“Players are expected to know the game’s rules—but not to a technically detailed level” (IPG's definition of Competitive REL)

I suppose we could derail this and argue about the “technically detailed level” - but let's not. Clearly, the NAP didn't understand the rules at the necessary level.

So, what about Section 4.1 of the MTR? “The philosophy of the DCI is that a player should have an advantage due to better understanding of the rules of a game, greater awareness of the interactions in the current game state, and…”
Does that imply that the NAP should NOT have an advantage here, due to a lack of understanding of the rules?

And, for that matter, do we eliminate OoOS, just because the player can't clearly communicate the correct sequence? How about one more quote, MTR 4.3: “any opponent can ask the player to do the actions in the correct sequence”.

That suggests that only the opponent can ask for the correct sequence, not the judge! (am I good at out-of-context, or what?!)

To me, that fifth example (block, animate, block) is a pretty clear indication that we can and probably should apply OoOS to this scenario, too - even if the player can't grasp the correct sequence. To exaggerate and thus illustrate:

AP: attack like this
NAP: OK, block here, Charm, use those tokens to block there and there
AP: nope, you can't do that - Judge!
Judge: I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way.
NAP: Oh, how does it work?
Judge: nope, not gonna tell you - figure it out!
NAP: $#*&%????????

If a player did exactly what that fifth example says - block, animate, block - and the opponent called us, we'd say “OK, that's out of order, but we got to a legal point; next time, animate before you block, OK? Carry on…”

So why not do the same thing here?

d:^D

err, slight edit to that last part:
we'd say “OK, that's out of order, but we got to a legal point; AP, any response to animating the Treetop? No? OK, next time, animate before you block. Carry on…”

d:^D

Originally posted by Jim Shuman:

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.

This. I'm a firm believer that OoOS and shortcuts are intended to speed the pace of play. When things are unclear to either player, it is important that the player operating explain their sequence of events. If they cannot do so or do so sub-optimally, that is a testable skill in competitive Magic.

Here we are transitioning from “let's make the obvious thing faster” to “this isn't obvious.. do we both know what's going on?”

Originally posted by Zakary Whyte:

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

So my response would have been something along the lines of, “the rules require you to choose all of your blocking creatures simultaneously. You don't have priority to cast a spell in between one creature blocking and another.” I'm really not sure where that falls on the scale of “technically correct but misleading” to “stop giving strategic advice,” but I think it's nonspecific enough to not constitute coaching but narrow enough that it's clear the player needs to think and follow up strategically.