Interesting situation at a Competitive REL SCG IQ.

I'm sitting at the table near Norin and Aboshan, who are in Game 3 of the penultimate round of swiss. Aboshan controls a flippedJace, Vryn's Prodigy. Norin controls a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. Aboshan casts Utter End, physically pointing to his opponent's Gideon with the Utter End but saying “Utter End Jace.”

Aboshan catches himself pretty fast, certainly before Norin has responded, and chuckles about his mistake. Norin says “Judge, he said Jace, shouldn't he have to target his Jace?”

I laughed. Norin didn't. He was serious.

I explain that Aboshan's intent was clear, and that it's not like in Magic Online, where it's “Oops, misclick, too late now.”

Norin responded with “Yeah, well maybe at FNM, but this is a competitive level event, right? He should have to stick with what he announced.”

I was not able to convince Norin that what Aboshan had done was OK. He wrote my name down and assured me that he knew who to contact with a complaint, and grumbled(quietly, respectfully) to his pals afterward about being tired of judges making sloppy calls. He was genuinely disgruntled.

While it would be tempting to write Norin's concerns off as sore loser mentality, I honestly do believe that he simply had a different idea about what it means to “play competitively.” I was at a loss to think of a resource that I could point him toward to help him understand that this was not sloppy judging but, simply, how judges help players navigate imperfections in communication. Scanning the MTR, IPG, and Judge Apps forums left me empty handed; he left the event feeling cheated, and I left the situation sad that I couldn't conjur up an external resource to help him understand why I stood by my ruling.

Have I missed something obvious? L3 Justus Ronnau called ruling by intent “a judge philosophy that isn't written down anywhere” (http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=judge/article/20041111b) Much of what he had to say in his 2004 article has since been rolled into the Out of Order Sequencing part of the MTR, but what about the kind of situation my players faced today? What can we do to help players trust that right call was made?

We aren't “ruling by intent” here. Our fix would be the same regardless of whether Utter End was meant to target Jace or Gideon (either the verbal cue or the physical one could be the slip). We're essentially doing a very, very short backup to the “declare targets” part of casting a spell, and asking the active player to communicate more clearly; no intent required.

As for how to communicate it with the player, I'd try something like this: “If we require him to target Jace when he says Jace but points to Gideon, it has really bad consequences for the tournament as a whole. For instance, you probably wouldn't have called me over if you thought he screwed up and should have targeted your Jace. In that case, you'd both be fine with Gideon going away. But if he's required to target Jace in this real scenario, then you would be cheating and could be disqualified in the hypothetical case. The last thing we judges want is to turn the normal way people play the game into a cheating offense.”

assured me that he knew who to contact with a complaint

We'll watch for that e-mail… ;)

It appears you handled this with diplomacy. I would ask Norin “why do you believe he wanted to destroy his own Jace?”. I'm sure his attempts at answering that would be amusing, too.

Ruling By Intent, or “RBI” as it came to be known, was a thing about ten years ago. That's no longer supported by the IPG as currently written - on purpose. We took the relevant parts of RBI and rolled them into the rewrites as we continually improved the IPG.

Imagine if either player spoke a language other than English, or was hard of hearing - the universal communication of pointing the spell at the target would be clear enough. Even if Norin controlled a Jace, but Aboshan points at Gideon while saying “Jace”, I think it's clear he is targeting Gideon.

(Admittedly, some of this is a “you had to be there” situation, and my response depends heavily on your telling of the story.)

d:^D

I'm curious, did you offer an appeal? Or were you the Hj of the event?

If no on both, I think that would be a way to offer the player a second
ruling and good customer service :). If that option wasn't available, I
think what you could do to improve the player experience is offer more
dialogue after the match. Maybe invite the person to be part of a
conversation including other judges :)?
Den 9 nov 2015 04:01 skrev “John Trout” <

I was the head judge; my floor judge was watching the other table that was still playing.

The root of the problem was a genuine mismatch between his understanding of what “Competitive” indicates, in terms of player and judge expectations, vs. the reality of it. It was clear from my interactions with him (though not from my post, which contained only the brief story) that he was the kind of player who likes to see things in black and white. He didn't want a persuasive argument from me or the other judge in the room, he wanted a guiding document, or even the hint of one, to back up my claim. I can empathize with that; I think many judges start down the path of becoming a judge for just that reason…in their own play groups, they are the “here it is in black and white” problem solvers who can find the relevant rule to back up their claim. I know that was true for me. So I really understood where he was coming from, misguided though he was.

As luck would have it, there was another judge whose opinion he does trust and whom he did contact (by phone, after the event, I discovered after making my original post). The other judge confirmed my ruling and the player was put at ease knowing he hadn't been cheated out of a win by “another sloppy judge” :)

The whole situation restored my appreciation for how much we learn and practice, as judges, that *isn't* in a book somewhere. It's on the job training and in the trenches experience, learned the hard way sometimes, with the guidance of our peers, until we are practicing not just the rules of judging but the spirit and philosophy of judging. It also helped me appreciate that much of what we do as judges could probably never be put to a document effectively.

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

I would ask Norin “why do you believe he wanted to destroy his own Jace?”.

His response would likely have been, since he said as much in our conversation, “It doesn't matter if he wanted to destroy his own Jace or not. That's what he said.” To him, that's the gold standard.

And, I honestly believe that if he had made the verbal mistake about his own spell and permanent, his response would have been “Yep, I said it wrong, you got me” as he sighed and put his own permanent into his graveyard. I know that sounds crazy, but he really did seem that invested in a world view where that's the logical conclusion given what it means to play tight and competitively. We were operating in two different paradigms. And, in his paradigm, there's a lot of sloppy judge calls that don't meet his standards!

Originally posted by John Trout:

And, in his paradigm, there's a lot of sloppy judge calls that don't meet his standards!

Some people are just destined to go through life disappointed.

Thank you John for sharing this situation with us. It seems like you did well while facing with a difficult player, and did even better by going to us for additional support.

Originally posted by John Trout:

The root of the problem was a genuine mismatch between his understanding of what “Competitive” indicates, in terms of player and judge expectations, vs. the reality of it.

One of the additional options you can work with is to that official documents states that "These events hold players to a higher standard of behavior and technically-correct play than Competitive events.", from which we can infer that, for this to be true, Competitive events can only be more relaxed on standard of behaviour and technically-correct play.

And if he can accept that, then the next step is to explain to him that the standard of technically-correct play he is trying to enforce is outside of the scope of Competitive events (and most likely of Professional events too, and what just happened is not technically-correct anyway , but these are different topics).

- Emilien

John, I think your insights into Norin's mentality here - including what elements would have lead to a satisfactory resolution for them - are great. It's definitely helpful to keep in mind, should any of us encounter a player with a similar perspective to Norin.