Originally posted by Johannes Wagner:

I dont see why the policy isnt that you have to announce every trigger, e.g. "Attack, Exalted trigger(s). I can't even imagine a scenarion where this would cause problems because you can still shortcut things like infinite combos and such.
This would in my opinion stop this discussions because they would boil down to 1 thing: Did he announce his trigger or did he not?

If you red a few post before if would make things like emrakul / storm strange to play.

But then we are talking about Competitive, so i think the more careful you play it should be rewarded. Thats why i even started this thread kinda, because all this talk i feel like right now competitive is too friendly. If you go to a GP, you should know your own deck (ie. triggers and stuff..)

I don't see a problem with “Grapeshot, Trigger” or “Grapeshot, Storm Trigger” and such. (I play it like that.)

> On Jul 15, 2016, at 5:02 PM, Johannes Wagner <forum-28534-a7c2@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
>
> I don't see a problem with “Grapeshot, Trigger” or “Grapeshot, Storm Trigger” and such. (I play it like that.)

We tried that a few years ago.
It was universally hated by players and judges because it didn't reflect the way players actually play.

The policy we have now was crafted so that it closely reflects the way players actually play. There might be some odd corner cases, like the one we are discussing, but it cleanly handles the vast vast majority of cases.

Basically, announcing every trigger is not how anyone plays. It's similar
to announcing priority passes or announcing all the parts of casting a
spell. It is a fairly technical part of the game we can't hold everyone at
a Competitive REL event to do all the time. There is a really wide variety
of people at Competitive events, with a really broad amount of skillsets,
knowledge levels, and experiences.

One of the parts of the game a huge amount of people fall down on is “what
things are triggers”. They don't know, and frankly you don't have to know
in order to play the huge majority of the game. We are the experts, with a
bunch of technical knowledge, and look how far we are into the weeds on the
“visible impact” of the Chalice trigger.


—
Rob McKenzie
Magic Judge Level III
Judge Regional Coordinator USA-North
Minnesota

Originally posted by Johannes Wagner:

I dont see why the policy isnt that you have to announce every trigger

We tried having that be policy, several years back–you had to demonstrate awareness of all of your triggers pretty much immediately. (Though with the usual caveats for OOOS.)

That led to a bunch of feedback from players saying that playing that way was miserable, so policy was changed again, and eventually we ended up where we are today.

Originally posted by Johannes Wagner:

I dont see why the policy isnt that you have to announce every trigger

Did he announce his trigger or did he not?

• “I dunno, I didn't hear it”
  
• “Io non parlo inglese”
  
• “no, he didn't say anything about a trigger”
  

I could go on, and on, and on… but that's only part of it. Announcing every trigger is tedious, and loses its effectiveness when it's a litany of “blah, trigger, blah blah, trigger trigger trigger, blah blah blah, triggers”. I know you simplified it in your examples, but in doing so, you've resorted to the same shortcut/shorthand communication that we already use and allow. I won't accept the argument that one's better than the other, esp. when the objective is to eliminate miscommunications.

Note also, I said “eliminate miscommunications” - not misunderstandings. We allow bluffing, because creating *some* misunderstandings is acceptable. (If you disagree with that, please enjoy playing with like-minded friends around your kitchen table; our Comp REL policies are not for you.)

And that's really the devil in these details - how do we handle misunderstandings and miscommunications and bluffing and strategic plays? In my view, fairly well, thanks to a lot of hard work over the years (kudos to the policy team).

d:^D

Oops. I responded to the wrong post.

Meant to respond to the one where it was suggested players explicitly announce all their triggers.

-b

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Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

All the Angel's Grace player needs to do is say “resolves?” as he puts in the graveyard. Problem solved. He didn't; instead, he assumed something - and in this specific example, the opposite of what policy says he should have assumed.

Yes, I'm OK with that player being punished for bad assumptions.

And I'm gladly not OK that a player can miss a trigger, and remembers it later and goes away with it.

Clearly, we are just rewarding someone to miss a trigger, then suddenly think about his combat phase and looking on the board -oh, Chalice !- let's now bluf everyone and the judge that I didn't forget this trigger, and everything was according to my plan.

I'm not comfortable with this. It's opening a vault to greater danger, because we don't know how far some people can abuse of it. As a player shouldn't have to announce every triggers, a player shouldn't ask for the game state every minute.

Originally posted by Maxime Hoube:

Clearly, we are just rewarding someone to miss a trigger, then suddenly think about his combat phase and looking on the board -oh, Chalice !- let's now bluf everyone and the judge that I didn't forget this trigger, and everything was according to my plan.

I'm not comfortable with this. It's opening a vault to greater danger, because we don't know how far some people can abuse of it. As a player shouldn't have to announce every triggers, a player shouldn't ask for the game state every minute.

Following that line of thought leads us nowhere, almost all cheating infractions fall under this slippery slope model… Clearly, GRV's are just rewarding players who intentionally break a rule to then just bluff to everyone and the judge that they didn't do it on purpose.

IMO, the IPG is clear enough: we assume that triggers are remembered unless the player takes an action that shows us they were not, not the other way around.

Edited Jona Bemindt (July 20, 2016 10:56:12 AM)

Originally posted by Maxime Hoube:

And I'm gladly not OK that a player can miss a trigger, and remembers it later and goes away with it … let's now {bluff} everyone and the judge that I didn't forget this trigger

Our policy covers Missed Triggers, not forgotten triggers. Because of the (fairly logical & sensible) way we've crafted the Missed Trigger policy, it is possible to forget a trigger, yet remember it before it's technically missed. This isn't a flaw in policy, or philosophy; there are many things in a game of Magic that can be forgotten, but remembered before it matters.

So, if I don't block, I'm taking 4, I'm at 7, on my next turn I'll have lethal … I guess I won't … oh, wait, that's right, you have a Giant Growth in hand; I'll block like this…

We can't write policy that everyone likes, but - hopefully - we can explain what policy says, and how it applies to common (i.e., not corner-case) situations, and greatly improve consistency, thus improve player experience.

d:^D

Originally posted by Maxime Hoube:

As a player shouldn't have to announce every triggers, a player shouldn't ask for the game state every minute.

Agreed. Players are, however, expected to maintain a clear and legal game state. If, at any point, they believe something is not legal or unclear, they should clarify.

Assuming is not clarifying. Assuming is… well, assuming. And assuming something hasn't happened when the document clearly states that the assumption is that it did happen is very bad for them.

I admit that I am surprised that the thing that causes the biggest upset is a player that acknowledges the trigger when it becomes relevant (with the split about if countering a spell causes or doesn't a visible game state) than a player deciding their opponent missed their trigger through assumption and an actual line of the IPG saying that it's a remembered trigger unless stated. To me, it's clear the player assumed the trigger was missed and didn't want to ask to not risk the owner of the Chalice to remember their trigger, maybe even using the argument that “ok” is a non-official shortcut to “resolves”, as stated previously in this thread.