From JAR

A player makes an in-game error not mentioned above
This will cover the bulk of player errors, and we will usually leave the game as it is. Fix anything that is currently illegal (e.g. an Aura enchanting an illegal permanent or a card in the wrong zone) and continue the game. If the error was caught soon after and rewinding is relatively easy, you may choose to undo all the actions back to the point that the illegal action happened. This can include returning random cards from the hand to the library to undo card draws (though don't shuffle the library if you do this!), and reversing various other actions (such as declaring attackers or blockers). Don't go crazy with this!

–> Do nothing when a player didn't look at a card. Afterall, the gamestate is still legal.


From IPG

The level of penalty an infraction carries is based on these factors:

• The potential for abuse (or risk of being exposed).
• Repeated offenses by the player within the tournament.
• The amount of disruption it causes (time and people affected) in discovering, investigating, and resolving the issue.

–> If the gamestate has progressed so far the potential for abuse is high, penalize the player. The amount of disruption it causes it minimal. Only if judges get "involved in the ways of a rewind or so, these points are covered. I wouldn't do anything if a player doesn't scry when he's supposed to.


Overall, I think if we do something about it, we mess around with the original game too much.

The only relevance I see is if a player notices his opponent doesn't scry when he should, knows it's not a trigger (Sea God's Revenge) and doesn't point it out. Is that Cheating - Fraud or not. I'd say no, because I as judge (so far..) simply let players ignore Scry if they chose to not look/move.

If not scrying is identified as infraction, we will have to think about rewinding and also more often treat the mentioned situation as Cheating, and that's the real problem for me. I don't want to rewind to something where a player left the game in a still legal state. I realize the references to the documents are not the best explanations, but that's the best way. Sometimes, problems are not solved by just the definitions of infractions.

Originally posted by Cj Shrader:

If the opponent noticed you didn't Scry but sat there because “Well in the
past they missed their Scry and the judge just didn't do anything,” we'd
have to start talking about USC - Cheating (Probably wouldn't go that far,
but that's not the point of this discussion).

Yet when the player misses their own scry, we do nothing?

This sounds like applying Missed Trigger philosophy without A) Having a
trigger and B) Giving the opponent the protections they get for Missed
Trigger.

A game rule was broken, and policy says what to do in that case. This is
not significant or exceptional, and I honestly just don't see a need for
any sort of exception for this case.

Loathe as I am to say it, I like this post and its reasoning. Strictly speaking, we do not have a trigger, nor do we have an optional action. When you Scry, you have to Scry. As with a fetchland and failing to find, you can choose not to look, and simply describe the outcome of the Scry rather than go through the motions, but you (both players) still have to acknowledge the Scry, because rules are rules.

That said, in an ideal world, I like Joshua's solution above, because it makes functional sense. Unfortunately sometimes the rules don't make functional sense, but rules are rules.

I'm pretty sure everyone here is on the same page:
1) It's a GRV to not resolve the spell fully, and the IPG explains what to do in those circumstances.
2) It feels really crappy that this is the case.

What's interesting is that this was a problem with Missed Triggers for a long while. The end result was not “Do what the IPG says” - instead it was “we're changing the rules on Missed Triggers”. i.e. the rules were changed because enough people felt they were less than perfect at handling the issue.

So it's worth discussing the topic as it gives feedback to those involved in maintaining and updating the IPG. It may lead to changes in the future.

Is not scrying actually a GRV? Seems analogous to casting Gitaxian Probe and not looking at your opponent's hand, since you really just wanted to draw the card. I'd feel pretty hard pressed to issue a GRV for something like that, even if there isn't a rule that explicitly states something like “players are not required to look at information made available to them”.

I agree, Mark. Discussion can only be a benefit, as long as it's done properly. It's kind of inevitable that these situations will come up where the penalty does not even come close to matching the severity of the infraction. The CR is a zillion pages long and covers mechanics that (God willing) we will never ever see again from Magic's 20 year history. The IPG and MTR are each merely dozens of pages trying to provide guidelines for Judges to work from.

As a quick side note: I see a lot of references in various places to Official rulings. Is there a list or database for these rulings? Basically, something like a Gatherer for Judges? I feel like such a thing would not only be extremely beneficial, but also necessary if consistency is the primary goal. Not every scenario is the same, obviously. Each one has its own little quirks and many times things depend on tiny little details discovered by interviewing players. But… For things like this, it'd be a valuable resource.

(this is where I expect to find that there is one and I'm the last to know)

Originally posted by Joshua Feingold:

We all know it is technically a GRV to play Snapcaster Mage as an Ambush Viper and “target nothing.” However, it is also the case that giving a Warning for this error is not useful or educational, and we shouldn't actually be awarding an infraction here. This is because there is no upside to “targeting nothing” and the course of play will not change as a result of this technicality.

I want to correct you on this one Joshua, this would be a missed trigger not a GRV. Because it's not detrimental it would simply be missed if the player didn't select a target, and no penalty would be applied.

I agree that I would not feel right about giving a GRV for a player not scrying, however under the current rules it would be the correct thing to do. The player forgot to take a required action, so going by the IPG it states that this is a GRV and is the infraction we should apply.

One of the reasons we give this infrations is to remain consistant. How is a player going to feel if at one tournament the judges ignore players that miss scrying, then another where they are penalizing for every missed scry? Or even worse if at the same touranment some judges give infractions and others don't.

I'm looking forward to what the L4+ judges decide, that way we all will know how to handle it in a consistant manner.

Edited Cris Plyler (Oct. 10, 2013 05:47:33 PM)

Chris, the Snapcaster situation is certainly not a Missed Trigger. The player clearly acknowledged the trigger at the appropriate time by stating the (illegal) choice to target nothing.

EDIT: Clarified “this” to “Snapcaster”

Edited Joshua Feingold (Oct. 10, 2013 06:03:54 PM)

Originally posted by Callum Milne:

My options according to policy are … or assume the player was playing suboptimally and instruct them to continue playing.

This is an option in policy?

Mark Mc Govern
What's interesting is that this was a problem with Missed Triggers for a long while. The end result was not “Do what the IPG says” - instead it was “we're changing the rules on Missed Triggers”. i.e. the rules were changed because enough people felt they were less than perfect at handling the issue.

This wasn't really the impetus for changing MT at all. Well, no more than changing anything.

People are trying to rationalize a lot here. Replace “Scry 1” with “Draw a card” and ask yourself if your answer changes. If so, why?

It's also worth noting that scry is not a new mechanic. It's been printed twice in the past and has run just fine under the current rule set on those occasions.

Edited Toby Elliott (Oct. 10, 2013 06:43:48 PM)

Originally posted by Cris Plyler:

I'm looking forward to what the L4+ judges decide, that way we all will know how to handle it in a consistant manner.

The IPG provided us with a window into their minds and allows us to handle things in a consistent manner. Let's use it.

Originally posted by Riki Hayashi:

The IPG provided us with a window into their minds and allows us to handle things in a consistent manner. Let's use it.

The problem is that people are trying to apply the IPG, but are coming up with differing answers anyway.

Toby Elliott
People are trying to rationalize a lot here. Replace “Scry 1” with “Draw a card” and ask yourself if your answer changes. If so, why?

Those situations are not comparable. One situation consists of actions that have no visible effect on the game state, the other does not.

Originally posted by Sebastian Rittau:

Those situations are not comparable. One situation consists of actions that have no visible effect on the game state, the other does not.

I think that Toby's point is that, essentially, we're differentiating on how to handle the situation for precisely that reason. Specifically, we're choosing to ignore one instruction, but not another, yet both are the same thing by the rules. An effect of a resolving spell.

The MIPG never tells us to differentiate because there's a “visible effect” on the game state or not. So, why is it that the situation is being approached that way?

Originally posted by Brian Schenck:

I think that Toby's point is that, essentially, we're differentiating on how to handle the situation for precisely that reason. Specifically, we're choosing to ignore one instruction, but not another, yet both are the same thing by the rules. An effect of a resolving spell.

The MIPG never tells us to differentiate because there's a “visible effect” on the game state or not. So, why is it that the situation is being approached that way?

Because situations that are don't have a visible effect on the game state are often not acknowledged at all. And why should they be? Do we really want to open this can of worms and start penalizing players who don't acknowledge those? To be honest, I have never seen this happening before, and I don't think we should start now.

Originally posted by Sebastian Rittau:

Because situations that are don't have a visible effect on the game state are often not acknowledged at all. And why should they be? Do we really want to open this can of worms and start penalizing players who don't acknowledge those? To be honest, I have never seen this happening before, and I don't think we should start now.

You'll have to describe a specific scenario to me, so that I understand to what you refer.

I want to address something that has come up a few times in this thread, and that is the notion that we are punishing the player and that we should feel bad about it. A player has made an error and presumably one of them has called you over to fix the error. Part of that fix is to give a penalty for the infraction. Penalty. Not punishment.

As for the notion that there isn't a prescribed solution in the IPG, I disagree. Back it up or leave it alone.

I believe people are getting too hung up on the trap of “I can't tell the
difference between ‘forgot to scry’ and ‘intentionally shortcutted past
it’.” However it's very easy to figure out: ask the player why they didn't
scry. If they give you a reason for not looking (such as I played Ponder
earlier in the turn and knew I didn't need to change anything), then no
infraction. If they say they forgot, then they forgot.

Nick Short
L2, Chicago, IL, USA