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Competitive REL » Post: Shortcut for producing tokens

Shortcut for producing tokens

Jan. 21, 2013 04:13:42 PM

Jens Strohaeker
Judge (Uncertified)

German-speaking countries

Shortcut for producing tokens

During my last PTQ I faced a scenario in which two players were unclear about the board state.

Player A was at 15 Life Player B at 20.

B had activated a Kiki Jiki-Mirror Breaker on his Restauration Angel and said very fast, “Angel, Angel, Angel, Angel”,
He claimed he had than declared the original Angel + the 4 Tokens (that were not represented by either Dice or Cards) as attackers, to which Player A reacted with a Rakdos Charm (Every Creature deals 1 to it's controller) claimind B was now dead.

It was tough figuring out what had happened, and I finally decided to rule there were “a million” Angels in Play, because B's story seemed less consistent and made up when he realised his mistake.
I don't want to discuss about a potential DQ but rather suggest the following Shortcut.

If a player repeatededly “copies” a card or spell without visual representation and without stating a certain number, he has chosen a VERY BIG number.

I know that this is not a very fortunate wording, but maybe we can discuss it. Here “saying ”card, card, card, …" is oftenly used to let the opponent know you produce a billion..

Jan. 21, 2013 04:40:40 PM

Patrick Cool
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Foundry))

USA - North

Shortcut for producing tokens

We already have rules in place to prevent this sort of issue from raising
it's head. When a player can go through an abitrarily large number of
iterations of an action they are required to dictate the number of times
they choose to execute that action as a shortcut through doing the action
over an over again. Player B seems to have indicated creating 4 new angels
with the kiki-jiki/angel combo and understands what he was attempting to
do. Now without further information that you can only gather while
investigating we can't say what was really the case here, but overall we
have rules and catches to avoid this kind of confusion.

my 2 cents

Patrick

Jan. 21, 2013 05:18:14 PM

Mark Brown
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy)), Regional Coordinator (Australia and New Zealand), Scorekeeper

Australia and New Zealand

Shortcut for producing tokens

I don't really see the need for this shortcut. Player A has a responsibility to clarify any confusion as to how many creatures were created, and would be well advised to get a specific answer prior to any action that relied upon that number. Was it 3 extra? Was it 4? verbally and quickly saying “Angel, Angel, Angel, Angel” isn't far off “Angel, Angel, Angel”.

I personally would have tried to determine what was said and ruled accordingly rather than arbitrarily ruling that it was a “million” Angels when I can't see from what was described either player suggesting it was that number.