The just published guide to triggers in Khans of Tarkir lists Sidisi, Brood Tyrant as a Detrimental trigger (http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/5005/?page=1#post-82860). Can someone expand on why this is the case? My instinct would have been the opposite, given that the only reason to play an awkwardly costed Hill Giant is to make additional zombies, and if someone were to miss the trigger you'd either shrug and move on, or check if they missed it because they were concerned with milling out. Cheers in advance :)

See also Nyx Weaver (you can find it in the Theros block guide.

You're being denied a resource; yes, it can also be beneficial, but with the necessarily context-free perspective, it's detrimental.

d:^D

A shortcut I take in these kind of situations is: milling is a viable
win strategy. By milling yourself, your opponent is a bit closer to
winning that way, exactly the same than you taking one point of damage
brings your oppponent a bit closer to winning via damage.

The fact that taking damage brings you closer to turning on Fateful Hour
is a bad argument to justify a life-losing trigger as beneficial. This
is exactly the same scenario.

I see I see. So the “line in the sand” as such is the line break in between the trigger itself, and the rest of the abilities on the card itself. Cheers Scott - that's useful to know.

Yes, you have to separate the trigger itself from the rest of the card - and there are plenty of examples of that. (You'll see a few in Khans, alone, where one trigger is detrimental, the other is not.)

But there's more to it than that, even. As per Federico's comment, don't consider the specifics of any one game or even style of deck, presence of cards that benefit from the trigger, life totals, etc. Just look at the trigger itself, in a vacuum, so to speak.

Also, as an aside - I could've just answered with “Because that's how R&D wanted it.” :)

d:^D

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Yes, you have to separate the trigger itself from the rest of the card - and there are plenty of examples of that.

So what about Akroan Horse?
The Missed Trigger Guide says, that the first triggered ability (When Akroan Horse enters the battlefield, an opponent gains control of it.) is not detrimental. Well, if we take the ability alone into consideration, giving a creature to an opponent right after it came into play seems detrimental to me. It's not detrimental if we take a look at the second ability, but by itself it clearly puts the player who cast it in a situation they would not like to be in.
So should we consider each trigger separately or look at the “big picture”, i.e. the rest of the card's text?

Edited Piotr Łopaciuk (Sept. 27, 2014 05:50:01 AM)

What happened to the guideline of “if the card would be better without the
trigger, then it's detrimental?” That's a sensible, easy to follow rule
that lets us go “sidisi is better than hill giant, it's trigger must not be
detrimental.”
On Sep 26, 2014 2:45 PM, “Piotr Łopaciuk” <

Is Sidisi with only the first trigger better than Hill Giant? No, because
it's harder to cast and denies you resources. That's why that first trigger
is considered generally detrimental. It is only better because of the
second trigger, which is not generally detrimental.

I wouldn't spend a huge amount of time stressing over which side of the line a specific card falls on. The policy is set up in such a way that it's kinda forgiving in this extremely narrow band of errors (calling a detrimental trigger non detrimental or vice versa).

Let's say you are wrong. What are the consequences?
First lets say you suspect the player is intentionally missing his triggers. That's cheating. Done, good we don't have to address that anymore.

Now, if a trigger should have happened and it's bad for the controller, the opponent is probably going to point it out. In this case the only decision is whether to give a warning or not, and in the grand scheme of things, for an borderline ability, it's not that big a deal. upgrades for missed trigger don't happen anymore (sure, that one judge knows a judge at some Open in …zzzzzzz). Remind the player to play on and be more mindful.

So now the only question is, if you are watching a match and a player misses his trigger and the opponent doesn't say anything. And you don't know if you should step in. What happens? If you step in, the *worst* that can happen is that a trigger happens that should have happened. It is not the opponents *right* to have triggers missed. It's his *right* to not say anything. If you make a boo-boo, the worst that can happen is the game is played more correctly. “But the opponent might have been counting on him forgetting about the trigger.” Whelp, that's a pretty poor strategy as the player could remember at any time.

So, in conclusion, don't spin yourself up over the edge cases. They matter much less than you think.

-bryan

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Brian, you're my hero.

Bryan, you're MY hero, too. :)

Seriously - Mr. Prillaman sums it up very nicely. Kudos to Dominick, too, for a succinct explanation of Sidisi's inferiority complex.

d:^D

Edited Scott Marshall (Sept. 27, 2014 11:22:16 AM)

I like Bryan's PoV, but it still seems odd to me.

To me, it can be summed up as: “We don't give a f***: either the guy is a cheater and he's out, either he only gets a warning or not but we don't care, it can't be upgraded to a game loss and he won't forget it much more now”

So, why don't simplify the IPG on this point, if it's not that important, every “missed trigger” should award a warning or every “missed trigger” shouldn't award a warning.

Originally posted by Gilles Demarle:

To me, it can be summed up as: “We don't give a f***: either the guy is a cheater and he's out, either he only gets a warning or not but we don't care, it can't be upgraded to a game loss and he won't forget it much more now”

I feel that's a gross simplification of Bryan's point. It's less this, and more “Don't sweat every single trigger ruling. Especially the marginal situations where you're not 100% certain.”

Originally posted by Gilles Demarle:

So, why don't simplify the IPG on this point, if it's not that important, every “missed trigger” should award a warning or every “missed trigger” shouldn't award a warning.

There's three dynamics at work, between those triggers that are clearly in the “usually detrimental” category, those triggers in the “almost never detrimental” category, and the grey area that does exist between those two. The policy is clear in that we do want judges to intervene and issue the Warning for those triggers clearly in the “usually detrimental” category (because missing them does give the player an advantage), and not intervene in situations where missing the trigger itself is penalty enough (as the player is putting themselves at a disadvantage by missing the trigger). AFAIK, this element is clearly desired by WotC, so that we issue Warnings only as necessary (because they are desired) and not further “penalize” a player who has already been penalized from their own bad memory. (The perception exists, regardless of whether a Warning is a “real penalty”.)

But the policy doesn't, and can't without being so dense as to being nearly incomprehensible, cover every situation. And there will exist plenty of situations where you may have to make a judgment on the “usually detrimental” element. The Wiki exists as a good guide on this point that you can fall back on, and discussions like this help explain the philosophy. But the existing policy itself is a beefy 2 pages in length, as long as the section on Deck/Decklist Problem, because there are a lot of elements to promote consistency. There is some expectation of inconsistency, especially in the grey area, and that is tolerable to an extent.

So, tl;dr, the policy does promote consistency in terms of penalizing the situations where it is merited and not penalizing other situations. If your judgment is that you need to intervene and issue a penalty, then you have taken an appropriate course of action; if your judgment is that it isn't, then don't second guess yourself.

>
> To me, it can be summed up as: “We don't give a f***: either the guy is a cheater and he's out, either he only gets a warning or not but we don't care, it can't be upgraded to a game loss and he won't forget it much more now”
>
> So, why don't simplify the IPG on this point, if it's not that important, every “missed trigger” should award a warning or every “missed trigger” shouldn't award a warning.
>
>
I think you are misapplying the logic here. I am/was talking about a very infrequent set circumstances where the judge is unable to determine if a trigger is detrimental or not and must make a decision on whether to step in/apply a warning. In this case it's less bad to be wrong because it's so infrequent and because the impact is so limited in scope.

However applying the same philosophy to triggers that are obviously detrimental is harmful. It takes the small scope and expands it till it pops it like a balloon.

There are many triggers that are obviously detrimental, and repeatedly missing those should be tracked with the same rigor, and for the same reasons as you would track repeatedly committing a GRV,

It's been mentioned to me, by someone who is smarter than me (as evidenced by their ability to learn more languages than just English!), that Bryan's comment “MT don't happen” could be confusing.

Bryan's not saying we don't upgrade because of policy, he's observing that upgrades are extremely unlikely, because so few detrimental triggers get missed, repeatedly, by honest players.

He's still my (English-speaking) hero… :)

d:^D