Hey everybody,

Andrew draws his card for the turn. Natasha realizes that Andrew forgot to pay for his Summoner's Pact, and calls JUDGE. “Doesn't he lose the game?”

So, a reading of the JAR reveals this:

These abilities are considered missed if the player did not acknowledge the ability in any way at the point that it required choices or had a visible in-game effect. If the ability includes the word “may,” assume the player chose not to perform it. Otherwise, use your judgement to decide if putting the trigger on the stack now would be too disruptive - don’t add it to the stack if significant decisions have been made based on the effect not happening!

At Competitive, the IPG says that we resolve it with the default action: “If you don't, you lose the game.” But this isn't Competitive. The “partial fix” per the JAR is to skip it if it's a “may” trigger .. it's not a “may” trigger, so we add it to the stack now unless it would be disruptive, and/or if the players made decisions based on it not happening. Neither of these is the case.

But it still feels weird. He didn't pay 2GG, so shouldn't he just lose? I know, game mechanics and policy mechanics are tied to card semantics, and those semantics say we treat this triggered ability like any other triggered ability. So I feel pretty confident that I made the right call: “Play the trigger now. Play more carefully please.” (I explained it more nicely and thoroughly than that, of course.)

The other wrinkle is this: it was a Win-a-Box tournament (my LGS has two of these a week). We run it at Regular REL, but what I call “Regular-Plus.” Still not applying the full IPG, but also being a little more strict about things .. being less inclined to let certain things slide in the name of “Fun and Education.”

Thoughts?

Originally posted by Jack Hesse:

“Play the trigger now. Play more carefully please.”

I agree with that ruling 100% at regular REL. Forcing Andrew to immediately lose the game because he missed a trigger is a BIG feel-bad for any player in an environment where the focus is on education over correct play.

Originally posted by Jack Hesse:

The other wrinkle is this: it was a Win-a-Box tournament

That doesn't change my opinion. Our rulings should be consistent with the REL of the tournament, not the prizes being competed for.

I agree with Eric.
Additionally, I would suggest to the TO that a tournament with prizes should be run at Competitive REL, not Regular. This is a quite common situation, at least here in Italy, and it often creates a lot of problems among players, divided by those who want to enjoy the day and those who play for victory.

Originally posted by Jacopo Strati:

I would suggest to the TO that a tournament with prizes should be run at Competitive REL

Personally, I don't think a booster box qualifies as the kind of “large prize” where the JAR suggests moving the tournament to Comp REL, although that is a judgement call your TO should make. I know I don't want to be filling out a deck list for a win-a-box. However, I do think it's important to either run the tournament at Regular or Competitive, not some mix of the two.

In my experience, it's when a tournament is not clearly run at one REL that problems arise. As long as everyone knows what to expect from the start, conflicts about how the rules should be enforced are kept at a minimum.

A while ago, this same discussion popped up in the forum, here's the link for a reference: http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/9032/

My two cents? While I understand that we should enforce fun and education over punishment of players at Regular REL, it's also one of the best occasion to learn that, since you chose to bring a deck with a card that does something specific as a drawback, you are allowed to make mistakes with it. It's not just about losing the game, I would have said the same of something like Masticore.

My view:

If it's Regular REL, then we follow the JAR, and we put the trigger on the stack. However, win-a-box is certainly a large enough prize in my opinion for the event to be run at Competitive REL. Trying to run the event at Regular-Plus REL is just asking for trouble. There's no policy document you can refer to when it comes to situations like this, so there's no clear answer.

Cool, thanks everybody! :)

Some follow-ups … Re: “Regular-Plus,” I'm not intending to create a separate, new REL. It's more of a way of saying that in fuzzy situations where things where things could go one way or another, I err on the side of “we're playing for a box, we need to play more tightly.” Example: At FNM players had a question about how Anger of the Gods interacts with Totem Armor. I explained to the controller of the Bogle, it's competing replacement effects, and he chooses the order in which they apply. He looked he was still really confused. It's FNM, so I explain further, “if you apply Anger first, Bogle gets exiled, and the Totem Armor effect does nothing; if you apply Totem Armor effect first, the Anger exile effect does nothing.” At a Win-a-Box, I wouldn't have offered the further explanation: I answered their question about how they resolve the competing replacement effects.

And the store is definitely not running the Win-a-Box events at Competitive. We run three of these every week for three different formats, and we're not going to start doing decklists and deck checks and Warnings and all that stuff that players don't get super excited about. Players enjoy playing in these as FNM-like events, but with higher entry fees and higher stakes.

Originally posted by Jack Hesse:

Hey everybody,

Andrew draws his card for the turn. He didn't pay 2GG, so shouldn't he just lose?

If the trigger resolved and you assumed he chose not to pay, he'd lose immediately and he couldn't proceed to draw for his turn. The fact that he draws for his turn shows, without any doubt, that the trigger was not resolved.

I'd just like to note that a normal GP side event is a Win-TWO-boxes that is run at Regular REL. The difference between the 5th win and a 5th loss is generally a full box riding on a single game. I think you could choose to run a Win-A-Box at Competitive REL but I certainly wouldn't advise it.

I heard several complaints from local players after GP Liverpool that the side events were run at Regular REL, despite the prizes on offer, and as a result their opponents got to play sloppily and miss triggers without consequences. I think side events are run at Regular REL for logistical reasons as much as anything else.

Marc the sunday sideevent on regular must be a north-american thing though. Until last year european GPs sideevents were usually run on competitive and only now with CFB and SCG coming over they are actually regular over here.
I like it more to have them on competitive because of the prices involved and for the judges to not have to switch mindsets :D

My experience (Europe & Japan only, never been to North America) has been that GP scheduled side events run at Competitive, and 8-mans at Regular - which seems like the sensible way to go.

I would say that a win-a-box is practically the textbook answer to “What's the smallest event that ought to be run at Competitive REL?”

One relevant point though is the value of a box (considering we seem to have something of a divide along the lines of European judges saying win-a-box should be Competitive, and US judges saying it shouldn't) - a box in the US is worth less than a box in the UK (I don't know prices for other European countries).

One question for you Competitive REL Win-a-boxers: do you collect decklists and do checks?

That's rhetorical, of course. I can't imagine ever doing this, and it's one of the big reasons that Regular REL is a good thing for these tournaments. There's also the book-keeping aspect of it. I wouldn't want to record infractions and penalties for all On-Demand Events.

No, I don't think that the relative value of a box in various countries changes this (unless we're playing for a box of some old, valuable set… like Innistrad (yes, it's old now)). And yes, a Win-a-box being 8 players is the textbook answer to “What's the smallest event?” period. But I don't think it should be Competitive. I've outlined the logistical reasons above, but there's also the player perception issue. At a GP, a WAB is the entry-level event for someone with a Constructed deck if they just want to try something out. Slapping Comp REL onto that goes against the spirit of that.

Originally posted by Riki Hayashi:

One question for you Competitive REL Win-a-boxers: do you collect decklists and do checks?

Yes. Absolutely. It's a Comp REL event with a large (enough) prize.

Originally posted by Riki Hayashi:

I wouldn't want to record infractions and penalties for all On-Demand Events.

On-Demands are usually Regular REL, but most Scheduled Side Events that I've seen have been Comp REL (and have had deck checks etc.). (Scheduled GP events tend to have bigger prizes than a box for first, but then On-Demands tend to have smaller prizes than that, so really I'm not sure how relevant using GP side events as our examples is).

What do you consider the cut-off for Comp REL, if not a box? (I don't mean that rhetorically; I am genuinely curious about the prize-value-levels people consider it necessary to switch to Comp REL at. I'd say about $100 (a box having a retail price of about $120 equivalent in the UK)).

Hm, I think there is a disconnect here.

“One question for you Competitive REL Win-a-boxers: do you collect
decklists and do checks
Yes. Absolutely. It's a Comp REL event with a large (enough) prize.”

“On-Demands are usually Regular REL,”

“Win-a-box” events are 8-person, single elim, on-demand events where the
winner gets a box.
So does it count as the usual On-demands or as a Comp REL?