Matt Tabak said that's how it works on his tumblr (link). You can't manifest from the library if Grafdigger's Cage is on the battlefield.
Well, then that's how it works. Now if I only understood why.
Edit: I'm going to guess it's because of...
...The effect defining its characteristics works any time the card is face down and ends when it's turned face up
Meaning that as soon as we understand that we're manifesting that top card, because it's face down from on top of the library, for a brief moment it's a 2/2 creature sitting on top of the library leaping down from the tower that is your 200+ Battle of Wits deck, onto the battlefield below to rush into service. In that case the cage would catch it, keeping our namesake enchantment from coming to life. But that's just my guess to justify what I don't fully understand. This is starting to turn into conjecture. If anyone can definitively confirm this belief, or elaborate upon why it really works, I would greatly appreciate it.
I don't think we can actually answer this one until the comp rules come out and we see what, if any changes come to 707. Face-Down Spells and Permanents. Currently the relevant rules for manifest are...
701.31a "Manifest [a card]" means "Put [that card] onto the battlefield face down." That permanent is a 2/2 creature with no text, no name, no subtypes, and no mana cost. That permanent is a manifested permanent as long as it's face down. The effect defining its characteristics works any time the card is face down and ends when it's turned face up.
Nothing about that, or anything listed in 707 suggests it's a creature while on the library, and 701.31a suggests that it is only a creature once it is a permanent. Facedown cards are only creatures on the stack, or while they're on the battlefield. Unless Natedogg knows more than us (which isn't out of the question), for now, Grafdigger's Cage doesn't seem to stop things from being manifested. If I'm misunderstanding something, or overlooking something, I would appreciate the correction and explanation.
I am tired of this black and white perspective players have on cheating. It's player error if the mistake had no benefit to you. It's cheating if the mistake was beneficial. Intent is required. I've made mistakes before as to casting a creature when I was short on the Mana because I was convinced it cost 1 less than it did and didn't notice until the next game. We are human, no one is perfect.
This is pretty spot on. The mentality I see often is "they made a mistake, they're cheaters and should be banned for life!" It's ignored time and time again that this "cheating" is really a mistake that looks like it could be malicious in intent, but we don't really know so we jump to the conclusion that it is the big cheats.
If you think this player in the video is a cheater, without investigating the situation yourself, then YOU (the person saying he is a cheater) are very likely a cheater by your own definition too. Missed a bob trigger? CHEATER! Forgot to discard down to 7 EoT? CHEATER! Didn't write down a life change right away? CHEATER! I know it seems like it's difficult to forget to put a card back, or to think you've placed two when you've placed one, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It does. I'll concede that this does look very fishy, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was considered cheating, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't too. Why? Because I'm not the one who is investigating this, and like you all, don't have all the facts.
Having a dealer to the side of the table so that each player only touches the cards he is dealt is impractical? I disagree given that Poker does it for all 5,000 attendees at major events with 1 dealer per table of players.
I think a reasonable consideration would be the final 32 for pro-tour and final 8 for GP events.
I would think a lvl 1 judge status would be a good starting point for a dealer to work the table. Dealer qualifications would be separate from judge qualifications. Players present the dealer with the deck and the sideboard. Dealer counts both for confirmation of suitability to play. The dealer sets aside the sideboard, then would shuffle each deck in a repeated way (split, split again, shuffle parts 1 and 2, then 3 and 4: split, then split again, shuffle parts 1 and 4, then 2 and 3) then repeat 5 times. Present cut card (yellow) to opponent for cut. Then perform again with 2nd deck.
Deal 7 cards to player who will start play, then 7 cards to player 2. If rejected, shuffle twice per above and deal 6 cards. Repeating downward as needed.
For sideboarding: dealer will press cut the 15 card sideboard into the players deck then present the entire deck to the player. The player then must remove 15 cards from his/her deck and present both to the dealer. Players may not selectively separate cards in the deck. Dealer confirms 15 cards sideboard and provides a count of the deck. Shuffle and play starts.
Look this allows enormous protection over slight of hand, deck stacking, card in lap, pass-through shuffling, sleeve shaving, and deck manipulation.
Tell you what, you start hosting $10,000 entry fee tournaments and compensating judge's a hell of a lot better than we are now, and we'll jump at the opportunity to be dealers like that.
WotC attempts to minimize this by having harsh blanket rules for this type of event. Had his opponent, or anyone, seen Dominguez only put back one card and said something it would have been an automatic game loss. There is no 'I forgot' just game loss. It's not the perfect system, but it works.
Actually, the error committed would call for a warning under Game Play Error - Game Rules Violation. You seem to think it's an error of Drawing Extra Cards, which would carry a game loss, but you're mistaken and this is why. While it's true that he did have an extra number of cards in his hand, which is part of what you can get caught under GPE-DEC, his error stems from resolving brainstorm incorrectly, and not from drawing any additional cards. It's not like the information is unknown, and not like the cards aren't originally mixed up in their hand to begin with, so it's much closer to a generic game rules violation than it is to drawing extra cards. The error happens when the card is incorrectly placed back on top of the deck, which is the root of the extra card. And when an issue of extra cards is caused by something like a communication issue (ex: I say I'm going to brainstorm for 4 and you agree to this number) or a game rules violation (ex: putting the wrong number of cards back off brainstorm) then it's not considered DEC.
I think you should re-evaluate your priorities if you skipped multiple friends birthday parties to go play some FNM. Don't be that guy.
This. You can play FNM 52 night a year. Do you really need to attend every FNM in the year when you're missing out on something that only happens once a year with close friends? Meh, but I shouldn't judge. People sometimes make the choices they make because of reasons some of us can't comprehend unless we were them.
Anyways to answer your question: I tell people I'm going to FNM. Most people I know, know what FNM is. Those who don't "I'm going to play in a local magic tournament". If they don't know what magic is, "It's a card game; think chess but with customizable pieces."
There is a local store, that in it's prime, was probably the crucible of all competitive magic locally, where now competing stores within a 30 mile radius all get 50+ players for FNM, and their prereleases all exceed 70+ players. This one store held the largest local events in house, and ran competitive events for multiple games every weekend. This was the pinnacle of the local game store that every game store aspired to be, fostering several pro players...
How it toppled:
The owners didn't adapt and start selling online
The owner stuck with revenue from oversea sales by traveling to the destinations
The owner was robbed, SEVERAL times, for amounts exceeding $100,000 in product
The owner didn't install security or insure his products
The owner hired bad employees and kids
The owner treated both the good and the bad employees like ****
The owner didn't always pay his employees
The owner was too involved in the non-buisness side of things with his store (drama)
Eventually he ran into other troubles, like divorce, custody battles, and IRS issues. He was once stuck overseas with his passport stolen for months relying on basically teenagers to run his store.
I greatly feel a sense of sorrow for this once giant in the community. He brought magic to where it is now here, and was a fantastic father. No one can ever deny that. His fate was not entirely his own construction, but he did play a large roll in his demise. Now he is still in business, still offline for sales, in a smaller, smellier store.
Out of the immense respect I have for his legacy, and as the OP requested, I request that if you know who I'm talking about that you leave his name and store out of this thread.
Card pool matters, and you'll often see good players 0-3 drop with bad Sealed pools, but deckbuilding can be very difficult in Sealed, and the games can be very skill-intensive, particularly with as long as they can go. (Sometimes it is a matter of just drawing your "bomb rare" to win the game, but not as often as some folks think it is.)
As I've said before, there's definitely skill involved in Sealed, but the bad luck is the worst of all the formats in sealed.
There's nothing worse than opening your passed deck, and already losing the event before you even played a single game. :/
I kind of just wish each event had both Limited and Constructed events on different days so people could participate in both or either no matter where they live.
Well, they do kinda do that. If a GP is large enough, they break it into two events, where the top 7-2 in both events make it into day 2. Vegas was 4 GP's being run all at the same time on day one.
However, the problems with that are either the payout sucks, drawing people away, or the payout is doubled to account for the two-in-one event and it becomes a loss for WotC. Not to mention one event will cannibalize the other, if not each other.
Never the less, it would be interesting to see if they could do it. A limited GP run side-by-side a standard GP.
All magic is "luck based" but if you think luck is the primary driver of limited then you aren't very familiar with the format. They've been doing this for awhile they probably know which events tend to draw the most/best players.
I don't disagree that there is a lot more skill in limited/draft. It takes a lot of skill to see the best decks you can make with a card pool, AND THEN you still have to pilot it. But what I was referring to is the luck in opening the packs. I've played in my fair share of limited events only to open a poor pool. At least in constructed if I'm losing to bad luck, it's poor luck while playing the game, not while making my deck.
Now maybe I suck at building decks from a limited pool, but we can't really gauge that on the internet, and at least I know for certain that I can tell the difference between a busted pool and a ****ty pool.
Keep in mind that was also mostly a fluke. It was in a location with cheap air fair, cheap hotels, great attractions, and was a limited set that was basically the closest people have ever come to drafting sanctioned cube in paper form.
However, you could help your argument by citing that the majority of the most recently large events (those over say 1500 players) have been limited. There's no denying that for the accessibility, and flexibility, limited is more popular than most other formats. But I also find it the least entertaining to watch and participate in compared to constructed events.
So I think the very nature of Limited attracts more people.
It does. I don't like it, and I think it's pretty bland and much more luck based to the individual player, but "that's just like, my opinion, dude". I just think they could have more evenly satisfied players if they had replaced a few of those events with modern, standard, and heck, why not one more legacy while we're at it? Maybe cut 5-6 sealed events, add in 3 standard, 2 modern, 1 legacy... or 5 standard, 1 modern more realistically.
I don't have any solid evidence that it's the most popular or not, but I won't deny that it's definitely one of the easier formats to play, and generally the most rewarding to skilled limited players. Obviously it's in large numbers because you don't need a deck to play, you can just show up and play, so it's easier to go to these events if you're a player of any variety.
It's just, I personally don't liked sealed so I'm on the complaining side.
Since there are (at least) four sets released each year, there are just as many different limited formats.
That's kind of what I touched on, but for the most part the limited experience is typically the same form set to set. There obviously is a different meta for limited between RTR, RTR+GTC, RTR+GTC+DGM, M14, THS, THS+BNG, and so on and so forth, but in the end the experience is never much different than:
Sit down
Open packs
Make the best deck out of what you can
With Standard/block, while the sets rotate, the decks tend to stay relatively consistent, or do so once they pop into existence. The experience for that standard may vary, but for the most part it will be the same throughout. Obviously though the consistency of decks change dramatically week to week, and set to set.
With Modern/Legacy, the consistency of the meta and the decks within the format are very strong. New decks do pop into existence, and from time to time decks fall out of favor/popularity, but when you sit down for it, it doesn't change much. The pace and style of play is expected and different.
Limited's pace and style of play will vary on what you open, but the experience of opening packs and building a deck is not much different from set to set, just as it is with block, standard, modern, and legacy. There are variations that differ obviously with sets, but the overall experience is the same.
But I understand what you're saying and your point. You can't go BW extort anymore. You can't build soulshift. You can't play against Olivia Jund. You can't play WW rouge. Those formats that rotate offer diversity that comes and goes, so obviously we see more of them than constructed events. I just wish there were less limited events. I'm not saying to drastically cut down numbers, but I would like to see less than half of the events be limited. Maybe 1/3rd would have been better.
Looking at the GP list, it looks like over half of the GPs in the 2014 schedule are Constructed events. I think that WotC aims for about half Constructed and half Limited.
Yeah, but it's just over by 1 event. 22 Sealed, 23 Constructed. Of those sealed events, besides the set used, they don't change much. For constructed, it varies between Standard, Legacy, Modern, and Block. That's a lot of different formats that offer a much more different experience, divided amongst 23 events out of the total 45.
Spiritmonger will always have a special place in my heart. It took me to my first top 8 in a PTQ, in my first PTQ ever. There were many cards that can take credit for the success but none of them were are rewarding as attacking with my favorite beast in my favorite colors.
Well, then that's how it works. Now if I only understood why.
Edit: I'm going to guess it's because of...
Meaning that as soon as we understand that we're manifesting that top card, because it's face down from on top of the library, for a brief moment it's a 2/2 creature sitting on top of the library leaping down from the tower that is your 200+ Battle of Wits deck, onto the battlefield below to rush into service. In that case the cage would catch it, keeping our namesake enchantment from coming to life. But that's just my guess to justify what I don't fully understand. This is starting to turn into conjecture. If anyone can definitively confirm this belief, or elaborate upon why it really works, I would greatly appreciate it.
Nothing about that, or anything listed in 707 suggests it's a creature while on the library, and 701.31a suggests that it is only a creature once it is a permanent. Facedown cards are only creatures on the stack, or while they're on the battlefield. Unless Natedogg knows more than us (which isn't out of the question), for now, Grafdigger's Cage doesn't seem to stop things from being manifested. If I'm misunderstanding something, or overlooking something, I would appreciate the correction and explanation.
This is pretty spot on. The mentality I see often is "they made a mistake, they're cheaters and should be banned for life!" It's ignored time and time again that this "cheating" is really a mistake that looks like it could be malicious in intent, but we don't really know so we jump to the conclusion that it is the big cheats.
If you think this player in the video is a cheater, without investigating the situation yourself, then YOU (the person saying he is a cheater) are very likely a cheater by your own definition too. Missed a bob trigger? CHEATER! Forgot to discard down to 7 EoT? CHEATER! Didn't write down a life change right away? CHEATER! I know it seems like it's difficult to forget to put a card back, or to think you've placed two when you've placed one, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It does. I'll concede that this does look very fishy, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was considered cheating, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't too. Why? Because I'm not the one who is investigating this, and like you all, don't have all the facts.
Tell you what, you start hosting $10,000 entry fee tournaments and compensating judge's a hell of a lot better than we are now, and we'll jump at the opportunity to be dealers like that.
Actually, the error committed would call for a warning under Game Play Error - Game Rules Violation. You seem to think it's an error of Drawing Extra Cards, which would carry a game loss, but you're mistaken and this is why. While it's true that he did have an extra number of cards in his hand, which is part of what you can get caught under GPE-DEC, his error stems from resolving brainstorm incorrectly, and not from drawing any additional cards. It's not like the information is unknown, and not like the cards aren't originally mixed up in their hand to begin with, so it's much closer to a generic game rules violation than it is to drawing extra cards. The error happens when the card is incorrectly placed back on top of the deck, which is the root of the extra card. And when an issue of extra cards is caused by something like a communication issue (ex: I say I'm going to brainstorm for 4 and you agree to this number) or a game rules violation (ex: putting the wrong number of cards back off brainstorm) then it's not considered DEC.
This. You can play FNM 52 night a year. Do you really need to attend every FNM in the year when you're missing out on something that only happens once a year with close friends? Meh, but I shouldn't judge. People sometimes make the choices they make because of reasons some of us can't comprehend unless we were them.
Anyways to answer your question: I tell people I'm going to FNM. Most people I know, know what FNM is. Those who don't "I'm going to play in a local magic tournament". If they don't know what magic is, "It's a card game; think chess but with customizable pieces."
Also...
Although there's no issue with playing in a legacy event on fridays, there is if it's being run officially as "FNM". "Friday Night Magic" can be:
It cannot be sanctioned as FNM with Legacy.
How it toppled:
Eventually he ran into other troubles, like divorce, custody battles, and IRS issues. He was once stuck overseas with his passport stolen for months relying on basically teenagers to run his store.
I greatly feel a sense of sorrow for this once giant in the community. He brought magic to where it is now here, and was a fantastic father. No one can ever deny that. His fate was not entirely his own construction, but he did play a large roll in his demise. Now he is still in business, still offline for sales, in a smaller, smellier store.
Out of the immense respect I have for his legacy, and as the OP requested, I request that if you know who I'm talking about that you leave his name and store out of this thread.
As I've said before, there's definitely skill involved in Sealed, but the bad luck is the worst of all the formats in sealed.
There's nothing worse than opening your passed deck, and already losing the event before you even played a single game. :/
Well, they do kinda do that. If a GP is large enough, they break it into two events, where the top 7-2 in both events make it into day 2. Vegas was 4 GP's being run all at the same time on day one.
However, the problems with that are either the payout sucks, drawing people away, or the payout is doubled to account for the two-in-one event and it becomes a loss for WotC. Not to mention one event will cannibalize the other, if not each other.
Never the less, it would be interesting to see if they could do it. A limited GP run side-by-side a standard GP.
I don't disagree that there is a lot more skill in limited/draft. It takes a lot of skill to see the best decks you can make with a card pool, AND THEN you still have to pilot it. But what I was referring to is the luck in opening the packs. I've played in my fair share of limited events only to open a poor pool. At least in constructed if I'm losing to bad luck, it's poor luck while playing the game, not while making my deck.
Now maybe I suck at building decks from a limited pool, but we can't really gauge that on the internet, and at least I know for certain that I can tell the difference between a busted pool and a ****ty pool.
Keep in mind that was also mostly a fluke. It was in a location with cheap air fair, cheap hotels, great attractions, and was a limited set that was basically the closest people have ever come to drafting sanctioned cube in paper form.
However, you could help your argument by citing that the majority of the most recently large events (those over say 1500 players) have been limited. There's no denying that for the accessibility, and flexibility, limited is more popular than most other formats. But I also find it the least entertaining to watch and participate in compared to constructed events.
It does. I don't like it, and I think it's pretty bland and much more luck based to the individual player, but "that's just like, my opinion, dude". I just think they could have more evenly satisfied players if they had replaced a few of those events with modern, standard, and heck, why not one more legacy while we're at it? Maybe cut 5-6 sealed events, add in 3 standard, 2 modern, 1 legacy... or 5 standard, 1 modern more realistically.
I don't have any solid evidence that it's the most popular or not, but I won't deny that it's definitely one of the easier formats to play, and generally the most rewarding to skilled limited players. Obviously it's in large numbers because you don't need a deck to play, you can just show up and play, so it's easier to go to these events if you're a player of any variety.
It's just, I personally don't liked sealed so I'm on the complaining side.
47.8%* is close enough to "half" to call it "half" for the sake of complaining.
*It's 22 sealed events out of 46, not 21.
That's kind of what I touched on, but for the most part the limited experience is typically the same form set to set. There obviously is a different meta for limited between RTR, RTR+GTC, RTR+GTC+DGM, M14, THS, THS+BNG, and so on and so forth, but in the end the experience is never much different than:
With Standard/block, while the sets rotate, the decks tend to stay relatively consistent, or do so once they pop into existence. The experience for that standard may vary, but for the most part it will be the same throughout. Obviously though the consistency of decks change dramatically week to week, and set to set.
With Modern/Legacy, the consistency of the meta and the decks within the format are very strong. New decks do pop into existence, and from time to time decks fall out of favor/popularity, but when you sit down for it, it doesn't change much. The pace and style of play is expected and different.
Limited's pace and style of play will vary on what you open, but the experience of opening packs and building a deck is not much different from set to set, just as it is with block, standard, modern, and legacy. There are variations that differ obviously with sets, but the overall experience is the same.
But I understand what you're saying and your point. You can't go BW extort anymore. You can't build soulshift. You can't play against Olivia Jund. You can't play WW rouge. Those formats that rotate offer diversity that comes and goes, so obviously we see more of them than constructed events. I just wish there were less limited events. I'm not saying to drastically cut down numbers, but I would like to see less than half of the events be limited. Maybe 1/3rd would have been better.
Yeah, but it's just over by 1 event. 22 Sealed, 23 Constructed. Of those sealed events, besides the set used, they don't change much. For constructed, it varies between Standard, Legacy, Modern, and Block. That's a lot of different formats that offer a much more different experience, divided amongst 23 events out of the total 45.