I am just curious, what is acceptable to say to people who are not the people playing a match to tell them to not critique you during the match. Example.
I had 3 lands. I played a tapped Temple of Triumph. Then, I proceeded to get all 4 of the lands together and then tap them to play Chandra's Phoenix (which only costs 3 mana). There was this guy watching who immediately criticized me, "You just played that land tapped. You can't tap it for mana." Then, my opponent corrected him, explaining that I was just using 3 mana for Chandra's Phoenix, and then the game proceeded on as usual. What is an acceptable way of telling the spectator to just leave you alone?
Edit: I'll just put my come into play tapped lands in a separate pile so we won't have the possibility of this confusion in the future.
Depending on who it is, you could say exactly that if you really wanted to. I have had to say that before, but just once... Pretty much just say that you and your opponent is on top of things and you'd like it if they didn't butt in like that.
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Nothing wrong with asking them politely to keep their comments to themselves during the match. Explain that you don't want the distraction or whatever. If it is a tourney situation then you can get a judge or organizer involved if needed.
I have had to correct and have been corrected from both sides of the spectrum. I think that simply asking them should suffice, if the person keeps at it, call a judge. I would at least.
Last resort? Find them in the parking lot later.... Just kidding. Try not to resort to violence.
I was just referring to a situation where a third party who likes to "correct" other people just interject at something that turns out to be a false alarm.
The way you described how you handled your cards makes it sound like he was doing you a favor. What if you really had mistakenly tried to tap that Temple for mana, and revealed a Warleader's Helix or something to your opponent? If he had waited, by the time he alerted you to the mistake you would have given away valuable information about your hand. By speaking up before you played a spell he ensured that the game would simply proceed as normal even if he was wrong.
I was just referring to a situation where a third party who likes to "correct" other people just interject at something that turns out to be a false alarm.
The way you described how you handled your cards makes it sound like he was doing you a favor. What if you really had mistakenly tried to tap that Temple for mana, and revealed a Warleader's Helix or something to your opponent? If he had waited, by the time he alerted you to the mistake you would have given away valuable information about your hand. By speaking up before you played a spell he ensured that the game would simply proceed as normal even if he was wrong.
I was just referring to a situation where a third party who likes to "correct" other people just interject at something that turns out to be a false alarm.
The way you described how you handled your cards makes it sound like he was doing you a favor. What if you really had mistakenly tried to tap that Temple for mana, and revealed a Warleader's Helix or something to your opponent? If he had waited, by the time he alerted you to the mistake you would have given away valuable information about your hand. By speaking up before you played a spell he ensured that the game would simply proceed as normal even if he was wrong.
But I played Chandra's Phoenix...
You did, but you possibly might not have, and from his view he had only the information that you tapped 4 lands. From that, he thought it right to tell you, in order to either: Embarrass you for a mistake, or to keep you from revealing a card you cannot cast.
STATISTICS.
All of these "Let's eliminate bad cards" crusades are simply ignorant. And when they start to devolve into "WotC is conspiring to give us crappy cards," they just become embarrassing. MATH is conspiring to give you crappy cards.
Seems much less extreme than at my LGS, literally will be playing a match against this girl, and will straight up call me an idiot for making x play. I feel that what you experienced was help that wasn't particularly needed, but I don't think his actions are much of a problem as it didn't change the gamestate nor did it really change how you were making a specific line of play. Your best bet is to politely ask the bystander to back up as you cannot concentrate with them breathing on your neck, or something of that nature. Don't by any means get testy or tilt, just be as polite as possible and have them understand that it's bothersome to hear the play-by-play.
I would just like to add that I am okay with people correcting mistakes. For instance (this was actually the same game as in the OP), my opponent played a second Polukranos, World Eater on the field, and another person (different from the one that commented on my play) pointed that out and he had to get rid of one of them because of the legend rule. So I do understand that this can be helpful if the other person is correctly pointing out a mistake.
In an FNM its quite common that people will at least respond if they watch a game and see something "illegal" (from their point of view).
If its false alarm, normally nothing problematic happened anyway.
Happens often that someone just trys to cast a card without the proper mana, or some other stuff that is easily corrected, without calling a judge over, just to say the trivial thing and keep going.
However, that just works in an FNM, where people are much more into having fun and kinda know each other anyway.
If a move is just "bad", dont respond in a game, tell them after the game is over if you need to.
In any other level, you have to call a judge, any comment to a running game might just get you in trouble.
The store I play at, during a tournament, only an opponent or a judge can talk to you about something you've done during a match. After the round has finished, others can speak to you about it, but never during the round.
By the rules, spectators are never allowed to directly point out anything to the players. At all. Spectators can always go and find a judge, if they think something wrong happened. And at Rules Enforcement Levels (RELs) Regular (FNM, Prerelease, ...) and Competitive (PTQ, GP Day 1, ...) they can tell the players "hey, I think you guys messed up, please stop your match while I get a judge".
That said, at Regular events, the atmosphere is usually more laid back, and pointing out simple illegal plays is often accepted.
So, @OP, you are well within your rights to ask spectators to not comment on your match, because technically they are not allowed to anyway. However, it might be the wisest course to just go with the level of spectator involvement that is accepted at your store, and try to slowly change the culture, rather than to be the one guy that doesn't care what the customs in this community are and insists on being different. Maybe try noting cases where spectator involvement went beyond a simple "hey, you can't target a pro: back creature with a black spell" and raise awareness in your group of how such involvement can give (unintended) strategic advice to one player.
If there are prizes on the line, I consider it extremely rude to make comments about a game you are not participating in. Part of being a very good magic player is minimizing the amount of mistakes you make, and losing to a bystander instead of my opponent just seems unsporting and unfair, especially if it is their friend essentially coaching them by pointing out things that favor them. FNM level tournaments are often decided by a clutch misplay.
Even mentioning something simple like "wow *blank* is about to go ultimate" is very inappropriate. There shouldn't be any comments during a competitive game. Afterwards though I will point out any mistakes my opponent made during the match, and what the correct lines of play should have been, like I would hope my opponent would do with me. I have no problem helping someone after our match, but I'm not going to coach them, or make observations, or hold their hand during a game where I'm playing for prizes.
If there are prizes on the line, I consider it extremely rude to make comments about a game you are not participating in. Part of being a very good magic player is minimizing the amount of mistakes you make, and losing to a bystander instead of my opponent just seems unsporting and unfair, especially if it is their friend essentially coaching them by pointing out things that favor them. FNM level tournaments are often decided by a clutch misplay.
Even mentioning something simple like "wow *blank* is about to go ultimate" is very inappropriate. There shouldn't be any comments during a competitive game. Afterwards though I will point out any mistakes my opponent made during the match, and what the correct lines of play should have been, like I would hope my opponent would do with me. I have no problem helping someone after our match, but I'm not going to coach them, or make observations, or hold their hand during a game where I'm playing for prizes.
I am like this too. I don't make a comment on someone else's match no matter what I see. I may or may not tell them after the match however.
I believe that you are obligated to tell a Judge if you see something illegal however. But since no one can really prove that I knew anything illegal was going on in their game and I want to leave the game to the 2 players, I refuse to say something.
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It's hard to say what's illegal. Like if I miss my herald of torment trigger am I cheating or was it an honest mistake? If I tap for a multicolored spell and don't actually have dual lands in the right combination, is that cheating or an honest mistake? I mean cards like supreme verdict have a unique colored mana cost, it's not unheard of to play it and accidentally only have 2 blue instead of 2 white available. And even like a rules mistake I don't like to intervene in. I'm very up on the rules as far as standard goes, and the only time I call a judge is to confirm to my opponent what I already knew.
It's hard to say what's illegal. Like if I miss my herald of torment trigger am I cheating or was it an honest mistake? If I tap for a multicolored spell and don't actually have dual lands in the right combination, is that cheating or an honest mistake? I mean cards like supreme verdict have a unique colored mana cost, it's not unheard of to play it and accidentally only have 2 blue instead of 2 white available. And even like a rules mistake I don't like to intervene in. I'm very up on the rules as far as standard goes, and the only time I call a judge is to confirm to my opponent what I already knew.
In general someone would assume its a mistake for the first bunch of times.
If the same "mistake" happens in very specific situations like "play wrath or you are dead ; ups i didnt see i dont have the mana" , then it will clearly become suspicious, even more so if it happens more often.
Everyone will have a bad day or randomly make such mistakes, sometimes no player will even notice and the game continues.
If someone taps all his mana in a giant pile to cast a important spell it also looks suspicious that they want to hide missing colored (or quantity) , so all that is potentially something to give you a hint they are trying to pull something of.
The occasional "did i play a land ?" is something you will hear often. And i say if someone is not sure, they better assume "yes" instead of "no". Most of the time your opponent will know aswell, so its an easy to fix question, but in a small amount of times, its a cheat, so still be careful.
*If someone pulls the "did i play a land ?" often enough, i would become highly suspicious.
**I am used to teaching that kind of players to put the lands they played that turn in a different pile, just beside the lands you allready have, so at any point they know if they played a land in the future ; and that fixes the problem so far.
If there are prizes on the line, I consider it extremely rude to make comments about a game you are not participating in. Part of being a very good magic player is minimizing the amount of mistakes you make, and losing to a bystander instead of my opponent just seems unsporting and unfair, especially if it is their friend essentially coaching them by pointing out things that favor them. FNM level tournaments are often decided by a clutch misplay.
Even mentioning something simple like "wow *blank* is about to go ultimate" is very inappropriate. There shouldn't be any comments during a competitive game. Afterwards though I will point out any mistakes my opponent made during the match, and what the correct lines of play should have been, like I would hope my opponent would do with me. I have no problem helping someone after our match, but I'm not going to coach them, or make observations, or hold their hand during a game where I'm playing for prizes.
I am like this too. I don't make a comment on someone else's match no matter what I see. I may or may not tell them after the match however.
I believe that you are obligated to tell a Judge if you see something illegal however. But since no one can really prove that I knew anything illegal was going on in their game and I want to leave the game to the 2 players, I refuse to say something.
I think that is a pretty irresponsible attitude. If you see an illegal play or game state then you should do what the rules allow you to do. I don't want to win or loose a game that was decided by an illegal play. Now, if a person comments on a "bad" play by me or my opponent then me and that person are going to have words.
Lol I think a lot of us have seem illegal plays even at standard opens. Remember not that long ago a guy made his stormbreath dragon fight a frostburn weird using the domri rade -2 the same turn his stormbreath dragon attacked a +1'ed jace, meaning the stormbreath dragon would not have killed the frostburn weird, and his opponent would have kept his thassa active and the game would have certainly been different.
I mean several months ago I detention sphered an activated mutavault and it was several turns later that someone walked by and pointed out the then obvious illegal play. We didn't know what to do. And this guy had top 8'ed an IQ, he should have known better.
But yeah I don't think it's ever ok to comment during a competitive game as a rule of thumb, since it's often difficult to tell the difference between cheating and ignorance.
I believe that you are obligated to tell a Judge if you see something illegal however.
No. As a spectator, you are not obligated to do anything at all (other than not to talk to the players during their match). If you notice anything illegal happening in a match you're watching, we are happy if you alert us, but you are not obligated to do so.
I have a question based on this. If I spot an illegal play, how would I go about telling them without A) Incurring their ire, or B) having them complain? Especially if it's people I don't know.
Happens often that someone just trys to cast a card without the proper mana, or some other stuff that is easily corrected, without calling a judge over, just to say the trivial thing and keep going.
However, that just works in an FNM, where people are much more into having fun and kinda know each other anyway.
At a recent FNM I was watching a game when one of the players cast a flashback card from his graveyard, it took some time to resolve (I think it involved returning lands from his graveyard to his hand or something like that), and then he put the card back in his graveyard. He already had some other cards in a separate exile pile, so it was quite clear it was a mistake (I'm pretty sure he wasn't trying to cheat.) I asked if the card shouldn't be exiled. He corrected the mistake.
If it had been a higher-level tournament instead, would have I dared say anything, or call a judge? I think I would be allowed to ask the match to be paused and to call a judge, but to do that for such a small thing (something that you could simply point out to the players in one short sentence) it feels too much trouble... On the other hand, if I just outright point it out to them without calling a judge, could I get in trouble?
On the third hand, would I be irresponsible if I say and do nothing?
Chances are, that even in a Grand prix nobody would mind, still Judges will tell you to not interrupt a game.
In the end a player would normally be fine with it, especially if both players missed the "error" , a quick sentence like yours here is a much better fix from a players perspective.
However, the point with judges is, that even "small" stuff like this should be tracked.
So from your point of view, it was a small error, a tiny thing, but MAYBE someone trys to pull this off intentional and does it over the course of the tournament more often, so "you" wont see it, but judges can track this.
In an FNM chances that someone will do this intentional are small or non-existent, as the price is small and people just play for fun.
This changes at higher levels, especially if real dollars are on the table.
That said, on an FNM its totally fine, on a Grand prix players will probably not mind if you point out a pretty easy error that is quick to fix ; like "this guy has protection from ... or this guy has hexproof" something like that.
But any judge will like to know (or they should, and face it, this small stuff is tracked not often enough, and some players really abuse stuff like this).
I had 3 lands. I played a tapped Temple of Triumph. Then, I proceeded to get all 4 of the lands together and then tap them to play Chandra's Phoenix (which only costs 3 mana). There was this guy watching who immediately criticized me, "You just played that land tapped. You can't tap it for mana." Then, my opponent corrected him, explaining that I was just using 3 mana for Chandra's Phoenix, and then the game proceeded on as usual. What is an acceptable way of telling the spectator to just leave you alone?
Edit: I'll just put my come into play tapped lands in a separate pile so we won't have the possibility of this confusion in the future.
Last resort? Find them in the parking lot later.... Just kidding. Try not to resort to violence.
In Competitive REL, they cannot comment directly, but they are allowed(and sometimes encouraged) to yell for a judge if you make a game-play error.
I don't know about regular REL, people comment on gameplay errors all the time even though they probably shouldn't. They can still call a judge.
The way you described how you handled your cards makes it sound like he was doing you a favor. What if you really had mistakenly tried to tap that Temple for mana, and revealed a Warleader's Helix or something to your opponent? If he had waited, by the time he alerted you to the mistake you would have given away valuable information about your hand. By speaking up before you played a spell he ensured that the game would simply proceed as normal even if he was wrong.
But I played Chandra's Phoenix...
You did, but you possibly might not have, and from his view he had only the information that you tapped 4 lands. From that, he thought it right to tell you, in order to either: Embarrass you for a mistake, or to keep you from revealing a card you cannot cast.
If its false alarm, normally nothing problematic happened anyway.
Happens often that someone just trys to cast a card without the proper mana, or some other stuff that is easily corrected, without calling a judge over, just to say the trivial thing and keep going.
However, that just works in an FNM, where people are much more into having fun and kinda know each other anyway.
If a move is just "bad", dont respond in a game, tell them after the game is over if you need to.
In any other level, you have to call a judge, any comment to a running game might just get you in trouble.
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That said, at Regular events, the atmosphere is usually more laid back, and pointing out simple illegal plays is often accepted.
So, @OP, you are well within your rights to ask spectators to not comment on your match, because technically they are not allowed to anyway. However, it might be the wisest course to just go with the level of spectator involvement that is accepted at your store, and try to slowly change the culture, rather than to be the one guy that doesn't care what the customs in this community are and insists on being different. Maybe try noting cases where spectator involvement went beyond a simple "hey, you can't target a pro: back creature with a black spell" and raise awareness in your group of how such involvement can give (unintended) strategic advice to one player.
Even mentioning something simple like "wow *blank* is about to go ultimate" is very inappropriate. There shouldn't be any comments during a competitive game. Afterwards though I will point out any mistakes my opponent made during the match, and what the correct lines of play should have been, like I would hope my opponent would do with me. I have no problem helping someone after our match, but I'm not going to coach them, or make observations, or hold their hand during a game where I'm playing for prizes.
I am like this too. I don't make a comment on someone else's match no matter what I see. I may or may not tell them after the match however.
I believe that you are obligated to tell a Judge if you see something illegal however. But since no one can really prove that I knew anything illegal was going on in their game and I want to leave the game to the 2 players, I refuse to say something.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)In general someone would assume its a mistake for the first bunch of times.
If the same "mistake" happens in very specific situations like "play wrath or you are dead ; ups i didnt see i dont have the mana" , then it will clearly become suspicious, even more so if it happens more often.
Everyone will have a bad day or randomly make such mistakes, sometimes no player will even notice and the game continues.
If someone taps all his mana in a giant pile to cast a important spell it also looks suspicious that they want to hide missing colored (or quantity) , so all that is potentially something to give you a hint they are trying to pull something of.
The occasional "did i play a land ?" is something you will hear often. And i say if someone is not sure, they better assume "yes" instead of "no". Most of the time your opponent will know aswell, so its an easy to fix question, but in a small amount of times, its a cheat, so still be careful.
*If someone pulls the "did i play a land ?" often enough, i would become highly suspicious.
**I am used to teaching that kind of players to put the lands they played that turn in a different pile, just beside the lands you allready have, so at any point they know if they played a land in the future ; and that fixes the problem so far.
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I mean several months ago I detention sphered an activated mutavault and it was several turns later that someone walked by and pointed out the then obvious illegal play. We didn't know what to do. And this guy had top 8'ed an IQ, he should have known better.
But yeah I don't think it's ever ok to comment during a competitive game as a rule of thumb, since it's often difficult to tell the difference between cheating and ignorance.
No. As a spectator, you are not obligated to do anything at all (other than not to talk to the players during their match). If you notice anything illegal happening in a match you're watching, we are happy if you alert us, but you are not obligated to do so.
Chances are, that even in a Grand prix nobody would mind, still Judges will tell you to not interrupt a game.
In the end a player would normally be fine with it, especially if both players missed the "error" , a quick sentence like yours here is a much better fix from a players perspective.
However, the point with judges is, that even "small" stuff like this should be tracked.
So from your point of view, it was a small error, a tiny thing, but MAYBE someone trys to pull this off intentional and does it over the course of the tournament more often, so "you" wont see it, but judges can track this.
In an FNM chances that someone will do this intentional are small or non-existent, as the price is small and people just play for fun.
This changes at higher levels, especially if real dollars are on the table.
That said, on an FNM its totally fine, on a Grand prix players will probably not mind if you point out a pretty easy error that is quick to fix ; like "this guy has protection from ... or this guy has hexproof" something like that.
But any judge will like to know (or they should, and face it, this small stuff is tracked not often enough, and some players really abuse stuff like this).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮