At Sunday I was the floor judge in a GPT at my city. We discussed with the HJ the issue about Desecration Demon second ability, which has some curious properties:

- It's a detrimental effect.
- Triggers at the beginning of each combat (which all turns have, regardless of creatures attacking)
- The opponent of the controller of the ability is the one making the decisions.

Checking the rules, the IPG says: “Even if an opponent is involved in the announcement or resolution of the ability, the controller is still responsible for ensuring the opponents make the appropriate choices and take the appropriate actions”. Base on this, we ruled that the controller of the demon has to acknowledge the ability each combat, or we should issue a Warning.

After that discussion, I issue a Warning to a player playing with the card for Missed Trigger. After we explain to him that he was expected to announce the ability each combat (something he clearly didn't knew), his opponent started to play a “gotcha” strategy, of the kind:

Opponent: “I'm going to attack.” (Or even worse: “I want to end my turn” after 1st main phase)
Player A: “Ok.”
(Pause)
Opponent: “Judge! My opponent hasn't announce the trigger involving a detrimental effect.”

After 2 Warnings, the controller of the Demon played really cautious to not get the upgrade. Still, even when the rule apparently is coherent with the IPG, feels kinda weird.

Yesterday, the same player approach to me and told me he and a friend had searched and watched some streaming videos of high level tournaments involving decks with Desecration Demon, and in none of them there was any Missed Trigger issued. I told him I was pretty sure I was right at issuing him the penalties, showed him the Missed Trigger Rule, and said I couldn't made my judging in base on streaming videos. nevertheless, I wanted to be sure if I was right at this, cause due the properties of the ability it doesn't feel normal.

Thank you for your responses.

In the recent WMC; Belgium vs Brazil had Vincent Lemoine calling the judge for his opponent who attacked with a descecration demon without anouncing the trigger.

I must say that at that moment something happened that wasn't covered good on camera as a lot of people were confused about how the judge resolved this. Somebody remembered this incident? Because it appeared that Lemoine wasn't attacked there for a turn; which in the end resulted in him winning in the nick of time with a topdeck later in the game. I believe it had also something to do with his opponent using a Abrupt Decay at the time.

Last Saturday, my opponent in the 3rd or 4th round sacrificed a creature during his combat, to tap my 6/6 (now 7/7!) blocker, so he could alpha strike with the rest of the team. That's when I first realized the ability reads “EACH combat”. Up until then, I'd been dutiful about mentioning it on my turn, but I'm sure I'm guilty of dozens of Missed Triggers, for my opponents' combat steps.

Technically, you are correct; it is Detrimental, and missing it merits a Warning. Even if the Demon is enchanted by something like Pacifism, it's still going to trigger, and it's still “usually considered detrimental” (although my Disciple of Bolas begs to differ!).

I would be very sad to see someone earn a Game Loss from upgraded, repeated MT Warnings, because of this Demon. That just doesn't fit with the way people really play the game. But if a player is intentionally missing that trigger, it could be a sign of Very Bad Things.

I'm even more sad to hear that some opponents wanted to run the “get him a Game Loss!” ploy. That is not a behavior that we want to encourage - but if there's a chance for a GL, it is encouraged.

Seems like we have some education to perform, teaching players the importance of indicating that trigger, each & every combat. New opening announcement? “Players, if you have Desecration Demon on the battlefield, remember that you have to announce its trigger for every combat.”

Were you incorrect to issue Warnings for Missed Trigger infractions? No. Could a better outcome have come from this situation? Probably.

As you mentioned yourself, the opponent was clearly playing a “gotcha” strategy, and that is not something that we want to encourage or support in the rules. In the situation you described, it seems clear that the opponent is aware of the trigger and has plenty of opportunity to act on said trigger. Compare this to if the Demon's controller were the one attacking without announcing the trigger - then, the opponent wouldn't have an a chance to act on the trigger - that would definitely be a Warning there.

In this situation, I think I would only give a Warning if I believed that both players legitimately forgot about the trigger and not that one player was trying to game the system. In fact, I would speak with the opponent and inform him that this kind of “gotcha” Magic is not acceptable behaviour.

As for the Worlds incident - my understanding was that the Demon controller said “Attack?” or similar - i.e. he wished to shortcut to declaring attackers. After some confusion, he cast a spell, which can only be done after attackers are declared. Since nothing was declared as an attacker, he didn't get to take it back and ended up missing combat. I would need to rewatch the coverage to be sure that's the case though.

Regarding trying to “get someone” by saying “go” - the “go” shortcut offers to pass priorty until the opponent has it in the end step. For me, that includes passing priorty while the demon trigger is on the stack, as well as choosing not to sacrifice anything as it resolves. Also, missed triggers which have no effect on the game aren't an infraction. I would argue that Desecration Demon could occasionally fall under this category (but given the number of flash creatures around, not very often).

Either way, I'd be hard pressed to side with someone pulling a shenanigan like that.

Would “Players may not cause triggered abilities controlled by an opponent to be missed by taking game actions or otherwise prematurely advancing the game.” fit in our thinking here?

By passing turn, the opponent could easily be seen as trying to advance the game causing the triggered ability to be missed.

I'd hate to be falling into the trap of reading what I want the IPG to say instead of what they actually say, but this seems to fit the “anti-gotcha” philosophy pretty well.

On a related note, I can't think of a situation where the opponent has a creature where he couldn't reasonably make a choice to affect the game state. Maybe they want that creature as large as possible so they can steal it and swing? Or kill it and gain some life? Maybe they're betting on drawing that card on their next draw? But to ferret those out it seems we'd have to take game state into account, which is something we don't want to do. If the opponent isn't given their chance to affect the game state, obviously they can't. But that's a gotcha in itself.

This was one of the triggers that should have stopped being a problem when
the “no effect on game state” escape clause was introduced. This trigger
was so dangerous under the (semi-)old trigger policy that I specifically
included it in my opening announcements at several RTR sealed events last
fall.

Now, however, you can ignore the trigger if the Demon is tapped or the
defending player controls no creatures or if the active player shortcuts
over the combat phase. (A player better have a darn good reason if he
thinks the trigger matters under these conditions.) It's still one of the
riskier triggers, but now it's only a Warning when a person could plausibly
want to tap the Demon. And that's totally fair.

Originally posted by Joshua Feingold:

Now, however, you can ignore the trigger if the Demon is tapped or the
defending player controls no creatures or if the active player shortcuts
over the combat phase. (A player better have a darn good reason if he
thinks the trigger matters under these conditions.)

I don’t think I fully agree with what I think it is you’re saying.

First of all, what the MIPG actually says on the matter is that “If a triggered ability would have no impact on the game, it’s not an infraction to fail to demonstrate awareness of it.” If Desecration Demon is already tapped, then perhaps you can make the case that this should apply here, though I’d still be a little iffy about it. Even if DD were tapped, the trigger does, after all, still give an opponent the chance to deep-six his own creature should he happen to want to do such a thing.

But I think you’re also saying that if player Active wishes to shortcut his way through his entire turn, without attacking with anything, that skipping the trigger here is also okay and not penalizable. I’m much more opposed to this viewpoint, and I’d have to question your reading of the above-quoted section of the MIPG.

To me, your interpretation is a bit akin to saying that a player needn’t bother pointing out his own Sulfuric Vortex trigger on his upkeep since he knows that his opponent is playing a “mill deck” and that his life total doesn’t matter. I’m sure we’d all be pretty hard-pressed to ever proclaim that an opponent had better have a good reason to actually want the player to take his Vortex damage before we’d be willing to hand out a warning.

In summary, just about the only time I’d consider Desecration Demon’s trigger to “not have an impact on the game” is when the opponent doesn’t actually have any creatures OTB to sacrifice.

Thanks.


Abe

Originally posted by Abraham Corson:

In summary, just about the only time I’d consider Desecration Demon’s trigger to “not have an impact on the game” is when the opponent doesn’t actually have any creatures OTB to sacrifice.

What if I want to flash in a Snapcaster in response to the trigger, to sacrifice it?

Originally posted by Abraham Corson:

But I think you’re also saying that if player Active wishes to shortcut his way through his entire turn, without attacking with anything, that skipping the trigger here is also okay and not penalizable. I’m much more opposed to this viewpoint, and I’d have to question your reading of the above-quoted section of the MIPG.

Does it matter here if the AP or NAP controls the Demon? I agree with what has been said earlier, if NAP control a demon and AP says “go”, that doesn't have to be a warning.

See entry #1.

So according to Sean Hunt's link, and everyone else, the ruling was complicated but technically correct.

The subsequent questions for Tony Hazes, Joshua Feingold, and Jason Wong (and any reader that support the deviation) is:
“Is the fact that this ability could lead to ”gotcha“ situation a good enough reason for a deviation?”
“Isn't making the opponent responsible for acknowledging the ability against the IPG philosophy and remedy regarding Missed Trigger?”

I really think that the reason for the rule that Joshua quoted is to prevent to transform magic in a game of speed like: “Oh, I already drew, so you forgot your trigger”. In this case, I don't think it applies: saying “go” means you pass priority until end phase or until something happens (breaking the shortcut). Assuming that saying it takes the responsible of acknowledging the ability seems against the IPG.

Since this is a card that is seeing more and more play in constructed, I really think we (as judges) should have a consensus on how to rule it. I agree with Scott on how sad it would be to issue a GL for subsequent missed triggers involving DD, but I guess we need to make sad choices sometimes. I will try to educate the local community on how important it is to acknowledge the ability, repeating it at the start of a tournament is a pretty good idea.

Greetings and thanks for the responses. You have been more than helpful :)

I think we are safe using a broader, practical interpretation of this clause. Several Flash creatures and instant creature token spells are played in standard. So if we take a hard line, even having no creatures on board isn't really sufficient.

My understanding is that the purpose of this clause is to avoid punishing players for playing naturally. Just like we don't really give a GRV for saying “target nothing” when a player casts Snapcaster with no intention of casting a spell, I feel we should not give warnings for skipping a trigger that is only relevant to combat 99% of the time when no attackers are being declared regardless.

We should also consider here that intentionally skipping a trigger to gain advantage is cheating. That makes trying to hide that an opponent has the opportunity to sac a dude when it would help him actually fall outside the scope of this discussion. So the only time you are potentially giving this warning is when a player actually forgets a relevant trigger (which is what we definitely want to do) or when he is just trying to play in a natural way and at a speedy pace with no real negative consequences (which I feel we should avoid punishing if possible). Given that in the few corner cases where the opponent just wants a generic sac outlet he will probably be aware of the trigger himself, I think the potential for abuse is quite small relative to the disruption to the natural course of play announcing a bunch of very-likely-irrelevant triggers can cause.

Doesn't the “No real negative consequences” aspect fly in the face of the IPG's global clause of “Don't take the current game state into account when evaluating and issuing penalties”?

Originally posted by Nathaniel Lawrence:

Doesn't the “No real negative consequences” aspect fly in the face of the IPG's global clause of “Don't take the current game state into account when evaluating and issuing penalties”?

The purpose of that language in MIPG 2.1 is for a judge to determine whether or not an infraction has taken place at all. This does not contradict the general language in MIPG 2 (or elsewhere in the MIPG) that judges shouldn't modify the procedures in the MIPG for handling infractions, since if we state that there is “no infraction”, then we never get to “penalty to be issued?” part of the process.

It is easy to confuse infraction with penalty, but the two serve very different purposes. And as mentioned the other day, assessing whether an infraction has taken place is a process for which you will have to development judgment as a judge to consider what happened, if something went wrong, and if we need to handle this via the MIPG. But that process starts with “Is there an infraction?” The language in MIPG 2.1 tells us “In this circumstance, there is no infraction.” The Angel token created by Geist of Saint Traft gets blocked and dies in the combat damage step? Who cares about the delayed trigger at that point?

Much like with MTR 4.2 and MTR 4.3 in terms of technical play versus functional play, we are avoiding a very technical approach to handling whether a trigger was missed or not. If a trigger truly has no effect on the game, and the controller doesn't actually “announce” the trigger, we don't care. Because, functionally, the trigger does nothing. Yes, technically it resolves and there may be choices involved, etc. But, since there's no actual effect on the game state, we don't care.

This follows how players generally play; they acknowledge the things that are generally relevant to the game, provided they are aware of those things. If there's no effect to the game (and you may have to exercise judgment in assessing the situation), then we don't require a player to acknowledge the trigger. As such, this isn't about “negative consequences” or even “positive consequences”, this about any effect at all.