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Competitive REL » Post: Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

Sept. 17, 2014 10:03:56 AM

Mark Mc Govern
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy)), TLC

United Kingdom, Ireland, and South Africa

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

The thing is, nobody is forcing you to scoop up your morphs and fail to reveal them. Whether you just forgot, or whether your opponent conceding caused you to scoop up your cards with joy is mostly irrelevant. You've committed an infraction and must not receive a penalty.

Sept. 18, 2014 08:02:00 AM

Philip Ockelmann
Judge (Level 2 (International Judge Program)), Scorekeeper, Tournament Organizer

German-speaking countries

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

I'm not questioning wether the player should get the infraction/penatly. He should.

I'm just asking about the timing, because if I say ‘I concede’, I should have lost that game no matter what, if you ask me. Same goes for loosing to the game rules - for all intents and purposes, once I lost or conceded a game, the game should be over in my opinion, and the GL-penalty for failing to reveal should be applied to the next game, whether that is within the current match or the next.
Upon thinking about this further, I dove into the comprules to understand. They solidified my view of not retroactively changing the gameresult through penalty.

Comprules-citations incoming:
Why a player that conceded a game (in my opinion) should not be able to win the game he conceded through a retroactive gameloss from his opponents morphs:
104.3a. A player can concede the game at any time. A player who concedes leaves the game immediately. He or she loses the game.
A player that concedes the game immediately leaves the game. A player that is not in a game anymore can hardly win it.
When loosing the game to SBAs instead of concession, he actually looses first and then leaves the game
104.5. If a player loses the game, he or she leaves the game. If the game is a draw for a player, he or she leaves the game.

In any case, the game is not over until every but one player has left the game unless he resolves a spell or effect that states he wins the game
104.2. There are several ways to win the game.

104.2a. A player still in the game wins the game if all of that player’s opponents have left the game. This happens immediately and overrides all effects that would prevent that player from winning the game.
104.2b. An effect may state that a player wins the game.

Which subsequently means that he does not reveal his face-down cards until this point.
707.9. If a face-down permanent moves from the battlefield to any other zone, its owner must reveal it to all players as he or she moves it. If a face-down spell moves from the stack to any zone other than the battlefield, its owner must reveal it to all players as he or she moves it. If a player leaves the game, all face-down permanents and spells owned by that player must be revealed to all players. At the end of each game, all face-down permanents and spells must be revealed to all players.
So if I am to apply the penalty (GL) right here, when he fails to reveal his morph, I would make him loose the game in which he is the only player. This would then be overwritten by 104.2a as quoted above, making the penalty a non-penalty for all non-tracking purposes….


TL;DR:
I think we should not make a player win a game he lost, or loose a game he won by applying the penalty for not revealing the morph at the end of the game. It just feels ‘wrong’ to me. Therefor I asked for confirmation that I understood correctly that we should do so.
The current Comprules (as far as I understand them) concur with this view, as the player who would win by me giving his opponent a GL is not in the game anymore and I cannot make the only player left in a game loose the game.

I hope to be enlightened :).

Edited Philip Ockelmann (Sept. 18, 2014 08:07:48 AM)

Sept. 18, 2014 03:19:09 PM

Oren Firestein
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

USA - Northwest

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

Originally posted by Philip Körte:

TL;DR:
I think we should not make a player win a game he lost, or loose a game he won by applying the penalty for not revealing the morph at the end of the game. It just feels ‘wrong’ to me. Therefor I asked for confirmation that I understood correctly that we should do so.
The current Comprules (as far as I understand them) concur with this view, as the player who would win by me giving his opponent a GL is not in the game anymore and I cannot make the only player left in a game loose the game.

I hope to be enlightened :).

The Magic Tournament Rules (and IPG) trump the Comp Rules. This is why we can assign a game loss to a player who controls Platinum Angel. We'll see if the next IPG version includes changes to address these issues, but there is no inherent problem in having the IPG tell us to assign a penalty that changes the winner of a just-finished game.

Sept. 18, 2014 03:29:42 PM

Steve Guillerm
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

USA - Northeast

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

There are plenty of compelling reasons to have a player lose a game (or match) that they won. One very obvious one is in which Player A concedes out of disgust, annoyance, or fear to a Player B. If a spectator calls a judge, and Player B gets the USC-Major match loss or Aggressive Behavior DQ, Player A is retroactively the winner, despite the concession.

The situations aren't directly analogous to failing to reveal a morph, but it's clear precedence for declaring the “winner” to be the loser.

Sept. 18, 2014 05:20:47 PM

Philip Ockelmann
Judge (Level 2 (International Judge Program)), Scorekeeper, Tournament Organizer

German-speaking countries

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

Yes, I know that there are some cases where we retroactively apply game/matchlosses or DQs.

A common GRV doesn't seem like it should turn a concession into a win. But that's only my opinion, and I will enforce the policy as it is layed out here ;).

Sept. 18, 2014 05:37:06 PM

Scott Marshall
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 4 (Judge Foundry)), Hall of Fame

USA - Northwest

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

Originally posted by Philip Körte:

A common GRV
To be fair, this isn't a common GRV, it's fairly serious - most? all? of what we used to call “Failure to Reveal” are fairly serious.

But, Philip, there are others who share your concerns, and some of them work for Wizards of the Coast. I'm waiting for some additional conversations with those folks and the HL judges; it is entirely possible that we'll conclude that there's a better solution … but for now - as you noted - we enforce policy as written.

Note also that this is how we've handled Morph for a long time (different sections of the Penalty Guides, but always resulting in a Game Loss). I don't think it's “broken”, but that doesn't mean we can't find improvements.

d:^D

Sept. 23, 2014 02:58:56 PM

Scott Marshall
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 4 (Judge Foundry)), Hall of Fame

USA - Northwest

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

OK, we have a new Official answer.

The Game Loss penalty for the upgraded GRV, when failing to reveal Morphs, should always apply to the game in which the error occurred (and yes, that includes the game that was just concluded by scooping up face-down cards without revealing them). This is true whether or not that Game Loss changes the original result of that game.

Toby expounds a bit on this, and on all of the policy changes that take effect for Khans of Tarkir, in his blog.

d:^D

Sept. 24, 2014 05:43:01 AM

Gilles Demarle
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

France

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

Originally posted by Philip Körte:

I'm not questioning wether the player should get the infraction/penatly. He should.

I'm just asking about the timing, because if I say ‘I concede’, I should have lost that game no matter what, if you ask me. Same goes for loosing to the game rules - for all intents and purposes, once I lost or conceded a game, the game should be over in my opinion, and the GL-penalty for failing to reveal should be applied to the next game, whether that is within the current match or the next.
Upon thinking about this further, I dove into the comprules to understand. They solidified my view of not retroactively changing the gameresult through penalty.


What if you concede because you don't have any answer to the morph card ? You may never know if this was really a morph card or not.

Sept. 24, 2014 10:54:13 AM

Scott Marshall
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 4 (Judge Foundry)), Hall of Fame

USA - Northwest

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

Gilles, you'll either see the Morph when he reveals it, or win the game when he gets a Game Loss.

I'm not sure if that answers your question?

d:^D

Sept. 24, 2014 11:15:38 AM

Gilles Demarle
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

France

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

That wasn't really a question, it was a reply for what i quoted, that can be summed up as “concede is concede, move on” so i was asking Philip what if the reason he conceded was that he couldn't handle a morph that maybe wasn't a morph. I wouldn't be very happy to know that my opponent lose his next game when he just defeated me like that.

The new ruling is fine for that now.

Sept. 24, 2014 01:01:07 PM

Philip Ockelmann
Judge (Level 2 (International Judge Program)), Scorekeeper, Tournament Organizer

German-speaking countries

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

I don't really see your point. If I (as the judge) think that you played a card as a morph, but it is not a morph, I will DQ you for USC-cheating in most cases one way or the other?

Sept. 24, 2014 01:17:15 PM

Tomoya Nakajima
Judge (Level 2 (International Judge Program)), Scorekeeper

Japan

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

“ at end of game, if a player forget to make own's morph face up, the player get GL (automatically)”

only the words have noticeable among player's Community.
so, some new players may feel worry about tournament.

Correctly, “ in the situation, head judge can grade up the penalty to GL. because ~ ”

I want judges to tell current knowledge to players, and to remove worry from player's Community.

thanks,

Sept. 26, 2014 08:21:35 AM

Gilles Demarle
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

France

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

Originally posted by Philip Körte:

I don't really see your point. If I (as the judge) think that you played a card as a morph, but it is not a morph, I will DQ you for USC-cheating in most cases one way or the other?

Maybe i didn't understand what you meant.

As a judge you will DQ me, that's for sure, but what i understood from your point of view is that, if i conceded the game, my game is “lost” no matter what, even if you cheated with your morph that is not a morph card. The DQ for cheating will be applied after the concession and now i've a loss at my record. But now, as the GL will be applied on the current game, even if i concede, i'll be declared winner.

Oct. 10, 2014 04:47:24 AM

Olle Liljefeldt
Judge (Level 1 (Judge Academy))

Europe - North

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

Where might be a good idea to edit the prevois post regarding Official Answer. I almost stopped reading the thread, happy with a policy that made sure the game loss was applied where it mattered.

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

OK, we have a new Official answer.

The Game Loss penalty for the upgraded GRV, when failing to reveal Morphs, should always apply to the game in which the error occurred (and yes, that includes the game that was just concluded by scooping up face-down cards without revealing them). This is true whether or not that Game Loss changes the original result of that game.

Toby expounds a bit on this, and on all of the policy changes that take effect for Khans of Tarkir, in his blog.

d:^D

Oct. 10, 2014 11:30:21 AM

Scott Marshall
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 4 (Judge Foundry)), Hall of Fame

USA - Northwest

Morph, Should I remind to my opponent?

Originally posted by Olle Liljefeldt:

might be a good idea to edit the prevois post regarding Official Answer
Done - and, thank you, Olle, for that reminder / observation!

d:^D