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Competitive REL » Post: Manamorphose, draw before declaring mana

Manamorphose, draw before declaring mana

April 22, 2018 08:59:45 PM

Andrew Villarrubia
Judge (Level 3 (Judge Foundry))

USA - South Central

Manamorphose, draw before declaring mana

Originally posted by Mark Brown:

In that instance you are adding a card to a set that because of this mistake you are now going to be interacting with to determine a card to discard

In this instance, you are adding a card to a set that because of this mistake you are now going to be interacting with to determine a card to discard colors of mana to add.

Both cases boil down to “a player put a card into their hand when they shouldn't have, and then made decisions involving that card.” I don't see the difference.

Edited Andrew Villarrubia (April 22, 2018 10:12:06 PM)

April 22, 2018 09:47:59 PM

Mark Brown
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 2 (Oceanic Judge Association)), Scorekeeper

Australia and New Zealand

Manamorphose, draw before declaring mana

Originally posted by Andrew Villarrubia:

In this instance, you are adding a card to a set that because of this mistake you are now going to be interacting with to determine a card to discard colors of mana to add.

I think you are stretching the definition of interaction.

April 24, 2018 04:08:36 PM

Riki Hayashi
Judge (Uncertified), Scorekeeper, Tournament Organizer

USA - Midatlantic

Manamorphose, draw before declaring mana

Originally posted by Steven Zwanger:

If we're treating this as a GRV, that makes Predict, a card that actually sees some Legacy play, into “Draw 2 cards” once every few events (or more often if the player encounters a different set of judges each time), with no recourse for the opponent.

Also, if this discussion happens every few years, then presumably the last one happened before we had the tool of HCE. We didn't have such a fix available when Manamorphose or Predict were printed and had to make do with the options then in place; now that we have the concept of HCE, I think the situation ought to be revisited, since HCE is a better fit philosophically as well as being a valid match mechanically.

Are you just arguing that we should classify this (Manamorphose) as HCE for tracking purposes or are you arguing for the Perish the Thought fix on this hand?

April 25, 2018 12:59:49 PM

Eduardo Menezes
Judge (Uncertified)

Brazil

Manamorphose, draw before declaring mana

Hello.

From IPG 2.3 (HCE):
“Be careful not to apply this infraction in situations where a publicly-correctable error subsequently leads to an uncorrectable situation such as a Brainstorm cast using green mana. In these situations, the infraction is based on that root cause.
Look at the root cause. Just because we are now in a spot where information has been lost doesn’t mean we started out this way. Another example would be the case of casting Elvish Visionary for UU, and then the player draws a card when the enters the battlefield trigger resolves. Once that card is drawn, that information is lost, but the original problem was the casting of the spell incorrectly and visible to both players.”

The root cause here is an error resolving manamorphose properly, therefore this is not a HCE, right?

April 25, 2018 03:05:48 PM

Isaac King
Judge (Level 1 (Judge Foundry))

Barriere, British Columbia, Canada

Manamorphose, draw before declaring mana

Originally posted by Eduardo Menezes:

The root cause here is an error resolving Manamorphose [im]properly, therefore this is not a HCE, right?

No. If a player casts a Divination and draws 3 cards, that is an HCE. “Resolving a spell improperly” describes 90% of errors players will make in a game, but that doesn't make them all GRVs. What matters is how the spell was resolved improperly.

The question here is whether the error was “drawing a card when the player shouldn't have” (HCE) or “failing to add mana to their mana pool when they should have” (GRV). They're both valid ways to view the error, the discussion is about which fits better both mechanically and philosophically.

April 30, 2018 04:36:05 PM

Aaron O'Connor
Judge (Level 1 (Judge Academy)), Scorekeeper, Tournament Organizer

Canada - Eastern Provinces

Manamorphose, draw before declaring mana

I tend to agree with the philosophy of the HCE. My reasoning for this is as mentioned above. The player gets a tangible benefit from knowimg the card that should be on top of their deck. The “Thoughtseize” fix corrects the set of known cards to what it should be. GRV certainly benefits the AP in a tangible way

June 1, 2018 05:27:21 PM

Todd Bussey
Judge (Uncertified)

None

Manamorphose, draw before declaring mana

There is validity and merit to the concept of letting the opponent choose.
We do it for missed triggers.
It doesn't seem out of line here.

Current GRV rules let the player choose for Iona, Shield of Emeria if they forget to when she enters.
Theoretically, that could become a big exploit if the controller “forgets” because he's uncertain which colour to pick of his opponent.
This seems like a similar exploit.

Now, if it's a genuine error, that does seem rather unfortunate for them, but play more carefully seems a reasonable justification.

Additionally, we could add the “Mindslaver” fix to the vocab, hanging out alongside the “Thoughtseize” fix.

Edited Todd Bussey (June 1, 2018 05:32:56 PM)

June 2, 2018 06:33:03 PM

Andrew Keeler
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

USA - South Central

Manamorphose, draw before declaring mana

First thing: Since this thread is old, it's probably a better idea to start a new thread to discuss a potential “mindslaver fix.”

That said:
I strongly disagree with adding a “Mindslaver fix” to the IPG. I think that remedies are supposed to try and return the game to an un-damaged state as much as possible, not to punish a player for making an error.

A “Mindslaver fix” effectively does the opposite because it creates a significant incentive for players to try and create “gotcha” situations in order to take advantage of this powerful ability.

For example:
You come to take a judge call. AP has a Liliana of the Veil in play, and NAP has a Pithing Needle and a Geist of Saint Traft in play. AP has just cast Liliana of the Veil and attempted to activate her -2 ability. NAP claims that Pithing Needle has named Liliana of the Veil, while AP claims that nothing was named. AP also has a Raging Ravine in play that would be reasonable to name with Pithing Needle. Both players agree that there was a lot of other action by both players around the resolution of the Pithing Needle and that NAP trailed off after resolving “Pithing Needle naming …” as if to think about what to name. They disagree only about whether a card was ever actually named. AP claims that they only realized that they didn't hear anything named for Pithing Needle once NAP claimed that Liliana had been named, and thinks NAP may have been trying to cheat by waiting to see what they needed to name. NAP thinks that AP just wasn't paying close attention and may be trying to take advantage of the “Mindslaver fix” to get around the effect of the Pithing Needle. What do you do?

As I was writing this, I kept going back in my head to try and decide which of the players was really trying to cheat (I too have a certain weakness for “gotcha” scenarios), but I eventually realized that it doesn't really matter who I wanted to be the cheater, because this scenario is entirely reasonable if either player were intending to cheat, or even if neither player were trying to cheat. The mere fact that a “mindslaver fix” creates this significant incentive for AP to claim that NAP hasn't named anything certainly makes the situation messier and more likely to be heated than current policy, and it isn't any better than current policy at removing “exploits” that unscrupulous players might try to get away with.

As a last note, if you are concerned about a player running an “exploit” of a tournament policy like you describe, why in the world aren't you investigating to determine whether you think that has happened? If you are investigating and you believe that the player is running an “exploit,” you should be DQing them. If you don't think they are running an exploit, then there's little reason to try and “punish” them for their error. You shouldn't try to punish cheaters in a policy that's meant to deal with honest mistakes, that's not what it's there for.