Ref: http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/14794/

We had an interesting conversation about this exact topic in my Tournament Report, and I wanted to open it up to everyone, so here we go.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that if your opponent is going to call a judge on this sort of situation, you should be able to describe the steps that make the play technically correct, especially at Competitive REL.

What are other people's thoughts? :)

-Zak

Let me start this with a question: why do you think that a player “should be able to describe the steps that make the play technically correct”? Is that based on an official document, or is that your personal opinion? In case it's the latter, do you think we should make it official, or is it okay for different judges to rule differently in cases like the one you describe here?

From MTR 4.3:

“All actions taken must be legal if they were executed in the correct order, and any opponent can ask the player to
do the actions in the correct sequence so that he or she can respond at the appropriate time (at which point players
will not be held to any still-pending actions).”

To me, it seems pretty open and shut based on this statement that the player calling the judge was asking the other player to perform the actions in the correct seequence, and the player could not, even when prompted by me (without giving information, of course).

From the MTR, to me it feels like once the opponent stops him and he can't perform the actions in the correct sequence, then we've got a problem.

I do realize that Magic isn't a game of “Gotcha” but at what point do we reward technical play over intent?

While I'd like everyone to understand what they're doing, I don't see in the MTR where it requires the player to actually demonstrate the detailed knowledge in a general sense, only when the opponent intends to respond to something in the middle.

So I think it's reasonable to try to sort out whether the opponent is confused, rules-lawyering, or wants to respond to something. “We've got an attempt at some Out of Order Sequencing going on here, things that would be legal and clear, just done in the wrong order. Are you considering responding to something?”

If the player is able to convey that he wants to generate the tokens “after
he attacks and before blockers” then he doesn't have to be able to say
“during the Declare Attackers step”. He doesn't have to be able to
technically describe the nuances, just the gist of it.

The first interesting call of the day came in quite early; Round 2, in fact. I came up across 2 players in an attack phase. The attacking player had declared his attackers; the blocking player had decided where his only creature (an Abzan Falconer) was going to block, and then attempted to cast a Mardu Charm to create two first-striking soldiers. At this point, a judge was called.

The first thing I recognized when I walked up on the situation was that the defending player was trying to out-of-order sequence. In general, I'm fine with letting out-of-order sequencing occur, as long as the player casting the spell knows when his spell is actually cast; in this case, when I asked the player when he was casting the spell, he was unable to answer when he was trying to cast it, but rather what he was trying to do. I did not allow the blocking player to use the Warriors to block, and there was no appeal.

Here's the original situation. In a situation like this, I think probably the best way to do this would be to say something like:

“You're trying to do multiple actions at once, and your opponent is asking that you do them one by one, which he's allowed to do. You should do each step of what you're trying to do separately. I'll watch to make sure everything is good. If you have any rules questions, you can ask me.”

Help him understand that he needs to do things one-by-one, and then the rest should be easy. If he's having difficulty, you can say “I can't offer any strategic advice on how to get the outcome that you want. If you have any specific rules questions, I can answer those; otherwise I need you to start taking actions and live with the outcome.”

Magic is a intensely technical game seriously there is a reason we love judge stack.

Out of order sequencing allows players to play the game without having to have exact technical knowledge, by expecting the player to explain the steps they're taking kind of undermines that

I agree with Gareth: we don't like players who rules lawyer, and I think we should not rules lawyer players ourselves either. If a player can describe the outcome he wants, but lacks the technical lingo to describe the exact steps, why punish him and not just help and educate him instead?

Edited Dustin De Leeuw (Dec. 27, 2014 05:42:31 PM)

Zakary, can you offer any more details about the conversation? What exactly were you looking for him to say, and what did he actually say?

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

Out of order sequencing allows players to play the game without having to have exact technical knowledge, by expecting the player to explain the steps they're taking kind of undermines that

At Regular REL I'm fine with this, but at Competitive REL a player should know how his deck works. I agree with Sean above, I would not require him to know the technical terms but he should still be able to tell you the sequence events are happening in.

It is my understanding Out of Order Sequencing was put in place to allow people to play in a more timely/intuitive manner, but not so they didn't have to know how their cards were played.

Eli, absolutely!

I was looking for the key terms “before blockers” or “During the Declare Attackers step”. Either would have sufficed and would have told me he knew how to play his card to get to the desired situation.

Thanks, Zakary!

I agree with what you were looking for; I wouldn't expect a player to know the name of “Declare Attackers” step, but I would expect them to be able to say “before blockers.” I'm quite puzzled to picture the player who couldn't verbalize this. How did he try to explain his actions?

He kept replying that he wanted to “block with this guy, cast Mardu Charm, block those guys”, or some variation of that.

The player has already made the strategic choice that they want the Mardu Charm tokens to be able to block.

Us explaining when he can cast them (or the legal times) is not strategic advice.

The comparison of Regular REL to Competitive REL is poor. What if this is a longtime Regular player's first Comp event? Why should we punish them when instead we can use this as a) an opportunity for teaching, b) have consistency between RELs, and c) not provide them strategic advice.

It seems like a) it was perfectly clear what he wanted to do and b) what he wanted to do was perfectly legal. My guess is that he got confused, then froze up when you requested that he explains specifically what he wants to do. I've noticed that players often feel pressured in situations like these and they're more afraid about somehow “messing up” than they are with simply explaining what they want to do.