chosen for the first trigger. If Angel leaves play and has both my cards and my opponent's under it, do I get a warning for missing it? What if all the cards belong to me? What if they all belong to my opponent? Is our basis for giving a warning the triggered ability as an atomic unit, or its possible separate effects?

Game state plays no part in determining if the ability is generally detrimental. Dark Confidant is not detrimental, even if its controller is at 1 life, and Angel of Serenity's returning of exiled creature cards is always considered “generally detrimental”, even if those cards belonged to the Angel's controller. I'll hazard to say that in a similar vein, Flickerwisp's delayed triggered ability must be considered generally detrimental. If the creature was returned to the battlefield immediately, then a case could be made for the trigger not being generally detrimental, but as it is I don't think it can be done.

I do believe that this thread highlights a need for better guidelines in determining whether an ability is generally detrimental? It seems these questions come up frequently, so it's obvious that judges are struggling with these decisions, and this can only lead to inconsistent rulings, which reflect poorly on us as a community.

Originally posted by Adam Liebman:

Angel of Serenity's returning of exiled creature cards is always considered “generally detrimental”, even if those cards belonged to the Angel's controller.

Is this something that's been officially ruled on already? Because this makes zero sense to me. The IPG clearly illustrates symmetrical abilities as an exception to ignoring game state, even though it doesn't go into detail about what constitutes “symmetrical.”

Again, are we judging individual triggered abilities for detrimentality in isolation, or in the context of the cards they're on or the other abilities they're linked to? Moving a card from exile to play is more apparently symmetrical if you ignore whether or not the same source exiled the card in the first place.

Edited Aaron Huntsman (March 7, 2013 12:33:09 PM)

Angel of Serenity was one of the detrimental triggers listed in Toby Elliot's blog around the time of the RtR release, though he did say it's a “weird” one. Nonetheless, as far as I'm aware, this remains the official stance. The example given by IPG for symmetrical effects is Howling Mine, which explicitly affects all players. In these cases, a distinction may be drawn based on which player it currently affects, but for me this also feels like a grey area, as it treads very close to having to take into account the game state.

If my understanding of policy is correct, any triggered ability must be considered on its own, not with reference to any other abilities printed on the same card - the infraction is for missing an individual trigger, and it is the nature of that trigger that determines if a warning should be assessed.

The rules of thumb I use are the following:

1. Would the card be significantly overpowered or abused if the triggered ability no longer existed? Or to phrase it a different way, does it seem as though the trigger was put in place to rein in the power of the card?

2. Would a cheater attempt to “forget” the triggered ability the vast majority of the times it came up if he could get away with it?

A 3/1 flier that exiled a permanent for 3 mana is clearly significantly overpowered, and it seems as though the designers included the delayed trigger to balance the card out. Further, a cheater would definitely try to not bring back permanents if he could get away with it.

In my book, it's therefore detrimental.