Magic - the Cheatering

[Humphrey]

While I was watching the tournament marathon this weekend (Eternal Champs and BoM), I noticed many many "mistakes".
Players
-trying to respond to trigger, they cant (Orchard in resp to Oath)
-drawing 3 cards with BS, putting none back
-using sick creatures (not only in the finals)

and many more. (Paper)Magic has become or always was a game of cheating.

Bertoncini was a good mentor it seems


The rules need to be a lot more strict. If a player produces a gamestate error or is trying to resolve illegal actions, he should get a gameloss.
If youre playing on high level tournaments, you should know and follow the rules and keep track on the game. It might not be always cheating, but
all those rewinds are stupid, in what sport you can rewind your mistakes? They didnt even get warnings for this.

"Sry I scored an own goal, I didnt know it was the wrong one" - "No problem, we take it back"

I can remember, back in the day, we didnt even allow to untap lands and got mana burn then.

[JDK]

They didnt even get warnings for this.

If it gets caught (and they call a judge), the judge will hand out warnings or infractions.

I don't think you should get a gameloss for every mistake, unless you repeat those mistakes (intentionally or not).

Your comparison to other sports/games is shortsighted. In MTG you get a warning or an infraction as 'punishment', in football the own goal is part of the game (it's a legal action) and 'punishment' itself. A more appropriate analogy would be casting Innocent Blood accidentally, when you have a Griselbrand on the field and your opponent nothing. You cannot "take it back". Anyway, it's a far stretch to compare different games and their rules...

[Arsenal]

In professional sports, it's exactly that, a team full of professional experts at their respective craft. In CCG tournaments, not every participant is a professional; to expect that level of play out of each any every participant is a lot to ask for.

[Koby]

Magic is a hard game of mental exercise. It's not uncommon for mistakes to occur, unbeknownst to both players and the judging staff.
It's one thing to be actively cheating, and another to be misplaying.

Cheating is judged by the intent of the player committing the violation through investigation. Equating knowingly playing multiple lands per turn to missing a trigger 40 minutes into an intense game is disingenuous.

RE: Oath of Druids -

10/1/2009: The targeted player controlling more creatures than the current player is a part of the targeting requirement. A player can't be targeted by this ability unless it's true, and the ability will be countered on resolution if it's no longer true at that time.

Oath of Druids will only trigger if a player has fewer creatures than an opponent. It will go on the stack. Then, upon resolution, it will check again. If creatures are at parity, the trigger will fail. What you described can and does happen as it should.

[danyul]

Legitimate errors and cheating are two very, very different things. We are humans trying to adhere to a game of rules. Look at humans at the highest levels of rules enforcement - government. They mess up all the time. How can you expect a regular dude playing a card game for funsies to be a perfect paragon of professional play when other people, who are paid to live by rules, also cannot do so? I don't mean to throw a red herring at this argument or anything, but the idea that we should all play perfectly seems misguided to begin with.

Humans are playing this game. Humans make mistakes. If you don't want to play this game with humans, or any game with mistake-prone meatbags, then you might prefer something more clean, perfect, and pure like...I dunno...Solitaire or Final Fantasy XXX: Anime Island.

[Arsenal]

Also, in professional sports, mistakes do get undone. Instant replay overturns mistakes. When a player does make a mistake, there's a punishment comiserate to the infraction. What the OP suggesting is analogous to a NFL game where the defense has 12 men on the field... then the referee awards the game win to the opponent.

[dunk]

10/1/2009: The targeted player controlling more creatures than the current player is a part of the targeting requirement. A player can't be targeted by this ability unless it's true, and the ability will be countered on resolution if it's no longer true at that time.

Oath of Druids will only trigger if a player has fewer creatures than an opponent. It will go on the stack. Then, upon resolution, it will check again. If creatures are at parity, the trigger will fail. What you described can and does happen as it should.

It doesn't work this way on Magic Online. Oath goes on the stack and if there is parity it fizzles with split second. No way to respond to it. And it always has been this way, so I don't think it's a bug... Maybe Humphrey should have described the situation better.


Best thing that happened at the BOM though was when a previous GP winner tried to use Mother of Runes with haste. Guy must have smoked a really fat joint before the match, or how else can you "forget" about that? I don't even think he got a warning for that, the judge only pointed out that Mum has summoning sickness...

[Spam]

I've talked with a judge once about whether or not I should, as spectator, be that guy that points out this kinds of things. His answer was: "Yes, you should"
I'll always stand for this. Keeping the game in a correct state should be everybody's interest.
And yes, don't know why, but Italian players tends to be very naive about this. Off course not all Italian players are like this, thankfully.

[Lemnear]

"native" ... well, that's a nice spin on "gaining extra mana while playing combo"

[Hopo]

How come the Source is not buzzing due to the current Brad Nelson -gate?

[Phoenix Ignition]

I didn't hear about it yet, what happened?

[H]

I didn't hear about it yet, what happened?

Brad Nelson fetches a Ghost Quarter, then quickly taps it to animate a Raging Ravine, keeps his hand over his lands after.

Here's a Gif of the sequence.