The following is based on an actual call taken at a PPTQ:

You are the head judge of a PPTQ. A spectator has asked a match to pause and has called you over. You learn that the active player said “go to combat,” waited for confirmation from the NAP, and then tried to crew two Smuggler's Copters. After you have explained what the Combat shortcut means, and the reason why it's too late to make the Copters into creatures, the NAP says “actually, I'm fine with him out-of-order sequencing in and just crewing the vehicles. Can I let him just play the way he meant to?”

Can he?

(Incidentally: When first I took this call, I thought that NAP was just being a sporting player. But on further inspection of the game, I realized that NAP had Kozilek's Return in the yard and Elder Deep-fiend in hand. Having both Copters be creatures would result in NAP gaining a huge advantage. Does this affect how you rule?)

My answer below (spoiler!)
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I ruled that yes, he could agree to have the vehicles get crewed. Per the IPG, players can agree to fix minor rules issues in their game. Moreover, the philosophical grounding of this policy is to prevent the NAP from the AP's ambiguity; therefore, there's no real problem with allowing the NAP to let the other player play the way he intended, unclear statement notwithstanding. I believe this reasoning applies whether the NAP is being sporting or being a shark; his reason for allowing a deviation from the shortcut are irrelevant.

Edited Eli Meyer (Oct. 31, 2016 02:07:29 AM)

Agree with your ruling and your reasoning. I also think the “shortcut to combat” is unnecessarily implemented and improperly assumes that “nothing important happens in the Begin Combat Step anyway”.

The current rules make it a verbal minefield to complete an action like "Crew my Cultivator's Caravan with my Toolcraft Exemplar, in the begin combat step after the trigger has resolved." It is not realistic to expect all players to know how to properly communicate this action with the hoops that have been recently erected.

This wasn't a problem until we made it a problem.

Russell - no, they really don't make it a minefield.
You just say you want to do exactly that. Or even “beginning of combat, crew my caravan with my exemplar” is fine.

Eli - 100% agree with your choice. If both players are happy, and understand where they're at, we don't need to be involved!

Eli, I also agree with your reasoning and ruling.

So far no one has jumped in on your secondary question about does that answer change because of “Elder Deep-Fiend”. The answer is no; I wouldn't take either hidden, derived, or public information in mind when making my ruling. Seeing the “trick”, I might hang nearby until after the combat in case the AP has a beef with the outcome.

I further agree with Eli; if both players mutually agree to dispense with a default shortcut they are entitled to do so. The players' motivation for doing that does not have to be the same, or even disclosed.

Originally posted by Russell Deutsch:

The current rules make it a verbal minefield to complete an action like "Crew my Cultivator's Caravan with my Toolcraft Exemplar, in the begin combat step after the trigger has resolved." It is not realistic to expect all players to know how to properly communicate this action with the hoops that have been recently erected

Just to address this bit, actually “Combat” “Affirmative response” “Crew vehicle that couldn't be crewed before trigger with Exemplar” is a perfectly legal exchange and you don't have to be to wordy with the interaction.

The shortcuts exist to protect the NAP… If the NAP was agree, it´s fine for me. Crew n' die!!!

The current shortcutting of the word “Combat” or the phrase “Move to combat” is both non-intuitive and easy for the rules-wise player to cause a bad situation for the person who actually thinks the word “Combat” refers to the phase and not to a specific step within the “Combat” phase.

Example 1… rules wise active player exploits on non-active player by saying “Move to combat”. NAP agrees, then tries to tap a creature to keep it from attacking. Active player, knowing the current shortcut, calls judge because the shortcut takes it to AP having priority in declare attackers. This is worse for the NAP then not having the current shortcut because they either have to understand that Combat doesn't mean the phase of that name or they have to make their play in the main phase. Making the play in the main phase allows the AP to do far more things than doing it in the beginning of combat.

Example 2… rules wise non-active player exploits on active player by agreeing to the “Move to combat” knowing that the AP will want to crew thier vehicle but by agreeing to the non-intuitive shortcut that the AP doesn't know exists they keep the AP from crewing the vehicle.

Having a shortcut use the actual name of a phase to refer to something other than that phase is non-intuitive and rife for confusion and abuse. The only way that a shortcut could be more confusing is if the words “Main two?” or “Second Main” meant move to the discard step. This shortcut may make sense to judges for some strange reason but for players it is a very silly non-intuitive thing placed there for savvy players to abuse on newer players.

“Move to combat” should mean move to the combat phase… the very start of it, first step, not some arbitrarily determined point within that phase.

Originally posted by Mark Randol:

The current shortcutting of the word “Combat” or the phrase “Move to combat” is both non-intuitive and easy for the rules-wise player to cause a bad situation for the person who actually thinks the word “Combat” refers to the phase and not to a specific step within the “Combat” phase.

This is, at best, tangential to the topic at hand. This thread isn't the place to litigate this issue.

There are plenty of articles and forum threads discussing that aspect of the shortcut. I'll edit some into this post when I get back to my desk.

Originally posted by Mark Randol:

Example 1… rules wise active player exploits on non-active player by saying “Move to combat”. NAP agrees, then tries to tap a creature to keep it from attacking. Active player, knowing the current shortcut, calls judge because the shortcut takes it to AP having priority in declare attackers.

This in particular is a misconception. The shortcut takes us to the Beginning of Combat step, while NAP has priority.

Edited Dan Collins (Oct. 31, 2016 12:01:19 PM)

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

Mark Randol
Example 1… rules wise active player exploits on non-active player by saying “Move to combat”. NAP agrees, then tries to tap a creature to keep it from attacking. Active player, knowing the current shortcut, calls judge because the shortcut takes it to AP having priority in declare attackers.

This in particular is a misconception. The shortcut takes us to the Beginning of Combat step, while NAP has priority.

Except that the NAP agreed, perhaps said “Sure, its combat”. This agreement rather than tapping the creature after the AP said “Move to combat”, by the MTR “ offers to keep passing priority until an opponent has priority in the beginning of combat step”. So, the AP offered to keep passing priority, then the NAP agreed to keep passing priority. That means that both players have now passed priority on an empty stack in the beginning of combat step. When both players pass priority on the empty stack we're moving on to declare attackers. The only way that the NAP can actually get priority there is to specifically say “in beginning of combat I <insert action>” prior to agreeing to the shortcut. The only way that the AP can get priority in the beginning of combat is to ask in main 1, “do you pass priority?”. Even the phrasing of “beginning of combat”, though it is the name of the exact phase, is still assumed to be a shortcut.

I'm fine with the players agreeing to what step and/or phase they are in. The Shortcuts are a default way that Policy gives us to end common disagreements- and there is no disagreement here.

Both players agree that AP has priority at a point before Declare Attackers.

Had NP disagreed, that's where we have a disagreement, and we use the MTR to adjudicate the dispute. This creates consistency. Since there is no disagreement, play on.

-Ben

Originally posted by Mark Randol:

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

Originally posted by Mark Randol:

Example 1… rules wise active player exploits on non-active player by saying “Move to combat”. NAP agrees, then tries to tap a creature to keep it from attacking. Active player, knowing the current shortcut, calls judge because the shortcut takes it to AP having priority in declare attackers.

This in particular is a misconception. The shortcut takes us to the Beginning of Combat step, while NAP has priority.

Except that the NAP agreed, perhaps said “Sure, its combat”.

To me, it looks like nothing happened between “NAP agrees” and “tries to tap a creature”. Seems like a single action here, and not actually trying to pass priority back prior to trying to tap a creature. I think AP would have a very hard time getting a judge to rule that priority was passed back.

As for the original scenario/question, I would agree with the responses thus far. Personally, I'd look at it as a player-approved backup, rather than a mutually agreed on alternate shortcut, but the result is the same.

Edited to parse quote structure more clearly.

Edited David Poon (Oct. 31, 2016 06:05:20 PM)

Originally posted by Russell Deutsch:

Agree with your ruling and your reasoning. I also think the “shortcut to combat” is unnecessarily implemented and improperly assumes that “nothing important happens in the Begin Combat Step anyway”.

The current rules make it a verbal minefield to complete an action like "Crew my Cultivator's Caravan with my Toolcraft Exemplar, in the begin combat step after the trigger has resolved." It is not realistic to expect all players to know how to properly communicate this action with the hoops that have been recently erected.

This wasn't a problem until we made it a problem.

Let's also remember that the shortcut puts us at the first point where NAP would have priority during beginning of combat. If they pass priority at this point, the trigger from Toolcraft Exemplar will resolve and each player has the opportunity to have priority again before declare attackers.

Originally posted by Christopher Wendelboe:

Let's also remember that the shortcut puts us at the first point where NAP would have priority during beginning of combat. If they pass priority at this point, the trigger from Toolcraft Exemplar will resolve and each player has the opportunity to have priority again before declare attackers.

This part of the combat shortcut is so counterintuitive that even judges have to be reminded of it quite frequently. I think that a NAP who has a basic understanding of the combat shortcut would feel tricked by this interaction.

However, this is getting off-topic. The combat shortcut is currently being discussed in this topic: http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/30179/?page=6 . I think we should keep the discussion there. Lets keep the discussion here about NAP being allowed to agree to deviate from a shortcut or not and whether his intentions here make a difference.