On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 11:03 AM, David Poon
<forum-30179-ebb1@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> At least, I'm not sure it's larger than what we would get if the shortcut
> were different.


I remember the mess that was the time before this shortcut. So many
feel bads from players exploiting less than perfect rules
knowledge/communication, also many from players who were just confused
(it was possible that both players ended up doing the opposite of what
they wanted to do). The current hard line shortcut isn't perfect, but
it is pretty close.

–
Gareth Pye - chatterofjudges.mtgmelb.com
Level 2 MTG Judge, Melbourne, Australia

Originally posted by Toby Hazes:

Or you know, just crew without saying anything, and if the opponent asks when you do that you can clarify “boc”.

If you cast a spell do you always announce in which main phase you do it? Do you never just turn creatures sideways without saying “attacks”? Crewing in boc is super easy. You don't even have to say anything, you just do it.

I still agree that “read this blog post” is a sign the MTR is not optimal. Especially since the Whats Up Docs post, the resulting app discussion, and the Policy Perspective posts are all saying different things. (Only the latest one should be linked to.)

As an exercise for those interested, I would recommend coming up with an alternative wording to this particular shortcut then. If we use this thread and the comments raised as a guide, then I think the objectives of the shortcut seem to be…

(1) Is more organic and more natural to the way players play the game, to make it easier and more functionally oriented.
(2) Does not require overly technical knowledge or phrasing to be understood by the players.
(3) Prevents wording “Gotchas!” when players try to angle shoot for a strategic gain.
(4) Can be applied even in situations where language barriers may exist.
(5) Allows any interested party to understoodunderstand the official source without requiring outside reading.
(6) Gives judges an opportunity to provide the players with clear educational moments.

…and I stress the last objective, as I think that becomes less about reducing “feel-bad moments”. Those are going to be hard to avoid no matter what we do. While we can mitigate those situations to some extent, though I suspect the anecdotal situations where the shortcut fails will still draw far more attention than the majority of situations where no problems occur, I think a better outcome is clear education opportunities to give players a path forward.

Keep in mind that this is something that both the player community and judge community will need to be willing to accept and ultimately serve the needs of both communities. Because players need the shortcut to be about function, and judges need to be able apply it in as neutral a manner as possible.

Edited Brian Schenck (Nov. 2, 2016 11:01:00 AM)

Originally posted by Brian Schenck:

Seriously, don't just “pass priority to end my main phase”. Indicate when you next want to take an action. Be active in your turn. Say “I want to do something in my beginning of combat step… Do you have anything before I end my precombat main?”.

According to Toby's most recent article, this statement is not allowed. And to me, that is where this shortcut is taken too far. Toby explicitly says that you have to tell WHAT you want to do in BOC.

I have no problem with the combat shortcut itself. It is not completely intuitive for players, I think, but education is fairly simple. Just tell them that since most of the times the active player has nothing he wants to do inbetween the things done in main phase 1 and declaring attackers, the most regular expressions such as “Combat?” and “Attacks?” shortcut to NAP's last priority before declaring attackers. People will understand this and probably won't get it wrong again.

The problem arises when AP cannot use clear language to go to his priority in BOC. A player might do this for various reasons. He might be used to this because of MTGO, he might just want to take any action at the last possible moment (crack a fetch? might want a different land if my opponent does this or that so best wait til end of his turn. Hmm another thing I could possibly do at a later moment as well? It is a good habit so might as well apply it here), he might actually have the most crazy corner case in hand or he might be trying to just trick the opponent. Okay, the last reason is a bit of a problem but does this happen that often? I think of all the people that try to do something in BOC, most people are not trying to get their opponent to make a mistake. Most people have no bad intentions here. Even if players would try to get their opponent to make a mistake, an educated NAP would not fall for it. This player does not even need to understand tournament rules. He just needs to understand how the game works, which is a fair requirement on competitive rel anyway. If the NAP gets confused and a situation arises, educate NAP. Make sure it does not happen for him again. It is easy to educate NAP for this and it is a useful lesson.

Instead, it has been decided that in order to use priority as AP in BOC, you must let your opponent know during your main phase WHAT you want to do, even in a situation where it involves hidden information such as cards in hand. When you try to tell a player that he has to clarify what he is going to do with the priority, most players can come up with corner cases where NAP will be gaining an advantage. Players will have arguments against this that are hard to refute completely. This makes educating players in this situation very difficult.

I really think that at competitive REL it is better to have some players make a mistake as NAP and educate them with a useful lesson about how the game works than to educate AP on that he cannot do something that the Comprehensive rules do allow because the tournament rules are too strict. On regular REL, sure protect your NAP a bit from not understanding the technicalities of a turn. On competitive? Don't make it AP's problem that NAP does not understand how a turn works.

Originally posted by Harm Tacoma:

Brian Schenck
Seriously, don't just “pass priority to end my main phase”. Indicate when you next want to take an action. Be active in your turn. Say “I want to do something in my beginning of combat step… Do you have anything before I end my precombat main?”.

According to Toby's most recent article, this statement is not allowed. And to me, that is where this shortcut is taken too far. Toby explicitly says that you have to tell WHAT you want to do in BOC.

I have no problem with the combat shortcut itself. It is not completely intuitive for players, I think, but education is fairly simple. Just tell them that since most of the times the active player has nothing he wants to do inbetween the things done in main phase 1 and declaring attackers, the most regular expressions such as “Combat?” and “Attacks?” shortcut to NAP's last priority before declaring attackers. People will understand this and probably won't get it wrong again.

The problem arises when AP cannot use clear language to go to his priority in BOC. A player might do this for various reasons…

Then it seems I misunderstood that bit from Toby's article, as I thought that one would only need to clarify in general that they wanted to take an action. Mea culpa on that point.

Nevertheless, I still don't see the issue here. Requiring the player to specify what action they intend to take is consistent with the rules. Again, see CR 116.1 and CR 116.4. Having priority and using priority requires you to take actions. A pass of priority is inaction. The active player needs to be active in their turn.

Furthermore, “pass priority” is not “clear language” as many want to claim. Why? Because the results are rather ambiguous. One must infer or otherwise derive the outcome… Leaving it to the listener to conclude what is meant. It is not nearly as explicit as many claim, because an explicit statement would mean the listener doesn't have to derive any meaning more than what the speaker has stated.

Which is the point here: The entirely different styles of communication at work between a “derivative” approach to the communication and an “explicit” approach to the communication.

Anyhow, we keep circling the same points. Rather than make our moderators' jobs harder, if the current policy is the problem, the find a way forward. Again, outline a new shortcut to address these problems. Because reiterating the same problems is not going to move the needle. It's only going to get the thread locked and nothing is going to change.

Don't mean to be an a**hole, but if you Brian got confused about the details of how to retain priority in BOC, how can we expect the players to get it right and not get confused or upset when this kind of situation arises?

I'm also not so sure about passing priority being an inaction. Per CR 116.3D to pass priority, you must first have priority and choose not to take any actions. Plus, CR 116.3A clearly tells that I should get priority in BOC. Anyway, I think the CR discussion is quite moot, most of the time the players just play without thinking about CR 116

For the “find a way forward” part, this is my proposition as stated before: keep the shortcut, it works just fine. But let the players who don't want to use the shortcut have the freedom of doing it, as long as they are clear about it.

Please don't take my mistake or misreading to be a fault on Toby's part. That is grossly unfair. I acknowledge my mistake as I, frankly, goofed entirely. My misreading is my mistake and no one else's.

Blaming Toby is placing blame on him or his article is entirely underserved.

Originally posted by Federico Verdini:

I'm also not so sure about passing priority being an inaction. Per CR 116.3D to pass priority, you must first have priority and choose not to take any actions. Plus, CR 116.3A clearly tells that I should get priority in BOC. Anyway, I think the CR discussion is quite moot, most of the time the players just play without thinking about CR 116.

You actually just said it. That is “choose not to take any actions.”

Passing priority is not an action. Which is why those rules are entirely germane to the situation and why the policy is consistent in that respect. Especially with situations like “Draw, go” where players indicate the action that they are taking and then being done.

Originally posted by Federico Verdini:

For the “find a way forward” part, this is my proposition as stated before: keep the shortcut, it works just fine. But let the players who don't want to use the shortcut have the freedom of doing it, as long as they are clear about it.

This is already allowed per MTR 4.2. Players are allowed to deviate, provided they are explicit about the deviation. Players may not use language whereby the outcome is derived, inferred, or otherwise subject to interpretation.

There's been some interesting discussion on this thread, but I think it's time to clear up a couple misconceptions, then wrap this one up (just like we've wrapped it up a dozen times before).

First, about Players not knowing the shortcut:

Originally posted by Mark Randol:

You read judge articles, study annotated MTR, etc. Players don't, nor should they be expected to.

MTR 1.10 Players
Players are responsible for:
…
Being familiar with the rules contained within this document.

Note that's a responsibility, not just an expectation or recommendation. Interestingly, this is the only rules document that players are responsible for knowing; presumably, it's OK if they don't understand the Comprehensive Rules, since judges are present and are required to know the CR (and prove that via the judge test). Many players do know the CR, and the IPG, as well as the MTR - but many more don't. It's OK if they need help with the CR, and if they're completely ignorant of the IPG - but they are responsible for following the policies of the MTR. And that includes Section 4 - perhaps the most important section for them to understand!

Next up:

Originally posted by Mark Randol:

I have never seen the problem that it is intended to solve.

…About that; how many times I've experienced either side of the issue re: this shortcut is largely irrelevant, since it's purely anecdotal evidence, but I do have about 20 years of experience, so I'll share: it's about even, actually.

And:

Federico Verdini
Player A says “I pass priority in my first main phase”, has a vehicle but wants to wait and see what his opponent does when he receives priority in the main.

Federico, I have multiple problems with this. First - WHY? I remain unconvinced that this is a real, and not imagined, strategic advantage being sought. More importantly, the way to do this is - as so many others have said - simple; just say “crew this, attack”, and maybe your opponent will interrupt that shortcut. And most of all - I disagree that AP, in your example, has a right to “wait and see”. As has been repeated, frequently, the Active Player controls the flow of the turn, they need to be Active; the NAP gets to react and respond to the AP's actions.

And some misconception about the severity of our statements (by “our” I'm referring mostly to myself, Toby Elliott, and Kevin Desprez - and yes, we're in complete agreement on this):

Originally posted by Mark Randol:

AP: Move to combat, activate Mutavault
…
As soon as he said the word “Combat” it is now the NAP's priority in beginning of combat.

and

Harm Tacoma
According to Toby's most recent article, this statement is not allowed. And to me, that is where this shortcut is taken too far. Toby explicitly says that you have to tell WHAT you want to do in BOC.

I need to refute both of those misunderstandings.
For that first quote, as long as you make a complete, uninterrupted statement like that, it doesn't matter that you start with, or just include, the word “Combat” - there has to be the implicit priority pass that comes with a pause. “Combat?” is quite different from “Combat, animate Mutavault” or even “Combat, crew FOO with this guy”.
In the second quote - Harm, that's not at all what Toby, Kevin, or I have been saying; what we've been saying is that you can't be vague about what's going on, or jump to the beginning of combat and retain priority without stating that you want to do something. In the paragraph with the heading “Yes, You Can Act in Beginning of Combat”, Toby is quite clear about this:

If a player wants to be clear that they’re doing something in their beginning of combat, all they need to do is say so! “Beginning of combat, activate my Wandering Fumarole” is not merely allowed, but encouraged. The active player has made it clear what is happening while acknowledging their need to act first.

The first sentence there is a complete statement. The next sentence is an example that illustrates the first sentence (and encourages proper usage).

For those who want to interpret that as “you can only do that if you're explicit”, consider Toby's other example - the one where there's actually a reason for the verbal shenanigans:

all the active player needs to do is explain why it’s relevant that they move the priority marker. “Do you want to do anything with that floating mana before we move to combat” is an acceptable way of explicitly moving to beginning of combat while retaining priority.

Note especially that he says "…is an acceptable way…“ - not THE acceptable way, not the ONLY acceptable way, it's one of them.

As I've already said, countless times, you can also be clear with something like ”I want to do something in Beginning of Combat?“ which, after NAP tells me ”OK“, I'd follow up with ”good, you didn't use“ (hah! he forgot!) ”that floating mana, so I'll animate Mutavault; anything before attacks?" - and that's about as tricky as we want you to get.

Brian Schenck
Then it seems I misunderstood that bit from Toby's article, as I thought that one would only need to clarify in general that they wanted to take an action. Mea culpa on that point.

I disagree with that conclusion; Brian, I think you got it right to begin with. And that also means I'm going to refute those who built arguments based on your “misunderstanding”.

So, in summary:
players don't have to read blog posts, forum threads, and umpteen other documents - just the MTR
the shortcut accomplishes exactly what we want it to, and the few issues are easily avoided
the shortcut does NOT prevent acting in combat, before declaring attackers

And with that, I can't imagine that we can possibly add much more value to this - especially since, as Bryan and Ben and others already noted, we've already expended thousands of words on this topic.

d:^D

Edited Scott Marshall (Nov. 2, 2016 10:41:23 PM)

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

In the second quote - Harm, that's not at all what Toby, Kevin, or I have been saying;

Sorry to drag this on, but just to be clear if this is the case I, and perhaps others, interpreted the following wrong:

Benjamin Lurie says:
October 18, 2016 at 2:52 pm
Follow up, how do you feel about, “move to beginning of combat, I have effects before attacks,”?

telliott says:
October 18, 2016 at 3:04 pm
I feel like you should then tell us what the effects are rather than wasting time. Plus, see the section on why we don’t have a special code.

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2016/10/18/do-not-pass-go/

I interpreted that as stating that your “I want to do something in Beginning of Combat?” would not be allowed.

I apologize, I referred to a statement by Toby Elliot but I never actually quoted it. A lot has been said about this subject already and then it is not exactly clear which statement I was referring to.

The comment I was thinking of is not the quote Toby Hazes shared. Instead, it was in the article he linked itself

To summarize the effect of the shortcut for those who might now know about it: the active player can’t request to move priority to beginning of combat without stating what they are doing there. They’re assumed to be passing priority after whatever statement they make.