Originally posted by Mark Brown:

The fact that a judge could notice and issue a warning and allow the player to pay the mana is essentially what the player should have been expecting - that their opponent did pay for the pact trigger and now has access to less mana until their next turn.

I kindly disagree. As a player, if my opponent does not pay for pact during his upkeep and proceeds to next phases, then I would expect that he loses the game, because that is what essentially all pact cards do - force you to lose if you refuse/unable/forget to pay. Previously, policy supported that and made pacts work as they were intended to work.

What is the most irritating for me in these changes (and also, last year changes with Path to Exile / Settle the Wreckage rules with asking opponent regarding his choice) is that they contradict with following lines in MTR:

A player should have an advantage due to better understanding of the options provided by the rules of the game, greater awareness of the interactions in the current game state, and superior tactical planning. Players are under no obligation to assist their opponents in playing the game.

Player should have advantage if his opponent messes up with his pact trigger, same as if he forgets to search for land after PtE. But now situation quite absurdly sounds like “Could you please not lose by paying for your pact even though we are far beyond your upkeep at this point?” Basically, judges force players to help their opponents to win, which sounds abnormal for me in any REL above Regular.

Originally posted by Bohdan Yarema:

Player should have advantage if his opponent messes up with his pact trigger, same as if he forgets to search for land after PtE.

A player is supposed to remind their opponent to get a basic when they use PTE on an opponent's creature. The IPG explicitly states that not reminding your opponent is a CPV warning.

Originally posted by Christian Gienger:

Originally posted by Bohdan Yarema:

Player should have advantage if his opponent messes up with his pact trigger, same as if he forgets to search for land after PtE.

A player is supposed to remind their opponent to get a basic when they use PTE on an opponent's creature. The IPG explicitly states that not reminding your opponent is a CPV warning.

I know that. I am saying that change that implemented this requirement goes against communication philosophy described in MTR, which I quoted.

A player should have an advantage due to better understanding of the options provided by the rules of the game, greater awareness of the interactions in the current game state, and superior tactical planning. Players are under no obligation to assist their opponents in playing the game.

I would argue that this does not imply that every single “awareness of interactions” should merit an advantage. There are lots of times where noticing something your opponent missed makes no difference at all (e.g. one player is dead regardless next turn). In general, the more aware a player is, the more advantage they have, but this cannot be applied rigorously to every interaction.

Also, there's a strong desire to avoid game losses due to simple things being forgotten. I really don't think Pacts were “intended” to cause game losses due to forgetting to pay.

Originally posted by David Poon:

Also, there's a strong desire to avoid game losses due to simple things being forgotten. I really don't think Pacts were “intended” to cause game losses due to forgetting to pay.

I agree with this. Pacts really feel designed so that you get a discount now, and pay the cost the later, and if you're really riding the danger line, hoping you're going to win right now.

It's not losing an aspect of knowing the rules or game state better by changing the policy (if you think so, it's very minute) - instead, it's removing the opportunity for players to angle shoot with distractions or walk the line of slow play in hopes their opponent forgets or even just takes actions in steps they usually would not. It's a better net experience overall.

Originally posted by Bohdan Yarema:

Player should have advantage if his opponent messes up with his pact trigger,

Bohdan, you do have that advantage; your advanced knowledge of the rules (which, by the way, is the Comprehensive Rules and Magic Tournament Rules) and your understanding of the Infraction Procedure Guide, allows you to sit on that trigger, in hopes it's missed until a point where the cost can no longer be paid.

Situations in which you can't sit on your opponents mistakes? Everything except triggers. If you pretend to ignore any other sort of infraction, in order to gain an advantage, you'd be Cheating - but your “better understanding of the options provided by the rules” means you won't make that mistake.

The fact that there's a chance your opponent's trigger will be put on the stack at a point that isn't ideal for you, does not invalidate the IPG.

As for the prior changes re: Path to Exile, consider that many players like to use foreign or full-art cards that don't make it obvious to your opponent what they do. A “better understanding of … the rules” does not extend to an encyclopedic knowledge of all cards. We really didn't want to carve out an exception like “you must tell your opponent what your illegible cards do; illegible is at the discretion of the judge and the opponent”. That's silly - but it would accomplish the overriding goal of that change, namely, protecting players who trust their opponents too much.

I pointed out that “the rules” includes the CR and the MTR; I implied (intentionally) that this phrase is not referring to the IPG. The MTR states that players are required to comply with the MTR - i.e., you have to read the MTR; it's required. The CR is optional, and I'm sure that an overwhelming majority of players have never read the CR, and only a very small percentage did so as thoroughly and frequently as judges usually do. Despite that, we recognize that superior understanding of the CR can provide an advantage when playing - and that we want that to be true.

A couple of sayings I like (but wouldn't accomplish much on a bumper sticker):
* Play the game, not the Judges
* Use the rules, don't abuse the rules

d:^D

We've kind of gone off track a bit. The original question was about how forgetting your pact trigger could have different outcomes based upon if a judge was watching/notices compared to when a judge doesn't notice.

What it has resulted in is complaining about the new policy change and how it changes how pact triggers have worked in the past, which is a fine discussion but has nothing to do with the original question and nothing to do with my response to the discussion, so I would rather my words not be used in relation to complaining about how this policy changes pacts.

With the current policy how missing your pact trigger has changed, and it now also adds another “strategic” option for a player that notices their opponent has missed their pact trigger and can wait until they no longer have visible means to pay and will lose the game.

If a judge notices this before that point and issues the warning and they now have the option to pay or not does mean that the outcome in this game will be different if the judge hadn't noticed.

My message to the players that point this out (to answer directly the original question) is that you cannot rely on your opponent missing a pact trigger and if you do you cannot rely on a judge not noticing. In the same way that you cannot assume that your opponent has missed their +1/+1 trigger when their creatures attacked.