We had a discussion in our local judge meeting about a scenario with Cavern of Souls. The scenario is from a 4day event which included a 180? players Legacy tournament. Ahmed plays Norbert in a competitive event, it's the first game in their match.



Ahmed plays Cavern of Souls. Norbert asks “Creature type?”. Ahmed replies: “Fish”. Norbert confirms: “Fish?” which Ahmed agrees on: “Yes, fish.”

Scenario a) The two players play a few turns, not using the Cavern of Souls. Then, Ahmed attempts to cast a Cursecatcher using the Cavern of Souls mana. Norbert objects “It's not a fish.”

Scenario b) Directly after naming Fish, Ahmed attempts to cast a Cursecatcher. Norbert objects “It's not a fish.”

Since we couldn't find a clear consens on how to rule it, I thought it'd be a good idea to present the problem to a wider public before I post it in my monthly blog/report.

When do we allow Ahmed to cast a Merfolk, which are nicknamed ‘fish’ often, and when do we allow to cast only Fish-fish with the Cavern? This is meant as a discussion, so everyone is invited to take part of it. Since i'm off to GP Prague now, I won't be able to answer myself for a few days. If you require intent or knowledge of the players, just write “If A knows X, then Y..”.

Edited Philip Böhm (Jan. 9, 2014 07:59:00 AM)

Do people really say fish with Cavern? With fish being an actual creature type, I don't see how this slang can be accepted in any way.

Originally posted by Toby Hazes:

Do people really say fish with Cavern? With fish being an actual creature type, I don't see how this slang can be accepted in any way.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/deck/669

http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Legacy_Fish_deck


Afterall, it's “Fish decks”.

Edited Philip Böhm (Jan. 9, 2014 07:36:23 AM)

Merfolk are commonly referred to as ‘fish’, especialy in Legacy.

This stems from the fact that there is/was a deck-archetype called ‘fish’ in Legacy and Vintage, which basically describes a Blue-based Aggrodeck, with cheap/free counterspells (FoW, Daze mostly) combined with lots and lots of small creatures.
Over time (in Legacy), this Archetype diverged into more Spellbased Decks (which evolved to the nowadays ‘threshold’ or ‘delver’ Tempodecks) like Canadian Threshold/RUG-Delver, UWR Delver, BUG-Tempo/Team America, Team Italy etc., and the still mostly creaturebased Decks, mainly Merfolk. Therefor the analogy to call Merfolk ‘fish’.

Quite a few Eternal-players aren't even aware that the Creaturetype ‘Fish’ exists (and does not refer to ‘Merfolk’).

EDIT: Assume Ahmed is one of those ‘quite few’ ;).

Edited Philip Ockelmann (Jan. 9, 2014 07:45:54 AM)

Yes, I think we understand that the nickname is used, in general.
However, the question he asked was whether people actually name “Fish” when
putting Cavern of Souls onto the battlefield.
(It seems that these types of “issues” usually come up in judge
discussions, not in actual situations)

In this case, the opponent clarified that the player was choosing “Fish”.
I see no reason to change anything.

Ahmed should be more precise. Unfortunantely for him Fish is a legal creature type. Just as Shawn pointed out, his opponent confirmed Ahmed's choice. The choice is legal, therefore there are no grounds to rewind or let him choose again. Furthermore it's a Competitive event. We don't expect players to play with by-the-book precision, but they should be as exact and precise as they can manage. Naming a correct type isn't a difficult skill to master. ;)

Also, i think GPE-GRV is in order, since Ahmed tried to play a creature without paying proper cost for it (he can't use Cavern of Souls generated mana, since Cursecatcher isn't a Fish)..

Edited Piotr Łopaciuk (Jan. 9, 2014 08:33:43 AM)

I don't see a reason here why we wouldn't hold Ahmed to his choice of “Fish” while not allowing other such colloquialisms such as “swing” to mean what they are often known to mean (this sort of thing has come up in many other discussions on this forum). I would hold Ahmed to the call of “Fish” even if he hadn't had the choice confirmed by Norbert, and the fact that Norbert confirmed the choice makes it all the more damning to Ahmed.

Perhaps he should have called Island instead…

EDIT: The above joke is a lot funnier when I can autocard the word Island to Island Fish Jasconius (which famously had the type line “Summon Island Fish” (hence giving it the Island subtype) for much of its life before getting eratta to remove it, causing awkward situations with cards like Choke and Boil; I don't think it was ever fetched with a Polluted Delta though, unfortunately)

Edited Lyle Waldman (Jan. 9, 2014 12:24:11 PM)

I was waiting to see if someone would present a compelling argument for allowing Ahmed to change from a legal choice to the choice he meant - and no one's offered one.

So far it appears y'all agree, Ahmed has learned that you don't ask for Apples if you really want Oranges. He named Fish, that's what it remains. We've probably got the “me, too” side of this pretty well covered, now.

Are there opposing viewpoints? Philip Böhm's discussion group seemed to be divided on this, so I have to believe some would argue to let Ahmed change to Merfolk - i.e., what he clearly meant - so let's hear from those folks?

d:^D

P.S. - Lyle, (a) the the card tags work fine, if constructed according to this forum's syntax guidelines; (b) there's a Provide Feedback link for YOU to use whenever you find a need. So, ©, nope, “someone” won't do that for you! :)

I can see someone trying to argue the similarities between something like Meddling Mage naming “bob” meaning dark confidant. or Pithing Needle naming “shackles” meaning Vedalken Shackles.

Most judges allow the nicknames to be used with those scenarios. In a legacy event shackles is a legal card albeit one that is not even remotely played.

Edit for some clarity.

Edited Nick Rutkowski (Jan. 9, 2014 12:15:11 PM)

Hmm, I can also see an argument for scenario b), where Norbert hasn't gotten priority at all between the calling of fish and the casting of Cursecatcher if you would also untap Arbor Elf as part of rewinding a cast spell. (But I'm fan of neither).

@Nick: I think that point would be split into 2 cases:

Case 1: Meddling Mage naming “Bob”. “Bob” is not a legal Magic card. Hence “Bob” is not a legal call for Meddling Mage. If a judge were called in that situation, the judge would ask the player to name a legal card instead, at which point the player would simply say “Dark Confidant”. Because “Bob” is a well-understood card nickname, most players understand it, and calling a judge for it would simply be a waste of everyone's time, players are discouraged for doing so (although if a judge actually was called, we would have to fix it in the above-prescribed manner).

Case 2: Calling “Shackles” for Vedalken Shackles. This is where things get tricky. In Modern, “Shackles” is not a legal card (having been printed, in Invasion), so for that format we can accept the “Shackles = Vedalken Shackles” shortcut (or use an approach similar to the Bob case). For Legacy, however, the corrct procedure is to lock in the naming of the card Shackles. However, because the Magic community is awesome, this tends not to come up, because in reality players aren't that rules-lawyery about things. I may be inclined to deviate if the “Shackles” player has both shown a copy of Vedalken Shackles and not shown either an actual Shackles or a single card in his deck that can produce white mana, but otherwise Shackles it is.

I don't think the Bob & Shackles issue really comes into play, as what it's fundamentally about is uniquely and clearly identifying cards - and here Ahmed has uniquely and clearly identified a creature type, just the wrong one.

I personally wouldn't consider letting him change his choice, unless there was some other detail to the scenario. Norbert's confirmation pushes it firmly into “he made a clear and legal choice, unfortunately a bad one”.
Factors that might make me consider allowing it to be changed:

• If Ahmed had pointed at a merfolk he already had in play when he said “yes, fish” (making the choice less unambiguous).
  
  
• If this was game three and in past games Norbert had accepted fish=merfolk - not the case in the scenario as given, but even in a game one there could be past games - perhaps these two are regular opponents, Ahmed always says “fish” to mean “Merfolk”, but today Norbert is trying to get every possible edge.
  
  
• Ahmed does not speak English very well, or has non-English cards. Some translations of cards have been a bit iffy; perhaps he actually thinks Merfolk are Fish.
  

None of these seem very likely to me.

Edited James Winward-Stuart (Jan. 9, 2014 01:03:14 PM)

Magic is not a game of “Gotcha.” I see no reason to encourage bad behavior
by rewarding a player for deliberately misunderstanding what its generally
clear communications.

Originally posted by Jacob Faturechi:

Magic is not a game of “Gotcha.” I see no reason to encourage bad behavior
by rewarding a player for deliberately misunderstanding what its generally clear communications.

While I agree to extent, I think it's also important to consider that communication is a two-way process. Both the recipient and the sender have some responsibility to ensure clear communication. And the intent of the recipient here could generally fall into one of two categories…

(1) I know what you meant, and I'm just trying to game the situation.
(2) I have no idea what you meant, and asked to make sure that I understood.

…and it might require investigation to get to the bottom of the situation. And I could see a spectrum of player types falling into one of the two categories in the general sense, and some expecting “Well, it's a CompREL event, why wouldn't Ahmed know the right choice here?” And Norbert might simply be exercising his option to be a bit more competitive in his behavior, rather than being very sporting. No different than if it were a situation involving “taksie-backsies” and bad, but legal, decisions.

That being said, we certainly haven't asked whether Ahmed's intent when naming “Fish” was to confuse Norbert. Why do we presume that Ahmed's intent was “Oh, I was just using a colloquial term” rather than “I knew ‘Fish’ is a creature type, and I hoped my opponent wouldn't pick up on what I meant.”, when we might presume the worst of Norbert? Do we consider the possibility that Ahmed may have been using “Fish” to mislead Norbert?

I also wonder whether, as judges, we'd lean towards being sympathetic with either player, empathetic with either player, or just consider the technical approach in terms of what happened. Because I could see individual bias for these things mattering. Personally, while I empathize with Ahmed in this situation, I'd also consider that Norbert did ask “Fish?” Do I force an expectation of more sporting behavior here upon Norbert in this situation?

In the end, I lean more towards “The player chose ‘Fish’.” It might not agree with my personal leanings, but it is a legal choice for Cavern of Souls, and certainly Ahmed has some responsibility for communication choices clearly to Norbert. If Norbert took reasonable steps to confirm that's actually what Ahmed meant, while I might not like that outcome, it is a mistake on Ahmed's part that he'll learn from.

Originally posted by Jacob Faturechi:

Magic is not a game of “Gotcha.” I see no reason to encourage bad behavior
by rewarding a player for deliberately misunderstanding what its generally
clear communications.

I would agree if it seemed that that was what had happened, but it doesn't read that way to me - Nathan asks Ahmed to confirm his choice of “Fish”. I suppose in a perfect world he'd say “Do you mean the creature type ‘fish’ or the creature type ‘merfolk’?”, but it's hard to call it bad behaviour when Norbert double-checks Ahmed's strange choice rather than rushing ahead in the hope of taking advantage of it.


“Oh, actually, I meant creature type Cephalid”