Scenario: Player receives a bye for round 1 at a FNM tournament, after scouting the field and the decks that the other players are playing with, he decides to he wants to make changes to the deck he wishes to play with (whether is changes in cards on the Main Deck, the Sideboard or he might even decide to change to another deck altogether).

Is he allowed to do that in a Regular REL tournament without decklists? The discussion we are having among us Brazilian judges is whether there is an explicit rule forbidding him to do that, while others agree that the contents of his deck is whatever he presents to the opponent at the start of his first game which in this case it would be at Round 2.

Any help in solving this scenario is appreciated.

There was a relatively similar thread a while ago.

In that thread, the situation was slightly different, as the player waited for Round 1 pairings to decide which deck he wants to play.
However, the general opinion was that it is okay to do so, even though it might not be exceptionally sporting.

The situation you described is very similar. For tournaments without a decklist, a player does not have to decide on a particular deck before they start playing, but once they have used a deck, it must be returned to its original composition before each subsequent match.

As for a particular rule I could point you to, there's no explicit rule that restricts when players have to decide which deck they want to play.


However, if you think that behaviour is causing problems (perhaps because other players are feeling uncomfortable about it), you can always talk to the player and express your concerns. In most cases, that should change the behaviour.

Edited Sebastian Stückl (Nov. 12, 2014 10:31:57 AM)