The New Docs IPG | MTR



There are a few changes to the IPG today that are worth highlighting, including a small change to missed triggers. Yikes!

In some rare corner cases, our default fixes produce unintuitive results. For example, I have an effect that tells me to draw and discard. I draw into an empty hand and play a land. Whoops! Applying the GRV remedy tells me to just discard now, but my hand is empty. That seems suboptimal, especially when fixing it is so easy, so we’ve added the ability to make tiny backups to fix an unnatural situation. How tiny? I’d say maybe one action that directly involved the affected permanent, where reversing it doesn’t affect anything an opponent would know about. In general, it’s better to apply the default fix, but the option now exists.

Speaking of default fixes, there’s a new one: if someone forgot to declare blocker order (or, in rare cases, attacker order) and it’s become relevant, just do it now. Rewinding these is often messy, and you can’t leave it undeclared if it’s relevant, so it’s best to have the players declare it now.

Another clarification that mostly affects deckcheck teams at large events: if an error is discovered on a decklist outside of a deckcheck don’t issue an infraction until the start of the next round (unless you think the deck itself is illegal). This minimizes disruption to ongoing matches. This was true for first round deckchecks, but it’s been changed to make it clearer that it applies at other times as well.

There’s a clause in Slow Play that gave upgrade discretion to the HJ for exceptional situations. It turns out that nobody could articulate a scenario where it might apply and not be Stalling, so we removed it.

Finally, yes, we touched missed triggers. In general, we’ve been really happy with how well those rules have worked, so touching them is scary and done very, very carefully. However, we’ve found a situation where we think we can improve gameplay flow and remove some potential inconsistencies from the infraction definition.

At the moment, we have a list of trigger types and how/when they need to be acknowledged by, plus an extra caveat that says “or if they’ve been acknowledged before then.” That works fine for three of the four classes of triggers, but produces a strange result when you acknowledge a trigger that requires physical action (gaining life, drawing cards, etc.), but then forget to take the action. A while later you remember and it’s a mess.

Intuitively, that feels like a missed trigger, and we’ve tweaked the definition to make it so. Now, acknowledgement of a trigger that changes the physical state of the game is done by… changing the physical state of the game at the appropriate time (with the usual flexibility for out-of-order sequencing). The other three types of trigger are not affected by this. Ones that require a target to be chosen need that target chosen when the trigger is acknowledged anyway, and the other two don’t change anything visible, so acknowledging them any time is fine.

There’s a few other non-functional and clarifying changes as well; those are covered in the changelog. Fingers crossed that we’ve fixed the missing penalty box under stalling, too! Thanks to all the judges who sent in suggestions, particularly Jeff Morrow. Have fun casting dragons and we’ll see you again for Origins.