Angle shot: Decree of Silence?
If your opponent plays a crappy spell you don't have to counter it if you don't want to
Doesn't work, you also have to put a depletion counter on Decree of Silence (linked to a detrimental effect in the same ability), something that's not covered under 1.4. A mandatory ability is only considered optional is it does one or more things covered under 1.4 and nothing else.
Doesn't work, you also have to remove a counter from Decree of Silence, something that's not covered under 1.4. A mandatory ability is only considered optional is it does one or more things covered under 1.4 and nothing else.
Likewise, doesn't work. The triggered ability of Bitterblossom also causes you to lose life, which is, again, not covered under 1.4.
Seems like this is going to be very confusing for judges. I'm sure I'ld need a cheat sheet to keep track of what exactly is covered under 1.4!
For sure
They need to have provided some (counter) examples, which toby elliot has said will be in an article sometimes in the near future.
They shouldve bolded the "and nothing else" and the "Abilities that trigger at the same point in each players turn and do something to "that player" (e.g. Howling Mine) are never optional." parts because they are easy to skim over and will probably create the most confusion.
At least its only a few bulletpoints which judges can keep in a notepad or something
For reference, here is what Toby Elliot says: Wow, do we have a lot to talk about today. A major shift in policy, a clarification on something that people have been arguing for years, and, as a special bonus, for the first time since the IPG came out, there's a fiat at the bottom of this message that is not in the rules.
Let's start with the big one. It's been a while since we've had a major change in policy philosophy, and this one has been in the works for a good six months. It comes from a desire to place a little more emphasis on people being responsible for their beneficial actions, coupled with a planned reduction on Wizards' part in using the word 'may' on cards. Their reasons for doing this are solid, including reducing perceived complexity for new players, but it did present a challenge for competitive play that dovetailed with our plans.
The change breaks down into two major components:
1) Opponents are *no longer* required to point out your missed triggers.
2) A big swath of triggers and enters-the-battlefield replacement effects have "Competitive REL" errata to make them optional.
I'm not going to dive into great detail here about the criteria for Optional Abilities, which has it's own new section at the beginning of the IPG. There'll be a "DVD commentary" on the changes soon that'll be filled with examples, and I'm sure this'll be material for articles for quite a while. If you look, though, you'll see that the definition of Optional Ability is pretty tight - there's not a lot of judgement call involved, and it never looks at the current game state.
Here, though, I figured I'd walk you through a couple of triggers, so you can see what happens:
Scenario #1: Alice controls a Soul Warden. Nadine playes a creature. One of the following things happens:
* Alice remembers the Soul Warden trigger, or Nadine reminds her about it. Soul Warden is an Optional Ability. She may choose to gain a life or not.
* Alice forgets the Soul Warden trigger. Nadine points it out after it has been missed. The game goes on with no lifegain.
* Alice forgets the Soul Warden trigger. Nadine notices and remains quiet. Nothing happens.
Scenario #2: Alice controls a Vampire Lacerator. Nadine is at 18 life. One of the following things happens:
* Alice remembers the Vampire Lacerator trigger (or Nadine reminds her). The trigger is, unsurprisingly, not an Optional Ability. Alice loses a life.
* Alice forgets the Vampire Lacerator trigger and draws a card. Nadine points it out afterwards. The remainder of the missed trigger rules are followed - the Vampire Lacerator trigger goes on the stack, Alice loses a life when it resolves, and Alice receives a Warning for a Missed Trigger. Nadine does not receive a Warning for Failure to Maintain Game State.
* Alice forgets the Vampire Lacerator trigger and draws a card. Nadine notices and remains quiet (or just doesn't notice it ever). Nothing happens.
* Alice "forgets" the Vampire Lacerator trigger (or realizes it later and decides to keep quiet about it). That's the same as ever - Alice has a nice conversation with the judge and is DQ'd for Fraud.
That's the bulk of it. The rest is devoted to describing exactly what constitutes an Optional Ability.
Since we were messing with Missed Triggers already, we took the chance to throw in several other tweaks. There's a new chunk of Missed Trigger instructions devoted to cards that trigger in ways that the controller of the trigger can't know they've been missed until too late (Curse of the Bloody Tome, Verdant Force, et al). In short, if the NAP player points it out right after the action has been taken that indicated the trigger was missed, put it on the stack right away and don't issue penalties. Also, if you discover the trigger has been missed in the middle of an action, complete that action first. This gets rid of nasty questions like what to do when you realize that there's a missed trigger in the middle of a Brainstorm. Finally, missed triggers get put onto the bottom of the stack rather than the top. In 95% of the cases, that makes no difference at all, but the rest of the time, it both moves the trigger closer to where it was supposed to trigger, and lets players focus on dealing with the current batch of actions before having to also think about the trigger.
Fun stuff, and I hope that everyone helps in getting the word out to the players of this change. It's significant, but I think it will be well receieved. Also, a caution - these changes are for Competitive+ REL only. Regular, with the focus on fun and helping each other, does not share this philosophy.
For some time, looping question have had ambiguous interpretations of the rules and not a lot of support for how to handle them. I'm here, at last, to clarify the official position on how looping rules work, and to add one little piece of policy that should help enforce that interpretation.
When you begin a loop (or start repeating a series of actions) you specify how many times you want to perform the loop, and the state you expect the game to be in after that many iterations. "I do this 50 times, add 50 mana to my mana pool, and this creature is untapped" is a perfectly acceptable loop, and the other player(s) can state where they're interrupting the loop. All good so far.
What is *not* acceptable is to try to perform a loop without being able to describe both the number of times and the final game state. "I mill until you have 2 Emrakuls left in your library" is not an acceptable loop. Neither is any loop where you can't predict where the game will end up. Additionally, if something happens that causes the prediction of the game state to be wrong, the loop ends immediately. So if you're milling somebody out with 100 mill iterations and you hit an Emrakul, the loop ends - you can no longer guarantee how many cards will be in the library and graveyard at the end of the iterations.
Of course, in the past, when this has happened, the problem has always been preventing them from simply restarting the loop and going until either time runs out, or the desired result actually happens. Today's update fixes this - trying to do a loop that doesn't have both a number and an end state is officially added to the definition of Slow Play.
Let's use a couple of examples to illustrate the difference. I have managed to, throughout whatever shenanigans, give myself an unbounded number of scry 2. What can I do with this?
1) I want to set up my deck so that the card I want is on top.
This is fine. I name the number of cards in my deck, announce that I'm moving them to the bottom until I hit the card I want. Then, I stop moving the cards to the bottom. The number of iterations is defined (the number of cards in the deck), and the final game state ("this card is on top") is defined.
2) I want to set up my deck so that it is in an exact order.
Technically, this is possible - you just bubble sort your deck until it matches the order you want. However, you cannot say how many iterations it will take, and thus you aren't allowed to do it. Trying to do so now gets you a slow play warning and it's time to go do something else instead.
There are a few other small tweaks, mostly grammar and clarifications. They are covered in the appendix, which is my way of encouraging everyone to go and download the new documents and read them. Special thanks to everyone who made suggestions for improvements, including Jared Sylva, Shawn Doherty, Mitsunori Makino, Brian Schenck, Francesco Scialpi and the members of R&D and the high-level judges who put a ton of work into making the missed trigger changes coherent and in line with what we wanted to accomplish.
Finally, the fiat. I hate to do this, because it sets a bad precedent, but the alternatives are worse. It has been noted several times that there's a weird quirk with werewolves. If you don't play a spell and miss the transform trigger, then the next player doesn't play a spell, you can end up with two "transform this" triggers on the stack. That results in the werewolf ending up back where it started, despite the presence of two triggers that want it to be on the other side.
Fixing this in policy without breaking a ton of other stuff turns out to be remarkably hard. We only have transforming werewolves for one more set, and we'll see if there are any constructed-playable ones after that. In the interim, if you have one or more missed triggers (and possibly a non-missed trigger) trying to transform a werewolf, just resolve one of them to produce the intuitive result and ignore the rest. Note that some transform cards and other effects may cause this dual transformation naturally. Those are fine. This ruling is just to handle the case where there's a missed trigger.
there is alot of misunderstanding in this thread. This only applies to MAY abilities.
No, it does NOT
New Rule 1.4
Traditionally, some abilities include the word ‘may’ as part of their text, indicating that their effect is optional. At Competitive and Professional REL, some additional triggered abilities and enters-the-battlefield replacement effects are considered optional. The player is not required to follow the instruction when the ability resolves, and if the ability is forgotten it will not retroactively be applied. An optional ability does one or more of the following things, and nothing else:
This is a pretty big change, not sure why they are doing this. They have been making a lot more mandatory triggers lately but what's the point of doing that if they're just gonna say "oh but if you forget then it doesn't matter now"?
This is a pretty big change, not sure why they are doing this. They have been making a lot more mandatory triggers lately but what's the point of doing that if they're just gonna say "oh but if you forget then it doesn't matter now"?
The point is to encourage fair play at your local FNM and to foster competitive play at higher REL events.
At the FNM, experienced players will have to point out missed mandatory triggers to inexperienced players. At a pro tour you are expected to know how to play Magic, and your opponent doesn't have to help you beat him.
I actually think that, while the announcement is initially confusing and badly timed for sure, these changes are for the better. I wish they could something about the weird corner cases like Transcendance though.
This is a pretty big change, not sure why they are doing this. They have been making a lot more mandatory triggers lately but what's the point of doing that if they're just gonna say "oh but if you forget then it doesn't matter now"?
If i read that article excerpt correctly, this is exactly why this errata only applies to higher REL events. WotC wants 2 things.
1. Newer players (or cynically, bad players that only go to lower REL events) have a simplified ruleset that doesn't overly punish them for missed triggers, replacement effects, etc. EDIT - To elaborate, the article explains that WotC is actively trying to cut down on the number of "may" triggers as they appear on cards, even though some will continue to be "may" abilities at competitive REL events. So Joe Noobsauce gets to miss as many Shrine of Burning Rage triggers as he likes, while still getting to add counters as long as someone knows how the card should work. Meanwhile, Steve Progamer only gets a sad feeling in the pit of his stomach when he realizes he forgot 3 upkeep triggers on HIS shrine of burning rage.
2. Experienced players have an expanded ruleset that no longer requires them to notify opponent's of their missed triggers/replacement effects as long as those missed triggers fall under the new ruleset.
so this means we now no longer need to actually pay attention to the cards but can make them "broked" on etb or triggered effects...this seems kinda retarded and seemed like the way it already was except you couldn't purposely break the rules...I am not so sure i am inclined to like this. Gives variance in deck builds/some will say helps skill but think it just makes the decent players better. Is all.
Like let me give an example say your playing legacy or some ish. And your running Kiln Fiend But know your opponent is holding the Reprisal And hes at 1 life and has a board of blocks i can ultimately cast a Distortion Strike ignore his ability make him a 2/2 unblockable and kill?
It is still forced, I think. Here's hoping that I am quoting the right rule this time
Actually, it doesn't occur at the same point each turn. Although I don't know the answer because all of this is too wacky! This is ridiculous. 3.1 and 3.7 make sense but 1.4 is just shenanigans!
Actually, it doesn't occur at the same point each turn. Although I don't know the answer because all of this is too wacky! This is ridiculous. 3.1 and 3.7 make sense but 1.4 is just shenanigans!
It doesn't happen at the same point each turn but it does happen to "that player".
EDIT: I appear to be in error again (though at least this time I am correct for the wrong reasons)
"Whenever a triggered ability of yours would do something *good* for you, and you forget it, you can't retroactively apply it anymore when it would normally be mandatory, but if it was something *bad* for you, its still mandatory". Which is quite logical
However, theres still always going to be corner cases and some discretion up to this rule, like interpretations of "beneficial counters", or of effects where a normally good effect is made bad. For example, if you had a soul warden in play, your enemy played a creature and you forgot to gain the life, then later in the turn, he tried to play a needlebite trap that he drew later too (so he missed the life gain too). Then under the old rules, it would be mandatory for you to go back, gain 1 life, and let him use the trap to kill you, whereas under these rules, since you both forgot about it, it didn't happen
Hrmm, but those would, "making it optional" thing throws me off a bit. I mean, that only works assuming your opponent *meant* to heal with soul warden, and forgot to- now he could decline entirely
Doesn't work, you also have to put a depletion counter on Decree of Silence (linked to a detrimental effect in the same ability), something that's not covered under 1.4. A mandatory ability is only considered optional is it does one or more things covered under 1.4 and nothing else.
Likewise, doesn't work. The triggered ability of Bitterblossom also causes you to lose life, which is, again, not covered under 1.4.
Seems like this is going to be very confusing for judges. I'm sure I'ld need a cheat sheet to keep track of what exactly is covered under 1.4!
Nope.
It means that mandatory triggers/ETB replacements are now may abilities at Competitive/Professional REL, as long as they only do things on that list.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
For sure
They need to have provided some (counter) examples, which toby elliot has said will be in an article sometimes in the near future.
They shouldve bolded the "and nothing else" and the "Abilities that trigger at the same point in each players turn and do something to "that player" (e.g. Howling Mine) are never optional." parts because they are easy to skim over and will probably create the most confusion.
At least its only a few bulletpoints which judges can keep in a notepad or something
For reference, here is what Toby Elliot says:
Wow, do we have a lot to talk about today. A major shift in policy, a clarification on something that people have been arguing for years, and, as a special bonus, for the first time since the IPG came out, there's a fiat at the bottom of this message that is not in the rules.
Let's start with the big one. It's been a while since we've had a major change in policy philosophy, and this one has been in the works for a good six months. It comes from a desire to place a little more emphasis on people being responsible for their beneficial actions, coupled with a planned reduction on Wizards' part in using the word 'may' on cards. Their reasons for doing this are solid, including reducing perceived complexity for new players, but it did present a challenge for competitive play that dovetailed with our plans.
The change breaks down into two major components:
1) Opponents are *no longer* required to point out your missed triggers.
2) A big swath of triggers and enters-the-battlefield replacement effects have "Competitive REL" errata to make them optional.
I'm not going to dive into great detail here about the criteria for Optional Abilities, which has it's own new section at the beginning of the IPG. There'll be a "DVD commentary" on the changes soon that'll be filled with examples, and I'm sure this'll be material for articles for quite a while. If you look, though, you'll see that the definition of Optional Ability is pretty tight - there's not a lot of judgement call involved, and it never looks at the current game state.
Here, though, I figured I'd walk you through a couple of triggers, so you can see what happens:
Scenario #1: Alice controls a Soul Warden. Nadine playes a creature. One of the following things happens:
* Alice remembers the Soul Warden trigger, or Nadine reminds her about it. Soul Warden is an Optional Ability. She may choose to gain a life or not.
* Alice forgets the Soul Warden trigger. Nadine points it out after it has been missed. The game goes on with no lifegain.
* Alice forgets the Soul Warden trigger. Nadine notices and remains quiet. Nothing happens.
Scenario #2: Alice controls a Vampire Lacerator. Nadine is at 18 life. One of the following things happens:
* Alice remembers the Vampire Lacerator trigger (or Nadine reminds her). The trigger is, unsurprisingly, not an Optional Ability. Alice loses a life.
* Alice forgets the Vampire Lacerator trigger and draws a card. Nadine points it out afterwards. The remainder of the missed trigger rules are followed - the Vampire Lacerator trigger goes on the stack, Alice loses a life when it resolves, and Alice receives a Warning for a Missed Trigger. Nadine does not receive a Warning for Failure to Maintain Game State.
* Alice forgets the Vampire Lacerator trigger and draws a card. Nadine notices and remains quiet (or just doesn't notice it ever). Nothing happens.
* Alice "forgets" the Vampire Lacerator trigger (or realizes it later and decides to keep quiet about it). That's the same as ever - Alice has a nice conversation with the judge and is DQ'd for Fraud.
That's the bulk of it. The rest is devoted to describing exactly what constitutes an Optional Ability.
Since we were messing with Missed Triggers already, we took the chance to throw in several other tweaks. There's a new chunk of Missed Trigger instructions devoted to cards that trigger in ways that the controller of the trigger can't know they've been missed until too late (Curse of the Bloody Tome, Verdant Force, et al). In short, if the NAP player points it out right after the action has been taken that indicated the trigger was missed, put it on the stack right away and don't issue penalties. Also, if you discover the trigger has been missed in the middle of an action, complete that action first. This gets rid of nasty questions like what to do when you realize that there's a missed trigger in the middle of a Brainstorm. Finally, missed triggers get put onto the bottom of the stack rather than the top. In 95% of the cases, that makes no difference at all, but the rest of the time, it both moves the trigger closer to where it was supposed to trigger, and lets players focus on dealing with the current batch of actions before having to also think about the trigger.
Fun stuff, and I hope that everyone helps in getting the word out to the players of this change. It's significant, but I think it will be well receieved. Also, a caution - these changes are for Competitive+ REL only. Regular, with the focus on fun and helping each other, does not share this philosophy.
For some time, looping question have had ambiguous interpretations of the rules and not a lot of support for how to handle them. I'm here, at last, to clarify the official position on how looping rules work, and to add one little piece of policy that should help enforce that interpretation.
When you begin a loop (or start repeating a series of actions) you specify how many times you want to perform the loop, and the state you expect the game to be in after that many iterations. "I do this 50 times, add 50 mana to my mana pool, and this creature is untapped" is a perfectly acceptable loop, and the other player(s) can state where they're interrupting the loop. All good so far.
What is *not* acceptable is to try to perform a loop without being able to describe both the number of times and the final game state. "I mill until you have 2 Emrakuls left in your library" is not an acceptable loop. Neither is any loop where you can't predict where the game will end up. Additionally, if something happens that causes the prediction of the game state to be wrong, the loop ends immediately. So if you're milling somebody out with 100 mill iterations and you hit an Emrakul, the loop ends - you can no longer guarantee how many cards will be in the library and graveyard at the end of the iterations.
Of course, in the past, when this has happened, the problem has always been preventing them from simply restarting the loop and going until either time runs out, or the desired result actually happens. Today's update fixes this - trying to do a loop that doesn't have both a number and an end state is officially added to the definition of Slow Play.
Let's use a couple of examples to illustrate the difference. I have managed to, throughout whatever shenanigans, give myself an unbounded number of scry 2. What can I do with this?
1) I want to set up my deck so that the card I want is on top.
This is fine. I name the number of cards in my deck, announce that I'm moving them to the bottom until I hit the card I want. Then, I stop moving the cards to the bottom. The number of iterations is defined (the number of cards in the deck), and the final game state ("this card is on top") is defined.
2) I want to set up my deck so that it is in an exact order.
Technically, this is possible - you just bubble sort your deck until it matches the order you want. However, you cannot say how many iterations it will take, and thus you aren't allowed to do it. Trying to do so now gets you a slow play warning and it's time to go do something else instead.
There are a few other small tweaks, mostly grammar and clarifications. They are covered in the appendix, which is my way of encouraging everyone to go and download the new documents and read them. Special thanks to everyone who made suggestions for improvements, including Jared Sylva, Shawn Doherty, Mitsunori Makino, Brian Schenck, Francesco Scialpi and the members of R&D and the high-level judges who put a ton of work into making the missed trigger changes coherent and in line with what we wanted to accomplish.
Finally, the fiat. I hate to do this, because it sets a bad precedent, but the alternatives are worse. It has been noted several times that there's a weird quirk with werewolves. If you don't play a spell and miss the transform trigger, then the next player doesn't play a spell, you can end up with two "transform this" triggers on the stack. That results in the werewolf ending up back where it started, despite the presence of two triggers that want it to be on the other side.
Fixing this in policy without breaking a ton of other stuff turns out to be remarkably hard. We only have transforming werewolves for one more set, and we'll see if there are any constructed-playable ones after that. In the interim, if you have one or more missed triggers (and possibly a non-missed trigger) trying to transform a werewolf, just resolve one of them to produce the intuitive result and ignore the rest. Note that some transform cards and other effects may cause this dual transformation naturally. Those are fine. This ruling is just to handle the case where there's a missed trigger.
No, it does NOT
New Rule 1.4
Traditionally, some abilities include the word ‘may’ as part of their text, indicating that their effect is optional. At Competitive and Professional REL, some additional triggered abilities and enters-the-battlefield replacement effects are considered optional. The player is not required to follow the instruction when the ability resolves, and if the ability is forgotten it will not retroactively be applied. An optional ability does one or more of the following things, and nothing else:
The point is to encourage fair play at your local FNM and to foster competitive play at higher REL events.
At the FNM, experienced players will have to point out missed mandatory triggers to inexperienced players. At a pro tour you are expected to know how to play Magic, and your opponent doesn't have to help you beat him.
I actually think that, while the announcement is initially confusing and badly timed for sure, these changes are for the better. I wish they could something about the weird corner cases like Transcendance though.
Yup, you can now decline to draw 7.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
EDIT: -
No, not for the reason you're probably thinking of, at least.
If i read that article excerpt correctly, this is exactly why this errata only applies to higher REL events. WotC wants 2 things.
1. Newer players (or cynically, bad players that only go to lower REL events) have a simplified ruleset that doesn't overly punish them for missed triggers, replacement effects, etc. EDIT - To elaborate, the article explains that WotC is actively trying to cut down on the number of "may" triggers as they appear on cards, even though some will continue to be "may" abilities at competitive REL events. So Joe Noobsauce gets to miss as many Shrine of Burning Rage triggers as he likes, while still getting to add counters as long as someone knows how the card should work. Meanwhile, Steve Progamer only gets a sad feeling in the pit of his stomach when he realizes he forgot 3 upkeep triggers on HIS shrine of burning rage.
2. Experienced players have an expanded ruleset that no longer requires them to notify opponent's of their missed triggers/replacement effects as long as those missed triggers fall under the new ruleset.
Jin doesn't trigger during each player's turn and doesn't refer to "that player".
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
So bottom line, Jin's EOT "Draw 7" effect is considered optional at competitive REL, but mandatory at FNMs?
Also, when do these changes go into effect? Immediately?
Hmm… Good point. This rule really takes some getting used to then
Correct.
January 1, 2012.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
Yes and January 1st.
Think of it as WotC's New Years resolution.
I see what you did there.
It is still forced, I think. Here's hoping that I am quoting the right rule this time
Not at all, a Triggered ability, without the word May, that does something to your opponent, is a Mandatory trigger, under 1.4
Edit - Fzian, that still doesnt apply, but your answer is right in spite of it
Like let me give an example say your playing legacy or some ish. And your running Kiln Fiend But know your opponent is holding the Reprisal And hes at 1 life and has a board of blocks i can ultimately cast a Distortion Strike ignore his ability make him a 2/2 unblockable and kill?
Inappropriate language warning issued. -viper
Actually, it doesn't occur at the same point each turn. Although I don't know the answer because all of this is too wacky! This is ridiculous. 3.1 and 3.7 make sense but 1.4 is just shenanigans!
It doesn't happen at the same point each turn but it does happen to "that player".
EDIT: I appear to be in error again (though at least this time I am correct for the wrong reasons)
No frownies - New rule, thats different than anything before, that depends on wording.
It is as confusing as the Intervening If clause.
"Whenever a triggered ability of yours would do something *good* for you, and you forget it, you can't retroactively apply it anymore when it would normally be mandatory, but if it was something *bad* for you, its still mandatory". Which is quite logical
However, theres still always going to be corner cases and some discretion up to this rule, like interpretations of "beneficial counters", or of effects where a normally good effect is made bad. For example, if you had a soul warden in play, your enemy played a creature and you forgot to gain the life, then later in the turn, he tried to play a needlebite trap that he drew later too (so he missed the life gain too). Then under the old rules, it would be mandatory for you to go back, gain 1 life, and let him use the trap to kill you, whereas under these rules, since you both forgot about it, it didn't happen
Hrmm, but those would, "making it optional" thing throws me off a bit. I mean, that only works assuming your opponent *meant* to heal with soul warden, and forgot to- now he could decline entirely