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Debates over what actions are angle-shooting and which are outright scummy are interesting to me. For that reason, I'm starting a series of articles to set up scenarios and ask players how they would conduct themselves in specific situations. I think it will be interesting to hear who would do what, when, and why.
This week I'm going to provide two very similar scenarios with one very relevant difference. Both of these happened to me over the last year.
Scenario 1
My opponent and I were shuffling up for game one and we both presented our decks. We presented and drew our opening hands. While evaluating our hands, a judge came over and game my opponent a card that his opponent from the round prior had accidentally taken after their match ended. It was a card from my opponent's maindeck, meaning that he had presented an illegal deck. The judge ruled that since the round hadn't started he would "be nice" and downgrade the penalty, which is usually a game loss, to a warning.
Would you appeal the judges ruling?
Scenario 2
My opponent and I once again found ourselves drawing hands before the round clock had started. My opponent looked at his hand with a perplexed look on his face and called a judge after about 30 seconds. He had drawn a sideboard card, meaning that he had forgotten to de-sideboard and thus presented an illegal deck. Once again, the first judge called issued a warning.
Would you appeal this judges ruling?
My Take
Neither situation suggests that the opponent was trying to cheat anybody. The first opponent very clearly forgot a card and the second opponent called the judge on himself. The fact that the second opponent called the judge on himself is the key difference between the two scenarios. The first scenario displays a player unknowingly breaking a rule and the second displays a player realizing that he had broken a rule and taking the appropriate steps to right the wrong.
I completely understand the rationale of anybody who would accept the warning in either or both situations. Personally, I chose to appeal both times. I feel like players don't appeal as often as they should, and given the knowledge that the penalty for presenting an illegal deck regardless of circumstance is a game loss and also given the fact that there were substantial stakes in both tournaments, I believe that appealing in both situations is a reasonable thing to do.
For the record, the head judge overturned the warning in the first scenario in favor of a game loss, whereas the initial ruling was upheld in the second scenario. I was informed at the time of the ruling in the second scenario that the Infraction Procedure Guide actually lists this scenario as an example of a time when a game loss can be downgraded at the discretion of the head judge.
What would you have done?
as a judge with experience in judging at GP’s, there are no grey areas in your scenarios.
I will appeal the first situation, because ‘being nice’ is never a good reason for a judge. Timing doesn’t matter in this case. And the HJ clearly thought it was indeed a GL.
The second situation is correctly downgraded. Like you said, it’s litterally in the IPG.
The philosophy:
1. there is no cheating, if it was cheating, penalty would be disqualification.
2. playing with 59 cards or with SB cards COULD give an advantage to the player he should not have. To prevent this from happening more, a game loss is appropriate. This lowers the chance a player tries to take advantage of it.
3. If the player noticed the error and call the judges himself, this clearly indicates he is not willing to take advantage of it. Also we would prefer the player to be honest if he discovers the error, so a downgrade in this situation is approriate.
If there was no downgrade, why would a player ever wants to call a judge when he discovers he has a SB card in the first game.
An appeal is not the best reaction, because if you think about it, you don’t want your opponent to hold that knowledge and take advantage of it. We want to promote honesty and clear communication.
A L1 or L2 judge should ask permission to a L3+ judge or HJ to allow the downgrade.
Saying that there’s no gray area as a judge is fine, but I’m writing from the perspective of a player. Some people are going to appeal in both of tbese situations and some aren’t.
I think the point is this: just because your average person doesn’t understand the IPG fully (and, honestly, many judges don’t — this is a difficult game, after all), doesn’t mean that there are gray areas.
Our collective ignorance doesn’t mean that there’s any ambiguity in the policy here.
Properly interpreting and enforcing the IPG is a skill that’s developed over many, many events and a lot of effort — but the rules themselves end up being pretty clear in these situations.
Like in all matters, the better informed you are the better suited you are to deal with more situations that come up. Sharing these stories is great to help spread the knowledge and being aware when it’s fruitful or not to appeal a ruling is certainly worthwhile enough for competitive players to inform themselves of.
Perhaps I didn’t pose the question as clearly as I should have. It’s not about how the judges rule, it’s about whether players think it’s slimy to appeal for harsher penalties. That’s the gray area.
Yeah, I think it’s a very good point to bring up and there will never be a “right or wrong” answer for everyone in every situation. It’s definitely important for people to be aware that you can simply do it in the first place, as I’m sure the majority of people at a given GP aren’t familiar with it.
But, given that we still have to remind people not to make up their own fixes and work arounds and that there shouldn’t be a taboo about simply calling a judge in the first place, we have a long way to go before reaching consensus on appeals.
At the absolute very least, people need to be aware that the option exists if they feel they need a second opinion on a ruling for any reason.
Do note the appeal proccess. Arguing and yelling at a judge/official is NOT a good idea as it leads into a slew of other IPG catagories. Just kindsly tell the judge issuing a ruling you do not agree with that You wish to appeal it. Dont scuff, hoff, or drop horendious profane remarks, Jsut let him now. The judge will handle it from there and retrieve you an appeals judge who will fix the situation.
however, with this said, dont appeal everything a floor judge says. Believe it or not, most judges out there eat live and breath this stuff, so they know what they are talking about.
Dont be a dick and appeal everything.
Magic is a complicated game, and judges get things wrong. This can happen for reasons even outside of knowledge of the game. I had a judge once give the wrong ruling on “attach” versus “equip” for a 2HG event and not only did he only skim the card for his ruling, but he didn’t even listen when we tried to clarify. The kicker? When we appealed we got a, “I am the head judge.” and he walked away.
This is obviously a rare circumstance, but the point stands that even when you are very knowledgeable, you’ll still sometimes make mistakes. I strongly disagree with the notion of labeling appealing as a dick move. It’s your right as a player, and as long as you’re respectful about it I don’t see it as a negative behavior whatsoever.
I’m a level two, and I agree with everything phyrexian trader said. If a judge says the word downgrade, they’ve done a deviation probably laid out in the IPG or that they decided, which means an appeals judge or head judge has been involved and appealing won’t do anything.
That said, I think everyone should more aggressively appeal every ruling all the time. It’s painful when I see wrong rulings not appealed. Newer judges who’ve never been appealed or rarely appealed take it poorly sometimes when they’re appealed, because it can seem insulting. When I know the person answering my call is a newer judge and I see the head judg not doing anything, I appeal even when I know the ruling is correct.
Appeal whenever you have the slightest doubt about a ruling, and never feel bad for doing so.
It’s refreshing to hear a judge reinforce that people should appeal more. It’s tragic when the misplay of somebody’s bad beat story is that they didn’t appeal a wrong judge call.
lots of newer judges do make bad calls, but dont appeal every single call. That is a horrible suggestion.
That is not the suggestion that I made.
One time in a 2HG pre-release (those were awesome), I enchanted my teammate’s creature with an aura. The match ended, and we scooped our cards up to prepare for the next round. We accidentally left the aura in my teammate’s deck – and since that was the 1 color of overlap, he may have been able to cast it! But, we pointed out our error immediately in the next round when my teammate ended up drawing that aura.
We were not really experienced in tournaments (plus it was a prerelease setting) so we removed the card from the game and offered to take it as a lost card draw. The opponent’s accepted, and that was that. Not sure what the right thing to do in that scenario is…can we technically change decks between rounds in a prerelease anyway, as long as we each still had 40+ cards?
You should never work out some kind of deal with your opponent- it’s always right to call a judge when strange things happen.
That said, prereleases are events that don’t require decklists and where changing your deck around between rounds is completely legal- assuming you’re only using the cards in your pool. As long as you both presented 40+ card decks I don’t believe that you broke any rules- the only place in your story when a rule was broken was during your “fix”.
Yeah, when I think back at the event that makes perfect sense. I had no idea what the rules were – it was my first prerelease (back when they were regional) and we were such casual players. Guess we should’ve just called a judge.
I think one issue is that judges tend to intimidate me. It’s like when you drive past a police car – even though you’re going the speed limit, you never know when one cop is having a bad enough day and they find some issue you weren’t even aware of. Do others have this same feeling about MTG judges or is it just me?
I imagine that I used to. Similar to the idea that FNMs are “too competitive”. A little experience always clears things up.
FNM doesn’t follow the IPG, it uses the JAR. however, a lot of the fixes in the IPG are good in general for general game play.