Question regarding this shortcut, since I too was not aware of it and thought, like the OP, that the shortcut was to auto-retain priority rather than pass each time:

Player A controls some Shade-like creature (or Scavenging Ooze or what have you). He says “Activate 3 times” and taps enough mana to do so. Player B says "after the 2nd activation, play “. Can Player A then back up and say ”OK, in that case I only want to activate 2 times“, untap the excess mana he tapped, and use that to play something else? This seems strategically risky.

On second thought, perhaps a better question, if this is easier to answer, is as follows: What is the game state when Player B says ”I want to interrupt you after x iterations“ when Player A requested y iterations for y > x?

The reason I ask is basically as follows: Say Player A controls an attacking Scavenging Ooze and has in hand God's Willing and Boon of Erebos. He taps an Overgrown Tomb and a Temple Garden to pay for 2 activations of Ooze. The opponent says ”in response to the first activation, cast Quicken -> Supreme Verdict“. Can Player A then cast Boon? What if Player B casts Path to Exile? Can Player A cast God's Willing? What if Player B has both of these lines of play available to him but has to choose one?

Is this something worth discussing, or do we throw it under the big umbrella of ”let communication policy handle it" and expect Player B to ask Player A what mana he's floating? Or is there another fix we should use here that I'm not aware of?

Edited Lyle Waldman (Dec. 4, 2013 10:03:42 AM)

If Player A proposes a shortcut to a certain point, but Player B wants to
interrupt the shortcut, you back up to the point where B wants to do
something. Player A is not locked into anything that would have happened
past that point.
So in this example, you'd back up to the point where the 2nd activation is
on the stack and Player A would untap the land used for the 3rd activation.
Proper communication is key to the latter part of your situation. Player
B doesn't have to tip his hand by playing something before backing up, if
he doesn't want to. “I have a response to the 2nd activation” would allow
Player A to untap a land, then Player B can play his Quicken/Verdict.

First of all, my apologies for invoking the dreaded Hive Mind (I hear it's banned from discussion on JudgeCast), but if there is any place to discuss it, this would be it.

Let me be more clear about how I play (or rather played, before reading MTR 4.2 more closely) Hive Mind. After Hive Mind Resolves, I usually have 2 or 3 pacts in my hand. With exception of Pact of Negation, it is generally strategically correct to play out my hand without passing priority (to avoid the ugly business of Krosan Grip), which technically goes Pact, Trigger, Pact, Trigger, Pact, Trigger.

I make use of OoOS and lay down my pacts like a poker hand in the order I'm playing them, left to right. I then point to each one and say “Trigger, Trigger, Trigger.” There are few reasons I see this as the best way to do it for all involved:

1. Usually the game is over and my opponent will concede and move to sideboarding. Since their deck is more likely to be worried about going to time then mine, we are usually in agreement that going through the motions of killing them in the upkeep is just wasting time.
2. As stated above, communication can sometimes be an issue where I'm playing and I don't want to induce my opponent into revealing information while I negotiate how to explain that I'm holding priority. Doing these actions quickly without showing them that I'm passing priority and then passing priority once I've made the order of the stack clear seems to be the best nonverbal way to do this.

So, my actions are consistent with the CompRules, but not MTR 4.2? Say I play out three Pact of the Titan like this and my Tron opponent calls a judge because he wants to cast Krosan Grip after the first one. I'd love to hear how you would rule.

So, my actions are consistent with the CompRules, but not MTR 4.2? Say I play out three Pact of the Titan like this and my Tron opponent calls a judge because he wants to cast Krosan Grip after the first one. I'd love to hear how you would rule.

I would rule that your opponent has interrupted your shortcut with the first Pact and Pact trigger on the stack, and the other two would be backed up and returned to your hand, and Krosan Grip would be on the stack. Just laying them all out at once is NOT considered an explicit declaration of maintaining priority.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

Question regarding this shortcut, since I too was not aware of it and thought, like the OP, that the shortcut was to auto-retain priority rather than pass each time:

Player A controls some Shade-like creature (or Scavenging Ooze or what have you). He says “Activate 3 times” and taps enough mana to do so. Player B says "after the 2nd activation, play “. Can Player A then back up and say ”OK, in that case I only want to activate 2 times“, untap the excess mana he tapped, and use that to play something else? This seems strategically risky.

On second thought, perhaps a better question, if this is easier to answer, is as follows: What is the game state when Player B says ”I want to interrupt you after x iterations“ when Player A requested y iterations for y > x?

The reason I ask is basically as follows: Say Player A controls an attacking Scavenging Ooze and has in hand God's Willing and Boon of Erebos. He taps an Overgrown Tomb and a Temple Garden to pay for 2 activations of Ooze. The opponent says ”in response to the first activation, cast Quicken -> Supreme Verdict“. Can Player A then cast Boon? What if Player B casts Path to Exile? Can Player A cast God's Willing? What if Player B has both of these lines of play available to him but has to choose one?

Is this something worth discussing, or do we throw it under the big umbrella of ”let communication policy handle it" and expect Player B to ask Player A what mana he's floating? Or is there another fix we should use here that I'm not aware of?

I believe the fix for this situation is to rewind to the point that the opponent wants to respond, as per 4.2. This would include untapping lands that were used for subsequent activations. I would rule that the player can choose which lands were tapped since the opponent should first ask to rewind to a certain point before announcing the spell they intend to cast. Also, since the opponent (NAP) hasn't yet acted at the point to which we rewound, they should be able to choose the spell to cast at that point (using the information of which lands are untapped in his/her decision). The only caveat is that they cannot request priority and choose not to act.

Edited Cameron Bachman (Dec. 4, 2013 03:01:12 PM)

Originally posted by Casey Brefka:

So, my actions are consistent with the CompRules, but not MTR 4.2? Say I play out three Pact of the Titan like this and my Tron opponent calls a judge because he wants to cast Krosan Grip after the first one. I'd love to hear how you would rule.

I would rule that your opponent has interrupted your shortcut with the first Pact and Pact trigger on the stack, and the other two would be backed up and returned to your hand, and Krosan Grip would be on the stack. Just laying them all out at once is NOT considered an explicit declaration of maintaining priority.

I'd better ask my Regional Judge how to retain priority in Korean then!

I think that when you put the spells onto the table at the same time, it is
could be clear that you are putting them all onto the stack at one time.
If you put the first one into the GY before playing the 2nd, it would be
clear you wanted the first to resolve before playing the second. Playing a
series of spells is easier to communicate than a series of activated
abilities, so the shortcut will apply more often. I think that you could
be consistent with CR and MTR with your actions. However, using a phase
like “in response” between each one would make it clearer.

Now that I have two different rulings from Level 3 Judges, I would like to say that I think this is an interesting hitch in the MTR. I would like it a lot more if the NAP could request a rewind, but the rewind went to the AP's priority, so that they could make it clear whether they wanted to hold priority.

Maybe this is too complicated for the other 99.999% of cases that aren't Hive Mind vs. Krosan Grip.

I have a question regarding this shortcut too…what happens when the player activates a batch of abilities where the only legal method would have been to retain priority, but they didn't explicitly state it?

For example, in a match I was watching a player announced “Tec Edge, Tec Edge, Tec Edge” and the opponent wanted to respond after the first one. It meant that after that interaction, the last two activations would have been illegal.

Originally posted by Simon Freiberg:

I have a question regarding this shortcut too…what happens when the player activates a batch of abilities where the only legal method would have been to retain priority, but they didn't explicitly state it?

Educate the player on better communication. Again, the purposebenefit of the shortcut policy in MTR 4.2 is generally to facilitate game play and make it less “rulesy”. (As the purpose is to ensure that there's no ambushes or advantage gain due to unclear communication.) Edit: Fixed comment to conform with reality. Mea culpa. Obviously, we expect players to adhere to the rules in a general sense, but not in a strict “do everything exactly this way”. Hence things like MTR 4.3 as well.

This happens a lot where the player casts Infernal Tutor and then cracks their Lion's Eye Diamond without clearly stating they are responding to their own spell. Does that mean he let Tutor resolve and search up nothing, then crack the LED? Very unlikely. In such a situation, context may matter.

The mistake, I feel, is in presuming that MTR 4.2 supplants the rules rather than supplements the rules.

Originally posted by Simon Freiberg:

For example, in a match I was watching a player announced “Tec Edge, Tec Edge, Tec Edge” and the opponent wanted to respond after the first one. It meant that after that interaction, the last two activations would have been illegal.

In that case, you'd probably need to talk to the players before making a ruling. This kind of situation probably doesn't follow the normal shortcut, even if not explicit. That may mean you talk to the Tec. Edge player to find out what he was doing, and then identify what the opponent was doing. Because it's possible the Tec. Edge player might tell you directly that he was responding to his own abilities, knowing how this situation plays out.

Edited Brian Schenck (Dec. 5, 2013 06:46:08 PM)

Originally posted by Brian Schenck:

the purpose of the shortcut policy in MTR 4.2 is generally to facilitate game play and make it less “rulesy”

This may seem like I'm nitpicking, but I actually think this is important: this is a nice benefit of the shortcut rules.

The purpose of the shortcut rules is to avoid someone gaining an advantage through unclear communication. Obviously, we haven't eliminated all such possibilities by defining these standard shortcuts - but we've hit the big ones, the things that “experienced” players would use to take advantage of newer or more casual players.

Originally posted by Brian Schenck:

The mistake, I feel, is in presuming that MTR 4.2 supplants the rules rather than supplements the rules.

Very well said!

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Brian Schenck
The mistake, I feel, is in presuming that MTR 4.2 supplants the rules rather than supplements the rules.

Very well said!

So, since we're actually debating this almost exact case on the local forums, I'd like to know what we exactly mean with “supplementing the rules”.

I'll make myself clearer: let's guess that in the scenario from the OP, the player activating Ooze lets the creature die, because he's accepting that the opponent has responded to all the activations on the stack. We are at the table. From what's being said above, contest does matter, so we should assume that the Ooze's player has retained priority without explicitly stating it. Is this acceptable? Are the Tournament shortcuts just a way to solve disagreements or are they “real” rules to enforce (so we are supposed to intervene)?

I see this particularly important, since we have recently had some specific-card rulings (I'm thinking of Cavern of Souls, but there have been a couple more) that are essentially defining shortcuts that need to be treated like in-game rules. So it sounds like specific-card shortcuts are a different matter from Communication Policy shortcuts.

Thank you,
Donato

Edited Donato Del Giudice (July 31, 2014 09:50:59 AM)

Donato - there's another concept that I've seen come up in other threads, where, if two players are taking actions or shortcutting in a way that all players understand what is going on, then we don't need to consider their action illegal, even if it appears to a spectator (or judge) that their actions are incorrect. So in the case of Scavenging Ooze, we may want to ask AP whether he was placing all the activations on the stack simultaneously, and if he was, we should ask the players to be more explicit in the future about how they are playing. However, since clearly both players agree that all activations were on the stack, we don't need to issue any GRVs or “fix” any game states.

On the other hand, if AP was intending to invoke the usual shortcut, then yes, you should enforce that and educate both players on it.

The MTR tournament shortcuts are a set of legal ways in which players may expect their actions to be interpreted. Shortcuts in general translate physical actions to CR concepts, and the MTR shortcuts are a “core set” of shortcuts which are fair to both players (to avoid “cheaty” communication) and essential to make it legal to play in the way that we usually play. If the players seem to disagree on what actions were actually taken, we should absolutely intervene to clarify the situation (and fix it, if necessary), but since players are allowed to propose and establish their own shortcuts, don't assume that someone playing contrary to an MTR shortcut is committing a GRV.

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

Donato - there's another concept that I've seen come up in other threads, where, if two players are taking actions or shortcutting in a way that all players understand what is going on, then we don't need to consider their action illegal (…) since players are allowed to propose and establish their own shortcuts, don't assume that someone playing contrary to an MTR shortcut is committing a GRV.

Thanks, Dan, I'm aware of this concept and that's why I feel I'm in need of a better understanding.

Of course that wouldn't be GRV… it would fall, if it is an infraction, in undefined Tournament Errors. The point is: the tournament shortcuts use the verb “to assume”. So, how much are we going to “assume” they are in force? Are we allowed to assume the opposite based on evidence? Because, in some way, this would make the tournament shortcuts more an “archive of solved disputes” rather than “tournament rules”. In other words, they would be not rules that can be infringed.

Just to make things less abstract, this discussion arose from the fact that all people that weren't judges (and some judges, too) found this specific shortcut quite counter-intuitive and even not very-well explained, so they found a lot of margin for different interpretations and fixes.

I hope I have been able to explain my concern: mine is more of a philosophical question.

Originally posted by Donato Del Giudice:

Of course that wouldn't be GRV… it would fall, if it is an infraction, in undefined Tournament Errors. The point is: the tournament shortcuts use the verb “to assume”. So, how much are we going to “assume” they are in force? Are we allowed to assume the opposite based on evidence? Because, in some way, this would make the tournament shortcuts more an “archive of solved disputes” rather than “tournament rules”. In other words, they would be not rules that can be infringed.

Just to make things less abstract, this discussion arose from the fact that all people that weren't judges (and some judges, too) found this specific shortcut quite counter-intuitive and even not very-well explained, so they found a lot of margin for different interpretations and fixes.

I hope I have been able to explain my concern: mine is more of a philosophical question.

I guess I'm not sure what the difference is. The fact that these shortcuts exist is a tournament rule, and if there's ever a dispute, then these are the rules we'll enforce. The only case where we wouldn't is if both players agreed that a different shortcut had been established.