Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Explaining why a post mysteriously disappeared…

Whoops, my bad!

John Brian McCarthy
The short answer here is “No.”

Isn't the short answer “yes”? He absolutely can buyback the spell, it's just a poor strategic decision because it will end up exiled anyway. This strikes me as similar to the persistently annoying "can I Spellskite this?" question.

Eli, the question asked was “…can I Buyback it?” If you're getting technical, “Buyback it” isn't a specific enough phrase here. You can attribute it to the act of paying the cost or to the act of returning it to your hand as they kind of go hand in hand. You have to “buyback it” in order to “buyback it.” What? The answers to “Can I Buyback it?” might be:

1) “Yes. (You can pay the buyback cost.)”

2) “No. (You can pay the buyback cost, but it won't return the card to your hand.)”

Unless asked the very specific question “Can I pay the buyback cost?” I would much rather see judges answer the second way. I've had some people suggest that this is coaching or strategic advice. I disagree. It would be coaching to tell the player “You shouldn't pay the buyback cost because it won't do anything.” A direct answer like 2) might heavily imply a correct strategic course of action, but you aren't “advising” it.

Now because of the ambiguity of the question (is the player asking about paying the cost or returning the card to hand?), many people advocate asking for clarification. That's a fine tactic to take. But I will end with this thought. If you think that answering with 2) is coaching, then what are doing by asking clarifying questions?

“You can pay for the Buyback, but when the spell resolves, Flashback actually overrides the Buyback and exiles the card, since Flashback doesn't care where it would go when it resolves.”

I will admit it's a tricky line between Y/N like Riki said, and reminds me a lot of the classic “Can I Spellskite X?” question.

Originally posted by Riki Hayashi:

Eli, the question asked was “…can I Buyback it?” If you're getting technical, “Buyback it” isn't a specific enough phrase here. You can attribute it to the act of paying the cost or to the act of returning it to your hand as they kind of go hand in hand. You have to “buyback it” in order to “buyback it.” What? The answers to “Can I Buyback it?” might be:

1) “Yes. (You can pay the buyback cost.)”

2) “No. (You can pay the buyback cost, but it won't return the card to your hand.)”

Unless asked the very specific question “Can I pay the buyback cost?” I would much rather see judges answer the second way. I've had some people suggest that this is coaching or strategic advice. I disagree. It would be coaching to tell the player “You shouldn't pay the buyback cost because it won't do anything.” A direct answer like 2) might heavily imply a correct strategic course of action, but you aren't “advising” it.

Now because of the ambiguity of the question (is the player asking about paying the cost or returning the card to hand?), many people advocate asking for clarification. That's a fine tactic to take. But I will end with this thought. If you think that answering with 2) is coaching, then what are doing by asking clarifying questions?

What if the question was “Can I Spellskite it?” (to take this back to a topic we all understand)

“You can pay the cost, but you won't get it back in your hand. This is because flashbacking a spell includes exiling it after it resolves or otherwise leaves the stack. You can pay buyback costs as it is an additional cost, but it will still be exiled.”

Eli, if answering “No” is coaching, isn't answering “yes” even worse (especially as ‘bybacking’ isn't a normal term). I would argue that by answering “yes”, we are doing reversed coaching, i.e. we are ‘guessing’ that the player are asking a question that he did not ask, and we are ‘guessing’ that he asked the ‘wrong’ one to avoid coaching. This just sounds like bad customer service to me.

To use the “Can I spellskite it?” situation as an example, if you answer “it is a legal target” or just “yes”, you are answering something completely different than what he asked (or you are using an arbritary definition of the nonexisting verb “to spellskite”), and that should be avoided imo.

Asking to clarify is absolutely something we can do, but I don't see any reason for not just answering the question by stating the relevant rules for buyback and flashback in this case (and I would do it in the spellskite case as well) - after all, the game rules are derived information, we have to state it to them if asked (if we only answers yes/no even when asked more complex questions, we aren't really explaining the rules), and if it is clear what the player are trying to ask, we shouldn't be too strict on the wording they use. (If you don't agree with this - would you judge differently if the player was a young kid or only spoke english partly?)

As long as we only state the rules that the player asked or obviously tried to ask about, we should be fine. If it's not clear to you what he tried to ask about, then clarifications might be needed to avoid coaching or misunderstandings :)

Originally posted by Edward Bell:

What if the question was “Can I Spellskite it?” (to take this back to a topic we all understand)

Please don't change the scenario - it just gets confusing when people reply to different prompts on the same thread. If you want to discuss that question, a new thread might be a better place to do so.

Thanks!

I have nothing to contribute to the actual topic that's not already been said, but I'd like to take a moment to appreciate the LL Cool J reference in this thread title.

You can't buyback this because Flashback will take priority if it comes to move card and it will put that card in exile

Originally posted by John Brian McCarthy:

Please don't change the scenario - it just gets confusing when people reply to different prompts on the same thread. If you want to discuss that question, a new thread might be a better place to do so.

Thanks!

Apologies, was merely an attempt to equate the question with something we've already discussed (and understand) so as not to rehash the same discussion.

Some judges in my area are discursing about this scenary and I have some questions about it:

MTR 4.1 says: “Judges are encouraged to help players in determining free information, but must avoid assisting players with derived information about the game state.”

It is perhaps buyback mechanics derived informatión?

And in the case that isn´t derived and we can aid player with is question, we can understand that this player is answering about activate buyback hability, and the answer will be “yes”. Give August more information about could be estrategic aid?
Maybe it´s better to say: “can you be more specific with your questión?”
or maybe is betther to say “yes” and wait for where finally end Reiterate card.

Sorry for my english, i´m really doing my best XD

Originally posted by Riki Hayashi:

Eli, the question asked was “…can I Buyback it?” If you're getting technical, “Buyback it” isn't a specific enough phrase here. You can attribute it to the act of paying the cost or to the act of returning it to your hand as they kind of go hand in hand. You have to “buyback it” in order to “buyback it.” What? The answers to “Can I Buyback it?” might be:

1) “Yes. (You can pay the buyback cost.)”

2) “No. (You can pay the buyback cost, but it won't return the card to your hand.)”

Unless asked the very specific question “Can I pay the buyback cost?” I would much rather see judges answer the second way. I've had some people suggest that this is coaching or strategic advice. I disagree. It would be coaching to tell the player “You shouldn't pay the buyback cost because it won't do anything.” A direct answer like 2) might heavily imply a correct strategic course of action, but you aren't “advising” it.

Now because of the ambiguity of the question (is the player asking about paying the cost or returning the card to hand?), many people advocate asking for clarification. That's a fine tactic to take. But I will end with this thought. If you think that answering with 2) is coaching, then what are doing by asking clarifying questions?

For the record, I would never ever answer “yes” to this question! However, I also would not answer “no,” not just because it's poor customer service, but also because I think it's technically the wrong answer. I didn't mean to imply that the short answer was the best way to handle it–just trying to point out ways that this case is similar to another case (which has been discussed to death!)

If we are looking for a complete yet brief answer, I would want to say
something like, “Flashback causes the card to be exiled instead of going
ANYWHERE else, even if you use Buyback.” I am just thankful that the last
time I dealt with this the spell had already been cast with Buyback so all
I had to do was apply the ruling.

Dominick Riesland, aka Rabbitball
Creator of the Cosmversal Grimoire
“As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then
their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to
destroy.”
– Christopher Dawson

With a number of good answers on this month's topic, it's time to wrap things up. First up, our answer:

You can pay the buyback cost. Buyback tries put the card back to your hand. However, Flashback always stops a card from going to anywhere except exile - graveyard, hand, library. Doesn't matter. Flashback always wins.

We liked a lot of judges responses this time. Ellen's answer was great because it explained the result without resorting to any technical terms that might confuse the player. And Marit's answer makes it clear that the player still has a choice to pay it or not.

Eli brought up that our simple answer of “no” instead of “yes” might be coaching. But Riki did a good job of explaining why this isn't strategic advice, and it lines up with our thinking. Try to understand what the player is really asking here - do they want to know if they're allowed to pay a cost, or do they want to know what the results will be if they pay it? Because they're not using technical language, you're going to have to interpret the question, and it seems like a much more likely interpretation is the second one.

Once again, thanks to everyone who participated. We'll be back soon with another scenario designed to help judges provide better answers. In the meantime, if you'd like to join the Personal Tutor team, or if you encounter a player question that you think would be interesting, please contact Josh Feingold.