so with the Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian heres a playing the combo and trigger announcing
Asked by VexxValentine 7 years ago
so this is more or less an announcing triggers question so lets say i have an answer to a trigger between Felidar Guardian and Saheeli Rai and dont want to use it until they make a ridicoulous board to make them blank on getting the kill. so initially i see people playing the combo and once the activate saheeli theyll just say "and i go ininfate?, kill ya and win?" could i make my opponent go through every single trigger and activation to a.) be a dick and b.) use time on the clock in my favor especially if im up a game or playing aggro.
so lets say i have a Make Obsolete in hand and my opponent just goes "play felidar go infinite, combat, win?" and i have the upper hand in terms of i have a game on them and i want to spend the clock to pressure my opponent into possible misplays and also if i want to draw i can essentially force a draw out. would it be considered slow playing. also what if i want my opponent to make the wrong decsion and make the exact needed to kill me and in response i kill one to land at one.
tl:dr can i force my opponent to announce each trigger of an infinite combo to buy me time.
Raging_Squiggle says... Accepted answer #2
- No. You cannot force a player to play out their activations over and over. They are proposing a shortcut, which they can certainly do according to these rules:
719.2a At any point in the game, the player with priority may suggest a shortcut by describing a sequence of game choices, for all players, that may be legally taken based on the current game state and the predictable results of the sequence of choices. This sequence may be a nonrepetitive series of choices, a loop that repeats a specified number of times, multiple loops, or nested loops, and may even cross multiple turns. It cant include conditional actions, where the outcome of a game event determines the next action a player takes. The ending point of this sequence must be a place where a player has priority, though it need not be the player proposing the shortcut
719.2b Each other player, in turn order starting after the player who suggested the shortcut, may either accept the proposed sequence, or shorten it by naming a place where he or she will make a game choice thats different than whats been proposed. (The player doesnt need to specify at this time what the new choice will be.) This place becomes the new ending point of the proposed sequence.
You either allow his combo to run its course, or you say something like "After the 100'th activation, I have a response." Or something like "When you move to combat, I have a response".
- Same as above. And it will be slow play if you are just sitting there quietly while your opponent waits for your answer for an extended amount of time. Upon proposing the shortcut, though, you may have your opponent go through the process one time so you may see how the loop will work, and if it works at all. But he is not required to do every single one, Hence, Shortcuts.
TL;DR: After the first activation, No.
January 11, 2017 12:45 p.m.
it will be slow play if you are just sitting there quietly while your opponent waits for your answer for an extended amount of time.
I wouldn't see that as slow play, more as stalling or another flavor of unsporting conduct. As I explained above, at any tournament level, independent of the REL, you're required to play at a reasonable pace. Slow play really just means you weren't able to play any faster, but didn't try to stall the game - your example clearly does the latter.
January 11, 2017 1:23 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #4
@BlueScope: It depends on the intent. "Slow Play" means you're taking longer than is reasonable to take actions and make decisions. The penalty is a Warning and is upgradeable to a Game Loss for repeated offenses. "Stalling" means you're purposefully changing your pace of play to manipulate the round clock. The penalty is Disqualification (Stalling falls under "Cheating", not "Unsportsmanlike Conduct"). A Judge would conduct some kind of an investigation if you were suspected of Stalling over simple Slow Play.
January 11, 2017 5:41 p.m. Edited.
VexxValentine says... #5
Alrighty the only reason I had this question is that in magic online you can't do shortcuts and I wanted to know if it was considered slow play
January 11, 2017 7:12 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #7
Yes, the limitations of MTGO mean that you can't do the exact same kind of shortcuts as in paper Magic, but the end result is basically the same. The person doing the combo has to stop after a certain number of iterations and start moving the game forward again. In paper Magic this is because of the shortcut rules, and in MTGO this because the player will auto-lose if their personal clock runs out. In paper Magic the player's opponent can propose an interruption to make a response, and in MTGO the opponent just needs to set their stops correctly and jump in at whatever point they intend to respond.
BlueScope says... #1
Interesting question (in the sense that it's usually not asked this way), and interesting that noone's answered it so far.
There's two concepts your question asks about: Shortcut rules, and Tournament Rules. Let's first cover shortcuts by quoting the relevant rules:
So, 719.2b is what will stop you in your tracks. You can't simply ask a player to go through the motions, but instead you'll have to say at which point, if any, you'd like to intervene. In your case, you may say "I'd like to do something after you created 3 additional tokens."
The first part already clears up the issue about you being able of using the game rules in your advantage for technical reasons. As far as intentions go, the tournament policy applies, which (independant from any RELs) has the following to say in the paragraph labelled "Tournament Violations":
In other words, you're not allowed to stall the game. Depending on the REL and the exact situation (meaning whether there can be established that you were actually trying to stall, as opposed to slow-playing), this may be handled differently, though as far as I'm aware, you're gong to be DQ'd at any of the RELs at this time for stalling.
If you have a Make Obsolete in hand, the most you can "get" out of that using the game rules is to try to trick the opponent into thinking you're having an endgame by casting it at an unusual time. I don't see much room for that in this scenario, but considering you can survive the turn either way by casting it in the declare blockers step the latest, you shouldn't worry too much about that.
In general, I'd advise against a thinking pattern that tries to exploit the rules or even a given situation to your advantage. Even when you're not going to be breaking any rules and get penalized by judges, players will pick up on that behavior. Last but not least, Magic is a game of luck and skill, and at times, you have to accept that your opponent has had more of the both of them than you and live with it. After all, winning is only rewarding if you won fairly - at least in my opinion.
January 11, 2017 12:43 p.m.