A tweet from the Magic Judges account at GP Portland said that Bomat Courier’s attack trigger is considered detrimental. The reason being that it depletes a player’s resources (cards in library), which makes it an exception to the general rule of thumb “would you play it if it didn’t have the trigger yes/no?”.

This seems like a stretch to me. I understand the concept of losing cards from your library can be a bad thing, but bomat courier looks more like “draw a card” than “mill a card”. Both will reduce the cards in your library, but one is far better than the other.

Should we actually be penalising players with Warnings for missing the trigger, and making them resolve it?

The opponent still gets the choice of if they wish the trigger to go onto the stack or not.

Bomat Courier has three abilities:
- haste
- a triggered ability, that makes you exile cards
- an activated ability, that makes you recover cards.

If you look at the triggered ability by itself, it is detrimental (player loses cards from his or her library).
If you look at the whole card text, you realize player will be happy to resolve the triggered ability … but rules don't go so far, for a number of reasons.

Edited Francesco Scialpi (Nov. 20, 2017 10:21:18 PM)

here is a useful resource:

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/mtg/standard-detrimental/

I would love for self-mill triggers to not be counted as detrimental, but they are ^^;

There are 2 types of triggers that I'm aware of that don't fit nicely with the current rule of thumb:
- self-mill triggers like Bomat Courier and Sidisi, Brood Tyrant.
- triggers that the opponent will have because the card changes control: Akroan Horse.
Perhaps a better rule of thumb is “add this trigger and nothing else to a vanilla bear. Does it become better of worse?”

EDIT: forgot about Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and friends which does work with the rule of thumb and not like the exceptions above

Edited Toby Hazes (Nov. 20, 2017 10:19:16 PM)

Bomat Courier is one of those cards that gets played because of the detrimental trigger (and the other stuff that goes with it, obv). This discussion also came up with Nyx Weaver, among others.

Wizards Magic R&D team often provides guidance for our Policy team, on how they want games to flow, how mechanics should impact game play, etc. It's actually a wonderful collaboration! And, R&D was quite clear: losing resources like this is detrimental.

Also, as Francesco hinted at - policy says to look at the trigger in a vacuum, not in game context (except for universal triggers where detrimental/not depends on whose turn it is - e.g., Howling Mine).
“Hey, I'm losing a resource!” –> detrimental (in a vacuum).
“But I want to have that happen!” –> context suggests benefit, and here we are…

d:^D

Thanks everyone. I have learned something new today. Which I suppose is supposed to happen every day ;)

Cheers
Mark

A related question- Is Norin the Wary's trigger detrimental, and why? It similarly fails the “would the card be played without it?” test but passes the “makes the card worse in a vacuum” test. It's not depleting a resource though.

Norin the Wary trigger is detrimental.

Although it is played in very specific decks only for its constant ETB triggering, a 2/1 for R with no downsides is somehow nice and would also be played in quite a few decks :)

Edited Joaquín Pérez (Nov. 23, 2017 04:11:07 AM)

(A) yes, Norin the Wary has a detrimental trigger. Arguably, it is depleting the resource known as Creatures, as well as requiring you to pay it's cost again to put it back on the battlefield.

(B) my semi-regular reminder to people: PLEASE do not post non-official Answers when someone is clearly seeking an Official Answer. kThanxBye

d:^D

Whoops, misspoke - forgot that Norin just “flickers”, and doesn't stick around as an attacker; I was thinking it bounced. (RTFC, Scott!)

Maybe it's better to just point out that - like a few other examples - just because players can find creative ways to benefit from a detrimental trigger, doesn't change the fact that it's detrimental.

d:^D