I'm concerned that the line of logic you are presenting makes drawing a card for Brainstorm with Spirit of the Labyrinth in play a GRV. Obviously both players know why this has happened and it is theoretically possible that the opponent could intervene, but the first observable error is still drawing an extra card, so it's DEC.

I believe we need to find more justification if we don't want to call this DEC.

And, frankly, my inclination is to call it DEC. We really want players to be clear any time they are going to draw a card. I have no problem giving this player a game loss to reenforce that. (This assumes an actual relevant response exists. I'm not going to reward pure penalty fishing.)

Edited Joshua Feingold (June 25, 2014 01:44:32 PM)

Adam rushing past Naomi's priority should never be called a GRV. It isn't. It's Adam attempting to shortcut a sequence of actions because he assumes that Naomi has no responses. Naomi interrupts, but too late. There is no game rule being violated by doing that. It's not even a DEC, it's just a communication problem.

So if no ifraction is present, why are we able to rewind?


2014-06-25 20:51 GMT+02:00 Sean Hunt <forum-10828-a940@apps.magicjudges.org>
:

Originally posted by Adrian Strzała:

So if no ifraction is present, why are we able to rewind?

Because we can't took Naomi chance for respond to Brainstorm.

Originally posted by Bartłomiej Wieszok:

Because we can't took Naomi chance for respond to Brainstorm.

Bare with me, but my understanding that there need to be specific criteria met that we as a Judge can rewind (the one i remember the moment i'm writing is a CR rewind and the infractions CPV and GRV). It does feel “right” to rewind and give Naomi chance to resond (if she has one) but shouldnt this be covered by any policy?

Naomi says she wants to interrupt the proposed shortcut; we allow that.

Assume this is not a violation of anything. It's just interrupting a proposed short.

Does that mean it's acceptable to just slam a Brainstorm and draw 3? Then if your opponent wants to do something, there is no penalty to track it and you can hope the right cards get randomly put back to allow you counter their counter (or whatever) with cards that never should have been in your hand?

And we also have to contend with the problem that the shortcut was never proposed. It was just executed.

There are problems associated with handling this either way.

If we're more permissive about it, then things are as Josh describes: Players casting draw spells are heavily incentivized to just grab for their cards right away, because the worst that happens is that we random some cards back on top and maybe they hit the card they needed and get to keep it.

If we rule this as DEC, then opponents are heavily incentivized to just not communicate in response to draw spells, because the call of, “Judge! My opponent didn't let me respond!” wins the game.

Each case rewards a different kind of lack of communication. It's consistent with our policy to put the burden of ensuring the spell is clear to resolve on the player casting it.

Either way I think there needs to be consistency in the ruling – I'm uncomfortable with ruling DEC or not based on whether or not the opponent has a response, because then we're putting the responding judge in the position of having to validate the legitimacy of the opponent's response in terms of deciding whether or not it merits issuing DEC.

Plus if you let ruling depend on what's in the players hand, you're effectively revealing private information. “What, no game loss? That means he has no counter and I'm free to do what I want this turn!”

Thinking about it some more, and I could be way off base, I'm leaning more towards the “have the player who wants to draw cards be clear about it” plan. (ala Josh)

Unfortunately it does potentially reward non-communication from the opponent, but if we're going to train draw-ers to always give the opponent a chance to respond (because drawing isn't as common as other effects, and is effectively irreversible in a technical sense though we do have a procedure for doing it), and put some burden on the person who wants to respond to an action to intercede quickly, this doesn't seem like an unworkable situation. The risk is somewhat mitigated. The incentive of getting those different cards or extra information does complicate things.

I don't really like the shortcut angle… I don't think I just get to declare a shortcut after the fact and get backup protection there. I also don't like calling this a GRV (even though I spent a ton of time justifying exactly that to myself), since that feels like we're engineering an infraction from the fix we want to apply. As I said though, I could be missing a factor.

This really feels like one of those things where we have to treat the “J” in judge as “Judgement” (instead of the more usual “Janitor”). I don't see a way out of this without annoying someone and protecting the integrity of the game/tournament.

It seems like it boils down to us choosing which player to believe in the argument of “I gave him plenty of time to respond” vs “He instantly drew”, and we already deal with that problem in other contexts. So it seems like a matter of deciding your facts (which will be somewhat subjective in process), then apply those facts through policy in an objective fashion.

So for this case, the (unstated) details matter of how quickly he drew after showing the Brainstorm, how long it took the draw process to actually complete, and whether his opponent had a chance to at least say “um, hey”. And that feels like it falls in “had to be there” territory. But I'd expect our opponent to be able to at least splutter pretty quickly, especially if they're an expert rules lawyer. =)

Would I factor in the Naomi's reputation for rules lawyering? yeah, to an extent when determining how to interpret her responses, but not beyond that. She needs to be treated like any other player, but if she's going to pick nits, she increases her burden of credibility. Odds are I'd be telling both players to be more clear about things either way though.

Do I factor in what's in her hand? Not really. Whether potentially responding or bluffing a potential response, she has a duty to pay attention to the game and respond quickly, and I don't see that differing based on what's in her hand. I'd expect a blue player at Competitive to instinctively respond pretty quickly to “Brainstorm?” being announced.

I think what the responding judge did was a deviation, but not a wholly unreasonably one, one done in the right spirit, and it's one I've seen advocated by judges far more experience than I. But I think the more proper answer is to decide what you think happened, confidently explain it, and give a supportable ruling based on that. And reiterate that communication needs to work both ways and be clear in order to avoid this sort of confusion. And thank you for getting a judge involved so quickly.

Originally posted by Evan Cherry:

As Emilien suggested, technically I would argue the rule being broken was not passing priority before resolving the spell

Actualy, I'm not even sure a rule was broken. If I'm watching a match, I won't give GPE - GRV to players who don't actively confirm each priority pass or seek active priority pass confirmation from their opponents.
In fact, I might even TE - Slow Play them if they do ;).

Adam wants to advance his turn. Naomi wants to do something before that, and communicate it at the first time she could. We let Naomi interrupt Adam at the proper moment, and we educate Adam. No infraction, no penalty, no fix.
If Naomi requests priority but doesn't do anything with it, we have an infraction for that: TE - Slow Play.
If she just wanted to remind Adam that she could have played something and would like him to ask confirmation before resolving draw spells, again, no penalty or infraction.
If she try to bully the judge into getting her opponent Game Losses, UC - Minor.

Originally posted by Emilien Wild:

We let Naomi interrupt Adam at the proper moment, and we educate Adam. No infraction, no penalty, no fix.

No fix? Assuming Adam drew one card before interrupted, you would let him keep that as Naomi respond? That would create some weird situation with spell being cast and resolved mid-resolution through Brainstorm. Or I'm interpreting that sentence wrong ;)

Originally posted by Emilien Wild:

Evan Cherry
As Emilien suggested, technically I would argue the rule being broken was not passing priority before resolving the spell

Actualy, I'm not even sure a rule was broken. If I'm watching a match, I won't give GPE - GRV to players who don't actively confirm each priority pass or seek active priority pass confirmation from their opponents.
In fact, I might even TE - Slow Play them if they do ;).

Adam wants to advance his turn. Naomi wants to do something before that, and communicate it at the first time she could. We let Naomi interrupt Adam at the proper moment, and we educate Adam. No infraction, no penalty, no fix.
If Naomi requests priority but doesn't do anything with it, we have an infraction for that: TE - Slow Play.
If she just wanted to remind Adam that she could have played something and would like him to ask confirmation before resolving draw spells, again, no penalty or infraction.
If she try to bully the judge into getting her opponent Game Losses, UC - Minor.

I am 90% with this. But part of me wants something to be tracked here for potential abuse. That said, I don't want to manufacture a warning just to fit my desire for the tracking. There has to be some kind of fix though if she does have a response.
So the question for me is, can we fix without a warning attached?

This topic is pretty close to this thread

http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/6376/

I thought I'd seen something like this before!

What's interesting is the the mostly settled (but not completely) answer still leaves one of the same open questions as this thread… if we're calling it a GRV, what R was actually V'd?

You must pass priority before resolving a spell.
Rushing to resolution without giving the opponent any chance to respond, is the violation.
me think.

Originally posted by CR:

608.1. Each time all players pass in succession, the spell or ability on top of the stack resolves. (See rule 609, “Effects.”)