Handling Inaccurately Declared Damage During Combat
Asked by Delphen7 1 year ago
I was playing in a tournament the other night, and told my opponent (who was completely tapped out) I was attacking for 11. He dropped to 2 life, and I passed the turn.
As he was going about untapping his permanents, I realized I'd miscounted how much damage I'd attacked with and that I had actually attacked for lethal. When I let him know (He was still untapping), he looked at me, shrugged, then continued on with his turn; where he ended up killing me and knocking me out of the tournament.
Now obviously there's an ethical side to this, but how should we handle this strictly within the rules?
I see it going either way as I told my opponent an inaccurate number, but I technically didn't need to tell them any number.
Gidgetimer says... Accepted answer #2
Kinda depends what level the event was being judged at. At Competitive and Pro REL you might be, but are not necessarily looking at "Tournament Error — Communication Policy Violation". I say that you might not have made an infraction because the IPG requires that the judge determines that your opponent took an action, or chose not to act based on the communication policy violation. Worst case scenario for you is a Warning and a backup to when the action was taken/not taken. You opponent because he didn't fix his life once you informed him of the mistake definitely committed "Game Play Error — Failure to Maintain Game State" (warning) when he didn't fix his life total and based on his reaction in general I would say "Unsporting Conduct — Cheating" which is a DQ.
At Regular REL (assuming that the event was being judged here unless your LGS judges at Comp for some reason) the fixes are a bit more relaxed and it may be worth just quoting the entirety of the section of "Judging at Regular" that would be relevant. Judging at Regular is actually worth a read if you plan to attend tournaments judged at Regular often as it is only 2 pages long and will help you understand what the judges are doing.
"A player makes an in-game error not mentioned above. This will cover the bulk of player errors, and usually the least disruptive option is to leave the game as it is after fixing anything that is currently illegal (e.g. an Aura enchanting an illegal permanent). If the error involved a player forgetting to draw or discard cards, have them perform the appropriate action now. Otherwise, if the error was caught quickly and backing up is relatively easy, you may undo all the actions back to the point that the illegal action happened. This can include returning random cards from the hand to the library to undo card draws (though don't shuffle the library if you do this), untapping permanents and undoing combat. This can be very disruptive where lots of decisions have been made or hidden information has been revealed since the illegal action, so don't go crazy with this!"
June 19, 2022 10:45 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #3
If something goes wrong during an event, the answer is always "call a judge to help you fix it". They will assess the situation to determine what kind of problem it is, and each category of problem has guidelines on the steps that need to be taken to sort things out. This might have been a "Game Play Error - Game Rule Violation" on your part and a "Game Play Error - Failure to Maintain Game State" on the part of your opponent, but it's up to the judge who's actually there and is able to get all the details in-person.
Yes, you do have to tell your opponent a number because they need to know how to change their life total after combat. If they ask you "how much?" and you answer "figure it out", the judge who answers the resulting call isn't going to be happy with you.
wallisface says... #1
I think you should have called a judge the second you realised an error had been made which your opponent wasn’t fazed about rectifying.
I’m assuming (but not certain/confident) that the judge would’ve done something along the lines of issuing you both a warning and the win.
June 19, 2022 9:41 p.m.