Hey guys! This came up at a PPTQ I was judging, and while I read the O on this case, I was wondering if I could get a bit more perspective on understanding it a bit better.

Player A controls Fevered Visions. On Player B's end step, Player A forgets to remind Player B to draw a card. Player B has 3 or more cards in hand, so Player B will take 2 damage from the trigger.

I checked out the triggers FAQ and found out that the trigger is generally detrimental on the opponent's turn. However, I think there exists an argument for making it non-detrimental providing the player has 3 or more other cards, and I was wondering where my thinking was wrong, and for a bit of trigger philosophy here. The argument is as follows:

Consider Dictate of Kruphix (it's a better analogue than Howling Mine, because with Howling Mine the opponent draws first, while with Dictate you do if you flash it in). The text on Dictate is almost the same as the text on Fevered Visions, except for the 2 damage clause. However, while Dictate saw almost zero play in its Standard format (or any other for that matter), Fevered Visions sees widespread play today. It therefore stands to reason that, when one asks “would you play this card if it didn't have that text on it?”, which is the base default question for determining whether a trigger is generally detrimental or not, the answer is “no”. Therefore the trigger is not generally detrimental.

Thoughts?

Taking into account game state (cards in hand) would be similar to treating Dark Confidant differently depending on a players life total, which currently isn't how trigger policy works.

I don't think there's a way to carve this caveat into policy without a massive overhaul of trigger philosophy.

Could you link to O statement that Visions on NAP side are detrimental? I have been always treating that trigger as non detrimental.

Jeff - for me that card in vaccume is never detrimental. You let them draw extra card but for a price.

Originally posted by Bartłomiej Wieszok:

Jeff - for me that card in vaccume is never detrimental. You let them draw extra card but for a price.

I think that there are two ways of considering this trigger that lead me to conclude that it should be considered detrimental to miss it for your opponent:

First, would this card be better or worse if it didn't include the opponent's draw-and-potential-damage? I believe that it would be better. Phyrexian Arena allows you to draw an extra card every turn, but it costs you one life, and doesn't draw you a card on its first turn out. While the “opponent might take damage” clause makes it not as bad to let them draw as Howling Mine might be, consider it a consolation prize - it's still detrimental, just not as detrimental.

Second, why do we bother with Warnings for some Missed Triggers? Because we want to keep track of when players miss triggers that are generally inconvenient for them to miss. Sure, sometimes missing this trigger to let your opponent draw (and maybe take damage) is bad for the Visions player, but I'd certainly be interested in a player who forgot to remind his or her opponent to draw when the opponent had no cards in hand. Issuing the Warning lets you track the infraction (and I hope judges writing it on a slip would investigate and note the number of cards the opponent had), and it tells the player “Hey, friend - we're watching you. Make sure you remind your opponent or you're going to have issues later.”

To answer Lyle's question about the distinction with Dictate of Kruphix, I don't think that comparing the amount of play the two cards saw is helpful. The two standard formats were quite different (remember that Theros shared Standard with two very powerful blocks!), and I don't think that you can compare cards across environments - Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time were fine in Standard and Limited, but banned and restricted everywhere else. It's also possible for an effect to be not-as-detrimental as another effect, but still detrimental. The damage might be enough to push Fevered Visions over the edge, even if players would rather play a version of the card that just let them draw.

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/mtg/standard-detrimental/ is reviewed and approved by (O) sources before we list cards with generally detrimental triggers.

(I'm on that project and we did have many discussions about Fevered Visions).

Edited Jeff S Higgins (Dec. 18, 2016 01:21:09 PM)

Just an ‘O’fficial +1 to what John Brian and SHiggins said.

d:^D

Originally posted by Bartłomiej Wieszok:

Could you link to O statement that Visions on NAP side are detrimental? I have been always treating that trigger as non detrimental.

Jeff - for me that card in vaccume is never detrimental. You let them draw extra card but for a price.

If your opponent draws a card at the price of 2 damage, that is good *for your opponent* - so, it is detrimental *for you*.

To be clear, by the way, I am working off of the following assumption: We are allowed to classify effects as being detrimental or not based on some characteristics of the game state. For example, Howling Mine is generally detrimental on your opponent's turn, but not on yours. I take that to mean that there exist some generally easy-to-account statements about the game that allow us to determine when an effect might be detrimental in some cases and not in others without changing the effect. In this specific case, I take that to mean that if the opponent has 2 or fewer cards in hand before the ability resolves, then the opponent will not take any damage from the ability and hence the ability can be considered detrimental. The question I am asking is concerning only the specific case in which the opponent has 3 or more cards in hand as the ability begins to resolve (or would begin to resolve if it was not missed). I noticed a few of the answers above took these 2 cases as the same case to make the argument that the ability was detrimental, and I wanted to be sure that I pointed this out, that I am working under the assumption that these are in fact different cases. If they're not, of course, then there's no issue, and I simply misunderstand the available tools for delineation on this topic.

@Francesco: You can look at it that way, as allowing your opponent to draw a card at the price of 2 damage which is detrimental, or you can look at it in the flip way: Your opponent is allowing you to deal 2 damage to them at the price of also allowing them to draw a card, which would be (imo) non-detrimental. The question is, which is the correct interpretation, and, more generally, if you are a judge at an event and need to answer this question on the spot about a card about which there exists grey area, how would you know without having to look through a FAQ?

(By the way, I was actually a judge at an event where I had to answer this question on the spot, and I had to get my answer from the FAQ because I wasn't able to figure it out on the spot)

Edited Lyle Waldman (Dec. 20, 2016 03:06:01 AM)

Lyle,

Your distinction between the ‘opponent has 2 or fewer cards’ and ‘opponent
has 3 or more cards’ when the trigger is put on the stack is the exact same
argument that we have had over Dark Confidant triggers over the past few
years. In the case where the opponent has 20 life we know that card isn't
going to kill them so obviously they are just getting a “free” card, but
at 3 life that card might kill them, or it might be the last land they need
to play the card they have in their hand. Each of these can create a
rabbit hole that we really don't want to be going down in our policy
writing. Call it detrimental when the opponent gets it and beneficial when
you get it.

It is also worth noting that we should typically be constructing our views
of “generally detrimental” vs “generally beneficial” based on what we know
is going to happen. In the case of fevered visions we know that our
opponent will draw a card on their end step. We don't know if they are
going to take 2 damage (obviously we know what their card count is so in
situ that is a known value, but for evaluating the trigger in a pseudo
vacuum is reasonably irrelevant imo). So our evaluation looks like your
first statement of "allowing your opponent to draw a card at the
price of 2 damage which is detrimental". However I will say that if I
wanted to do 2 damage to someone, the downside of having them draw a card
in any game would still make me call this detrimental.

Cheers

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

To be clear, by the way, I am working off of the following assumption: We are allowed to classify effects as being detrimental or not based on some characteristics of the game state. For example, Howling Mine is generally detrimental on your opponent's turn, but not on yours. I take that to mean that there exist some generally easy-to-account statements about the game that allow us to determine when an effect might be detrimental in some cases and not in others without changing the effect.

I think your initial assumption is incorrect. We are not able to classify an effect as being detrimental or not based on the game state. We are able to base it on conditions of the trigger. This is different than using the game state. Howling Mine is always a detrimental trigger on your opponent's turn and is always not detrimental on your turn. Even if I have one card in your library, Howling Mine will not be a detrimental trigger to me.

We classify events as generally detrimental regardless of game state but taking into account who controls the trigger and when they are triggering. In doing so we declare “in most normal games of magic this effect is detrimental” even when it is not necessarily so. We frequently do this by taking the trigger, each time it triggers, to discover if it does something that is generally good or generally bad. Sometimes this is evident by theoretically removing the effect from the card and seeing if the card is generally better or worse, still regardless of the specific game state. For Fevered Visions, your opponent drawing a card and taking damage is probably a downside as we haven't seen a 3cmc card that lets only YOU draw a card each turn. There is likely some point at which the amount of damage becomes significant enough that the effect is no longer generally detrimental (imagine an effect that says your opponent takes 20 and draws a card). But the overall feeling is that the card is that in a regular game of magic, the effect (take some damage and draw a card) is generally considered an advantage to an opponent, and therefore detrimental. So we judge it as detrimental for all game states.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

To be clear, by the way, I am working off of the following assumption: We are allowed to classify effects as being detrimental or not based on some characteristics of the game state.

IPG
The current game state is not a factor in determining this, though symmetrical abilities (such as Howling Mine) may be considered usually detrimental or not depending on who is being affected.

No, we can't classify effects as detrimental based on game state. Howling Mine will always be detrimental on your opponents turn and beneficial on your turn (assuming you control it). It doesn't suddenly become beneficial when your opponent has 1 card left in their library or detrimental when you have one left.

Alright, thanks guys. I think I have a better feeling for this one now.