I thought of this tonight regarding decklists that are provided in some single elimination scenarios. Is there anything stopping a player from sideboarding quickly and, while waiting for the opponent to finish sideboarding, copying that opponent's decklist? This is all I really found searching the MTR & IPG:

Players are allowed to take written notes during a match and may refer to those notes while that match is in
progress.

Similar to writing down revealed cards. there are other excerpts that say a player may refer to notes made before the match in between games, and those notes must have been in his or her possession since the beginning of the match, but that doesn't seem to apply here because hand contents and other revealed cards can be referenced and those notes were taken during the match.

The only other problem could come in the form of Slow Play, but if you're just waiting for your opponent to finish sideboarding you can't really be delaying the tournament, right? Am I missing something, is this perfectly legal, or is there perhaps a previous ruling I'm not aware of?

We could argue the semantics of this:

Originally posted by MTR 2.11:

Between games, players may refer to a brief set of notes made before the match. … These notes must be removed from the play area before the beginning of the next game.

Copying a set of notes that was made before the match doesn't seem like it should exempt a player from complying with the rest of that paragraph, and removing those notes before the next game.

However, it's largely irrelevant. Sharing of decklists is not allowed at most events - it's only when Wizards provides on-line coverage of multi-day, constructed events - i.e., constructed Grand Prix Top 8s, Pro Tour Top 8s (StarCityGames.com's Open and Invitational Top 8s are one rare exception).

And at those events, the judges at the match will remove the deck lists before the next game starts, and would not allow copying contents of those lists.

In short, it's kind of like that one answer that shows up in a lot of Judge Center exams: “This can't happen as described.” :)

d:^D

EDIT: Yeah. Dumb question deleted. Reading is hard >_>

Granted, the player hasn't committed an infraction until the game actually starts and the notes are visible. But this feels like an error that would be occurring outside of a game so we -should- intervene and tell the player “that's going to be OA if you reference it during the game” or something, right?

Edited Sean Stackhouse (June 16, 2014 12:06:59 AM)

It's OK if a player makes notes from memory; I suppose we can't really stop them from jotting down the entire deck list, other than to bring up Slow Play. It'd be difficult to sideboard, shuffle, present AND copy a deck list in just a few minutes. If Joe is still sideboarding while Sally takes copious notes about Joe's deck, then neither one of them are performing their pregame procedures “in a timely manner”.

To further explore your concerns, let's look at a different scenario. Joe and Sally are playing in the Top 8 of a PTQ (so deck lists are absolutely NOT SHARED); Joe won game one quickly, but in game two Sally surprised him with an off-color “bomb”. Joe sideboards a bit differently than for game two, shuffles, presents, crosses out the life totals from game two … then writes “MIZZ MORT!!!” in big letters where he'll track game three's life totals.

Sure, he's referencing that note during that game, and it's clear he's playing around Mizzium Mortars, but that's not a problem. He made a note, from memory, about the contents of Sally's deck - specifically, the one card he's worried about - and he can refer to that note during the game.

So if, during the Top 8 of a GP, Joe gets through the pregame procedures, then writes down a few cards that he's concerned about in Sally's deck - cards that he didn't see in a previous game, but only on the deck list - it's really no different.

To sum up - players aren't going to hand-copy a deck list “in a timely manner”, this really isn't likely to ever come up, Slow Play discourages attempts to game the system here - and it probably doesn't matter to 98% of judges (i.e., those who aren't going to Head Judge a GP, PT or SCG Open/Invitational).

d:^D

On a side note, this is a pretty good example of why the electronic devices
policy is what it is. Otherwise, it would be easy enough to snap a picture
of a decklist in a very timely manner and just have it up to reference for
the entire match.

Thanks for the answers!