Originally posted by Vincent Roscioli:

Lyle Waldman
If you have any examples (does not need to be Magic-related), please enlighten me

The Player Communication policy does not prohibit partial answers. For example, if I attack with a Tithe Drinker and you are contemplating blocking with a Grizzly Bears, and you ask “What is he?”, it would be common for me to say “It's a 2/1 and it has lifelink”, omitting the Extort ability because it isn't relevant to the combat. We can't force players to give the “whole truth” all the time, because it is too burdensome and could simply result in players refusing to communicate at all for fear of committing an infraction.

Sure, good point. Allow me to suggest an alternative scenario: I am attacking you with Phage, the Untouchable. You control a Grizzly Bears. You say “What is she?” and I reply “She's a 4/4”. I'm not misrepresenting anything, everything I've said is correct, but I've omitted that one itty-bitty detail that if Phage hits you, you lose the game; this is certainly a relevant detail. Do you still think this is “no penalty”?

@Scott: I'll try =D Let me know if I'm doing something wrong XD

Lyle, at Competitive REL, it's not a player's job to help his opponent make
correct tactical decisions.

We never give penalties based on implications or failure to follow common
conventions (unless those conventions are actual MTR shortcuts or have been
explicitly established during the course of a match.)

If you ever catch yourself thinking “but what he meant was…” or “that
usually implies…” that probably means you are overstepping the bounds of
communication policy.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

Do you still think this is “no penalty”?

Absolutely. Nothing in the Player Communication Policy indicates that answers about derived information must be complete, whether or not the piece of information is relevant to the situation at hand. (In fact, note the contrast of wording between the bullet point on derived information and the bullet point on free information–it is made explicit that questions about free information must be answered “completely”, while the same is not true for questions about derived information.)

Originally posted by Vincent Roscioli:

Absolutely. Nothing in the Player Communication Policy indicates that answers about derived information must be complete, whether or not the piece of information is relevant to the situation at hand. (In fact, note the contrast of wording between the bullet point on derived information and the bullet point on free information–it is made explicit that questions about free information must be answered “completely”, while the same is not true for questions about derived information.)

Are we supposed to make judgements based on what is implied in the MTR because in situation A it explicitly says something, and in situation B it does not explicitly say the opposite?

If this is the way the MTR is supposed to be read, I would like the Player Communication Policy to be more clear about this topic (partial answers re: derived information, specifically) when it is next updated.

I feel that at competitive level of play, magic is a test of skill. Although it is derived information, Nami did not lie about anything. No penalty.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device via Vodafone-Celcom Mobile.

Originally posted by Joshua Feingold:

Lyle, at Competitive REL, it's not a player's job to help his opponent make
correct tactical decisions.

We never give penalties based on implications or failure to follow common
conventions (unless those conventions are actual MTR shortcuts or have been
explicitly established during the course of a match.)

If you ever catch yourself thinking “but what he meant was…” or “that
usually implies…” that probably means you are overstepping the bounds of
communication policy.

Hm. How does this philosophy interact in this case with the philosophy of “Magic is not Gotcha”? It seems as though Annie is trying to create a “gotcha” moment with Nami here; by answering Nami's question in this way, Annie is trying to make Nami not block, at which point she can say “Oops, GOTCHA! You're dead!”, which I've learned many times is something we try to avoid when making calls.

Anyway, I think tha's all I have to say. In abiding by Scott's comment on getting myself a Slow Play warning (did the analogy work? Am I doing it right?), I'm going to step out and wait for an O now, which I'm really kind of excited for. Don't disappoint me!

EDIT: This is the second time in a week that this has happened: As a request for a forum usability update, can we get the forum to somehow only parse things in square brackets as tags if such a tag has been pre-defined or something? Just not being able to ever use the square-brackets character here is somewhat annoying.

Edited Lyle Waldman (July 13, 2013 04:17:39 AM)

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

Hm. How does this philosophy interact in this case with the philosophy of “Magic is not Gotcha”? It seems as though Annie is trying to create a “gotcha” moment with Nami here; by answering Nami's question in this way, Annie is trying to make Nami not block, at which point she can say “Oops, GOTCHA! You're dead!”, which I've learned many times is something we try to avoid when making calls.

Players' interactions with judges should not be a game of Gotcha. Players' interactions with each other can and should involve tricks, within the limits of game and tournament rules. Good players routinely try to bait their opponents into misplays, and there is nothing wrong with that.

In this case, Annie stayed within the letter and spirit of the rules and successfully tricked her opponent. There is no infraction.

>

>
> Sure, good point. Al low me to suggest an alternative scenario: I am
> attacking you with Phage, the Untouchable. You control a Grizzly Bears. You
> say “What is she?” and I reply “She's a 4/4”. I'm not misrepresenting
> anything, everything I've said is correct, but I've omitted that one
> itty-bitty detail that if Phage hits you, you lose the game; this is
> certainly a relevant detail. Do you still think this is “no penalty”?


Absolutely. The policy for derived information does not say ‘must say
all true things’ it says ‘all thing you say must be true’. Lying by
omission is allowed.

This is a precedent that you may or may not agree with as a judge but
which I have been assured (there's a thread in the comp REL forum
where I ask about this) is by far the most fair and easiest to
adjudicate policy they have come up with. If you can come up with a
way to write policy that doesn't allow this answer for Phage but is
otherwise easy to adjudicate, I'm sure that the Powers That Be would
love to hear about it; every time a situation like this comes up a
large fraction of judges that haven't encountered the situation before
get unhappy about it, and a large fraction of the ones that have still
aren't happy about it but know what the answer is.

I think the big split we have is about the definition of ‘misrepresent’. It seems most people are arguing that an omission isn't a misrepresentation in most cases.

If Nami's question had been “What are the card types of the cards in your graveyard?” and Annie had answered “enchantment and land” that answer would technically be true. If, however, Nami has asked “What are ALL the card types of the cards in your graveyard?” Annie's answer would be a lie by omitting ‘tribal’. Would anyone be OK with Annie answer had Nami's question used the word ‘all’?

In the spirit of not playing gotcha, I'm not willing to differentiate the two questions above. Nami's actual question was considerably more vague that either of my examples but I still have a hard time accepting Annie's answer when she worded it so as to imply that it was a complete list.

the burden is 100% on Nami to ask the right question. Annie can never, ever
be at fault for saying something truthful, so if Nami's question allows
Annie to answer truthfully and still trick Nami, then it was the wrong
question.

This is a good way to look at it, because the communication policy constrains a player only in what information that player gives away, never in the way the receiving player interprets it.

As a silly but instructive example consider this: Alice asks, “what is the p/t of that goyf?” Nadine replies truthfully, “I have 3 cards in hand.” You investigate and find that they speak the same language and that they fully agree on the question, the answer, and the interpretations of everything. In this case, Nadine has NOT committed any infraction, because she made a truthful statement, though it was irrelevant.

True statements can be irrelevant or incomplete, but if they are true in the case of derived information, then the speaking player has satisfied our requirements. Of course, with free information, such as life totals or card names in public zones, the statements must be true and complete. Irrelevant true statements about free information are acceptable, as long as they are followed by relevant true statements, because the communication policy requires a player to give answers to free information, so irrelevancies delay the requirement. With derived information, irrelevancies need not be followed by anything, because nothing is required. Of course, if a player uses wordplay, language, tongues, body language, etc., to create ambiguity, he'll probably get a talking to by the judge not to do that again.

Anyway, the top sentence is the important one, I feel, in interpreting the intent of the communication policy, because we can never be certain how others will understand our communications, but we can always be sure about how we GIVE our communications.

Eric Shukan
Woburn, MA USA


On 07/13/13, Sam Sherman wrote:

the burden is 100% on Nami to ask the right question. Annie can never, ever
be at fault for saying something truthful, so if Nami's question allows
Annie to answer truthfully and still trick Nami, then it was the wrong
question.

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Does anyone feel the scenario changes at all if instead of a tribal enchantment (Bitterblossom) it's replaced with a non-Tribal enchantment (Crusade) and “the land” is replaced with a Creature Land (Dryad Arbor)? What about an Artifact Creature (Memnite)?

While I don't think the ruling is necessarily different, Tribal feels like a throw-away, second tier card type that people don't take seriously the majority of the time while there would be an emotional expectation that someone would more accurately represent non-Tribal card types.

It would not change. Yes, tribal is less ffrequent than others, but from the point of view of the documents, that does not change anything.

Originally posted by Brian Denmark:

If Nami's question had been “What are the card types of the cards in your graveyard?” and Annie had answered “enchantment and land” that answer would technically be true. If, however, Nami has asked “What are ALL the card types of the cards in your graveyard?” Annie's answer would be a lie by omitting ‘tribal’. Would anyone be OK with Annie answer had Nami's question used the word ‘all’?

In the spirit of not playing gotcha, I'm not willing to differentiate the two questions above. Nami's actual question was considerably more vague that either of my examples but I still have a hard time accepting Annie's answer when she worded it so as to imply that it was a complete list.

Since we're dividing questions into categories of “has to answer completely” and “doesn't have to answer completely”, there will always be two similar questions that fall in different buckets–we have to draw the line somewhere.

Edited Lars Paulson (July 14, 2013 12:16:39 PM)

Originally posted by Eric Shukan:

This is a good way to look at it, because the communication policy constrains a player only in what information that player gives away, never in the way the receiving player interprets it.

As a silly but instructive example consider this: Alice asks, “what is the p/t of that goyf?” Nadine replies truthfully, “I have 3 cards in hand.” You investigate and find that they speak the same language and that they fully agree on the question, the answer, and the interpretations of everything. In this case, Nadine has NOT committed any infraction, because she made a truthful statement, though it was irrelevant.

True statements can be irrelevant or incomplete, but if they are true in the case of derived information, then the speaking player has satisfied our requirements. Of course, with free information, such as life totals or card names in public zones, the statements must be true and complete. Irrelevant true statements about free information are acceptable, as long as they are followed by relevant true statements, because the communication policy requires a player to give answers to free information, so irrelevancies delay the requirement. With derived information, irrelevancies need not be followed by anything, because nothing is required. Of course, if a player uses wordplay, language, tongues, body language, etc., to create ambiguity, he'll probably get a talking to by the judge not to do that again.

Anyway, the top sentence is the important one, I feel, in interpreting the intent of the communication policy, because we can never be certain how others will understand our communications, but we can always be sure about how we GIVE our communications.

Eric Shukan
Woburn, MA USA


On 07/13/13, Sam Sherman wrote:

the burden is 100% on Nami to ask the right question. Annie can never, ever
be at fault for saying something truthful, so if Nami's question allows
Annie to answer truthfully and still trick Nami, then it was the wrong
question.

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Is this an O?

Followup question, if you don't mind: Going back to a queston I asked a page or so ago, how would you adjudicate the following situation?

Annie controls Maro (Can anyone actually control MaRo?) and is attacking Nami, who is at 3 life. Nami says to Annie “How many cards are in your hand?” Annie says “I have these 2 cards in my hand” (note Annie does NOT say “I have 2 cards in my hand”, she specifically says “I have THESE 2 cards in my hand”, which can be interpreted as “…and there may be others”) and shows Nami the back faces of 2 Magic cards, which are indeed in her hand. Nami says “OK, no blocks”. Annie then shifts one of the cards in her hand slightly sideways to reveal a third card and says to Nami “You're dead”.

This situation, to me, seems analogous, and I'm pretty sure this would result in some penalty. How would you adjudicate this, and what is the difference between the 2 situations, if any, which would result in one being a penalty and the other one not (if such is the situation)? If you don't want to respond here, please respond via PM.

Edited Lyle Waldman (July 14, 2013 03:27:42 PM)