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That's a bit sketchy to chalice check like that. Personally I only chalice check when my opponent is on the stretcher because of all the anthrax I lace my sleeves with, that way I know they can't even call a judge.
I had a fun game in Modern playing Elves against a Chalice player: Chalice normally shuts the deck down really hard, but I had two Cavern of Souls, so I wasn't affected at all. However, my opponent (on Mono-Blue Tron) tried to cast an Expedition Map. When I pointed out his own Chalice trigger, he declared "I'm choosing to miss it", to which I responded he couldn't do that. This had to be escalated to a Judge Call because he just couldn't accept that he couldn't choose to miss his own trigger (like he can if I'm casting a spell and he simply forgets) even with me there reminding him of it.
Record goes to the pre-release player (I was judging) who tried "My opponent didn't declare the excess damage for trample so I assume they assigned 6 damage to the 1/1 and 0 to me"...
It does not automatically assign anything. Players can make that mistake. The only damage that auto assigns technically is deathtouch. And even then people can angle shoot
@@dalevanvleet9357 Not strictly, but functionally it goes in the assigned order and in a common understanding. *IF* no such understanding is reached without parsing, the game reverts to the specified step. Here it means that when the defender calls judge on assumed trample damage, the damage is just clarified and the game resumes, as the gamestate most likely hasn't progresses far. If it has (for some weird reason), handling shortcuts and handling illegal actions are to be consulted. So yes, trample "assumes" minimal assigned damage under the same ruling that deathtouch does, with DT just adding a minimal required damage of 1 before further modifiers.
This excess damage comment happened to my at Yugioh Nationals final round table 1. Opponent drew a card after being dealt lethal and claimed I didn’t announce one creatures attack , so he drew and began his turn calling a judge. I’m still mad 10 years later
Years ago, at an LGS that ran friday night modern, I had a guy that tried to chalice check me. He intentionally covered the mana cost of the card with his thumb, mumbled the spell name and tried to put it into graveyard before I could respond with my trigger. I called him out on it and told him to put the card face up on the table facing me so i could see its CMC. It really made me sad that someone wanted to behave like this at FNM level.
I was once in a two headed giant tournament and an opponent cast a spell and put it on the table, when I tried to counter it he told me that once a spell hits the table it has resolved...
That's actually bs how are you supposed to know what the card is to want to counter it? It's not like you know what's in your opponents hand before they play their cards.
@@kyonsenzu8799 Yeah, me and my 2hg partner immediately called BS and he pretty quickly stopped trying it with us, I believe later in that tournament the same team was soulbonding cards with each other which is not how the ability works so it was either not understanding or hoping to super cheat
If that was actually legal people could palp cards in their hand and slam them o to the table and they wouldve "resolved" without any ability to see the card. Dud3 was talkoj out if his ass
For a while, people played Throne of Geth for this explicit purpose in eternal formats as a way to proliferate chalice triggers. I don't know if that still happens, but it was delightful tech that I really enjoyed hearing about.
There's a real funny gp coverage of stiflenaut v eldrazi or something. Eldrazi played chalice, stiflenaut cast some phyrexian tezz spell and proliferated it to 2. Opp cast a 2 mana spell, resolved, and they remembered chalice. It was a pretty funny exchange bc the chalice player meant no Ill will
My own high-water mark for observed cheating was the pre-release opponent who had been angle-shooting for two games, just at the edge of plausible deniability, who ended our match by asking, "I won game one, right?" Reader, he had not one game one, and when I said so he just picked up his cards and playmat and moved on, which was in its way more creepy than if he had tried to argue about it.
Just as annoying to me is when people try to angle shoot on communications. Like chalice checking 5 times, you say "chalice trigger, gets countered; chalice; [points to chalice]" and then finally you just go "hmm" assuming you are on the same page and then they pretend that was acknowledgement of their thing resolving. I had a few cases where at casual events (like side events or fnm) where people clearly understood what you meant but pretended not to for their own gain. Sure you're *supposed* to be unambiguous with your language, but on a long day of casual play you are allowed to abbreviate stuff, right?
One time I was playing in some Swiss rounds at a larger local tournament and my opponent called the judge to try and get his Abundant Growth to resolve through my chalice: I had declared “no response” because there was a triggered ability to resolve before resolving the spell, and he was trying to say I let it resolve through the chalice. The judge sided with me. The icing on the cake is he started playing his first turn before I declared whether I was mulliganing, and I just let him play when I could have easily brought the judge over to penalize him…
I start a lot of sentences with “okay” or “yeah” as in “okay this happens” or “yeah I’m gonna counter that spell”… I’ve only had one or two people try to use my affirmative words at the start of “okay chalice trigger” against me but it’s kinda obnoxious
Just as an FYI that would never fly at a competitive REL event, and wouldn’t fly at most casual events either. I would suggest talking to the people who run the store about that and if it doesn’t get fixed finding a new one.
I remember one time back in INN/RTR standard I was playing at an event that was larger than what I was used to. In one game I cast a Huntmaster of the Fells and signaled to my opponent that I had a triggered ability, to which he acknowledged it resolving. I created the 2/2 and adjusted the dice I was using to track my life total, and passed the turn. We get to combat on his turn, he attacks me and I end up taking some damage and say "ok I go down to X life." He then calls a judge, points to the pad he was tracking life totals on, and says that I was tracking my life total incorrectly because I had not specifically declared my life gain from the Huntmaster trigger on the previous turn. The judge ruled in my favor, because I had resolved the other half of the trigger and my opponent acknowledged it, but that left a bad taste in my mouth. It felt like a blatant attempt at angle shooting, and it worsened my play experience for the remainder of the match.
Sounds like your opponent was not properly tracking life totals to me. He acknowledged your trigger and then didn't add the life points to his tracker.
So I haven't exactly had a Chalice check moment per se, but I did run into a very unsportsman-like opponent who soiled my first FNM experience. This was years ago. I was excited to play Modern for the first time at my LGS. I recognized a few of the players there as I had been in many times to play Commander. Everyone knew I was new to Modern and I had no clue what meta decks were, I built mono white Soul Sisters because my friend said he was doing well with it. I got a lucky game one against Scapeshift, and game 2 I got matched up against someone playing blue black fairies so I had a free win there. At this point I'm 2-0 and I'm on top of the world. I sit down for game 3 and realize my opponent was someone who was just hovering over my table watching the majority of my previous game meaning they knew my deck pretty inside and out. I chuckle a bit and point that out to my opponent and probe to see if he would tell me what his deck is "haha I guess you have the advantage since you were just watching my last game. Unless you want to fill me in on what you're playing to make it even?" I would have accepted most answers, but my opponent replies with a very snide "Oh you'll find out soon enough. Don't worry." Not the end of the world. He didn't have to tell me his deck. Well as it turns out he was playing what was at the time the top tier Modern deck. Abzan CoCo with Melira and infinite persist. I'd like to remind you all that at this point I'm an extreme casual who up until this point had only played EDH; CoCo is NOT a commander card and I've never seen it before. Nor had I bothered with any Persist creatures because they didn't seem that great in EDH. I have no fucking clue what any of my opponent's cards do, He's mentioning rules and trigger sequencing and all this shit that I have never even had to deal with, at one point he cast a CoCo in response to one of my Soul Sisters without mentioning it was in response to the cast so I thought I was getting more life than I was and he was getting frustrated. At this point I call the judge over and I'm just like "dude I'm new, I have no clue what's going on and my opponent isn't explaining his cards." The judge, who was just the store owner, was more than happy to sit there for the rest of our match and explain my opponent's cards because he wouldn't, and walk me through the combo that my opponent was doing as he was doing it, and verified with me what my life total should be at; no advice, just verifying boardstate and explaining. I ended up losing that game and that was fine, but the store owner made note of that guy's behavior, and was soon after banned from the store for continued unsportsmanlike behavior and just generally being a dick and short-tempered
To the store owner who kicked this guy out. Good job. This kind of attitude is the worst for creating welcoming environment and allowing people of all experiences to play
One of the first times I went to FNM, right after I had started playing actually, (just jammed together some Guilds of Ravnica era sub-par white weenie Standard deck) one opponent did some crazy infinite looping combo when I was tapped out. Can't remember the combo for the life of me, but it involved using Omniscience and using different spells to constantly shuffle and draw (for what win con I have no idea) It's a small town LGS, so the judges, who were staff at the store who knew me from shopping for comics and DnD supplies, knew that I had never played before. I was just sitting there watching this dude goldfish for a few minutes when one of the judges wandered over. Recognizes the board state immediately. He kinda checks on me to see if I'm salty or anything and I had no idea what was happening, I just kinda said I'm impressed with the combo. I guess it didn't sit right with the judge that this guy was blazing through triggers, explaining nothing, kinda taking advantage of the fact I was a new player. As the judge is there, my opponent resolves some effect that causes him to draw 7 cards. As he's about to do the cycle, shuffle the hand and graveyard into the library thing again, the judge stops him. "Draw 7?" "Yeah." "It resolved?" "Yup!" "How many cards in library?" Dude pauses. Gets kinda nervous. As the judge reaches out, he fans his deck. "Five." "Oh, so you lost. Game 2 to Diogenes." I learned several lessons about Magic that night.
So an opponent trying to cast spells through a chalice, checking you to see if you miss it, is ofcourse legal, however I've had games were it went in a different direction. First, some time ago, before the pandemic, I played a lot of Merfolk. I had an idea to buy into the deck so I could play it in modern, legacy and eventually vintage (last part never happened). Merfolk play Cavern of souls which, like you said, makes it possible to bypass the Chalices. An opponent I played against kept doing the reverse check, where he would point out my Chalice trigger, even though I cast spells that were uncounterable. Never got me, but that was a bit scummy. The second time however, I was playing against a D&T deck in a local legacy tournament. This was quite some time ago, when I was new to eternal formats and was still borrowing half my deck from local people. The D&T player knew I was new to the format, and since I was playing some kind of Delver deck at the time, Chalice was ofcourse good against me. I accidentally ran a couple of spells into the chalice before understanding what was going on, and from there I lost the game. It was only later that I learned Chalice was symetrical, because my opponent had been playing his own spells through his own chalice without me knowing, having never played against it before. The tournament was already over and I didn't really play against him again, because he moved and stopped coming to our local tournaments, but that was an awful experience to have.
To check if you forget that you used Cavern-mana is pretty legit tbh. I played Chalice for years and therefor made it a habit to announce just everything I do.
@@jaywinner328 It is, but what Ziri is suggesting is that it's good habit to announce every Chalice trigger because the opponent might try to "chalice check" them at some point by casting a creature with mana that was *not* produced from Cavern of Soul's uncounterable ability. If the opponent was always clear about saying "cast X creature with uncounterable mana from Cavern of Souls" then maybe announcing the Chalice trigger for that spell would be unnecessary, but until then, announcing Chalice triggers every time is best practice to make sure you don't get taken advantage of. Now, if they DO cast a spell with uncounterable mana and the Chalice player allows it to be countered, THEN that is a problem.
@@Sevifor Not really, depending on the rule enforcement level both get a warning for failed to maintain gamestate and it will be rewinded up to that point if possible
Them missing their chalice triggers on their own spells is just straight up illegal play, right? You're not allowed to miss triggers that are detrimental to you.
I once was spectating a player at an FNM that had a thought knot seer. The opponent killed TKS by blocking and killing it, then didn't draw a card from the death trigger. I pointed it out in the end step when it was evident that nobody else was going to speak up and the player who controlled TKS claimed that he "missed his own trigger" and that the opponent couldn't draw, making it evident that the player was aware of the draw trigger and was angle shooting intentionally. That was a real quick warning from the judge I called over.
Had a few try to do this to me and got salty when caught. Actually had one remove the counter from my chalice when I took a drink. He got thrown out because he didn’t know a judge was behind them watching the match
Yeah I think trying to catch your opponent in a technicality instead of winning with your cards is probably the worst thing you can do in a TCG outside of blatant cheating
Winning by technicality is nothing bad, except maybe in the completely non-competitive formats/circles. That is, as long as the technicality is set and established beforehand and it happens within the game and with matters within the game. If the rules are rules, you go by the rules as rules as the situation develops. If the rules are bad, you change them. Trying to game with pre-, postgame or matter outside of it is scummy as hell, though. For example, the obfuscating player perception here is really low. Same for using rules made for stuff outside the game, like concession rules and such, or cheating by cheating enforcement (the retroactive morph DQ case or a typo in a tournament admission etc.). But if you name the wrong card, even if you mean another, it's not bad for the opponent/judge to hold you onto it in a game with stakes.
@@qwormuli77I think that it’s part of the game, no way to get rid of it, but it’s still scummy to actively choose to try and win by angleshooting rather than just playing the game as intended.
@@qwormuli77While I agree that winning by a technicality is nothing bad, but I do think there is a sportsmanship that you should have with it. This example is clearly bad sportsmanship.
I play yugioh, as well as magic, and its pretty bizarre that mandatory triggers, especially ones that are both sided *could* be ignored because of how complicated the boards happen. In yugioh, if a trigger is mandatory, and either play fails to notice it until later, that could mean the entire game could just be thrown out; because that game would be basically illegal.
and honestly i kind of side with YGO on that one. imagine if at some point in a chess game i - against you without you noticing right away. Move a black square Bishop to a white square during a diagonal move. and then we dont notice until like 4 turns later. I wouldn't call anything that comes from that game legitimate.
@@Atmapalazzo Well for the most part, unlike magic you can know the state of all the cards in your deck. And in a tournament setting; you as a player; should know everything in your deck. So why would a search effect be allowed to resolve. But yea, yugioh is the odd one on out in that, cause in both pokemon and mtg your allowed "illegally search".
i dont play yugioh so just basing on what you said couldnt you intentionally mis a trigger when losing then after call a judge and get that game thrown out?
Just recently, I sat at a table for baldur's gate draft, most players were on their first draft ever and trying to enjoy it, and then there was a level 2 headjudge, aiming hardcore for the win (yes at a prerelease commander game), it was miserable for everybody, he wasn't nice, wasn't joking or smiling, tried many times to cheat and I had to call him out everytime that I could catch him drawing an extra card, adding an extra treasure, etc... At the end, he broke an agreement we had when we agreed before the game it wasn't allowed, but then he called a judge who said it wasn't strictly an obligation, shortly after he unsurprisingly won, then said good game and smiled while everyone else was already packing their stuff in silence In the end he won a single extra pack, but boy did he make sure everyone was sad and bored, true PoS, which is sad considering most people I meet through MTG are smart and nice...
@@zaliacrimson5401 Well English isn't my mother's tongue so ponctuation might be off, I don't believe I made grammar error though, thanks for pointing out something that has nothing to do with the subject...
I only play at FNM level where the stakes are a bit different. But I can’t imagine feeling good about winning a game because your opponent missed triggers. I tend to remind opponents of things like Mayhem Devil triggers and I hope they do the same for me. I think of it as working together to maintain to the rules and correct state of the game as closely as possible. It’s less likely both of us miss something.
☝this. I personally feel like helping another player improve their game is more important than winning because I exploited someone else's inexperience or distraction.
I agree. But I have had points where I stopped because they were missing triggers every turn. There gets to be a point when you start screwing up your play when you are trying to keep track of your opponents triggers.
You're one win away from top 8 of a GP. Your opponent is on 3 life, and just cast a Chalice on 1 while you're tapped out, but you have a Bolt in hand. You wouldn't be okay with it if your opponent missed their Chalice trigger and scooped it up when you cast that Bolt on a later turn?
@@TheOnlyBootlegger If your one win away from the top 8 of a GP, your opponent wouldn’t miss that trigger. I don’t know if you’ve ever played in a GP, but your opponent is not going to scoop with that much money on the line after two days of play without checking the board state to see if there is a way that they aren’t dead.
@@TheOnlyBootlegger I mean it could very well be the kind of thing where everyone says they would help a stranger being robbed in front of them until the chips are down and it actually happens. But I really can’t get into the mindset of trying to cast that bolt knowing it would just get countered by the chalice.
There are many reasons why I stopped judging, but the ever-evolving rules around triggered abilities that it's possible to "miss" was one of them. I judged what I think was a state championship at a time when there was a Jace whose +1 ability was something like "Whenever a creature attacks you until your next turn, it gets -1/-0 until end of turn". People assumed this worked the same as a static ability that said "Until your next turn, creatures attacking you get -1/-0", but in the era of the ability to miss beneficial triggers, it does not, and you had to declare the trigger as the creature attacks or you don't get it. At least, that was the rule for that tournament. I don't know if the rules team ever changed it to specify that it was only for things that actually moved cards between zones or whatever, as I quit judging soon after that. It was not a fun day for me.
@@juter1122 I guess you're misinterpreting the issue. Most people at that time were completely unaware that they had to announce beneficial triggers they controlled that merely changed a creature's characteristics, mainly because it was a very new concept that was not exactly well-communicated to anyone other than judges. No one was "missing" these triggers (for the most part) - they were just assuming everyone knew they happened, because that's how it worked for a long time. That is, by trying to fix one problem with illegal game states, they made people have to speak up about things they never had to before, and was rarely an issue. That the judging powers that be thought this was perfectly reasonable policy was one of many things, when all put together, that made me not want to judge anymore.
Late to the party on this one but the scummiest opponent I ever played against was at my LGS for FNM. I think this was like New Phyrexia standard? So a while ago. Anyway, dude had a weird multicolor spells/burn deck that wasn't anything to write home about, Mostly burn spells and card draw and land searching. He burned me out on game 1 and then proceeded to side in 15 spells that all had the words 'shuffle your library' on them. He proceeded to waste the ENTIRE REST OF THE ROUND (still in game 2) by shuffling as slow as possible over and over again. When I called a judge for OBVIOUS slow play I was informed that we had needed an eighth player for the fnm to fire so the guy I was playing against was technically the judge for the evening. Of course he refused to give himself a warning for slow play and successfully ran out the time (and the 5 turns) to 'win' the match 1/0. Needless to say I reported him to wizards and lodged a complaint. And within a year this guy had his judge qualifications revoked. Mainly because he did scummy shit like this all the time. Especially against new players most of whom dropped the game after their first FNM because he was so toxic. That store is under new management now, but damn I still get steamed from that night.
@@ldgarius Haha, the temptation's there- but at the same time, if I'm proxying cards, it's only fair to the other players who buy real cards to only do it for multiple copies of cards I already own. Don't wanna randomly rock up with a proxied £100,000+ deck! ...Or maybe I do. That'd be hilarious.
Reminds me of the time I went to a tournament as a kid, and my opponent in round 2 started spasming and I realized he's having an epileptic seizure. I immediately called for help, and the organizers made sure an ambulance came and took the guy to the hospital. In all the chaos though, I left my table with all my stuff on it, and when I came back my deck was gone, because somebody used the opportunity to swipe my type2 (that's what we called standard back then) deck and my backpack with my (admittedly rather lackluster) trade binder. I had to drop out of the tournament because I didn't have a deck to compit with, and shortly after I quit MTG for around 10 years, only coming back to it as a young adult.
It is kinda shitty to do this, but it's definitely not cheating. And yeah, I've had something *WAY* worse happen to me. I'll explain: It was a commander tournament at a store that just opened up a week before. I enrolled in the tournament($5 entrance fee for the possibility of winning a Lorwyn box, due to location and competition they were desperate for players, I found this out later) there were only 4 of us that entered the tournament, including the son of the store owner. Everything goes fine for 6 or 7 turns(can't remember exactly cause it's been a few years), I'm playing Mikaeus The Unhollowed and have a very favorable board state. One of my opponents, the son of the store owner, is running Sen Triplets. On his turn, he forgets the Sen Triplets trigger and proceeds as normal. It eventually becomes my turn and I draw Cauldren of Souls and play it. At this point I had Kheru Bloodsucker out as well as Mikaeus, and Viscera Seer out as well as a Grave Titan. So I begin my loop to win the game, when the Sen Triplets player decides that, since he missed the trigger, it is okay for him to retroactively use it to steal my Cauldren of Souls, I stop the game and demand a judge comes over(assuming this store has a judge), turns out the only judge is the owner of the store aka the father of the Sen Triplets player and he rules that its totally fair for him to retroactively play my Cauldren of Souls. I picked my shit up and left. I received a permanent ban from the store for my actions, but the plus side is the store closed in about 2 weeks. I found out about the desperation for players due to one of the employees eventually becoming an employee at the lgs I normally visit. This is also how I leaned the whole tournament was probably a scam.
Missed trigger + not in hand + not detrimental trigger, also casting with Sen Triplets is an action you may take. Due to the card drawn, its unknown you had the Cauldren of Souls in your hand at that timing. So the action of you casting the Cauldren of Souls, and them missing the trigger, and then wanting to reverse the trigger gives them unfair advantage. In magic you as well can't reverse actions and or phases when cards are moved from a library to any other zone. (So I would say about 4 to 5 rules were broken here.)
Benefit of the doubt would be maybe he didn't know you were reaching for an inhaler, he just saw you rummaging in your bag for some unknown reason and went for the check. Idk I wasn't there, so I don't know how blatantly obvious it was that you needed an inhaler. And maybe the opponent just didn't put 2 and 2 together on wheezing followed by reaching into a bag.
My chalice checking story is at GP London's Legacy Challenge. It was the final round before top-cut and my game against a Nic Fit player was deterministic of which one of us makes top 32. I have 2 turn lethal with 2 Reality Smashers so my opponent's gambit is to mutter Top, quickly play Sensei's Divining Top and immediately activate it, I clock them about grab the top 3 and stop them with my Chalice trigger, clearly the Nic Fit player knew the judge would side with them if I didn't stop them exactly then. A turn later, they scoop, and don't say a word as they pack up and leave in a hurry.
I had a game in No Ban List Modern in a side event where I was playing a R/G Eldrazi deck against a standard deck with a NBL mana base. Game was going late as they has a bunch of counter spells. I had at some point, put a challice on two. Neither of us had a way to remove it, we had a conversation about it while we were playing. I cast a Warping Wail targetting a creature they had with 1 power, and moved the card directly from my hand to my graveyard without waiting and chuckled a little. We had a judge sitting next to us watching the game as we were the last two playing at the table. My opponent, however didn't get what I was doing and cast Syncopate to counter my Warping Wail, at which point I said "Oh, in response to the chalice trigger? Ok." To which they responded something like, "Oh, right. I guess so." I moved Warping Wail to exile, they put Syncopate in the graveyard, a bit sad that they didn't realize I was throwing the card away intentionally. The judge said to us both after the game, "I've never seen a chalice trigger bait a counterspell before. That's my new favorite chalice play." because to both the judge and I it was obvious that I wasn't intending to resolve the spell. I won the game with a Reality Smasher cast using Cavern of Souls and empowered with Kessig Wolf Run, so it didn't change the result at all, but it was a goofy point in the game.
Similar story when i was playing tron vs fish in modern and put a chalice on 2, cast a pyroclasm into a chalice on 2 and my opponent saced his curse catcher to daze it figuring it was dead anyways. i opted not to pay.
Triggers and checks was what got me to quit competitive magic. Back when pod was a thing, I had an opponent call judge on me when I sac'd a kitchen finks to pod, resolved pod first, when said "persist" -- They said because I missed the trigger, I couldn't persist Finks. I played it that way for 4 rounds of the tournament and was feeling good from my 3-1, so I called judge. The judge came over and said I missed it and to play on. I lost that match because of that single missed trigger and it was a terrible feel bad moment. I get now that the sacrifice was a cost to activate the ability, so it had to resolve first, but these are things that anyone not familiar to competitive magic can ruin an experience. And if it happened at an FNM, screw that guy.
Aren't you allowed to do things slightly out of order if the results would be the same anyway and so long as you comply with a request to reorder correctly from an opponent?
I'll be honest I've never heard of chalice checking before this but now that I've given it a think it definitely seems scummy no matter what the context. It's hard for me to draw a line that says "chalice checking is ok, but not when an opponent is distracted." It's either ok or it isn't
What's really wild is that chalice checking yoyr opponent is perfectly fine (I mean, it's cheating, but there's no penalty for it, so), but literally ignoring literally the exact same mandatory effect to get literally the same advantage is big trouble if you chalice check yourself.
@@dapperghastmeowregard yeah it's one thing if it was a "may" trigger, then casting a spell when you think your opponent won't remember the trigger is fine, but otherwise the more I think about it the more it just seems scummy to do full stop, whether or not your opponent has bad allergies at that moment
@@EbonAvatar I kinda wanna try playing Chalice, then when my opponent tries to check me, be like "In response, tap Bazaar Trader to donate Chalice to you, the trigger has already passed, call a judge on you for resolving a card through your own Chalice." 99% sure that doesn't actually work, you'd still control the initial trigger, but it makes me smile.
This is something i enjoy about YUGIOH. maintaining the board state is the responsibility of all players, so mandatory triggers are everyone's problem. Thus chalice checking is just cheating, but Yugioh will rewind board states when genuine mistakes are made.
the prowess triggers from a 1 drop (mutagenics) mentioned at about 4:20 won me my second match of my last modern FNM, thank Garfield for on cast triggers
Wasn’t a chalice check, but I played against a guy at a GP who was playing scapeshift. All of his basics and all of his scapeshifts were in Japanese. I cast thoughtseize, he lays his hand on the table, lands above, targets below. But he puts his scapeshift in with the basic lands, and underneath a forest, so all that is poking out is the first character of the card name. I actually fell for it, selected something else, realized what happened as he was picking up his cards, called a judge, and the judge didn’t ding him. Six years later and I’m still mad at that judge for not calling him on that. He won that game.
I really think there should be a level of "You know what you are doing" penalty. Like just treat all instances like that and bad judge calls as intentional cheating. "But judg-" "No Im not playing that game, that's a warning."
isn't it possible he just forgot for a moment? I have literally read a card, realized I can't do something, I start thinking hard about something else and completely forget the first thing then end up playing right into the thing I was trying to avoid in the first place. Magic is hard.
Chalice checking is the best argument against playing in paper that I've ever heard. Yes, taking advantage of a medical situation is scummy, but when you've set the standard as what the rules allow on the narrowest interpretation then you're setting yourself up for scummy play.
THIS!!!! imagine if i just, mid chess game. Dupe you...i slip my bishop during his diagonal to say, a black square from a white. and now i pin a high value piece of yours like a queen with an illegal move. But we just carry on cus "ya gonna have to be quicker than that" Like cmon.
I think it's scummy to try to manipulate your opponent into missing a trigger. It's one thing if they miss it. It's another if you're playing tactical mind games trying to CAUSE them to miss it.
Once during FNM I forgot what my own cards do, where I mistaken "look at the top 3 and put it back in any order" with "look at the top 3 and put one in your hand", and my opponent caught me. I was like, I wasn't trying to cheat, honest.
jokingly chalice checked a player in a lost game before i scooped. he had a chalice tattoo sleeve up his arm, he did not fail to point to his chalice in play. great guy.
as long as it isn't an irreversible action, my casual playgroup pretty much automatically will retroactively correct a missed Chalice trigger. we are testing the decks, amd having fun. the only stakes involved in the game is usually looser has to grab snacks amd drinks from the kitchen. that's where I like chess. You hear of instances all over where ranked players playing are under the weather the opponent will accept a draw.
I have a friend who used to play a ton of Modern UB Mill. One FNM (I think it was for the stores 10y anniversary) I was playing down the table from him and I notice his opponent, clearly tilted after game 1, leave to talk to the store clerk. They talk for a bit, then the opp comes back and they finish siding. We later learn from the clerk that he asked for some basics, clearly intending to pull from the draft rule "you have unlimited basics in your side" to increase his deck size vs mill. "Can I get some basics" has been a meme in the group since.
It doesn't even have a "may" in the counter. It just says to do it. If I l was being mauled by a puma, my opponent should still not be able to cast cards and have them resolve. It is also beyond scummy if you win by doing this. It goes against the spirit of the game.
I'm of just the same mind. show me anywhere in a MTGO game that you can recreate this :P Show me anywhere in a goldfish test draw that you can do this. Show me against an optimal playing opp, WHERE YOU CAN DO THIS. i may hold stacking cards in my head far far above this in severity but this is still super scrummy.
I would never chalice check when someone had a asthma attack; doing it when the opponent has a medical emergency that hampers breathing makes it so difficult for them to reply "alright"
I personally sold my copies of Chalice of the Void because I was tired of people angle shooting even at FNM level events. If I play Chalice it's just gonna be on MODO.
This story makes me think of this one guy I played against who called a judge because I didn't announce the life I gained from my lifelink creature. His reasoning was that I missed a trigger by not saying this, of course the judge was with me on this and nothing came of it more than a boring match.
I'll admit, I'll kind-of chalice check (I just remind them before it's missed) in the middle of a priority hold to see where my opponent's focus is. Mostly so I know if I need to remind them of their triggers that benefit me.
As an on and off MUD legacy player since 2012, I have been hit with chalice checks more so than most in my community. When people do this they usually have an over friendly/casual personality until they check your chalice. It definitely gets you down over time at your event. I've done the same thing, in fact, I started typing this before you even got to your mood snaps.
Yeah, the timing is a bit scummy. Overall checking your opponent to make sure that they know their own deck, through making sure they remember triggers or forcing them to prove to you that they kill you with their combo, is important. I've always felt that deck knowledge is very important and you wont get better if you have some games you lose because you forgot a trigger or two, it's part of learning to play this game.
When your combo is dependent on layers resolving before a target to a triggered ability is declared it does help to have the rule ls citation bookmarked.
Well it depends If my wgd loop starts uncontested in anje for example Theres no need to prove i kill beyond pulling out 3 cards from my deck because i have a true infinite loop that does not end until i ein
@@V2ULTRAKill Well no, it is important for them to check if you do kill them. Just having infinite mana (or card draw for that matter) doesn't mean you win, it just means you pulled a combo and now you may be in position to kill. Infinite mana with nothing to sink it in is pertty much useless. Infinite card draw with no possible interaction means you would just deck yourself, and so on.
@@alilhard again If the loop resolves the worst possible outcome i can have is a draw It is an ACTUAL infinite not a loop that can be repeated infinitely, a loop that does not end unless force stopped or the game ends Unless I kill, the game draws There is zero point in running a true infinite without a kill, and madness has zero mana spell recursion Anje is fundamentally a deck that wins by playing the loop
@@V2ULTRAKill Ok, so you mean to tell me that if I have only worldgorger in the yard and I play animate dead you scoop no matter boardstate ? Not taking the piss, just explaining that it's in your opponent's best interest to check "from here, do you win the game, do you have a way to win the game from this boardstate ?"
I think the end of what you said on the story of giving the benefit of the doubt feels fairly correct. You know you were off in a negative space the cursing out your friend and knowing you were off is certainly a good sign. My default post Yuuya and Saito but more so Yuuya as he was one of the best regarded players is to report the concern to the judge so they can have it documented if its a 1 off nothing happens if its a history thats it can get addressed. While that is my default if it was just the player being kinda not pleasant and seemingly angle shooting that wouldnt move me off it, the barking at a friend thats when I would be on the fence.
I had a situation at a PTQ that I feel really bad about. I play very robotically and enunciate everything, steps phases triggers, resolutions, EVERYTHING. I was on dredge, and when I Life from the Loam'D, I accidentally picked it back up with the 3 lands. I realized now that I put the 3 lands on top of it and didn't think, and when my opponent called judge, I didnt dispute it at all. It was my mistake, and I was going to take the loss if it came down to it. I got a warning overall and reverted the game state. I won the match overall, but I feel like my opponent thought I was cheating the whole time, using my robotic play patterns to hide it. It feels bad to be accused of cheating when you really didn't mean to do an illegal play pattern.
eh honestly I think that the game working differently because a player "forgets" feels quite a bit like the whole reason that manual dexterity cards are banned. Though as you said it is unlikely to affect 99% of my games since I don't play competitively I don't like it as a concept even. In an ideal world both players should keep track of the game state and remind each other when something would be able to trigger. But then you run into a hard to enforce thing maybe just give both players a warning for failure to maintain game state and attempt to rectify the situation but again that is way more hands on than should be necessary.
I’m trying to remember which tournament it was but it was pre-Covid and a judge ruled that it is also the responsibility of the opponent to make sure their opponent is keeping track of their triggers, they penalized that individual with unsportsmanlike conduct. It’s on TH-cam here if I remember correctly so if I can find it I’ll share the link!
Due to playing control decks frequently, any sort of attempt to cast while a player is otherwise preoccupied is pretty bad manners. 1 too many times have I played a commander game where players skip from End step to next players main step when I had wanted to cast something in the end step. Just don't be that guy. You'll just ruin your reputation in your local community and nobody will play with you. That's when you truly lose at MTG.
taking explicit advantage of an opponents personal weaknesses in a non-game or deck building aspect in general is shitty, im not saying you have to point out that youre dead on board but like letting an opponent miss stuff because they forgot or like have something going on outside of regular sloppy pay is fucked up
Chalice Checking isn't really cheating, its a result of having such a bad system for catching board state errors. In my playgroup we have a "Not a may" rule where if an ability is a may effect, you can miss the trigger, oh well. If its not a may ability, we have to do everything we can to return the board state to as it should have been. The fact that you could respond with something innocuous and "miss a trigger" as a result is ridiculous.
I would STRONGLY consider it cheating... you're ignoring it's effect. Chalice says "COUNTER THAT SPELL". The effect is automatic and requires no-Owner input for it's effect to go off. It does NOT say "owner MAY counter spell". Why play a game if you're just gonna ignore the rules?... the officialbook rules, and/or the rules set by the cards-on-field.
@andrewdesalvatore7262 you're allowed to cast spells into the chalice. In the rule book of the game, the owner of the permanent is the sole person responsible for remembering the chosen trigger. Actual cheating, or illegal play would be casting path into a sanctum prelate on one, or casting a path on the opponents turn when they have a teferi time raveller
What you described is as bad as if I mid yugioh match opponent is choking and I go for all my effects when he needs a moment so I don't have to worry about response in yugioh ... kinda a prick move and definitely if as for the example someone is in danger of some sort
My scummiest opponent ever was a tier 2 DCI judge. I casted an spell that said "each player chooses a basic land of each type he controls and sacrifices the rest" and he argued that he would choose his dual lands since they had basic land types on them. And he was a t2 judge so he knew better. Yes, he could choose dual lands, but if he chose two underground rivers, once for each land type. I'm fairly sure he could not.
Chalice checking: legal. Legal does not necessarily imply moral. Knowingly playing a card into an opponent's Chalice on the hope that they miss a trigger is, to my mind, unquestionably immoral. However, it is impossible for an outside observer to know with certainty that somebody is doing it intentionally (although, as with all things, pattern of behavior helps to paint a clearer picture). It is possible for me to see a distinction between "missing an opponent's beneficial trigger" and "missing an opponent's beneficial trigger *that I caused.*" The former I find easier to overlook, although that's purely subjective, has no bearing on the rules, and your opinion may vary. Regrettably, this is simply a problem that we have to deal with because the alternatives are even more onerous. If a player were able to receive a penalty for missing their opponent's triggers, there would be substantially more warnings going out, would result in more judge calls, which would lengthen the average round time of a tournament, etc. etc. It's not sporting to require a player to have knowledge of and track all of an opponent's cards that that player might or might not be familiar with. Additionally, in tournaments with stakes, requiring a player to track their opponents triggers or be penalized can lead to truly disgusting situations. Imagine Player A intentionally misses their trigger hoping that Player B misses it too. When Player B misses the trigger, Player A waits a bit before calling a judge, getting both players a warning for the missed trigger. Player A, if they haven't had any warnings yet, can do this hoping that Player B has gotten earlier warnings in an attempt to get the penalty upgraded to a game loss for Player B, even though the missed trigger was the result of an intentional misplay by Player A. While I think Chalice checking is intrinsically immoral, I would *much* rather have that than this kind of "involve a judge" angle shooting nonsense.
Being someone who likes to play games competitively, I take issue with "action X is allowed, but immoral." If we start making distinctions like that, we create a situation where in order to play to win/play a game to the best of one's ability, one must play in an immoral way. In my eyes, what is allowed by the rules of a game is fair game in competitive play, and if those rules create feel-bad situations for players, that is the fault of the rules, not the players who take advantage of them. That said, if the player PK described would have resolved their spell had PK not gestured for them to wait, I would call that immoral. Why? Because my understanding of MtG's rules is this: 1) When a player has priority, that priority must be either used (roughly, a card/ability must be played), or explicitly passed. 2) Players may take shortcuts, so long as the results of those shortcuts is accepted by both players. If my understanding is correct, then PK's opponent would have been cheating had they attempted to cast and resolve their card while PK was distracted. This is because, in that case, (1) PK had not explicitly passed priority back, and (2) PK absolutely would not agree with a shortcut involving the card resolving. TL/DR; I disagree with the notion that checking if your opponent knows about their own triggers in a game where they are solely responsible for said triggers is immoral (I'd never intentionally do it in most casual play environments, but there are different social considerations there). If assuming the worst of PK's opponent is correct, then I agree that their actions were immoral. P.S. The issue you brought up w/ making both players responsible for triggers can be resolved by making warnings given for missed opponent's triggers not upgradable to game losses ever, though that would cause its own problems. Point is, there may be a way to make it work well. I know Yugioh does it, and many of its players like the fact that it does.
@@delta3244 a reasonable take, but I disagree with a core fundamental of your argument. You suggest that a person should play the game to the fullest that the game allows. I couldn't agree more. However, *tournament infraction proceedure* is not what I consider "rules of the game." It is what happens when the rules of the game are *broken*. A person Chalice testing (keeping in mind that it is impossible to prove intent) is knowingly attempting to circumvent the game rules in the knowledge that, because of the way the error is handled, they could stand to gain an unmerited advantage in the game. To summarize: if the game were able to be 100% enforced by the rules, there would be no Chalice checking. Chalice checking is therefore not a part of the game, and at best a part of the metagame.
@@Sevifor I agree with the premise that tournament infraction procedure (TIP) is not part of the rules of the game. I do not believe that this premise implies that my argument is false however, because MtG TIP _does not_ contain anything which would penalize a player for chalice checking. I also hold that benificial missed triggers not resolving is _not_ part of TIP, as there is no outside-of-game punishment for doing so. In any case, if you accept the premise that TIP-related rules penalize every illegal action a player may make, then that premise implies that chalice checking is not illegal, because (afaik) there is nothing in TIP to punish it. I can see this premise being questionable to you based on what your argument is, though, since per your argument, these missed chalice triggers are part of TIP and penalize the player who would benifit from chalice resolving, not the player who is harmed by it. (Side note, since this is the internet, thanks for the reasonable response. This conversation has already been productive for it)
@@delta3244 for sake of argument, I will grant that "chalice checking" is not a punishable infraction, which is why I originally stated that it is "legal". To clarify the crux of the argument though: admitting that does not make it a part of the game rules. Sure, you can cast that spell into the chalice. It is then countered via a triggered ability that the game rules necessitate putting on the stack. Regardless of definition, the game rules are clear: the chalice must trigger, and the spell would be countered. Thats it for game rules. When that inevitably doesnt happen, then we are immediately outside of game rules. We are merely discussing the best fix for the situation where the game rules have been improperly maintained. Current policy in the TIP is that its a missed beneficial trigger, so no warnings and no change in game state, but this doesn't change the fact that the game state is wrong. Intentionally attempting to put the game in an improper game state is something I consider immoral. You are most welcome to disagree with me, but that is where I draw the line, and I do not think you can sufficiently demonstrate to me that this does not cross that line. To be clear, I am not astride some high horse whereby I never engage in willfully ignoring my opponent's missed triggers, but I do believe that's a failing on my part. I do feel sympathetic to your position in at least one way, though. Chalice checking is a way to increase win rates, and so by not doing it, you put yourself at a strict disadvantage over others who do in a tournament setting. It would be nice to mitigate this. Unrelated, but of interest: chalice checking feels particularly dirty to me (and I suspect others) because it involves a layer of active participation. An opponent missing their beneficial prowess trigger requires merely that I do not remind them. An opponent missing their chalice trigger requires that I am knowingly triggering it but not saying so. I don't know if its a meaninful distinction, but it feels different.
@@Sevifor I don't believe that distinction is meaningful. In both cases, you know something that your opponent is supposed to do (the exact same thing - resolve their beneficial mandatory trigger), and choose not to tell them. In both cases, what you described holds: Game rules necessitate that the trigger happens. You know the trigger must happen. Your opponent doesn't. You allow the trigger not to happen. If chalice checking is immoral, so is failing to remind your opponent of all their beneficial triggers that you are aware of. If the latter is not immoral, neither is the former. Both break the game's rules in the exact same way. That said, I think it's important I clarify a specific piece of where my argument comes from. I believe that competitive games must always satisfy the following criteria: If the chances of cheating successfully are 0%, then an immoral player should have no advantage over a moral player. This necessitates that I hold the view that actions which result in no punishment outside of the game are allowed within the rules of the game, and have the effect on the game that the rules mandate. I hold that MtG is a viable competitive game if tournament policy is followed to the letter, therefore I hold that chalice checking and failing to remind opponents of triggers are both legal and valid actions (though they likely get in the way of improving at the game, so doing them may be ill-advised anyways). Remembering your own triggers is a skill one must develop to get good at the game. I think that a hypothetical rule which requires players to remind their opponents of triggers if they are aware of said triggers would be good for the game if enforceable, but said rule is not part of the game as-is, likely because such a rule is not enforceable. Similarly, having a judge at every table to make sure all rules are followed properly without fail would likely be good for the game, but is too expensive to be worth it.
Haven't read it in a very long time, but the comprehensive rulebook used to specifically and very clearly state that it was the responsibility of BOTH players to remind of any triggers, regardless of who owns them, it is supposed to be about sportsmanship not try to sneak in wins that you don't deserve from ignoring triggers that have no choice, if in a tournament and a trigger is missed/ignored both players could be punished equally.
I had a fun one in a SCG event. Was playing quest for the holy relic in the standard format at the time. My opponent here was on o e of the blue green ramp variants. I casted a Kor skyfisher with a quest on 3 in play.. my opponent asked what I was picking up. To this I motioned to grab a card on instinct and stopped to say "before that" and went to change the counters on quest. Of course they stopped me, and said we could call a judge. While miffed I declined and moved on proceeding to take this game one as they only set me back by maybe a turn. Karma did it's work for me here though as they I game 3 took a while on choosing the frost titan trigger. He chose wrong leaving my mirran crusader untapped and his only blocker as an avenger of zendikar. I get to slam a sandbagged Darksteel axe on my following turn killing him from 8 with that same crusader.
One tournament my friend is in, opp casts some kind of tutor, shuffles his deck, offers the deck for my friend to shuffle. Calls the judge that my friend is illegally shuffling his deck. Judge ruled against my friend because the guy sneakily SLIPPED the tutor back into the deck so it wasn’t in the graveyard!
In Yugioh, mandatory abilities are both player's responsibility to track, Yugioh really doesn't want those to be missed, if a mandatory trigger is missed, the game rewinds back to when the mandatory trigger should have activated (if it hasn't been long enough that rewinding isn't possible), and both players are penalized for missing it, so Yugioh avoids this specific situation almost entirely.
It was so at magic and that rule are removed because of how miserable expirience of reminding to opponent their beneficial triggers under threat of penalty, and how bad situations for judges was when both players forget about trigger. Now you could even skip announcment of triggers that not change visible boardstate, untill they relevant (for example, prowess triggers are important only at assigning damage)
Because of the rules on chalices' counter being a trigger ability, it just sucks that people will test the chalice player to no end that they are paying attention to say, "chalice trigger, counter it." Also, you never know if your opponent is packing disallow or looking to cycle a nimble obstructionist to the trigger to counter it. All that being said, I did have someone tell me I was cheating for playing chalice because all of their outs in their deck get countered by the chalice trigger.
I don't play much counter spells, not even in most of my blue decks. But those few times someone has gotten a cough or had a hard time focusing I've just paused until they are back in the game. It doesn't matter if it is casual or competitive. It is just part of being sportsmanlike. One time I even offered to grab them some water for a similar reason that was mentioned in the video.
I had the candelabra of Twanos and I was using it correctly but one of my opponents kept saying that I had an infinite combo because I simply had the urzatron. I explained to him that while I could pay × and tap it then untap my lands then retap them it wouldn't go any further than one cycle. He was emphatic that I could simply pay × and untap my lands but I could only do in in cycle and it didn't require me to tap the candelabra. I was nice enough to point out that it was something that is known as a mono artifact. Those don't exist anymore in the game itself and when they did they were under the rules text of only once per turn or tap me as part of my costs.
It is perfectly acceptable to chalice check your opponent in a COMP REL match with money on the line, as long as you are doing it as part of a legitimate check on your opponent. It is never acceptable to attempt to take advantage of a medical issue your opponent is having. I have zero issue with picking your spots on chalice checking either. For instance a game with a simple board state at an FNM would be a shitty place to be doing this.
The asthma inhaler example with ponder doesn't have anything to do with Chalice. He's trying to slip something passed you while you're distracted. That's just cheating. It doesn't matter that he didn't check you in G1. Every instance of him putting a spell on the stack is a unique situation that is resolved in a vacuum.
Reminds me of a dude I met on a tournament who was really salty and he exclaimed: "I'm only having fun when I'm winning!" I was really, really weirded out by that comment. There are always people taking the game too serious, sadly... Even had an opponent think I wanted to deliberatly poison them when offering crackers, which I was eating myself. And he wasn't even joking. The guy next to me thought we knew each other and were joking but when he realized this wasn't the point, they were just as weirded out as I was.
My own angle shooting experience is pretty recent-- my LGS was having a friendly Commander tournament against another store in the area, and I went along partly as our spare (I'd placed 5th in the mini-tournament to decide on our team of 4, which sounds impressive until I also mention there were 5 entries total) and partly to get some games in with anyone else who showed up. Ended up being me and two other guys from Neither store-- one of whom was new to the game, one of whom was Not. like if you've a MtG tattoo (he had a pretty good-sized Vraska on his arm), I'm gonna assume you're familiar enough with the game to be aware that the legend rule does *not* go on the stack and that once a creature resolves, it's a permanent and not a spell. So anyway, I'm playing Izzet Pirates, newbie was playing a mono green prebuilt deck sold by another local store (which had earl of squirrel as a win con, not sure what the deal was there-- I found this out when I Windfalled him and had to explain silver borders), and vraska tat is playing Koma, but with Marit Lage as secret commander. He gets out the Dark Depths and Thespian Stage combo, stages to Dark Depths... And then attempts to transform thespian stage in response to the legend rule, leaving Dark Depths in play AND giving him a marit lage. A couple turns after I explain how that actually works, he attempts to Double Major his marit lage and seems openly suspicious when I explain spell vs. permanent and that it's not a valid target as it's already in play. At that point, I honestly believe that assuming he's trying to get one over on me IS giving him the benefit of the doubt, because the alternative is assuming he's just Profoundly Stupid.
My experience wasn’t any specific action, more of an overall experience. I had met up with a friend at the LGS for a few rounds of Commander. After he left, played against a random guy who had introduced himself while my friend and I were playing. I was still new to the format, playing with an untuned deck. This guy had a Markov Eminence deck. He played like he was going for the title. He was clearly in the lead, yet he didn’t hesitate to repeatedly devastate everything from board state to my land base. Mind you, this was a random & casual game. Dissuaded me from playing with strangers for a while.
I had a situation where I defeated a supposed friend in a game of pioneer. I left right after the match since it was the last round. And he reported the match as a draw. I would have been in 4th place and revived some credit, but he screwed my record and left me empty handed. Not something worth confronting, but he’s lost my trust and any positive regard I had for him.
I was playing EDH, when an opponent had cast a "Phantasmal Image" as a copy of my commander (for those who don't know, it enters as a copy of a creature, except it's an Illusionin addition to its other types and it has "When this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, sacrifice it."). I cast Murder on it, and they cast an Arcane Denial to counter it. When I point out that they will still have to sacrifice it because it became "the target of a spell or ability"... that's when things got weird. My opponent argued with me that countering the spell that targeted the Image was "on cast" and was thus before I could name targets. I tried to inform them that targets are chosen as part of casting a spell. You can't counter a spell to stop your creature from becoming a target of it because it has already become a target by the time you have an opportunity to respond. Then they said that "Targets happen on etb." I responded with confusion, as this was an instant, not a permanent. They then concluded that if they counter a spell in response to the cast, then there is no etb, and thus, no targeting. When I argued that instants don't enter the battlefield, they insisted that "instants still hit the field." Thankfully there was a third player in the game, so they backed me up. The Phantasmal Image player left. It baffles me how a mono-blue Braids, Conjurer Adept group hug player who was so insistent on reminding us that it's "untap upkeep draw - if you draw you choose not to put anything down" can have such a severe misunderstanding of the stack.
My favourite silly cheating thing is a player casting Elspeth back in the day and immediately trying to use her -8 ability to make everything Indestructible for the game. I said "you cant do that, she doesn't have that many counters" So he replied "sure I can, the counters can go negative because of damage, so I can also spend them into negative" I just scooped and went about my day
It’s not your job to make sure someone does the checking but if I were playing sportsmanship would dictate I would play a card that would need to be checked nothing I hope that my appointment would forget and I don’t know why I would play it knowing that he did have a Chalice check but I probably would remind them otherwise why even play it. Also I enjoy your your content so much keep it up please you and the professor or so witty at times it’s amazing so thank you for a little bit of joy in my day when I get to watch what you guys do and what you do thank you
Had a player playing a modern deck (Krark-Clan Ironworks) call for judge to do a deck check on a boggles player who played Leyline of sanctity mainboard . This was a weekly modern game (not competitive ) by a LGS. After the owner verified that the player did infact play leyline of sanctity mainboard and he did not break any rule , they continued playing with the salty player telling his opponent “ you need to pay for my entry fee”
I had an opponent cough in my face at a gp and the judge told me he couldn’t ask the guy to not do a bodily function. The fifth time of saying stop I scooped and went back to the hotel
I know this is a year old, but there's a very simple thing to remember for this sort of thing. The rules do say that a player is not required to remind an opponent about a missed trigger, no matter what the trigger is. They can't be punished for it. However, a player is not allowed to try and trick an opponent into missing a trigger. This would include trying to move too quickly so they may not notice, as well as trying to act when they are distracted. It's one thing to hope your opponent misses a trigger or to profit when they do, it's another to try and act in a way so as to make it more likely they miss a trigger. And while not pertinent to this story, if your opponent misses a trigger, you can point it out and a judge can act to roll things bac. The example given is someone attacking with an Arbor Elf equipped with a Sword of Feast and Famine, unblocked. The attacking player untaps all of their lands, but the defending player forgets to discard. Even if it's not pointed out until the post-combat main phase, once pointed out a judge can ask the defending player to still discard their card, treating it as a game rules violation. This doesn't mean either player is punished for missing the trigger, it just means that the judge confirms they did things wrong and rules on how to correct the mistake. I think it ends up being up to the judge if the trigger is just skipped entirely or handled even with such a big delay, and probably depends on what the missed trigger was and what impact missing it has had since then. Like missing a Chalice trigger, some effects are harder to roll back than others. If it should have countered a draw spell, then it might be a bit complicated to make your opponent return the card they drew, especially if it was several phases back. But a card that gave them tokens or counters could more easily be rolled back, just removing the tokens or counters. Unless they got tokens and used those tokens for other things before the trigger was missed. I'm not a judge though, that's just how it sounds to me based on what I'm reading. But the main thing is that this specific situation would have counted as them trying to make you miss a trigger. Otherwise they should have kind of frozen the game with their card on the stack, waiting for you to finish what you were doing, possibly even repeating what they said if it seemed you didn't hear them so that you could properly respond. Because hypothetically, in a situation like that, they could have cast Ponder and looked at 4 cards while you were distracted or something.
I remember when obzedat/whip of erebos was im standard back when theros released. Some big tourny ruled that obzedat could exile himself even tho the whip said thay if the card would leave the battlefield (this exiling itself), then it is exiled instead (meaning the whip triggers to exile it changing which effect/card exiled it). That deck was a top tier deck because of that ruling even tho my lgs called wizards of the coast MULTIPLE times for a rules check and every single time they responded with 'yes. Whip would exile him and he wouldnt return BUT because it was ruled the other way around at (big tourny). We have to go by that ruling'
I don’t see a problem with the Obzedat rule tbh. The wording on the Whip makes it possible as it’s a replacement effect and won’t take effect, "exile it instead of putting it anywhere else" but it’s already being exiled by own ability so the whip doesn’t need to "do" anything. Same thing was true of Rest in Peace + Obzedat or Aetherling.
I once had a mill opponent tell me i lost before my serra avatar shuffled back into my deck at a friend of a friend’s house. It took me 30 minutes to convince him i was an L1 and that you lose when you draw a card with no library. Even showed him the rule and he still argued.
Back when I was a young teenager when I just first got into magic, I was at an FNM against this opponent that would cut my deck but would look at the card as he's cutting. Me being a young dimwit, didn't think this was against the rules because I was new at the game and I didn't challenge him. He would cut the deck, angle the visible card towards himself and if he didn't like what he saw, that's where he would cut.
Reminds me of a guy who comes to every FNM at my LGC. He gets visibly angry and growls when he has to mulligan and groans and rolls his eyes whenever you counter a spell or remove one of his big threats. It's fine to run into an opponent like this every once in a while but he does it every single week, every single game, no one wants to be matched up with him because he doesn't talk, doesn't banter, just sits there silently and growls, scowls and groans and it's just not a fun experience.
That is terrible behavior. Unfortunately, people try that garbage all the time in tournaments. People have tried to get me to miss triggers while distracted, too. With me it involved cards like Aether Vial or Gods Willing in my hand that my opponent knew I had.
At a modern PPTQ back in 2017 I was playing my win and in to top8 on Hardened Scales. I was facing Titan Shift which is a pretty difficult matchup if they can answer my early aggression. Win g1, lose g2 and have him DOB g3. I pass the turn and at the same time my son approaches the table (10yr old) to say goodbye as his mom came to pick him up since he had lost out and was getting bored. I turn my back to hug him and when I turn around the OP has their hand up and is calling judge. Flustered and confused I ask him what’s going on. “Oh I went to draw and I accidentally saw the top two.” Still visibly confused I let the judge do his thing. His thing ends up being asking the guy what his draw was and which card he saw and then some shuffling happens. My op casts explore into scape shift and kills me…. Interesting the 2nd card in his library mattered. I saw him pull the same stunt a month ago at FNM with a grist plus trigger. Cheating to look for outs….at FNM. Why bother playing if you feel you have to cheat to win. What’s a win worth then??
@@lMaBanana As 1 who played A LOT of both, I can assure you, Magic rulings are for the worse so much more bureaucratic and the coresponding language associated is formal AF.
Chalice checking is fine, the timing he did it would have made me call a judge even if he wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. It's scummy and he'd probably chalice check someone choking to death
If the opponent plays any card regardless of what it is while you are clearly incapacitated and unable to continue the game, then I see that as unsportsmanlike and scummy. But if your opponent thinks you might make a mistake following a distraction, (a distraction which you caused not him) and he thinks you might forget to chalice check him because your mind has now lost focus following said distraction, then I call that smart and strategic.
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@@numnut154 well i do not blame him because the scam requres a fair amount of research to see through but eh still not cool.
Established titles is a scam. :p
@@numnut154 he cut it out of the video
That's a bit sketchy to chalice check like that.
Personally I only chalice check when my opponent is on the stretcher because of all the anthrax I lace my sleeves with, that way I know they can't even call a judge.
Seems reasonable
I had a fun game in Modern playing Elves against a Chalice player:
Chalice normally shuts the deck down really hard, but I had two Cavern of Souls, so I wasn't affected at all. However, my opponent (on Mono-Blue Tron) tried to cast an Expedition Map. When I pointed out his own Chalice trigger, he declared "I'm choosing to miss it", to which I responded he couldn't do that. This had to be escalated to a Judge Call because he just couldn't accept that he couldn't choose to miss his own trigger (like he can if I'm casting a spell and he simply forgets) even with me there reminding him of it.
Lmao I choose to make this boardwipe one sided
Amazing
Choosing to miss a trigger? What was this player on lmao
Too noob to be throwing such heat such as chalice. 'This potion is too strong for you.'
@@skyguytomas9615 Sounds more like a cheater to me.
Record goes to the pre-release player (I was judging) who tried "My opponent didn't declare the excess damage for trample so I assume they assigned 6 damage to the 1/1 and 0 to me"...
Doesn't trample default to a mininum value, unless specified in the rules?
Wow. Almost charmingly stupid thing to say.
Edit: I mean the guy not the OP.
It does not automatically assign anything. Players can make that mistake. The only damage that auto assigns technically is deathtouch. And even then people can angle shoot
@@dalevanvleet9357 Not strictly, but functionally it goes in the assigned order and in a common understanding. *IF* no such understanding is reached without parsing, the game reverts to the specified step. Here it means that when the defender calls judge on assumed trample damage, the damage is just clarified and the game resumes, as the gamestate most likely hasn't progresses far. If it has (for some weird reason), handling shortcuts and handling illegal actions are to be consulted.
So yes, trample "assumes" minimal assigned damage under the same ruling that deathtouch does, with DT just adding a minimal required damage of 1 before further modifiers.
This excess damage comment happened to my at Yugioh Nationals final round table 1. Opponent drew a card after being dealt lethal and claimed I didn’t announce one creatures attack , so he drew and began his turn calling a judge. I’m still mad 10 years later
Years ago, at an LGS that ran friday night modern, I had a guy that tried to chalice check me. He intentionally covered the mana cost of the card with his thumb, mumbled the spell name and tried to put it into graveyard before I could respond with my trigger. I called him out on it and told him to put the card face up on the table facing me so i could see its CMC. It really made me sad that someone wanted to behave like this at FNM level.
I was once in a two headed giant tournament and an opponent cast a spell and put it on the table, when I tried to counter it he told me that once a spell hits the table it has resolved...
That's actually bs how are you supposed to know what the card is to want to counter it? It's not like you know what's in your opponents hand before they play their cards.
@@kyonsenzu8799 Yah, that's either ignorance or cheating. Probably the second.
Yeah that's not how priority works.
@@kyonsenzu8799 Yeah, me and my 2hg partner immediately called BS and he pretty quickly stopped trying it with us, I believe later in that tournament the same team was soulbonding cards with each other which is not how the ability works so it was either not understanding or hoping to super cheat
If that was actually legal people could palp cards in their hand and slam them o to the table and they wouldve "resolved" without any ability to see the card. Dud3 was talkoj out if his ass
Chalice checking during an asthma attack is ridiculous. They should have called a judge for slow-play.
LOL
I just realized chalice has counters, so removing the counters with "Hex parasite" or increasing it via proliferate is a funny way messing with it.
For a while, people played Throne of Geth for this explicit purpose in eternal formats as a way to proliferate chalice triggers. I don't know if that still happens, but it was delightful tech that I really enjoyed hearing about.
@@Sevifor khan's bastion works similar
There's a real funny gp coverage of stiflenaut v eldrazi or something. Eldrazi played chalice, stiflenaut cast some phyrexian tezz spell and proliferated it to 2. Opp cast a 2 mana spell, resolved, and they remembered chalice. It was a pretty funny exchange bc the chalice player meant no Ill will
My own high-water mark for observed cheating was the pre-release opponent who had been angle-shooting for two games, just at the edge of plausible deniability, who ended our match by asking, "I won game one, right?"
Reader, he had not one game one, and when I said so he just picked up his cards and playmat and moved on, which was in its way more creepy than if he had tried to argue about it.
Just as annoying to me is when people try to angle shoot on communications. Like chalice checking 5 times, you say "chalice trigger, gets countered; chalice; [points to chalice]" and then finally you just go "hmm" assuming you are on the same page and then they pretend that was acknowledgement of their thing resolving. I had a few cases where at casual events (like side events or fnm) where people clearly understood what you meant but pretended not to for their own gain. Sure you're *supposed* to be unambiguous with your language, but on a long day of casual play you are allowed to abbreviate stuff, right?
Stopped going to legacy events at a local LGS and started going to another one instead after this exact experience
I physically put my finger on chalice and say chalice every time to avoid confusion.
One time I was playing in some Swiss rounds at a larger local tournament and my opponent called the judge to try and get his Abundant Growth to resolve through my chalice: I had declared “no response” because there was a triggered ability to resolve before resolving the spell, and he was trying to say I let it resolve through the chalice. The judge sided with me.
The icing on the cake is he started playing his first turn before I declared whether I was mulliganing, and I just let him play when I could have easily brought the judge over to penalize him…
I start a lot of sentences with “okay” or “yeah” as in “okay this happens” or “yeah I’m gonna counter that spell”… I’ve only had one or two people try to use my affirmative words at the start of “okay chalice trigger” against me but it’s kinda obnoxious
Just as an FYI that would never fly at a competitive REL event, and wouldn’t fly at most casual events either. I would suggest talking to the people who run the store about that and if it doesn’t get fixed finding a new one.
I remember one time back in INN/RTR standard I was playing at an event that was larger than what I was used to. In one game I cast a Huntmaster of the Fells and signaled to my opponent that I had a triggered ability, to which he acknowledged it resolving. I created the 2/2 and adjusted the dice I was using to track my life total, and passed the turn. We get to combat on his turn, he attacks me and I end up taking some damage and say "ok I go down to X life." He then calls a judge, points to the pad he was tracking life totals on, and says that I was tracking my life total incorrectly because I had not specifically declared my life gain from the Huntmaster trigger on the previous turn. The judge ruled in my favor, because I had resolved the other half of the trigger and my opponent acknowledged it, but that left a bad taste in my mouth. It felt like a blatant attempt at angle shooting, and it worsened my play experience for the remainder of the match.
Oh yeah that’s definitely angle shooting. You can’t miss part of a trigger. Do you still use a die or have you moved to pen and paper?
@@ZakanaHachihaCBC I still just use dice when I play casually, but at bigger events with higher stakes I absolutely use pen and paper.
Sounds like your opponent was not properly tracking life totals to me. He acknowledged your trigger and then didn't add the life points to his tracker.
@@damionwhitehead1165 It’s underhanded at best and down right cheating at worst.
@@ZakanaHachihaCBC Definitely cheating - Misrep'ing game state.
So I haven't exactly had a Chalice check moment per se, but I did run into a very unsportsman-like opponent who soiled my first FNM experience. This was years ago. I was excited to play Modern for the first time at my LGS. I recognized a few of the players there as I had been in many times to play Commander. Everyone knew I was new to Modern and I had no clue what meta decks were, I built mono white Soul Sisters because my friend said he was doing well with it. I got a lucky game one against Scapeshift, and game 2 I got matched up against someone playing blue black fairies so I had a free win there. At this point I'm 2-0 and I'm on top of the world. I sit down for game 3 and realize my opponent was someone who was just hovering over my table watching the majority of my previous game meaning they knew my deck pretty inside and out. I chuckle a bit and point that out to my opponent and probe to see if he would tell me what his deck is "haha I guess you have the advantage since you were just watching my last game. Unless you want to fill me in on what you're playing to make it even?" I would have accepted most answers, but my opponent replies with a very snide "Oh you'll find out soon enough. Don't worry." Not the end of the world. He didn't have to tell me his deck. Well as it turns out he was playing what was at the time the top tier Modern deck. Abzan CoCo with Melira and infinite persist. I'd like to remind you all that at this point I'm an extreme casual who up until this point had only played EDH; CoCo is NOT a commander card and I've never seen it before. Nor had I bothered with any Persist creatures because they didn't seem that great in EDH. I have no fucking clue what any of my opponent's cards do, He's mentioning rules and trigger sequencing and all this shit that I have never even had to deal with, at one point he cast a CoCo in response to one of my Soul Sisters without mentioning it was in response to the cast so I thought I was getting more life than I was and he was getting frustrated. At this point I call the judge over and I'm just like "dude I'm new, I have no clue what's going on and my opponent isn't explaining his cards." The judge, who was just the store owner, was more than happy to sit there for the rest of our match and explain my opponent's cards because he wouldn't, and walk me through the combo that my opponent was doing as he was doing it, and verified with me what my life total should be at; no advice, just verifying boardstate and explaining. I ended up losing that game and that was fine, but the store owner made note of that guy's behavior, and was soon after banned from the store for continued unsportsmanlike behavior and just generally being a dick and short-tempered
"Nor had I bothered with any Persist creatures because they didn't seem that great in EDH."
Me: "Laughs in Mikaeus combos"
To the store owner who kicked this guy out. Good job. This kind of attitude is the worst for creating welcoming environment and allowing people of all experiences to play
One of the first times I went to FNM, right after I had started playing actually, (just jammed together some Guilds of Ravnica era sub-par white weenie Standard deck) one opponent did some crazy infinite looping combo when I was tapped out. Can't remember the combo for the life of me, but it involved using Omniscience and using different spells to constantly shuffle and draw (for what win con I have no idea)
It's a small town LGS, so the judges, who were staff at the store who knew me from shopping for comics and DnD supplies, knew that I had never played before.
I was just sitting there watching this dude goldfish for a few minutes when one of the judges wandered over. Recognizes the board state immediately. He kinda checks on me to see if I'm salty or anything and I had no idea what was happening, I just kinda said I'm impressed with the combo.
I guess it didn't sit right with the judge that this guy was blazing through triggers, explaining nothing, kinda taking advantage of the fact I was a new player. As the judge is there, my opponent resolves some effect that causes him to draw 7 cards. As he's about to do the cycle, shuffle the hand and graveyard into the library thing again, the judge stops him.
"Draw 7?"
"Yeah."
"It resolved?"
"Yup!"
"How many cards in library?"
Dude pauses. Gets kinda nervous. As the judge reaches out, he fans his deck.
"Five."
"Oh, so you lost. Game 2 to Diogenes."
I learned several lessons about Magic that night.
Git Gud 🤷🏼♂️
More confirmation bias for me that all CoCo players are degenerates.
So an opponent trying to cast spells through a chalice, checking you to see if you miss it, is ofcourse legal, however I've had games were it went in a different direction. First, some time ago, before the pandemic, I played a lot of Merfolk. I had an idea to buy into the deck so I could play it in modern, legacy and eventually vintage (last part never happened). Merfolk play Cavern of souls which, like you said, makes it possible to bypass the Chalices. An opponent I played against kept doing the reverse check, where he would point out my Chalice trigger, even though I cast spells that were uncounterable. Never got me, but that was a bit scummy.
The second time however, I was playing against a D&T deck in a local legacy tournament. This was quite some time ago, when I was new to eternal formats and was still borrowing half my deck from local people. The D&T player knew I was new to the format, and since I was playing some kind of Delver deck at the time, Chalice was ofcourse good against me. I accidentally ran a couple of spells into the chalice before understanding what was going on, and from there I lost the game. It was only later that I learned Chalice was symetrical, because my opponent had been playing his own spells through his own chalice without me knowing, having never played against it before. The tournament was already over and I didn't really play against him again, because he moved and stopped coming to our local tournaments, but that was an awful experience to have.
To check if you forget that you used Cavern-mana is pretty legit tbh. I played Chalice for years and therefor made it a habit to announce just everything I do.
@@jaywinner328 It is, but what Ziri is suggesting is that it's good habit to announce every Chalice trigger because the opponent might try to "chalice check" them at some point by casting a creature with mana that was *not* produced from Cavern of Soul's uncounterable ability. If the opponent was always clear about saying "cast X creature with uncounterable mana from Cavern of Souls" then maybe announcing the Chalice trigger for that spell would be unnecessary, but until then, announcing Chalice triggers every time is best practice to make sure you don't get taken advantage of.
Now, if they DO cast a spell with uncounterable mana and the Chalice player allows it to be countered, THEN that is a problem.
@@Sevifor Not really, depending on the rule enforcement level both get a warning for failed to maintain gamestate and it will be rewinded up to that point if possible
that second story is a player just straight up cheating. Very scummy and sorry to hear it happened to you.
Them missing their chalice triggers on their own spells is just straight up illegal play, right? You're not allowed to miss triggers that are detrimental to you.
I put 20 mana into Chalice during a cedh game while my friend was playing his Kozilek deck. It was the optimal bm.
That's beautiful. Thank you you've given me a goal to work towards lol
@@Steamboat2016 If it wasn’t his table we were playing on, he probably would have flipped it.
WHAT!?!! OH MY!!
Might as well just play a Meddling Mage at that point lol
What the hell was that pod? Kozilek isn't really cedh material.
I once was spectating a player at an FNM that had a thought knot seer. The opponent killed TKS by blocking and killing it, then didn't draw a card from the death trigger. I pointed it out in the end step when it was evident that nobody else was going to speak up and the player who controlled TKS claimed that he "missed his own trigger" and that the opponent couldn't draw, making it evident that the player was aware of the draw trigger and was angle shooting intentionally. That was a real quick warning from the judge I called over.
Had a few try to do this to me and got salty when caught. Actually had one remove the counter from my chalice when I took a drink. He got thrown out because he didn’t know a judge was behind them watching the match
Damn, that second one wasn't even cheating in RAI, but straight up cheating in RAW.
Yeah I think trying to catch your opponent in a technicality instead of winning with your cards is probably the worst thing you can do in a TCG outside of blatant cheating
Winning by technicality is nothing bad, except maybe in the completely non-competitive formats/circles. That is, as long as the technicality is set and established beforehand and it happens within the game and with matters within the game. If the rules are rules, you go by the rules as rules as the situation develops. If the rules are bad, you change them. Trying to game with pre-, postgame or matter outside of it is scummy as hell, though. For example, the obfuscating player perception here is really low. Same for using rules made for stuff outside the game, like concession rules and such, or cheating by cheating enforcement (the retroactive morph DQ case or a typo in a tournament admission etc.). But if you name the wrong card, even if you mean another, it's not bad for the opponent/judge to hold you onto it in a game with stakes.
@@qwormuli77Just play your cards dudes, if they are good, and you are good, you’ll win, no need for BS.
@@qwormuli77I think that it’s part of the game, no way to get rid of it, but it’s still scummy to actively choose to try and win by angleshooting rather than just playing the game as intended.
@@qwormuli77While I agree that winning by a technicality is nothing bad, but I do think there is a sportsmanship that you should have with it. This example is clearly bad sportsmanship.
@@nicholas8739If you have to remind people that your action is technically 'ok' then its an asshole move regardless of context
My opponent: has a heartattack
Me: Ponder Chalice Checking
Opponent: receiving a surprise emergency message that he's being evicted.
Me: so... my Path to Exile resolves
I play yugioh, as well as magic, and its pretty bizarre that mandatory triggers, especially ones that are both sided *could* be ignored because of how complicated the boards happen. In yugioh, if a trigger is mandatory, and either play fails to notice it until later, that could mean the entire game could just be thrown out; because that game would be basically illegal.
and honestly i kind of side with YGO on that one. imagine if at some point in a chess game i - against you without you noticing right away. Move a black square Bishop to a white square during a diagonal move.
and then we dont notice until like 4 turns later.
I wouldn't call anything that comes from that game legitimate.
@@Atmapalazzo Well for the most part, unlike magic you can know the state of all the cards in your deck. And in a tournament setting; you as a player; should know everything in your deck. So why would a search effect be allowed to resolve.
But yea, yugioh is the odd one on out in that, cause in both pokemon and mtg your allowed "illegally search".
i dont play yugioh so just basing on what you said couldnt you intentionally mis a trigger when losing then after call a judge and get that game thrown out?
@@pauperism7425 its up to a judge, but if your the one doing the mistakes, and it isnt both players youll be the one to lose.
It's easy to throw out the whole game when it only lasts 3 turns.
Just recently, I sat at a table for baldur's gate draft, most players were on their first draft ever and trying to enjoy it, and then there was a level 2 headjudge, aiming hardcore for the win (yes at a prerelease commander game), it was miserable for everybody, he wasn't nice, wasn't joking or smiling, tried many times to cheat and I had to call him out everytime that I could catch him drawing an extra card, adding an extra treasure, etc... At the end, he broke an agreement we had when we agreed before the game it wasn't allowed, but then he called a judge who said it wasn't strictly an obligation, shortly after he unsurprisingly won, then said good game and smiled while everyone else was already packing their stuff in silence
In the end he won a single extra pack, but boy did he make sure everyone was sad and bored, true PoS, which is sad considering most people I meet through MTG are smart and nice...
I think you should report that person, There is a form on the Judge Academy you can submit to report a judge.
Like theDartrunner said, if there's a judge cheating report. That person doesn't deserve the title of a judge.
I don't believe you considering how shitty your grammar and punctuation is.
@@zaliacrimson5401 Well English isn't my mother's tongue so ponctuation might be off, I don't believe I made grammar error though, thanks for pointing out something that has nothing to do with the subject...
I only play at FNM level where the stakes are a bit different. But I can’t imagine feeling good about winning a game because your opponent missed triggers.
I tend to remind opponents of things like Mayhem Devil triggers and I hope they do the same for me. I think of it as working together to maintain to the rules and correct state of the game as closely as possible. It’s less likely both of us miss something.
☝this. I personally feel like helping another player improve their game is more important than winning because I exploited someone else's inexperience or distraction.
I agree. But I have had points where I stopped because they were missing triggers every turn. There gets to be a point when you start screwing up your play when you are trying to keep track of your opponents triggers.
You're one win away from top 8 of a GP. Your opponent is on 3 life, and just cast a Chalice on 1 while you're tapped out, but you have a Bolt in hand. You wouldn't be okay with it if your opponent missed their Chalice trigger and scooped it up when you cast that Bolt on a later turn?
@@TheOnlyBootlegger If your one win away from the top 8 of a GP, your opponent wouldn’t miss that trigger. I don’t know if you’ve ever played in a GP, but your opponent is not going to scoop with that much money on the line after two days of play without checking the board state to see if there is a way that they aren’t dead.
@@TheOnlyBootlegger I mean it could very well be the kind of thing where everyone says they would help a stranger being robbed in front of them until the chips are down and it actually happens. But I really can’t get into the mindset of trying to cast that bolt knowing it would just get countered by the chalice.
There are many reasons why I stopped judging, but the ever-evolving rules around triggered abilities that it's possible to "miss" was one of them. I judged what I think was a state championship at a time when there was a Jace whose +1 ability was something like "Whenever a creature attacks you until your next turn, it gets -1/-0 until end of turn". People assumed this worked the same as a static ability that said "Until your next turn, creatures attacking you get -1/-0", but in the era of the ability to miss beneficial triggers, it does not, and you had to declare the trigger as the creature attacks or you don't get it. At least, that was the rule for that tournament. I don't know if the rules team ever changed it to specify that it was only for things that actually moved cards between zones or whatever, as I quit judging soon after that. It was not a fun day for me.
that's an issue of misreading the card. it sounds clear to me getting minutes to look at the wording
@@juter1122 I guess you're misinterpreting the issue. Most people at that time were completely unaware that they had to announce beneficial triggers they controlled that merely changed a creature's characteristics, mainly because it was a very new concept that was not exactly well-communicated to anyone other than judges. No one was "missing" these triggers (for the most part) - they were just assuming everyone knew they happened, because that's how it worked for a long time. That is, by trying to fix one problem with illegal game states, they made people have to speak up about things they never had to before, and was rarely an issue. That the judging powers that be thought this was perfectly reasonable policy was one of many things, when all put together, that made me not want to judge anymore.
It was in fact changed, you can't be angle shot by that anymore.
Late to the party on this one but the scummiest opponent I ever played against was at my LGS for FNM. I think this was like New Phyrexia standard? So a while ago. Anyway, dude had a weird multicolor spells/burn deck that wasn't anything to write home about, Mostly burn spells and card draw and land searching.
He burned me out on game 1 and then proceeded to side in 15 spells that all had the words 'shuffle your library' on them. He proceeded to waste the ENTIRE REST OF THE ROUND (still in game 2) by shuffling as slow as possible over and over again. When I called a judge for OBVIOUS slow play I was informed that we had needed an eighth player for the fnm to fire so the guy I was playing against was technically the judge for the evening. Of course he refused to give himself a warning for slow play and successfully ran out the time (and the 5 turns) to 'win' the match 1/0.
Needless to say I reported him to wizards and lodged a complaint. And within a year this guy had his judge qualifications revoked. Mainly because he did scummy shit like this all the time. Especially against new players most of whom dropped the game after their first FNM because he was so toxic.
That store is under new management now, but damn I still get steamed from that night.
I'll never need to worry about Chalice Checking. Not because I'm a good or even semi-competent player, but because I'll never be able to afford them!
huh, just get any chinese to print one dude...
@@ldgarius Haha, the temptation's there- but at the same time, if I'm proxying cards, it's only fair to the other players who buy real cards to only do it for multiple copies of cards I already own. Don't wanna randomly rock up with a proxied £100,000+ deck!
...Or maybe I do. That'd be hilarious.
Reminds me of the time I went to a tournament as a kid, and my opponent in round 2 started spasming and I realized he's having an epileptic seizure. I immediately called for help, and the organizers made sure an ambulance came and took the guy to the hospital. In all the chaos though, I left my table with all my stuff on it, and when I came back my deck was gone, because somebody used the opportunity to swipe my type2 (that's what we called standard back then) deck and my backpack with my (admittedly rather lackluster) trade binder. I had to drop out of the tournament because I didn't have a deck to compit with, and shortly after I quit MTG for around 10 years, only coming back to it as a young adult.
I am so sorry that happened to you. How awful and traumatic!
It is kinda shitty to do this, but it's definitely not cheating. And yeah, I've had something *WAY* worse happen to me. I'll explain:
It was a commander tournament at a store that just opened up a week before. I enrolled in the tournament($5 entrance fee for the possibility of winning a Lorwyn box, due to location and competition they were desperate for players, I found this out later) there were only 4 of us that entered the tournament, including the son of the store owner.
Everything goes fine for 6 or 7 turns(can't remember exactly cause it's been a few years), I'm playing Mikaeus The Unhollowed and have a very favorable board state. One of my opponents, the son of the store owner, is running Sen Triplets. On his turn, he forgets the Sen Triplets trigger and proceeds as normal. It eventually becomes my turn and I draw Cauldren of Souls and play it. At this point I had Kheru Bloodsucker out as well as Mikaeus, and Viscera Seer out as well as a Grave Titan.
So I begin my loop to win the game, when the Sen Triplets player decides that, since he missed the trigger, it is okay for him to retroactively use it to steal my Cauldren of Souls, I stop the game and demand a judge comes over(assuming this store has a judge), turns out the only judge is the owner of the store aka the father of the Sen Triplets player and he rules that its totally fair for him to retroactively play my Cauldren of Souls. I picked my shit up and left. I received a permanent ban from the store for my actions, but the plus side is the store closed in about 2 weeks.
I found out about the desperation for players due to one of the employees eventually becoming an employee at the lgs I normally visit. This is also how I leaned the whole tournament was probably a scam.
Missed trigger + not in hand + not detrimental trigger, also casting with Sen Triplets is an action you may take.
Due to the card drawn, its unknown you had the Cauldren of Souls in your hand at that timing. So the action of you casting the Cauldren of Souls, and them missing the trigger, and then wanting to reverse the trigger gives them unfair advantage. In magic you as well can't reverse actions and or phases when cards are moved from a library to any other zone. (So I would say about 4 to 5 rules were broken here.)
Benefit of the doubt would be maybe he didn't know you were reaching for an inhaler, he just saw you rummaging in your bag for some unknown reason and went for the check. Idk I wasn't there, so I don't know how blatantly obvious it was that you needed an inhaler. And maybe the opponent just didn't put 2 and 2 together on wheezing followed by reaching into a bag.
Even if he was doing it for something else, if he never passed priority, they can't even resolve their card.
My chalice checking story is at GP London's Legacy Challenge. It was the final round before top-cut and my game against a Nic Fit player was deterministic of which one of us makes top 32. I have 2 turn lethal with 2 Reality Smashers so my opponent's gambit is to mutter Top, quickly play Sensei's Divining Top and immediately activate it, I clock them about grab the top 3 and stop them with my Chalice trigger, clearly the Nic Fit player knew the judge would side with them if I didn't stop them exactly then. A turn later, they scoop, and don't say a word as they pack up and leave in a hurry.
I'm here for this channel moving into purely dog costuming content.
I had a game in No Ban List Modern in a side event where I was playing a R/G Eldrazi deck against a standard deck with a NBL mana base. Game was going late as they has a bunch of counter spells. I had at some point, put a challice on two. Neither of us had a way to remove it, we had a conversation about it while we were playing.
I cast a Warping Wail targetting a creature they had with 1 power, and moved the card directly from my hand to my graveyard without waiting and chuckled a little. We had a judge sitting next to us watching the game as we were the last two playing at the table. My opponent, however didn't get what I was doing and cast Syncopate to counter my Warping Wail, at which point I said "Oh, in response to the chalice trigger? Ok." To which they responded something like, "Oh, right. I guess so." I moved Warping Wail to exile, they put Syncopate in the graveyard, a bit sad that they didn't realize I was throwing the card away intentionally. The judge said to us both after the game, "I've never seen a chalice trigger bait a counterspell before. That's my new favorite chalice play." because to both the judge and I it was obvious that I wasn't intending to resolve the spell.
I won the game with a Reality Smasher cast using Cavern of Souls and empowered with Kessig Wolf Run, so it didn't change the result at all, but it was a goofy point in the game.
"No banned list modern" is a funny way to say vintage.
Similar story when i was playing tron vs fish in modern and put a chalice on 2, cast a pyroclasm into a chalice on 2 and my opponent saced his curse catcher to daze it figuring it was dead anyways.
i opted not to pay.
Triggers and checks was what got me to quit competitive magic. Back when pod was a thing, I had an opponent call judge on me when I sac'd a kitchen finks to pod, resolved pod first, when said "persist" -- They said because I missed the trigger, I couldn't persist Finks. I played it that way for 4 rounds of the tournament and was feeling good from my 3-1, so I called judge. The judge came over and said I missed it and to play on. I lost that match because of that single missed trigger and it was a terrible feel bad moment. I get now that the sacrifice was a cost to activate the ability, so it had to resolve first, but these are things that anyone not familiar to competitive magic can ruin an experience. And if it happened at an FNM, screw that guy.
You got scummed. That person got you on a technicality of semantics. Everyone in that circumstances knows what's happening.
That just sounds like Out of Order Sequencing so yeah you shouldn’t have been forced to miss it
Aren't you allowed to do things slightly out of order if the results would be the same anyway and so long as you comply with a request to reorder correctly from an opponent?
@@skippycoulter now a days yes but assuming it’s forever ago the rules where harder. Aka made you play tighter.
I'll be honest I've never heard of chalice checking before this but now that I've given it a think it definitely seems scummy no matter what the context. It's hard for me to draw a line that says "chalice checking is ok, but not when an opponent is distracted." It's either ok or it isn't
What's really wild is that chalice checking yoyr opponent is perfectly fine (I mean, it's cheating, but there's no penalty for it, so), but literally ignoring literally the exact same mandatory effect to get literally the same advantage is big trouble if you chalice check yourself.
@@dapperghastmeowregard yeah it's one thing if it was a "may" trigger, then casting a spell when you think your opponent won't remember the trigger is fine, but otherwise the more I think about it the more it just seems scummy to do full stop, whether or not your opponent has bad allergies at that moment
@@EbonAvatar I kinda wanna try playing Chalice, then when my opponent tries to check me, be like "In response, tap Bazaar Trader to donate Chalice to you, the trigger has already passed, call a judge on you for resolving a card through your own Chalice."
99% sure that doesn't actually work, you'd still control the initial trigger, but it makes me smile.
@@dapperghastmeowregard if you ever pulled that off on me I'd tip my cap to you and concede the game to you. Touche, good sir
This is something i enjoy about YUGIOH. maintaining the board state is the responsibility of all players, so mandatory triggers are everyone's problem. Thus chalice checking is just cheating, but Yugioh will rewind board states when genuine mistakes are made.
the prowess triggers from a 1 drop (mutagenics) mentioned at about 4:20 won me my second match of my last modern FNM, thank Garfield for on cast triggers
I've played lots of prowess decks over the years and that cast trigger is seriously a lifesaver!!!
Stax player complaining about scummy opponent, it made me chuckle
You don't need a costume to make a dachshund look regal! Love those dogs!
Wasn’t a chalice check, but I played against a guy at a GP who was playing scapeshift. All of his basics and all of his scapeshifts were in Japanese.
I cast thoughtseize, he lays his hand on the table, lands above, targets below. But he puts his scapeshift in with the basic lands, and underneath a forest, so all that is poking out is the first character of the card name.
I actually fell for it, selected something else, realized what happened as he was picking up his cards, called a judge, and the judge didn’t ding him. Six years later and I’m still mad at that judge for not calling him on that. He won that game.
I really think there should be a level of "You know what you are doing" penalty. Like just treat all instances like that and bad judge calls as intentional cheating. "But judg-" "No Im not playing that game, that's a warning."
isn't it possible he just forgot for a moment? I have literally read a card, realized I can't do something, I start thinking hard about something else and completely forget the first thing then end up playing right into the thing I was trying to avoid in the first place. Magic is hard.
It's a tournament. For a prize. At that level, people know what they're doing.
Chalice checking is the best argument against playing in paper that I've ever heard. Yes, taking advantage of a medical situation is scummy, but when you've set the standard as what the rules allow on the narrowest interpretation then you're setting yourself up for scummy play.
THIS!!!!
imagine if i just, mid chess game.
Dupe you...i slip my bishop during his diagonal to say, a black square from a white. and now i pin a high value piece of yours like a queen with an illegal move.
But we just carry on cus "ya gonna have to be quicker than that"
Like cmon.
There are literally no arguments against playing paper, not even challice checking. You get up and never play that person again and that's it.
@@ldgariusthis is the vast difference between people who play this as a game. And people who think it's a competitive sport.
@@ldgariuscost? the price of magic cards seems like a pretty great argument
I think it's scummy to try to manipulate your opponent into missing a trigger. It's one thing if they miss it. It's another if you're playing tactical mind games trying to CAUSE them to miss it.
Once during FNM I forgot what my own cards do, where I mistaken "look at the top 3 and put it back in any order" with "look at the top 3 and put one in your hand", and my opponent caught me. I was like, I wasn't trying to cheat, honest.
jokingly chalice checked a player in a lost game before i scooped. he had a chalice tattoo sleeve up his arm, he did not fail to point to his chalice in play. great guy.
as long as it isn't an irreversible action, my casual playgroup pretty much automatically will retroactively correct a missed Chalice trigger. we are testing the decks, amd having fun. the only stakes involved in the game is usually looser has to grab snacks amd drinks from the kitchen.
that's where I like chess. You hear of instances all over where ranked players playing are under the weather the opponent will accept a draw.
I have a friend who used to play a ton of Modern UB Mill. One FNM (I think it was for the stores 10y anniversary) I was playing down the table from him and I notice his opponent, clearly tilted after game 1, leave to talk to the store clerk. They talk for a bit, then the opp comes back and they finish siding.
We later learn from the clerk that he asked for some basics, clearly intending to pull from the draft rule "you have unlimited basics in your side" to increase his deck size vs mill. "Can I get some basics" has been a meme in the group since.
It doesn't even have a "may" in the counter. It just says to do it. If I l was being mauled by a puma, my opponent should still not be able to cast cards and have them resolve. It is also beyond scummy if you win by doing this. It goes against the spirit of the game.
I'm of just the same mind. show me anywhere in a MTGO game that you can recreate this :P
Show me anywhere in a goldfish test draw that you can do this.
Show me against an optimal playing opp, WHERE YOU CAN DO THIS.
i may hold stacking cards in my head far far above this in severity but this is still super scrummy.
I would never chalice check when someone had a asthma attack; doing it when the opponent has a medical emergency that hampers breathing makes it so difficult for them to reply "alright"
I personally sold my copies of Chalice of the Void because I was tired of people angle shooting even at FNM level events. If I play Chalice it's just gonna be on MODO.
This story makes me think of this one guy I played against who called a judge because I didn't announce the life I gained from my lifelink creature. His reasoning was that I missed a trigger by not saying this, of course the judge was with me on this and nothing came of it more than a boring match.
I'll admit, I'll kind-of chalice check (I just remind them before it's missed) in the middle of a priority hold to see where my opponent's focus is. Mostly so I know if I need to remind them of their triggers that benefit me.
As an on and off MUD legacy player since 2012, I have been hit with chalice checks more so than most in my community. When people do this they usually have an over friendly/casual personality until they check your chalice. It definitely gets you down over time at your event. I've done the same thing, in fact, I started typing this before you even got to your mood snaps.
Benefit of the doubt is not a weakness, it’s a strength to show you can handle whatever someone is bringing to you.
Yeah, the timing is a bit scummy. Overall checking your opponent to make sure that they know their own deck, through making sure they remember triggers or forcing them to prove to you that they kill you with their combo, is important. I've always felt that deck knowledge is very important and you wont get better if you have some games you lose because you forgot a trigger or two, it's part of learning to play this game.
When your combo is dependent on layers resolving before a target to a triggered ability is declared it does help to have the rule ls citation bookmarked.
Well it depends
If my wgd loop starts uncontested in anje for example
Theres no need to prove i kill beyond pulling out 3 cards from my deck because i have a true infinite loop that does not end until i ein
@@V2ULTRAKill Well no, it is important for them to check if you do kill them. Just having infinite mana (or card draw for that matter) doesn't mean you win, it just means you pulled a combo and now you may be in position to kill. Infinite mana with nothing to sink it in is pertty much useless. Infinite card draw with no possible interaction means you would just deck yourself, and so on.
@@alilhard again
If the loop resolves the worst possible outcome i can have is a draw
It is an ACTUAL infinite not a loop that can be repeated infinitely, a loop that does not end unless force stopped or the game ends
Unless I kill, the game draws
There is zero point in running a true infinite without a kill, and madness has zero mana spell recursion
Anje is fundamentally a deck that wins by playing the loop
@@V2ULTRAKill Ok, so you mean to tell me that if I have only worldgorger in the yard and I play animate dead you scoop no matter boardstate ? Not taking the piss, just explaining that it's in your opponent's best interest to check "from here, do you win the game, do you have a way to win the game from this boardstate ?"
I think the end of what you said on the story of giving the benefit of the doubt feels fairly correct. You know you were off in a negative space the cursing out your friend and knowing you were off is certainly a good sign. My default post Yuuya and Saito but more so Yuuya as he was one of the best regarded players is to report the concern to the judge so they can have it documented if its a 1 off nothing happens if its a history thats it can get addressed. While that is my default if it was just the player being kinda not pleasant and seemingly angle shooting that wouldnt move me off it, the barking at a friend thats when I would be on the fence.
I had a situation at a PTQ that I feel really bad about. I play very robotically and enunciate everything, steps phases triggers, resolutions, EVERYTHING. I was on dredge, and when I Life from the Loam'D, I accidentally picked it back up with the 3 lands. I realized now that I put the 3 lands on top of it and didn't think, and when my opponent called judge, I didnt dispute it at all. It was my mistake, and I was going to take the loss if it came down to it. I got a warning overall and reverted the game state. I won the match overall, but I feel like my opponent thought I was cheating the whole time, using my robotic play patterns to hide it. It feels bad to be accused of cheating when you really didn't mean to do an illegal play pattern.
eh honestly I think that the game working differently because a player "forgets" feels quite a bit like the whole reason that manual dexterity cards are banned. Though as you said it is unlikely to affect 99% of my games since I don't play competitively I don't like it as a concept even. In an ideal world both players should keep track of the game state and remind each other when something would be able to trigger. But then you run into a hard to enforce thing maybe just give both players a warning for failure to maintain game state and attempt to rectify the situation but again that is way more hands on than should be necessary.
I’m trying to remember which tournament it was but it was pre-Covid and a judge ruled that it is also the responsibility of the opponent to make sure their opponent is keeping track of their triggers, they penalized that individual with unsportsmanlike conduct.
It’s on TH-cam here if I remember correctly so if I can find it I’ll share the link!
Chalice checking when you're coughing and wheezing?
This is not a combat sport where you need to
"PROTECT YOURSELF AT ALL TIMES"
Due to playing control decks frequently, any sort of attempt to cast while a player is otherwise preoccupied is pretty bad manners. 1 too many times have I played a commander game where players skip from End step to next players main step when I had wanted to cast something in the end step.
Just don't be that guy. You'll just ruin your reputation in your local community and nobody will play with you. That's when you truly lose at MTG.
taking explicit advantage of an opponents personal weaknesses in a non-game or deck building aspect in general is shitty, im not saying you have to point out that youre dead on board but like letting an opponent miss stuff because they forgot or like have something going on outside of regular sloppy pay is fucked up
Chalice Checking isn't really cheating, its a result of having such a bad system for catching board state errors. In my playgroup we have a "Not a may" rule where if an ability is a may effect, you can miss the trigger, oh well. If its not a may ability, we have to do everything we can to return the board state to as it should have been. The fact that you could respond with something innocuous and "miss a trigger" as a result is ridiculous.
Chalice checking is not cheating, but taking advantage of your sick opponent is
I would STRONGLY consider it cheating... you're ignoring it's effect. Chalice says "COUNTER THAT SPELL". The effect is automatic and requires no-Owner input for it's effect to go off.
It does NOT say "owner MAY counter spell".
Why play a game if you're just gonna ignore the rules?... the officialbook rules, and/or the rules set by the cards-on-field.
@andrewdesalvatore7262 you're allowed to cast spells into the chalice. In the rule book of the game, the owner of the permanent is the sole person responsible for remembering the chosen trigger. Actual cheating, or illegal play would be casting path into a sanctum prelate on one, or casting a path on the opponents turn when they have a teferi time raveller
What you described is as bad as if I mid yugioh match opponent is choking and I go for all my effects when he needs a moment so I don't have to worry about response in yugioh ... kinda a prick move and definitely if as for the example someone is in danger of some sort
My scummiest opponent ever was a tier 2 DCI judge. I casted an spell that said "each player chooses a basic land of each type he controls and sacrifices the rest" and he argued that he would choose his dual lands since they had basic land types on them. And he was a t2 judge so he knew better.
Yes, he could choose dual lands, but if he chose two underground rivers, once for each land type. I'm fairly sure he could not.
Chalice checking: legal. Legal does not necessarily imply moral. Knowingly playing a card into an opponent's Chalice on the hope that they miss a trigger is, to my mind, unquestionably immoral. However, it is impossible for an outside observer to know with certainty that somebody is doing it intentionally (although, as with all things, pattern of behavior helps to paint a clearer picture). It is possible for me to see a distinction between "missing an opponent's beneficial trigger" and "missing an opponent's beneficial trigger *that I caused.*" The former I find easier to overlook, although that's purely subjective, has no bearing on the rules, and your opinion may vary.
Regrettably, this is simply a problem that we have to deal with because the alternatives are even more onerous. If a player were able to receive a penalty for missing their opponent's triggers, there would be substantially more warnings going out, would result in more judge calls, which would lengthen the average round time of a tournament, etc. etc. It's not sporting to require a player to have knowledge of and track all of an opponent's cards that that player might or might not be familiar with.
Additionally, in tournaments with stakes, requiring a player to track their opponents triggers or be penalized can lead to truly disgusting situations. Imagine Player A intentionally misses their trigger hoping that Player B misses it too. When Player B misses the trigger, Player A waits a bit before calling a judge, getting both players a warning for the missed trigger. Player A, if they haven't had any warnings yet, can do this hoping that Player B has gotten earlier warnings in an attempt to get the penalty upgraded to a game loss for Player B, even though the missed trigger was the result of an intentional misplay by Player A. While I think Chalice checking is intrinsically immoral, I would *much* rather have that than this kind of "involve a judge" angle shooting nonsense.
Being someone who likes to play games competitively, I take issue with "action X is allowed, but immoral." If we start making distinctions like that, we create a situation where in order to play to win/play a game to the best of one's ability, one must play in an immoral way. In my eyes, what is allowed by the rules of a game is fair game in competitive play, and if those rules create feel-bad situations for players, that is the fault of the rules, not the players who take advantage of them.
That said, if the player PK described would have resolved their spell had PK not gestured for them to wait, I would call that immoral. Why? Because my understanding of MtG's rules is this:
1) When a player has priority, that priority must be either used (roughly, a card/ability must be played), or explicitly passed.
2) Players may take shortcuts, so long as the results of those shortcuts is accepted by both players.
If my understanding is correct, then PK's opponent would have been cheating had they attempted to cast and resolve their card while PK was distracted. This is because, in that case, (1) PK had not explicitly passed priority back, and (2) PK absolutely would not agree with a shortcut involving the card resolving.
TL/DR; I disagree with the notion that checking if your opponent knows about their own triggers in a game where they are solely responsible for said triggers is immoral (I'd never intentionally do it in most casual play environments, but there are different social considerations there). If assuming the worst of PK's opponent is correct, then I agree that their actions were immoral.
P.S. The issue you brought up w/ making both players responsible for triggers can be resolved by making warnings given for missed opponent's triggers not upgradable to game losses ever, though that would cause its own problems. Point is, there may be a way to make it work well.
I know Yugioh does it, and many of its players like the fact that it does.
@@delta3244 a reasonable take, but I disagree with a core fundamental of your argument. You suggest that a person should play the game to the fullest that the game allows. I couldn't agree more. However, *tournament infraction proceedure* is not what I consider "rules of the game." It is what happens when the rules of the game are *broken*. A person Chalice testing (keeping in mind that it is impossible to prove intent) is knowingly attempting to circumvent the game rules in the knowledge that, because of the way the error is handled, they could stand to gain an unmerited advantage in the game.
To summarize: if the game were able to be 100% enforced by the rules, there would be no Chalice checking. Chalice checking is therefore not a part of the game, and at best a part of the metagame.
@@Sevifor I agree with the premise that tournament infraction procedure (TIP) is not part of the rules of the game. I do not believe that this premise implies that my argument is false however, because MtG TIP _does not_ contain anything which would penalize a player for chalice checking. I also hold that benificial missed triggers not resolving is _not_ part of TIP, as there is no outside-of-game punishment for doing so.
In any case, if you accept the premise that TIP-related rules penalize every illegal action a player may make, then that premise implies that chalice checking is not illegal, because (afaik) there is nothing in TIP to punish it. I can see this premise being questionable to you based on what your argument is, though, since per your argument, these missed chalice triggers are part of TIP and penalize the player who would benifit from chalice resolving, not the player who is harmed by it.
(Side note, since this is the internet, thanks for the reasonable response. This conversation has already been productive for it)
@@delta3244 for sake of argument, I will grant that "chalice checking" is not a punishable infraction, which is why I originally stated that it is "legal". To clarify the crux of the argument though: admitting that does not make it a part of the game rules. Sure, you can cast that spell into the chalice. It is then countered via a triggered ability that the game rules necessitate putting on the stack. Regardless of definition, the game rules are clear: the chalice must trigger, and the spell would be countered. Thats it for game rules. When that inevitably doesnt happen, then we are immediately outside of game rules. We are merely discussing the best fix for the situation where the game rules have been improperly maintained. Current policy in the TIP is that its a missed beneficial trigger, so no warnings and no change in game state, but this doesn't change the fact that the game state is wrong. Intentionally attempting to put the game in an improper game state is something I consider immoral.
You are most welcome to disagree with me, but that is where I draw the line, and I do not think you can sufficiently demonstrate to me that this does not cross that line. To be clear, I am not astride some high horse whereby I never engage in willfully ignoring my opponent's missed triggers, but I do believe that's a failing on my part.
I do feel sympathetic to your position in at least one way, though. Chalice checking is a way to increase win rates, and so by not doing it, you put yourself at a strict disadvantage over others who do in a tournament setting. It would be nice to mitigate this.
Unrelated, but of interest: chalice checking feels particularly dirty to me (and I suspect others) because it involves a layer of active participation. An opponent missing their beneficial prowess trigger requires merely that I do not remind them. An opponent missing their chalice trigger requires that I am knowingly triggering it but not saying so. I don't know if its a meaninful distinction, but it feels different.
@@Sevifor I don't believe that distinction is meaningful. In both cases, you know something that your opponent is supposed to do (the exact same thing - resolve their beneficial mandatory trigger), and choose not to tell them. In both cases, what you described holds: Game rules necessitate that the trigger happens. You know the trigger must happen. Your opponent doesn't. You allow the trigger not to happen. If chalice checking is immoral, so is failing to remind your opponent of all their beneficial triggers that you are aware of. If the latter is not immoral, neither is the former. Both break the game's rules in the exact same way.
That said, I think it's important I clarify a specific piece of where my argument comes from. I believe that competitive games must always satisfy the following criteria:
If the chances of cheating successfully are 0%, then an immoral player should have no advantage over a moral player.
This necessitates that I hold the view that actions which result in no punishment outside of the game are allowed within the rules of the game, and have the effect on the game that the rules mandate. I hold that MtG is a viable competitive game if tournament policy is followed to the letter, therefore I hold that chalice checking and failing to remind opponents of triggers are both legal and valid actions (though they likely get in the way of improving at the game, so doing them may be ill-advised anyways). Remembering your own triggers is a skill one must develop to get good at the game.
I think that a hypothetical rule which requires players to remind their opponents of triggers if they are aware of said triggers would be good for the game if enforceable, but said rule is not part of the game as-is, likely because such a rule is not enforceable. Similarly, having a judge at every table to make sure all rules are followed properly without fail would likely be good for the game, but is too expensive to be worth it.
Haven't read it in a very long time, but the comprehensive rulebook used to specifically and very clearly state that it was the responsibility of BOTH players to remind of any triggers, regardless of who owns them, it is supposed to be about sportsmanship not try to sneak in wins that you don't deserve from ignoring triggers that have no choice, if in a tournament and a trigger is missed/ignored both players could be punished equally.
That used to be the case but they changed the rule in 2013, now you don’t have to remind your opponent about their triggers if you don’t want to
I had a fun one in a SCG event. Was playing quest for the holy relic in the standard format at the time. My opponent here was on o e of the blue green ramp variants. I casted a Kor skyfisher with a quest on 3 in play.. my opponent asked what I was picking up. To this I motioned to grab a card on instinct and stopped to say "before that" and went to change the counters on quest. Of course they stopped me, and said we could call a judge. While miffed I declined and moved on proceeding to take this game one as they only set me back by maybe a turn. Karma did it's work for me here though as they I game 3 took a while on choosing the frost titan trigger. He chose wrong leaving my mirran crusader untapped and his only blocker as an avenger of zendikar. I get to slam a sandbagged Darksteel axe on my following turn killing him from 8 with that same crusader.
One tournament my friend is in, opp casts some kind of tutor, shuffles his deck, offers the deck for my friend to shuffle.
Calls the judge that my friend is illegally shuffling his deck. Judge ruled against my friend because the guy sneakily SLIPPED the tutor back into the deck so it wasn’t in the graveyard!
In Yugioh, mandatory abilities are both player's responsibility to track, Yugioh really doesn't want those to be missed, if a mandatory trigger is missed, the game rewinds back to when the mandatory trigger should have activated (if it hasn't been long enough that rewinding isn't possible), and both players are penalized for missing it, so Yugioh avoids this specific situation almost entirely.
It was so at magic and that rule are removed because of how miserable expirience of reminding to opponent their beneficial triggers under threat of penalty, and how bad situations for judges was when both players forget about trigger. Now you could even skip announcment of triggers that not change visible boardstate, untill they relevant (for example, prowess triggers are important only at assigning damage)
it's not cheating, but it's absolutely scumbag angle shooting
It is cheating, but there's no penalty for getting caught, so.
Because of the rules on chalices' counter being a trigger ability, it just sucks that people will test the chalice player to no end that they are paying attention to say, "chalice trigger, counter it." Also, you never know if your opponent is packing disallow or looking to cycle a nimble obstructionist to the trigger to counter it. All that being said, I did have someone tell me I was cheating for playing chalice because all of their outs in their deck get countered by the chalice trigger.
I don't play much counter spells, not even in most of my blue decks. But those few times someone has gotten a cough or had a hard time focusing I've just paused until they are back in the game. It doesn't matter if it is casual or competitive. It is just part of being sportsmanlike. One time I even offered to grab them some water for a similar reason that was mentioned in the video.
Ludicrous! Everyone knows the correct sequencing for a Chalice check is after a kick in the balls...
"I kick you in the balls"
Opponent, on the floor wheezing in pain: "... chalice"
I had the candelabra of Twanos and I was using it correctly but one of my opponents kept saying that I had an infinite combo because I simply had the urzatron. I explained to him that while I could pay × and tap it then untap my lands then retap them it wouldn't go any further than one cycle. He was emphatic that I could simply pay × and untap my lands but I could only do in in cycle and it didn't require me to tap the candelabra. I was nice enough to point out that it was something that is known as a mono artifact. Those don't exist anymore in the game itself and when they did they were under the rules text of only once per turn or tap me as part of my costs.
What a long walk to get to something that ultimately didn’t matter
It is perfectly acceptable to chalice check your opponent in a COMP REL match with money on the line, as long as you are doing it as part of a legitimate check on your opponent. It is never acceptable to attempt to take advantage of a medical issue your opponent is having. I have zero issue with picking your spots on chalice checking either. For instance a game with a simple board state at an FNM would be a shitty place to be doing this.
The asthma inhaler example with ponder doesn't have anything to do with Chalice. He's trying to slip something passed you while you're distracted. That's just cheating. It doesn't matter that he didn't check you in G1. Every instance of him putting a spell on the stack is a unique situation that is resolved in a vacuum.
Reminds me of a dude I met on a tournament who was really salty and he exclaimed: "I'm only having fun when I'm winning!"
I was really, really weirded out by that comment.
There are always people taking the game too serious, sadly...
Even had an opponent think I wanted to deliberatly poison them when offering crackers, which I was eating myself. And he wasn't even joking.
The guy next to me thought we knew each other and were joking but when he realized this wasn't the point, they were just as weirded out as I was.
My own angle shooting experience is pretty recent-- my LGS was having a friendly Commander tournament against another store in the area, and I went along partly as our spare (I'd placed 5th in the mini-tournament to decide on our team of 4, which sounds impressive until I also mention there were 5 entries total) and partly to get some games in with anyone else who showed up. Ended up being me and two other guys from Neither store-- one of whom was new to the game, one of whom was Not.
like if you've a MtG tattoo (he had a pretty good-sized Vraska on his arm), I'm gonna assume you're familiar enough with the game to be aware that the legend rule does *not* go on the stack and that once a creature resolves, it's a permanent and not a spell.
So anyway, I'm playing Izzet Pirates, newbie was playing a mono green prebuilt deck sold by another local store (which had earl of squirrel as a win con, not sure what the deal was there-- I found this out when I Windfalled him and had to explain silver borders), and vraska tat is playing Koma, but with Marit Lage as secret commander. He gets out the Dark Depths and Thespian Stage combo, stages to Dark Depths...
And then attempts to transform thespian stage in response to the legend rule, leaving Dark Depths in play AND giving him a marit lage. A couple turns after I explain how that actually works, he attempts to Double Major his marit lage and seems openly suspicious when I explain spell vs. permanent and that it's not a valid target as it's already in play.
At that point, I honestly believe that assuming he's trying to get one over on me IS giving him the benefit of the doubt, because the alternative is assuming he's just Profoundly Stupid.
My experience wasn’t any specific action, more of an overall experience. I had met up with a friend at the LGS for a few rounds of Commander. After he left, played against a random guy who had introduced himself while my friend and I were playing. I was still new to the format, playing with an untuned deck. This guy had a Markov Eminence deck. He played like he was going for the title. He was clearly in the lead, yet he didn’t hesitate to repeatedly devastate everything from board state to my land base. Mind you, this was a random & casual game. Dissuaded me from playing with strangers for a while.
I had a situation where I defeated a supposed friend in a game of pioneer. I left right after the match since it was the last round. And he reported the match as a draw.
I would have been in 4th place and revived some credit, but he screwed my record and left me empty handed.
Not something worth confronting, but he’s lost my trust and any positive regard I had for him.
I was playing EDH, when an opponent had cast a "Phantasmal Image" as a copy of my commander (for those who don't know, it enters as a copy of a creature, except it's an Illusionin addition to its other types and it has "When this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, sacrifice it.").
I cast Murder on it, and they cast an Arcane Denial to counter it. When I point out that they will still have to sacrifice it because it became "the target of a spell or ability"... that's when things got weird. My opponent argued with me that countering the spell that targeted the Image was "on cast" and was thus before I could name targets. I tried to inform them that targets are chosen as part of casting a spell. You can't counter a spell to stop your creature from becoming a target of it because it has already become a target by the time you have an opportunity to respond.
Then they said that "Targets happen on etb." I responded with confusion, as this was an instant, not a permanent. They then concluded that if they counter a spell in response to the cast, then there is no etb, and thus, no targeting. When I argued that instants don't enter the battlefield, they insisted that "instants still hit the field."
Thankfully there was a third player in the game, so they backed me up. The Phantasmal Image player left.
It baffles me how a mono-blue Braids, Conjurer Adept group hug player who was so insistent on reminding us that it's "untap upkeep draw - if you draw you choose not to put anything down" can have such a severe misunderstanding of the stack.
Sounds like a cheater to me.
My favourite silly cheating thing is a player casting Elspeth back in the day and immediately trying to use her -8 ability to make everything Indestructible for the game.
I said "you cant do that, she doesn't have that many counters"
So he replied "sure I can, the counters can go negative because of damage, so I can also spend them into negative"
I just scooped and went about my day
It’s not your job to make sure someone does the checking but if I were playing sportsmanship would dictate I would play a card that would need to be checked nothing I hope that my appointment would forget and I don’t know why I would play it knowing that he did have a Chalice check but I probably would remind them otherwise why even play it. Also I enjoy your your content so much keep it up please you and the professor or so witty at times it’s amazing so thank you for a little bit of joy in my day when I get to watch what you guys do and what you do thank you
Well thanks for the warning about chalice, I'm working on my first legacy deck with chalice of the void in it.
Had a player playing a modern deck (Krark-Clan Ironworks) call for judge to do a deck check on a boggles player who played Leyline of sanctity mainboard . This was a weekly modern game (not competitive ) by a LGS.
After the owner verified that the player did infact play leyline of sanctity mainboard and he did not break any rule , they continued playing with the salty player telling his opponent “ you need to pay for my entry fee”
Whenever I play against a Chalice deck, I almost always end up playing a spell into it; not because I'm Chalice checking, I'm just that dumb, lol!
Chalice + a way to move counters is a fun thing to do :P
I had an opponent cough in my face at a gp and the judge told me he couldn’t ask the guy to not do a bodily function. The fifth time of saying stop I scooped and went back to the hotel
I know this is a year old, but there's a very simple thing to remember for this sort of thing.
The rules do say that a player is not required to remind an opponent about a missed trigger, no matter what the trigger is. They can't be punished for it. However, a player is not allowed to try and trick an opponent into missing a trigger. This would include trying to move too quickly so they may not notice, as well as trying to act when they are distracted. It's one thing to hope your opponent misses a trigger or to profit when they do, it's another to try and act in a way so as to make it more likely they miss a trigger.
And while not pertinent to this story, if your opponent misses a trigger, you can point it out and a judge can act to roll things bac. The example given is someone attacking with an Arbor Elf equipped with a Sword of Feast and Famine, unblocked. The attacking player untaps all of their lands, but the defending player forgets to discard. Even if it's not pointed out until the post-combat main phase, once pointed out a judge can ask the defending player to still discard their card, treating it as a game rules violation. This doesn't mean either player is punished for missing the trigger, it just means that the judge confirms they did things wrong and rules on how to correct the mistake. I think it ends up being up to the judge if the trigger is just skipped entirely or handled even with such a big delay, and probably depends on what the missed trigger was and what impact missing it has had since then. Like missing a Chalice trigger, some effects are harder to roll back than others. If it should have countered a draw spell, then it might be a bit complicated to make your opponent return the card they drew, especially if it was several phases back. But a card that gave them tokens or counters could more easily be rolled back, just removing the tokens or counters. Unless they got tokens and used those tokens for other things before the trigger was missed. I'm not a judge though, that's just how it sounds to me based on what I'm reading.
But the main thing is that this specific situation would have counted as them trying to make you miss a trigger. Otherwise they should have kind of frozen the game with their card on the stack, waiting for you to finish what you were doing, possibly even repeating what they said if it seemed you didn't hear them so that you could properly respond. Because hypothetically, in a situation like that, they could have cast Ponder and looked at 4 cards while you were distracted or something.
I remember when obzedat/whip of erebos was im standard back when theros released. Some big tourny ruled that obzedat could exile himself even tho the whip said thay if the card would leave the battlefield (this exiling itself), then it is exiled instead (meaning the whip triggers to exile it changing which effect/card exiled it). That deck was a top tier deck because of that ruling even tho my lgs called wizards of the coast MULTIPLE times for a rules check and every single time they responded with 'yes. Whip would exile him and he wouldnt return BUT because it was ruled the other way around at (big tourny). We have to go by that ruling'
I don’t see a problem with the Obzedat rule tbh. The wording on the Whip makes it possible as it’s a replacement effect and won’t take effect, "exile it instead of putting it anywhere else" but it’s already being exiled by own ability so the whip doesn’t need to "do" anything. Same thing was true of Rest in Peace + Obzedat or Aetherling.
Turns out tarring and feathering angle shooters to send a message is indeed "based" and "praxis".
I once had a mill opponent tell me i lost before my serra avatar shuffled back into my deck at a friend of a friend’s house.
It took me 30 minutes to convince him i was an L1 and that you lose when you draw a card with no library. Even showed him the rule and he still argued.
Back when I was a young teenager when I just first got into magic, I was at an FNM against this opponent that would cut my deck but would look at the card as he's cutting. Me being a young dimwit, didn't think this was against the rules because I was new at the game and I didn't challenge him.
He would cut the deck, angle the visible card towards himself and if he didn't like what he saw, that's where he would cut.
Reminds me of a guy who comes to every FNM at my LGC. He gets visibly angry and growls when he has to mulligan and groans and rolls his eyes whenever you counter a spell or remove one of his big threats. It's fine to run into an opponent like this every once in a while but he does it every single week, every single game, no one wants to be matched up with him because he doesn't talk, doesn't banter, just sits there silently and growls, scowls and groans and it's just not a fun experience.
If it's a club and no one wants to play against him, ask him to play elsewhere.
That is terrible behavior. Unfortunately, people try that garbage all the time in tournaments. People have tried to get me to miss triggers while distracted, too. With me it involved cards like Aether Vial or Gods Willing in my hand that my opponent knew I had.
At a modern PPTQ back in 2017 I was playing my win and in to top8 on Hardened Scales. I was facing Titan Shift which is a pretty difficult matchup if they can answer my early aggression. Win g1, lose g2 and have him DOB g3. I pass the turn and at the same time my son approaches the table (10yr old) to say goodbye as his mom came to pick him up since he had lost out and was getting bored. I turn my back to hug him and when I turn around the OP has their hand up and is calling judge. Flustered and confused I ask him what’s going on. “Oh I went to draw and I accidentally saw the top two.” Still visibly confused I let the judge do his thing. His thing ends up being asking the guy what his draw was and which card he saw and then some shuffling happens. My op casts explore into scape shift and kills me…. Interesting the 2nd card in his library mattered.
I saw him pull the same stunt a month ago at FNM with a grist plus trigger. Cheating to look for outs….at FNM. Why bother playing if you feel you have to cheat to win. What’s a win worth then??
As a yugioh player, I always think magic rules are hilariously weird.
Having played some of both - lmao in no way will you convince me that MTG rulings on the whole are less bizarre than YGO 🤣🤣
@@lMaBanana As 1 who played A LOT of both, I can assure you, Magic rulings are for the worse so much more bureaucratic and the coresponding language associated is formal AF.
Chalice checking is fine, the timing he did it would have made me call a judge even if he wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. It's scummy and he'd probably chalice check someone choking to death
Iunno man, chalice sounds like it's mega fucking unfun to play against
I think knowingly playing into Chalice without any benefit besides hoping they don't notice should be considered unsportsmanlike conduct.
If the opponent plays any card regardless of what it is while you are clearly incapacitated and unable to continue the game, then I see that as unsportsmanlike and scummy. But if your opponent thinks you might make a mistake following a distraction, (a distraction which you caused not him) and he thinks you might forget to chalice check him because your mind has now lost focus following said distraction, then I call that smart and strategic.