Hey all! I have a situation similar to a situation from GP Montreal that I saw. I wonder what the opinion is regarding if it's OA or not.

Judge is called over by a player. The situation is that the player controls a Spell Queller. The player wants to know how she can use Spell Queller and a blink spell to produce the “O-ring” trick, whereby the spell is exiled forever.

Obviously, if the judge tells the player how to do it, that's OA. However, the savvy judge might notice that it is actually not possible to achieve this, if the Spell Queller is already in play. Is it OA for the judge to tell the player that the play she is trying to make is not possible?

Edited Lyle Waldman (Aug. 16, 2016 10:34:09 PM)

Hi Lyle,

I might be tired and missing something but isn't it quite common that we
encounter questions where the player's strategic plan won't work but we
can't just answer it because it is phrased the incorrect way and by
answering, we're giving strategic advice?

What makes this situation different? You're not specific as to what the
player said. If they're phrasing a question in such a way that we can
answer it, it shouldn't be OA either way. If they are asking in a way that
you deem would be OA, why wouldn't saying they can't be OA?

I feel clarification here might help at least me understand your question
better :)

Den 17 aug 2016 05:33 skrev “Lyle Waldman” <
forum-29377-e7e0@apps.magicjudges.org>:

Hey all! I have a situation from GP Montreal that I saw, and at the time I
thought nothing of it, but the more I think about it the more I wonder if
it might have been OA.

Judge is called over by a player. The situation is that the player controls
a Spell Queller. The player wants to know how she can use Spell Queller and
a blink spell to produce the “O-ring” trick, whereby the spell is exiled
forever.

Obviously, if the judge tells the player how to do it, that's OA. However,
the savvy judge might notice that it is actually not possible to achieve
this, if the Spell Queller is already in play. Is it OA for the judge to
tell the player that the play she is trying to make is not possible?

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If the situation is something like “Hi, judge, how can I do the ”Oblivion Ring-trick“ with this blink spell and my Spell Queller?” I would rather answer something like “I can't help you with strategical advice, what part of the rules are you wondering about?” or even “what specific line of play are you wanting to do and what do you think will happen?”

If we try to “guess” what the player actually means with an unclear question like this by just saying “it doesn't work”, it might be OA, but even worse, the player might easily misunderstand what question we're actually answering and end up feeling tricked. Maybe not in this exact situation, but it's still safer and better customer service to give the player a chance to rephrase the question in a way we can actually answer, they would learn more from it as well.

I apologize. The question would be phrased as such:

“Judge, I know that there was an interaction with Oblivion Ring and similar cards such that I could use a blink spell somehow and get the target removed forever. I want to do the same thing with my Spell Queller. How do I do it?”

or something like that.

I don't think it's OA to say “What you're describing isn't possible in these circumstances. If you'd like to talk about the intricacies of Spell Queller after your match, come find me.”

No reason to waste live match time trying to coach the player through every bit of the interactions and why it doesn't do what they want given their board state/what conditions would need to be met in order for it to work “correctly”.

I will disagree and say I feel this falls within OA. I'll refer to Marit's
post as her example and what Lyle stated isn't that far apart.

I like Marit's approach here and I use it myself. Customer service is super
important and we want to make the player feel that we want to help.
Coaching is not okay though and the balance there is something I've always
found hard.

My take:

We want to help players fill the gaps in their rules- and policy knowledge
and if they ask us questions on rules and policy, we answer. However, we
also set up knowledge of rules and policy as a skill that differentiates
between players.

So in order to not make these contradict each other, we have to have a
certain distinction between the two. If a player asks a rules question and
that doesn't bridge the gap between their current rules knowledge and that
necessary to make their desired play, then that is them showing
insufficient understanding of the rules and it will likely reward their
opponent. If we just teach them all they need to know without them
soliciting that information, we are giving them an advantage we are not
offering their opponent.

At least, this is my understanding of this kind of OA :).

By “skipping” the interaction with the player we're also making assumptions
about what that player needs (and making assumptions is the cause of most
of my less impressive judge calls :p).

Den 17 aug 2016 4:57 em skrev “Nathaniel Lawrence” <
forum-29377-e7e0@apps.magicjudges.org>:

I don't think it's OA to say “What you're describing isn't possible in
these circumstances. If you'd like to talk about the intricacies of Spell
Queller after your match, come find me.”

No reason to waste live match time trying to coach the player through every
bit of the interactions and why it doesn't do what they want given their
board state/what conditions would need to be met in order for it to work
“correctly”.



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Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

“Judge, I know that there was an interaction with Oblivion Ring and similar cards such that I could use a blink spell somehow and get the target removed forever. I want to do the same thing with my Spell Queller. How do I do it?”

Whenever we encounter “how do I do it?” our answer almost always should be “I cannot give play advice; do you have a specific rules question?” or similar, even and especially when the stated goal isn't actually impossible.

In this case, telling a player “this isn't possible” without being specifically asked as such may not be OA per se, because what you are helping them avoid is not a strategic error, but rather an actual GPE; therefore, answering as such certainly seems to go against our philosophy of not intervening until a Game Play Error is actually made.

Edited Yonatan Kamensky (Aug. 18, 2016 07:49:37 PM)

There's a pretty big difference between intervening and being asked to engage; we shouldn't play whack-a-mole with players, waiting for them to ask exactly the right question(s) or else commit an infraction. If a player proposes something to me that isn't legal within the bounds of game rules, I'm absolutely going to tell them that's the case - the specifics of why, if not addressed by the player's original question(s), may be an altogether different matter.

Consider also the cases where you see something that might be illegal - do you not step in there either until you know rules were broken, or do you ask clarifying questions?

Originally posted by Nathaniel Lawrence:

we shouldn't play whack-a-mole with players, waiting for them to ask exactly the right question(s) or else commit an infraction.

How do you draw the line between answering a question that wasn't exactly, specifically asked and helping the player? I can't see a way that answering any question other than exactly what was asked wouldn't open the doors to outside assistance.

Originally posted by Nathaniel Lawrence:

If a player proposes something to me that isn't legal within the bounds of game rules, I'm absolutely going to tell them that's the case

I agree with this part. If a player asks me “I want to Doom Blade my opponent's Dark Confidant, and then … ?” I think we have a duty to stop them before they get too far and explain why they can't doom blade the Bob, not answer the exact question and then play gotcha as soon as they start down the path they outlined.

However, these strike me as significantly different scenarios – I don't feel we're committing OA if we tell a player “you can't legally do X.”