Welcome to Personal Tutor, where we discuss how to educate players without coaching them. Our goal is build from a personal understanding of a rules interaction to an informative answer you could actually give to a player.

For the official launch of Personal Tutor, we have a topic suggested by Toby Hazes. Please remember, there are no wrong answers here. This is an intentionally challenging scenario. No tournament will be harmed by coaching in this forum, and no player will have a bad day because he misunderstood your ruling. So be bold, and give it your best shot!

The Scenario: Antivenin and Nuerotoxin are playing in a Modern Grand Prix. Neurotoxin calls you over to the table. “So, judge, my opponent is attacking with Melira, right? Let's say I active my Inkmoth Nexus and block with it. No removal or tricks or whatever. I know it can't give her any -1/-1 counters, but will it still do damage?”

“Correct” answer #1: Yes.
“Correct” answer #2: No.

L1s and Judge Candidates, feel free to give your answers immediately. L2s, please wait a day to add your input. L3+, please wait two days.

Melira, Sylvok Outcast 1G
Legendary Creature — Human Scout (2/2)
You can't get poison counters.
Creatures you control can't have -1/-1 counters placed on them.
Creatures your opponents control lose infect.

Inkmoth Nexus
Land
Tap: Add 1 to your mana pool.
1: Inkmoth Nexus becomes a 1/1 Blinkmoth artifact creature with flying and infect until end of turn. It's still a land. (It deals damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters and to players in the form of poison counters.)

I will go with “Yes” :-)

“Well, Neurotoxin, you are correct that Melira will not receive -1/-1 if it's blocked by Inkmoth Nexus. However, the Inkmoth will still deal combat damage to Melira even though Inkmoth has infect. Melira's 2nd static ability only prevents herself and creatures on her team from receiving -1/-1 counters. It doesn't actually prevent damage dealt by creatures with infect. Therefore Inkmoth will inflict damage to Melira during the combat damage step; but that damage won't actually *harm* Melira. Do you have any questions or is this ok for now?”

For a question like this (which I've also heard while tutoring several non-Magic related subjects) I would start by responding “I think I know what you're really asking, but could you restate your question more specifically so I can be sure my hunch is right?” The content of Neurotoxin's reply will affect what amount of the following I would respond in turn with: “Yes, even though no -1/-1 counters are placed damage is technically dealt. {full detail follows} But because sources with Infect naturally don't leave marked damage either, nothing really happens.”

Edited Michael Shiver (Oct. 3, 2013 04:55:43 PM)

It deals combat damage, tho it has no effect. The Bggest problem here is that as a judge you give play advice if you say the whole answer. So you should just stick to “Yes, it deals combat damage.”

I worry about the lack of clarity “Doing damage can mean slightly different things, and I want to make sure I'm answering the rules question you're actually asking. Can you clarify that a little more?”

“Yes.”

Take a step back, then wait for the feel bad moment and clarify to him what just happened when he asks. If you ask a judge a question and they don't step away from the table, ask more questions.

I really don't like answering in such a way I'm actually telling him what to do. I would like to stick as abstract as possible (being the “possible limit” the understanding of the players involved). So I think I would say something like:

“Well, infect is a way of doing damage, it just replaces the consequence of the damage done. Instead of marking damage on a creature, you put that many -1-1 counters on that creature. If you replace the effect of putting those counters, the creature is still considered to do damage, but doesn't actually mark the damage as a normal creature would do. Did you understand?”

I think I wouldn't explain the issue of losing/gaining infect until they asked. If Neurotoxin thought it had lost infect, he wouldn't had asked they way he did.

Greetings

Edited Joaquín Ossandón (Oct. 4, 2013 02:14:42 AM)

I believe it is okay to say something like: “Yes, the Inkmoth Nexus will deal damage for any effect that cares whether it has dealt damage, but that damage won't result in damage being marked on the creature.”

I don't really see a problem answering this way, since I don't feel like I'm giving him play advice, because his question can only mean two things: either he knows that the nexus will have infect due to timestamps, and asks because of effects like lifelink, or he wants to know if the nexus will have infect. In both cases I told him the answer to his question, without explicit telling him that the nexus still has infect, since he didn't ask that.

Towards avoiding the issues we had in the zeroth Personal Tutor, let's hash out the “why” first:

First of all, if Neurotoxin animates Inkmoth Nexus, it WILL have infect. This follows from timestamps in layer 6: Melira will remove Infect abilities from all creatures first, and then Inkmoth's ability gives it infect, circumventing the loss, if you will.

Next, Inkmoth WILL “deal damage”, but it won't have any effect. This is due to the technicalities of how damage works, which are detailed in 119.4. A quick overview:
1) Damage is “dealt”, with any prevention or replacement effects directly appended to that “dealing of damage” taken into account. Melira doesn't count here, since she doesn't modify damage: she modifies counters being placed.
2) The results of the damage are processed. In this case, the results (if Inkmoth blocks Melira) will be: “2 points of damage are marked on Inkmoth by Melira” and “One -1/-1 counter is placed on Melira by Inkmoth”.
3) The results are applied, modified by whichever replacement effects may apply. THIS is where Melira comes in: since she cannot have counters placed on her, the “One -1/-1 counter is placed on Melira by Inkmoth” result “fizzles”, and 2 damage is marked on Inkmoth.



So, with that out of the way, we still have to determine what to tell Neurotoxin here. Since the biggest thing we're avoiding is guiding his play based on our answer, staying vague until the actual scenario comes up is probably for the best. I'm not convinced this is the best, but perhaps just dodging the question is the best approach here? “It's complicated. I'm happy to answer your question, but I can't give you any information that will affect your decisions in the game. If the scenario does actually come up, I'm glad to walk you through the interactions, however.”

100% agree with Aric, although I would define the best strategy as making sure the player is asking a very concrete question with our answer falling under what we can and can't tell players.

The “technical” answer we can give them is “Yes, the Inkmoth deals damage”. That's obviously not the answer they are looking for, but the by the book answer we would give.

Here is the question we would LOVE for the player to ask:
“Does my Inkmoth Nexus have infect when I animate it?”

I'm answering Yes.

I think I would just answer “Yes” here and then watch the game. I don't feel that I'm doing the player any disservice in this particular situation by doing so, and I don't want to attempt to interpret the player's thoughts for them.

If there's a followup question, or if the player tries to make some assumption based on my affirmative, then I'll happily explain the issue further; I don't think it's a feelbad or “gotcha” in this case.

(Mainly, I'm not sure what the player is hoping to achieve with his line of questioning just from the information presented; this doesn't have the same sort of “loaded question” feel as something like using Spellskite's ability on an effect that won't be able to target Spellskite.)

Originally posted by Nathaniel Lawrence:

I think I would just answer “Yes” here and then watch the game. I don't feel that I'm doing the player any disservice in this particular situation by doing so, and I don't want to attempt to interpret the player's thoughts for them.

Why do you feel this isn't a disservice? I can understand not wanting to assume you can interpret the player's intentions, but the possibility that the player meant “marks damage” rather than “assigns damage” is still very much there. If you give the advice “Yes.”, and nothing further, it's very much possible (and I'd argue likely) that the player will then assume that their block on Melira will be a good course of action, meaning your answer guided their decision.

In this case the danger to coach seems fairly small, especially since the player basically stated all possible outcomes right there in the question. Personally I don't have a problem answering “Yes it will deal damage, but no damage will be marked on Melira.” (And clarify if the player doesn't understand.)

The question “will it deal damage” is ambiguous, even if it's technically not. But we cannot expect players to ask all their question in a technically correct way. And our task as judges is to help players, not being a judge robot that interprets any question in a very strict technical manner. If the danger of coaching is very low, like in this case, I will opt for the helpful answer.

One thing about the feature in general: Please always explain the rules problem in the original post. I overlooked the timestamping for quite a while and wondered what the problem was in this case.