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Competitive REL » Post: Card Arrangement Guidelines and Communication Policy

Card Arrangement Guidelines and Communication Policy

July 23, 2015 07:07:36 PM

Marco Storelli
Judge (Level 1 (International Judge Program))

Italy and Malta

Card Arrangement Guidelines and Communication Policy

Hello there!
As you all are probably already aware, Communication is the key in a good game of Magic and a lot of it is actually done through common practices (or “defaults”) and shortcuts. Some of them are encoded in the MTR, some of them are just assumed by common sense, and some others were recently added in the section 2.13.

With all of this in mind, we can in fact classify a set of actions made by a player as “usual” and others as “unusual”. Section 4.2 teaches us that, in case of a dispute between players, the ones who adhere to estabilished, and thus “usual” shortcuts, are generally favored as “correct” in their interpretation of the game flow and a judge ruling will likely support the version of those who played within the aforementioned guidelines.

Now, the introduction of section 2.13 has the potential to give an important tool to all the judges (and not just the ones in charge of competitive/professional featured matches): given that there now are officially “usual” and “unusual” ways to arrange your cards, in case of a dispute, will the “usuals” be rewarded as they are playing/making their assumptions within the guidelines?

Generic example:
-AP, looking at the board state of NAP, makes the assumption X and makes a play based on X
-NAP, without any clear indication, actually meant something completely different from X which is labeled as “unusual” for the expected board representation
-In general, would you rule in favor of AP because he made an assumption within the guidelines and NAP wanted to deviate without being clear enough?

Greetings,
M

July 23, 2015 08:44:05 PM

Yonatan Kamensky
Judge (Uncertified)

USA - Northeast

Card Arrangement Guidelines and Communication Policy

Would a good example of such ambiguity be a player turning a D6 so that the figure “6” resembled “9”?

July 30, 2015 02:06:12 AM

Mark Brown
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 2 (Oceanic Judge Association)), Scorekeeper

Australia and New Zealand

Card Arrangement Guidelines and Communication Policy

I really don't think you can equate rules to make video coverage clearer to viewers over the internet as a now defined “usual” and “unusual” actions.

The only requirement for players outside of this very small video coverage specification is that the game state is not confusing.

If AP makes an assumption about the game state without checking it with NAP it would require NAP to have done something that would in general cause confusion rather than having for example lands where most players have non-lands.