Hello everyone,

AP attacks with a 4/4. NAP blocks with a 3/3 and a 1/1. NAP asks which creature AP wants to deal damage first and AP answers the 3/3.
They both agree to go to damage, AP puts the 4/4 in his graveyard and NAP puts the 3/3 in the graveyard, leaving the 1/1 on the battlefield. AP passes turn.
Do you intervene ? If yes, based on what ? If no, what do you do if at the next turn AP says “wait, your 1/1 died !” ?

A quick reminder on CR510.1c and the reason this question exists : ". An amount of damage that’s greater than a creature’s lethal damage may be assigned to it."

Thanks in advance !

Nothing illegal happened here. NAP proposed something that may or may not have been legal, and AP confirmed it by not correcting it. This philosophy is asked about fairly often, here are some past threads about it:

https://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/1631/
https://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/24500/
https://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/31297/

Originally posted by Isaac King:

Nothing illegal happened here. NAP proposed something that may or may not have been legal, and AP confirmed it by not correcting it. This philosophy is asked about fairly often, here are some past threads about it:

https://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/1631/
https://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/24500/
https://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/31297/

Feels so much wrong to me.
NAP can think “I'll put only the 3/3 in graveyard, and hope AP doesn't notice”, and he gets away with it.

Should AP have the burden of being vigilant, and correct NAP? Indeed, NAP is moving his own creatures from battlefield to graveyard, so responsability should be more on NAP side rather than AP side.

So would you want your opponent to assume you are always making the optimal choices and plays?

Originally posted by Théo CHENG:

So would you want your opponent to assume you are always making the optimal choices and plays?

Come on.
We are talking about a situation where 99, 99% of times, AP will assign damage “3 here, 1 here”.
Further, NAP is taking the action, not AP.

From here to “always assuming blah blah” is a huge leap.

Originally posted by Théo CHENG:

So would you want your opponent to assume you are always making the optimal choices and plays?

No. Yet shortcuts were created to make us have no choice but to assume the opponent is making optimal plays :

Originally posted by MTR 4.2:

Whenever a player adds an object to the stack, he or she is assumed to be passing priority unless he or she explicitly announces that he or she intends to retain it. If he or she adds a group of objects to the stack without explicitly retaining priority and a player wishes to take an action at a point in the middle, the actions should be reversed up to that point.

I can't tell my opponent that I'm allowed to kill his Nantuko Shade with my Lightning bolt because he should've activated its ability at 12 different stances instead of everything at the same time.

Originally posted by MTR 4.2:

If a player casts a spell or activates an ability with X in its mana cost without specifying the value of
X, it is assumed to be for all mana currently available in his or her pool.

If my opponent taps 10 lands and casts a Fireball targetting me, I can't just take 5 damage and assume he decided to not use the remaining 4. Even if I'm the only one with a notepad at the table and the caster doesn't bother to track life points.

The same goes for some others shortcuts. While I understand the point Isaac tried to make, his examples aren't the best :
_ https://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/1631/ : if I didn't misinterpret Scott's sentence, he argues in favor of dealing combat damage in the most efficient way

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

While it is legal to assign all 5 to the first blocker, even though its toughness is only 3, that's not the expected “normal” assignment; instead, you would normally assign lethal to each creature in assignment order, until you've assigned all damage.

So, the 2nd blocker dies - having had 2 damage assigned by the attacker, and 1 damage from Electrickery.

_ The second situation is about replacement effects. It's a situation were the player with the most rules knowledge will gain an advantage, not a situation where one player can try to be sneaky by not fully completing an action to gain an advantage.

_ The third one only involves one player casting a spell and by not fully completing the action proposing a valid reality to the opponent. It is extremely closer to our case, I agree, but at least it isn't about one player trying to fool the other. Making the opponent responsible for the other player's counters wouldn't be very convenient. In our case, NAP is the one responsible for moving his creatures to the appropriate zone.


This is an actual situation that happened to me quite some time ago. I wanted to intervene but I didn't because I couldn't see any grounds for it. The question ends up being, why isn't it a shortcut ?
I did some research and found this (old) Toby's article about trample damage : https://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2012/11/20/trample/
It does explain why there's no shortcut on trample and sounds reasonable to me.
Funny thing is he even mentions

You don’t want to codify maximizing damage, because someone will inevitably claim that you did all 5 damage to the first of the 5 1/1s blocking, because you failed to say anything else.

As if it wasn't a wanted action.

Some of the shortcuts are here to avoid players getting fooled on something small that could go unnoticeable. If the examples above aren't enough, here's a completely legal CR scenario forbidden by the MTR :

AP's 2nd Main Phase
NAP : “Can I have priority ?”
AP : “Huuu, sure?”
NAP : “Ok, I pass priority, now it's the end step”

With the appropriate paragraph :

Originally posted by MTR 4.2:

A player may not request priority and take no action with it. If a player decides he or she does not wish to do anything, the request is nullified and priority is returned to the player that originally had it.

I should probably end it here since this has become way longer than it should, so let me just conclude by quoting Francesco :

Feels so much wrong to me.

We don't want players going around and always putting the first blocker on graveyard and leaving the rest on the battlefield unless the opponent states something, right ?

Edited Àre Maturana (Aug. 2, 2017 08:14:23 PM)

I would not interfere, but if AP notices early enough, and the 1/1 hasn't
interacted with the gamestate a whole lot, I'd rule that he did in fact do
the damage to the 1/1.

2017-08-02 8:15 GMT-04:00 Àre Maturana <

Originally posted by Francesco Scialpi:

Should AP have the burden of being vigilant, and correct NAP?

Yes, absolutely. Players are responsible for communicating appropriately, and are not required to help their opponents make good decisions. If AP wants to avoid this problem, he need simply state how he is assigning damage.




Àre Maturana-

You mention some shortcuts as situations where we assume the player made the optimal play, but those are defined specifically in the MTR. This situation doesn't have a shortcut for it, so I don't think you can apply that philosophy here.

You mentioned Toby's article, but to be honest, I think you somewhat missed the point of it. The article explains why there isn't a trample shortcut, and how we look at what actually happened to determine how any unspoken decisions were made.

So, we do the only thing possible: default to what actually changed in the game. How many creatures went to the graveyard? Did they say anything like “and you Take two” within a reasonable time frame? Did life totals get written and acknowledged – a requirement that was partly inspired by trample? This makes everything work well in the context of the game – the net effect is almost always “creatures die, opponent takes damage if it gets pointed out” – even though a player will occasionally forget some damage and be upset a little later that they didn’t get it. Ultimately, it’s the responsibility of the person controlling the trampler to be clear, and that’s where we want the incentives.



The other topics I linked were not meant to be the same exact situation, I simply meant them to display our philosophy of “look at what actually happened- well, that's what happened”. If a player takes an action that might be legal, and the opponent doesn't choose to correct it, nothing bad has happened. We don't assume that a player made the optimal play, even if it's “obvious”. It's not our job to help the players play well, just legally.

Regarding Uncle Scott's quote- I won't put words into his mouth, but I believe he meant that we look at the game state to see what happened. After combat damage has been dealt in that scenario, we don't know how much damage was dealt to the second 3/3, so we don't make an assumption either way. As soon as it becomes relevant to the game state, we require the player who made the decision (in this case Player A) to clarify, which he did by saying that the creature died once it was dealt 1 more damage. Similar to a possible missed trigger, we're allowed to be in a game state where it's unknown exactly what the current game state is. If someone wants to know what has happened before it becomes relevant, they can simply ask.

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Both players should also be led to understanding of why it's important to be more clear about what's going on - for the attacker, to explain damage assignment; for the defending player, to ask questions when it's not clear.

Here's one more source talking about this philosophy, in yet another context: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/discussing-cavern-souls-2012-05-25

Communication is a tricky thing, and doesn't always consist entirely of statements made. I fell that there is a very good argument (an overwhelming argument, in fact) that the AP here believes that he has communicated a legal choice for the assigning of combat damage in the values of 3 and 1 (less important), and that the NAP here believes that the AP has communicated that same thing but is actively choosing to misunderstand that communication (more important).

Relevant questions I would ask the players: How has blocking with multiple creatures been dealt with before this match? Likewise, how has trample been dealt with? NAP, did you proactively move to a more clear method of communication, such as speech instead of unspoken understandings, and use that more clear method to confirm an otherwise unclear situation?

Based upon the answers to these questions, I can't see the outcome of this being anything other than a dead 1/1.

Arthur- can I ask how this situation is different from the one discussed in Toby's article?

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2012/11/20/trample/

Originally posted by Isaac King:

Arthur- can I ask how this situation is different from the one discussed in Toby's article?

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2012/11/20/trample/

Different from that five year old article? Sure. The difference between this situation and issues arising from trample is very similar to the difference between a GRV and a Missed Trigger, and the amount of active interaction we exect from players for each of these situations. It's fairly easy to forget that a creature has trample and could deal excess damage somewhere else, but substantially harder to forget what a creature's power is and that it still has to deal that much damage. Yes, there are certain circumstances where it could happen, and if the 1/1 here lived because the AP forgot about their Gideon emblem that the situation gets somewhat more complicated (but even then, the AP has failed to assign the correct amount of damage according to the process in 510.1c, and the situation becomes on of applying a proscribed fix rather than handling communication issues).

Isaac, the other gigantic difference between that article and this thread is this:
Generally players don't physically move their opponents creatures to their graveyard (in fact it would typically be seen as very rude).
However in the trample case, AP can attack and write down a life total change. That doesn't involve relying on NAP doing anything. Your linked article is about AP having a decision which we can infer based on AP's physical actions (not recording a life total change).

I see a dead 1/1 here too.

I would view this as being different if NAP actually proposed something and communicated it to AP, rather than just surreptitiously doing (or not doing) something and hoping AP doesn't notice (what you describe as “AP confirming it by not correcting it”).

Consider the following scenario that I view as horrific (DQ-worthy) that your argument would seem to condone:
AP, controlling only untapped creatures, casts a precombat Sparring Mummy (in order to pump a Mummy Paramount).
NAP (unnoticed by AP) untaps a creature (and later claims "I was proposing that Sparring Mummy was untapping my creature“).
AP does other things prior to combat (including asking for confirmation for things, such as: ”Cast Trial of Solidarity, any responses?").
AP eventually attacks
NAP blocks with the creature they had just untapped
AP calls judge

Ok,

I went a bit too concise and I felt that I need to explain a bit more.

I was responding to this sentence :

Should AP have the burden of being vigilant, and correct NAP? Indeed, NAP is moving his own creatures from battlefield to graveyard, so responsability should be more on NAP side rather than AP side.

I indeed think that AP has at the very least as much, if not more responsibility in this sequence than NAP.
In the absence of a shortcut describing this mecanism by default, yeah I would like that the player that is supposed to assign the damage bore the ultimate responsibility if there is a lack of communication. I would not be surprised if there is a shortcut instructing otherwise, but as we are right now, I think it is not fair to blame NAP if AP did not execute something the CR would instruct them to do. I would not give a GRV to AP, and realistically I would not be shocked (well, a bit though) if someone wants to, since there is a GRV for not ordering blockers (though for the discussions above, the old trample shortcut was in a very similar spot than what we have now with ordering blockers).
In short, it is not all on NAP, but it is fair that AP specifies some things as well.

Also, yeah some large majority of time you maximise the damage to all the recipicents but there is in limited especially many spots where you do not want to kill a specific creature.
That bridges towards what Àre is saying. In fact this topic is just a general case of the trample topic. If we think about it maximizing damage between blockers and trampling over a player is exactly the same topic. We don't have shortcut for trample anymore, so what would justify it for the general case?
I don't know, there is very few case where it is relevant and where AP could take advantage of the lack of communication : AP attacks with an adorned pouncer and you block with a bloodlust inciter and a ruin rat.) and you realize when the rat dies that you opponent now can exile your cut/ribbons that is currently in your graveyard, and now you can say that you wanted to kill the inciter only all along. This ressembles to the example of Arthur about forgetting having trample, or even more relevant you can forget that your creature has deathtouch for some reason.

I do not have a strong feeling towards any direction, but I personnaly lean towards that we should have a shortcut for that and that removing the trample one was only half-justified. Having a shortcut usually serves the great majority of cases, and the burden is on the players if they do not wish to follow the shortcut when a rare case presents itself. Maximizing damage seems to be a great spot to have a shortcut.

Edited Théo CHENG (Aug. 3, 2017 04:24:14 PM)

Though they do exist, the situations where AP wants to keep a specific blocker alive are few and far between. If such a situation happens, AP will always communicate clearly about this.

In contrast, most players will assume that “I kill as many of my opponents creatures as possible” is obvious, and therefore won't communicate about it.

If NAP wants his 1/1 to survive, he need to get explicit confirmation of this from his opponent. “all damage to my 3/3?” followed by confirmation would be fine with me, but “I assumed my opponent made a very unusual choice for no apparent reason” is not acceptable.

I don't require players to assume that their opponent always makes optimal choices, but I expect them to ask for clarification if a choice is relevant yet unclear.

In the given situation, I suspect that there may be a disagreement on past game actions, where AP thinks he distributed damage 3 and 1, whereas NAP feels AP distributed 4 and 0. If this is the case, AP has committed Failure to Maintain Game State.

So I'm going to intervene to ask how damage was distributed. If AP intentionally kept the 1/1 alive, everything is fine and dandy. If there was a disagreement, I can fix it now. In that case, AP will receive FtMGS, with no penalty for NAP (as NAP didn't actually break any rules, unfortunately).

Originally posted by Michel Degenhardt:

Though they do exist, the situations where AP wants to keep a specific blocker alive are few and far between. If such a situation happens, AP will always communicate clearly about this.

In contrast, most players will assume that “I kill as many of my opponents creatures as possible” is obvious, and therefore won't communicate about it.

If NAP wants his 1/1 to survive, he need to get explicit confirmation of this from his opponent. “all damage to my 3/3?” followed by confirmation would be fine with me, but “I assumed my opponent made a very unusual choice for no apparent reason” is not acceptable.

Agree.

Originally posted by Michel Degenhardt:

I don't require players to assume that their opponent always makes optimal choices, but I expect them to ask for clarification if a choice is relevant yet unclear.

In the given situation, I suspect that there may be a disagreement on past game actions, where AP thinks he distributed damage 3 and 1, whereas NAP feels AP distributed 4 and 0. If this is the case, AP has committed Failure to Maintain Game State.

So I'm going to intervene to ask how damage was distributed. If AP intentionally kept the 1/1 alive, everything is fine and dandy. If there was a disagreement, I can fix it now. In that case, AP will receive FtMGS, with no penalty for NAP (as NAP didn't actually break any rules, unfortunately).

This is not allowed by IPG. If NAP didn't break any rule, you cannot give FtMGS to AP.