(2*) What should you do if you disagree with a judge's ruling? Support Judging FtW on Patreon at / judgingftw Suggest a question: forms.gle/YTK2qrQqTL18rRsJ9 A: Appeal it or explain rationally what you think is wrong.
There's a local story of legend in my area about someone who went to a Legacy GP with a humility deck and came into a really in-the-weeds ruling with the card (shocker). Initial judge rules incorrectly, appealed to the head judge, who did the same. Exasperated, the player asks to appeal to the rules manager, which is not something I even knew you could do. And supposedly most of the time this is in vain. But in some strange twist, there is a rules manager and they are on site at the event. He strolls up, listens to the player's case, and then confirms their version as correct. It was probably a 20 minute judge call but still renown years later for such an improbable success.
@@kuznecoffjames It's a title within WOTC itself, the person whose job it is to maintain the rules of the game and all the associated baggage. That's part of what made the story so insane, there's like maybe 1 or 2 of them in the whole world, and finding them for an appeal was a true shooting star rare moment.
@@HeyApples Based on the title I would've assumed it was someone lower within the rules cannon (like a higher judge), but to get someone who actually *makes* the rules is pretty crazy. That's a great story!
The 'let the judge finish their ruling' comes from way back. While i didnt run into it myself, i do remember there being a couple players that just didnt respect L1 judges, so without that guidline they would only want the head judge to make rulings for them (ie. Appeal before making a ruling).
Yeah, saw that happen with newer judges too. Some players got even more pissed after getting told that the first judge has to give a ruling before they can appeal. 🤣
I only ask for judges for non-rules related rulings. Magic mechanics are cool and all but I’d much rather have their expertise on the best Mexican food near the RCQ.
I had a judge get orcish bowmasters interaction wrong (pinging the 1/1 orc token won't kill it because it's 2/2 once the trigger is resolved, he thought it did.) Fortunately it wasn't too game impacting so I just took his word and asked again after the match was over and quad checking with friends. The judge double checked with other judges through what I think was discord. After a short 5 minutes he came back and apologised for his mistake and clarified what he got wrong and how it worked. Nice guy overall but I can see how if at the time that interaction mattered I might have needed to speak up.
Back in the really old days, while not quite that bad, there were situations much closer to "Islands tap for colorless." That was one of the big reasons for the 6th Ed rules changes and the birth of the comprehensive rules. It leaves much less up to interpretation. I also remember hearing one story (possibly from MaRo) of a decently sized tournament where the Head Judge ruled, shortly before it was about to start, that different printings of the same cards had different legalities. So you could play cards that had been reprinted into the most recent sets, but not original printings of those same cards from older sets. I think this was argued to be due to making it easier to check legality and make sure everyone had cards that used the same wording (since all way before oracle), but it caused a lot of chaos.
Technically, this is a rules question. Appeals have made me a better and more knowledgeable judge, especially in my early years, and now im at times a go-to judge at the LGS's i frequent. At events i judge, i try to explain my ruling in the simplest but clearest way possible. If i notice they may still not be sure of my ruling, i always let them know that if they would like to appeal, they can.
I think most people would call "questions on how cards interact, as detailed in the CR" rules questions, while anything decided by MTR or similar non-CR documents & policies as non-rules questions. This question is still technically about rules associated with Magic, but they're mostly about the tournament & people playing in it, not the actual game.
Every single judge I know, myself included, has had an appeal at one point or another, and most of us have had our rulings changed on appeal at least once. You know what our reaction has been, without exception? "Oh cool, now I know too, and can do it correctly in the future."
While "it works this way on Arena" isn't a great argument, more than once it has led me to a post with a L2 Judge explaining why it's working as intended/bugged, and that explanation can help a lot.
I remember back at GP Barcelona where the floor judge ruled that Death's Shadow died after the life change would grow it beyond the received lethal damage and that the head judge then comfirmed that ruling. The shadow player continued to play on confused only for the head judge to return after 30 seconds. They started to rewind the game which already had moved on to the next turn and it involved several spectators and judges. After that mess and the new board state the humans player found themselves dead on board and minutes of rewinding ended up in " untap. Draw, swing for lethal"
I would like to add one more thing: once the head judge has made the final ruling (after any relevant discussion), please go back to playing the game instead of arguing or continuing the discussion. You can (and should) approach the judge after the match (when the judge has time) to follow up with any more comments or questions, and hopefully one or both of you will learn something. But during the match (which will hold up the whole tournament) is not the correct time for that discussion.
One of my big goals with this video was to raise awareness. Judges who deal with appeals routinely tend to think this is just something that all players know as a matter of course, but in my experience, that's certainly not something you can take for granted.
So the one time I disagreed with a judge, the ruling was actually in my favor- It was one of the few standard events I took part in- back during the Theros/ Ravinica standard if I recall correctly. My opponent had my in a pretty bad spot with a hydra, I think the Boros one with double-strike, and I cast “turn and burn” fused (meaning I cast both halves of the card, “turn” which made a creature into a 0/1 with no abilities until end of turn then “burn” which did 2 damage to a target creature). The I immediately realized this had no effect on the +1/+1 counters on the hydra (technically, it buffed the toughness by 1) meaning my burn was not sufficient to kill it. I pointed this out to my opponent who didn’t think that was how it worked, so I suggested we call a judge just to be sure. And the judge ruled that the turn somehow negated the counters. So on the occasion when I disagreed with the judge’s ruling- I just figured I had done my due diligence and took the bad call in my favor.
7:10 I must plead guilty there, I sometimes use "I tested it on forge" as an argument when talking with other players 😅 Of course I never call that an all-powerful argument, and I would probably never use that when talking with someone that definitely knows what they are talking about, but still
I could imagine a scenario for the unsportsmanlike conduct ruling coming from something like players appealing rulings-not-yet-made to try and overload the head judge, or to appeal a ruling while the head judge is otherwise already occupied. A player could do this with the aim to use up event/round time for some advantage (such as to try and timeout in an otherwise unfavorable matchup to get a tie or a 1-0 win, even with extensions).
Strangely enough, this has its own separate callout in a separate section of the IPG! This example appears in the section for Stalling: A player playing slowly appeals a warning in an attempt to gain advantage by having more time to make a decision.
Judges don't mind at all if you ask for an appeal or even ask questions about the ruling they're giving. However, please do so in a pleasant manner. "Hey, I understand where you're coming from but I don't think it works that way. Could I appeal this to the head judge, please." goes over much better than, "You're an idiot! Go get the other guy." (You may think I'm exaggerating the second response. I've seen someone say this *verbatim* to a judge before.) Being kind goes a long way.
Only use legal forms of challenge when issueing one for a High Noon duel the next day. Make sure other judges are present for the duel to ensure a safe and honorable bout
I feel like part of the "wait until the ruling has been made" thing is to prevent time-wasting play (make dubious play on purpose after a clean first win, opponent challenges, immediately appeal so that the head judge has to come over and rule. Time this to when you know the head judge is on the other side of the room and involved in something, or even outside of the room, and you've potentially got a round-end before the ruling is rendered), and part of it is to avoid and/or mitigate player-judge antagonism (if the player's had contentions with a judge before, the player assuming that that judge is going to be biased against them is understandable, but likely to lead to the very bias that's being assumed if they express themself, particularly if they see who the judge is and immediately appeal. Being made to wait for the ruling to be delivered forces the player to give the judge a chance to be unbiased, which potentially leads to the mending of that rift. Admittedly, it also gives the player a chance to dig their own grave, but I feel like that's a "safety net" of sorts - if the player is willing to let their personal antagonism get in the way of fair play, they probably need to modify their attitude a little before they get involved in high-stakes games).
Good video, I was only missing one thing: What about Gatherer rulings, which players and judges can look up on their phones? Is that allowed? Endorsed? If Gatherer directly states something, it should be hard for a judge (or a player if they got it wrong) to argue against it.
Can anyone point me to anywhere citing where MTG ARENA or MTGO had wrong rules/interactions? This is hard to swallow as they are official products and have had tournaments in them
MTGA didn't allow some legal choices for naming cards, that would've been legal if playing on paper. MTGO has had many bugs, I'm not sure where you should even start on that one. Multiple Auras being put on the battlefield, causing the game not to ask you where you want to attach them, and then just putting them in the graveyard. The entire softlock bug. Wall of Roots being instant speed on MTGO, but being able to be tapped to pay for costs on paper.
I have had other judges tell me that many MTGO interactions are hard-coded on a per-card basis. MTGA does a better job of rules enforcement because it is newer and has a much smaller card pool, but has still had bugs; all software has bugs. To boot, even the CR does not cover absolutely every edge case. These are best-effort documents and implementations, and some amount of providing rulings is currently a matter of personal interpretation, though that amount is very small.
So what do I need to so to get "Instill Energy's" oracle text fixed? It should give a creature haste just like nether shadow has haste on its oracle text.
Giving nether shadow haste is cleaner and doesn't really change how the card works, instill energy giving haste would change how the card works, in fact I believe one of the printings on gatherer used to say it gave haste in the oracle text (it was only one of the printings for some reason) but they've fixed that. So it's intentional that instill energy only allows it to attack as if it had haste and not activate tap abilities. It's a bit weird and confusing that that's how it works but it's an old rarely played card so I don't think wizards cares to much about it anyway and would rather just leave it that way in case it breaks something in the future.
@@rustyanvile Not to mention cards that care about keywords like Odric. While it might not break anything it'll have far reaching consequences that we can't be sure of. It's similar to the way a lot of cards with the early versions of shroud/hexproof/ward haven't been errata'd, they have small, but very functional differences to how they work compared to the keywords.
@@rustyanvile It did simply grant haste for a long while actually, and the oracle was updated to be more in line with its original card text. They've done these kinds of things to other cards too, like Time Vault.
@rustyanvile haste obviously didn't exist back then, and nether shadow gives a clear precedent for what "can attack the turn it comes into play" should mean. It's obvious what Instill energy's intended use purpose is, yet the oracle text has refused to acknowledge it. It's not like it's a game breaking card. G to give a creature haste isn't broken, especially by today's standards.
@Kryptnyt time vault got fixed back to it's original wording though. As I said before it's clear that Instill energy is intended to give haste, yet it doesn't.
Long time ago, a judge gave me a DQ on a Prerelease event. The reason? On opp turn, I played a sorcery as an instant to destroy one of their attacking creatures on his combat step and, when my next turn start (after I draw), I saw the card on the yard and notice that I've played that card wrong. Inmediately, I said my opponent that I made a mistake and tell him we must call the judge and he agrees. The judge was close to us (I dont know if he saw us playing or not), he came, made us rollback to the point before the attack, the sorcery back to my hand and we continue. I take the damage of that attack and we keep playing pretty well. When the match ends, the judge calls me and says he has "enough information to know I was cheating during the tournament" The only thing I could say was that I made a mistake because I haven't played that card before (again, it was a prerelease) but I couldn't change their decision, I was DQ'ed. He was the only judge on the event so I couldn't make an appeal to anyone. It was a pretty sad day. So i'm pretty glad to hear you apologize. Thanks.
My friends and I are new players and we play commander. We want to get the rules rights so we are alle educating ourselves and your video’s are a great inspiration. We also use ChatGPT 4 (the paid version) to help explain rules but also entire card interactions this really helps but I have a questions, in your opinion how good is chatGPt as a judge?
ChatGPT is never a good option for factual information. It might be right a lot of the time, but the issue is it can be wrong sometimes. If it's wrong sometimes and you consult it for information, you can't be sure if the information it gives you is correct, therefore you have to assume the information it gives you is always incorrect. The best you can probably get from it is to give you ideas of what to search for to find an actual ruling by an actual judge.
Chat gpt will hallucinate aka make shit up. So I wouldn't completely trust it. In fact a lawyer got in a lot of trouble for using chat gpt write a legal brief for him and it made up a couple cases and heavily changed another one.
@@thekilla1234 But that is true for humans too. The human judge might be right a lot of the time, but the issue is it can be wrong sometimes. If it's wrong sometimes and you consult it for information, you can't be sure if the information it gives you is correct, therefore you have to assume the information it gives you is always incorrect.
@@mawillix2018 Yes, but there are 2 major differences. 1. ChatGPT is just a probability engine that shits out words that appear near each other the highest percentage of the time. It doesn't know rules of MTG, it just guesses what might be the correct rule by parroting past rulings. This means it's more likely to give outdated information, incorrect information that was given by non-judges over the years, or just information not related to the thing asked because it prefers high probability situations, so niche rulings will be ignored in favor of common rulings featuring the same cards. 2. A judge can be talked to and reasoned with. They can clarify the situation and point to various rules to backup their claim. If you tell ChatGPT it is wrong, it will blindly agree with you and then shit out a completely different set of words. You can then tell it that it's wrong again and it will keep doing that. You can't discuss with ChatGPT because it's just a word splurger. You just have to take what it says at face value even if you have questions about its response. What I meant by "wrong" is that it can't reason about the situation, and because it can't reason and doesn't know what MTG is or even what the rules are, you can't trust it as a resource because even when it's right, it's not right because it knows the answer, it's right because probability was on its side and it stumbled into the right solution. Just to give an example, I asked it about Urza's Saga and Magus of the moon, which is a commonly known interaction: "In MTG, does Magus of the Moon destroy Urza's Saga?" This question isn't correctly phrased because Urza's Saga doesn't get destroyed, it gets sacrificed as a state based action, but this is the kind of thing someone would ask a judge, and the judge would clarify, so this is a good test for ChatGPT to correct me on this. Its response was that Urza's Saga loses all abilities, can't produce tokens, and ended with "So, while Magus of the Moon doesn't directly "destroy" Urza's Saga, its ability effectively neutralizes Urza's Saga's functionality as a Saga enchantment land." This all makes sense because these are words that would appear near each other when talking about these 2 cards, but it never even talks about Urza's Saga being sacrificed or even removed from the battlefield at all. So then I asked it: "Does Urza's Saga stay on the battlefield in this situation?" And it replied: "Apologies for the confusion. Let me clarify. Urza's Saga remains on the battlefield even if Magus of the Moon's ability is active. Magus of the Moon doesn't directly remove or destroy Urza's Saga; instead, it changes the type of lands on the battlefield to Mountains if they are nonbasic." This is just flat out wrong. It's just shitting out words that appear near any discussion regarding Magus of the Moon, since any discussion regarding this card will have a high probability of talking about losing abilities, not permanents being removed from the battlefield. It also is still talking about "destroy" rather than "sacrifice" because that's what I said to it.
if the words seem to sound good together, chatGPT is happy to say it, and it doesn't fact-check itself. it will speak as soon as it has something to say, and it is up to the operator to decide if it is verifiable or just nonsense. would you trust a judge that behaved that way ?
I really wish I knew this early on in my tournament career. I was in the "win and in" later stage of a tournament and got a bad call from a judge who was really friendly with my opponent. Had I known I would've appealed and discussed it with someone else.
I think a lot of judges, as a result of being surrounded by this stuff and dealing with it regularly, take for granted that all Magic players know certain things, including appeals. Many of these things are absolutely not something that all Magic players know, and that's one of the reasons I really wanted to make this video.
I know your personality and everything by this point, but the title and thumbnail are meme worthy. It looks like you're about to let hell loose on the poor player who questioned a judge.
Hey Dave, have a rules question for you! What happens if I have 6 cards in deck, my opponent had 5 life, and I use minsc and boo's -2 sacrificing a 7/7 boo token to deal 7 to my opponent? Do I die? Do they die because the damage is done before I draw? Is it a draw?
The whole ability has to resolve, top to bottom order, before SBEs are checked, which is when lethal damage is checked. Meanwhile, you lose as soon as you attempt a normal draw action with an empty library. I'm not 100% on the second part, so someone can correct me, but I am 100% on the first part, so you draw at best.
@@mawillix2018 True, however given how the stack works and plain reading of the card, the "draw X cards" if the sacrifice is a hamster is not a "may" effect. Therefore it is a prerequisite to the damage being done, as all mandatory actions in an effect must be completed before they do their damage. So as soon as you cannot draw the card, while it would not immediately be game ending, since it is a mandatory step for the effect to fire at BEST you cannot complete the effect so it fizzles on the stack doing no damage, and you die next turn when you cannot draw a card during your draw phase. However it could equally be argued that the effect makes the card draw mandatory in-effect making it the same as a draw step and you die immediately to mill.
@@milhousevanhoutan9235 being unable to draw 7 doesn't suddenly undo the damage to the opponent. Both players would lose the game the next time that state based actions are checked, meaning that the game would be a draw.
I don't think that there was any specific problem that happened on how to appeal to the head judge, it's just the commonplace "maintain the chain of command" that you see in military and the workplace. If you have a problem, you don't go running to the boss 3 levels up, you start with your immediate supervisor. I've handed out a penalty in the past for a player not wanting to tell my judge what happened because "it's going to get appealed anyway, so just go get the head judge." I had to counsel a judge on my staff once because he went over, made an incorrect ruling, and it was appealed. I went over, made the correct ruling, and had to explain to the player who was now on the short end of the stick what the ruling was and why, having to make sure not to throw my judge under the bus. But then the other judge took me aside and had the audacity to tell me he was upset at me for taking so long at the table and changing the ruling after he spent his time over there. That was a wonderful talk that, try as I might, did not educate the judge further on how the appeals process works and that if his ruling was correct I wouldn't have had to take so long over there. He didn't think he was right, he just cared that he felt humiliated because he was wrong. I also once saw a player appeal a ruling against him not because he thought the ruling was wrong, but because he blatantly said he didn't have enough confidence in the head judge's knowledge and was hoping he'd get it wrong and reverse the decision. That was a healthy level of disrespect I thought deserved a penalty, but the player was a golden child of that store and nothing happened.
"Judges are always right".. Thats just bullshit and arrogant. I can tell what i do if a Judge and even the Headjudge ruled something wrong: i report them to a higher Instance so they dont judge any other Events, if they steal a Win/a Placement from me with their wrong Ruling, i let them compensate the damage.
Can you explain what kind of "higher Instance" that you're reporting judges to? I'd also be interested in what kind of compensation you were able to get, because I've never heard of anything of the sort.
Not sure who you Contactin Magic.The Judges need to do some kind of test to be a Judge. So i would say the Puplisher, WIzards of the Coast can be contacted. Compensation in form of Prices i lost. Either i MUSt get the stolen Prices or the Money.@@miserepoignee9594
