Competive REL.

Andy puts Chalice on 1 a few turns later Otto says, “Tap 2 lands for blue, blue; cast opt.” Pauses and says, “Is it good?” Sure, then Otto says, Okay, float a blue mana, scry then draw.

Otto is trying to have Andy miss his Chalice trigger. Has Otto committed an infraction or has he just Out-of-Order Sequenced by mentioning the floating mana after confirming resolution? I need an “O” on this one and I hope policy is okay in this forum, it wasn't 100% clear if it was disallowed and was rules only.

This forum does not cover policy, I'm afraid, just rules. I'll move this along to the Competitive REL forum for you and ping the folks responsible for policy issues.

I don't think you're going to get an “O” answer on this, please check out https://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2013/03/05/no/ for this.
I'm going to unlock this as well because I think it's an interesting situation.

If the player were playing more formally he'd cast the Opt and mention the floating mana, then ask if the Opt resolves. I'm not really sure what you are getting at though so if you can clarify why you think this is an infraction.

Asking if the spell resolves before mentioning the floating mana is not exactly correct but a lot of players forget to announce floating mana, it's not the most known part of the rules, and most of the time it doesn't impact anything. The fact they've mentioned it at all before actually taking the actions of resolving the spell is relatively unusual.

Thank you both Mark and Callum. Also, thank you Callum for moving my post to the “right place”.

Mark, regarding my “o” That was merely a cultural fetish that I was copying for cultural membership. AND, that Toby E. article is great. TY

Give me a little time and I'll resurrect this topic and give more context.

In short, I think the possible issues here are either…

1) No issue/infraction.
2) GRV not following the game rule,
3) OoOS so it's all fine (ended up in a legal state), or
4) Cheating.

I will say more later.

This is a borderline case, but personally, I would issue USC-Cheating.
My reasoning being that tapping two mana implies to the opponent that the spell you're casting has CMC 2, when in reality opt has CMC 1, which amounts to misrepresentation of Oracle text.

If this is cheating, it's not because Otto tapped two lands when the card costs U. You're allowed to tap whatever lands you want when you have priority. There is absolutely no rule that says you must “represent” the costs of your spells accurately through your choices of which mana abilities to activate. (There is a tiny but fascinating quibble here about activating more mana abilities than you need in the 508.1j/509.1f windows for paying for combat restrictions. But that's not what happened here.)

If this is cheating, it's because Otto didn't announce the blue mana left in his mana pool when passing priority, as required by 106.4a. As Mark Brown notes, though, nobody ever does this, or at least not nearly as scrupulously as the rules require, so it's kinda tricky.

That said, I think it's unambiguously not a candidate for out of order sequencing. MTR 4.3 tells us “it is acceptable for players to engage in a block of actions that, while technically in an incorrect order, arrive at a legal and clearly understood game state once they are complete.” This is not what's happening. Otto is skipping a contextually rather important action, then waiting for a response from his opponent, and then going back and doing it later. The same MTR section goes on to address this case specifically: “Nor may players use out-of-order sequencing to try to retroactively take an action they missed at the appropriate time.”

Given this, I think we are in cheating territory. Otto is clearly breaking a rule on purpose to get an advantage. Just because we normally don't enforce that rule very strictly (or at all) doesn't mean that intentionally breaking it to gain advantage is ok. If you investigate and somehow reach the conclusion that Otto had totally forgotten about the Chalice and just likes tapping his lands in a weird order, then I guess we're at “technically GRV, but probably don't issue it, because this rule just isn't broadly enforced.”

As a side note, I think it sucks that we have this rule but it isn't enforced. When you're in that situation, it's usually best to either start enforcing it, or remove the rule. Leaving things in a limbo state like this can only lead to inconsistency and thus to players feeling bad.

Originally posted by Christopher Trent:

This is a borderline case, but personally, I would issue USC-Cheating. My reasoning being that tapping two mana implies to the opponent that the spell you're casting has CMC 2, when in reality opt has CMC 1, which amounts to misrepresentation of Oracle text.

As with many discussion on this forum, it's easy to call something cheating here, compared to at an actual tournament.
Cheating requires 3 things to happen:
1 A player makes an infraction
2 The player knows his line of play is not allowed
3 There is an advantage gained

If the headjudge is convinced of all these 3 parts, it should be a DQ for cheating.

3 is a very clear here, the advantage is ‘let the opponent miss the trigger’. 1 is already a lot harder. Up until the moment the player says “ Okay, float a blue mana”, most people will let the ‘not announcing floating mana’ slide because it is something everyone always skips. Especially if someone specifically announced the 2 blue mana in pool only seconds before. Would you give an infraction, if the Chalice player called you over immediately after Otto says: ‘Is it good?’, would you award him a GRV - Not announcing floating mana?
2 is also not a given. The judge investigates, and asks Otto (away from the table) “What were you trying to accomplish?”. His answer: “I messed up. I wanted to create some smoke and mirror around the Chalice trigger, by tapping 2 lands. However, when I was busy, I totally forgot to announce I have floating mana on announcement, so I put it in there on resolution.”. Or they say: “Yes, I played it by the book, I announced my floating mana as required on resolution of the Opt”.

Would I DQ the player? Maybe. When presented with scenarios like this from players, I always tell them, that not all judges will always make the correct assessment about whether this is cheating or not, and while they may get a scenario that stays on the good side of the line, the judge investigating might thenk they were on the wrong side of the line. So definiently advice players not to do this, but I'll reserve my judgement until after I talked with both players.

Just to clarify for others:

A player does not need to be committing an infraction as outlined by the IPG, they just need to be breaking a rule. For example, there is no penalty for incorrectly reporting a match result accidentally but doing so intentionally to “win” a match instead of losing it would definitely be cheating.

I have something that's maybe related and perhaps can contribute to the discussion.

Some time ago, before I became a judge, I was a much better player. I played when Mana Leak was legal in Standard, and I played an X spell. I tapped all my mana and clearly announced what X was. If my opponent could count, he would be able to see that I had 3 mana floating. He played Mana Leak and I informed him that I pay for it with the 3 mana floating.

Would you say that this is also cheating, or just playing smart?

Whilst this would depend on the outcome of the investigation, to me the summary is that the player has committed a violation (either forgetting to announce floating mana or overpaying for a spell), knowing that doing so is wrong, and intending to gain an advantage (by his opponent not grokking that the Chalice triggered). That would result in the player becoming DQd for USC – Cheating.

As ever, the investigation will decide what happens.

Originally posted by Lars Harald Nordli:

I have something that's maybe related and perhaps can contribute to the discussion.

Some time ago, before I became a judge, I was a much better player. I played when Mana Leak was legal in Standard, and I played an X spell. I tapped all my mana and clearly announced what X was. If my opponent could count, he would be able to see that I had 3 mana floating. He played Mana Leak and I informed him that I pay for it with the 3 mana floating.

Would you say that this is also cheating, or just playing smart?

Maybe this happened years ago, and lots of things have changed since, but I think rules are written as they are exactly to prevent scenarios like this.

Here is an exhaustive article on the subject:

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rulestips/2013/01/tournament-tuesday-announcing-floating-mana/

(Also, are you implying that becoming a judge has the effect of worsening your play skill?)

Edited Francesco Scialpi (Nov. 2, 2017 09:06:37 AM)

Originally posted by Francesco Scialpi:

Maybe this happened years ago, and lots of things have changed since, but I think rules are written as they are exactly to prevent scenarios like this.

Here is an exhaustive article on the subject:

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rulestips/2013/01/tournament-tuesday-announcing-floating-mana/

Hmm, when I look at the article I see that it is very old (2013). When I search yawgatog.com and the MTR, I find nothing about floating mana, except this phrase in the MTR:

4.2 Tournament shortcuts
If a player casts a spell or activates an ability with X in its mana cost without specifying the value of
X, it is assumed to be for all mana currently available in his or her pool.

Have the rules changes? As I see it, nothing prevents you from tapping more lands as long as you specify what X is. Also, where are the rules about floating mana written?

Originally posted by Francesco Scialpi:

(Also, are you implying that becoming a judge has the effect of worsening your play skill?)

Yes. Too much judging, too little play time. ;)
Also being a father and husband I don't have the conscience to participate in other COMP REL events out of my city as a player.

Originally posted by Lars Harald Nordli:

Hmm, when I look at the article I see that it is very old (2013). When I search yawgatog.com and the MTR, I find nothing about floating mana, except this phrase in the MTR:

4.2 Tournament shortcuts
If a player casts a spell or activates an ability with X in its mana cost without specifying the value of
X, it is assumed to be for all mana currently available in his or her pool.

Have the rules changes? As I see it, nothing prevents you from tapping more lands as long as you specify what X is. Also, where are the rules about floating mana written?

It's still there, hiding in the Comp Rules. I searched for ‘mana pool’, as ‘floating’ doesn't appear in the CR at all. Here's the relevant rule:

106.4a. If a player passes priority (see rule 116) while there is mana in his or her mana pool, that player announces what mana is there. If any mana remains in a player's mana pool after he or she spends mana to pay a cost, that player announces what mana is still there.

Originally posted by Jason Riendeau:

It's still there, hiding in the Comp Rules. I searched for ‘mana pool’, as ‘floating’ doesn't appear in the CR at all. Here's the relevant rule:

106.4a. If a player passes priority (see rule 116) while there is mana in his or her mana pool, that player announces what mana is there. If any mana remains in a player's mana pool after he or she spends mana to pay a cost, that player announces what mana is still there.

Thanks! Thinking I was smart, when instead I was a cheater… :o

Originally posted by Christopher Trent:

This is a borderline case, but personally, I would issue USC-Cheating.
My reasoning being that tapping two mana implies to the opponent that the spell you're casting has CMC 2, when in reality opt has CMC 1, which amounts to misrepresentation of Oracle text.

This is where I have been “tending”. And this discussion is exactly what I hoped to hear.

Thank you.