Situation: Active player, lets call him Alvin, has four untapped lands, a Goblin Rabblemaster, and a 1/1 red Goblin token. Nonactive player, lets call him Nathan, has three untapped lands. Alvin says "move to combat" Nathan responds by casting a Hero's Downfall targeting the Goblin Rabblemaster. Alvin has no response, puts the creature in the graveyard, and proceeds to cast a new Goblin Rabblemaster. At this point I am called over.
Alvin says he is still in the main phase and can therefore cast a creature before moving to combat. Nathan says it was already agreed they were moving to combat. Thus the debate begun. Most of the room at this FNM was fairly polarized on the topic even after I explained it. What was my ruling? They are still in the main phase.
500.2. A phase or step in which players receive priority ends when the stack is empty and all players pass IN SUCCESSION. Simply having the stack become empty doesn’t cause such a phase or step to end; all players have to pass in succession with the stack empty. Because of this, each player gets a chance to add new things to the stack before that phase or step ends.
That is the rule on how to move to the next phase. When Nathan added something new to the stack after Alvin passed priority the phase could not change. Alvin being the active player then gets priority after the stack empties. Empty stack plus being in the main phase means he may play sorcery speed spells such as a new Goblin Rabblemaster.
The story doesn't end here however. A spectator, lets call him Steve, was particularly against this ruling because of his experience on MTGO and actually emailed WoTC about this. Two very important things were later learned. First, WoTC customer support does not always know how to answer rules questions, this is why we have judges. They responded to his email with incorrect information that was very confusing for Steve since he by that time understood that actual ruling on it. Second MTGO has a setting that assumes you are done with your main phase entirely if you pass priority on an empty stack. This setting can and should be changed if you play online so you can determine for yourself when you want to pass priority regardless of how rare it becomes this important.
Thank you for joining us at Wizardden.com and feel free to send us your rules questions, I am always happy to answer questions that don't relate to banding.
Enlightening to know how it works
ReplyDeleteWhen are we going to move to Priority Pass buttons like chess timers? The priority was passed to the non-active player by saying "Move to combat" which is a very common way of "skipping" to make the game move quicker and smoother (and is completely legal).
ReplyDeleteThe non-active player didn't want to play the downfall on the main phase so they waited until beginning of combat. They were given priority, they passed (and yes he passed since he is allowed the same courtesies the active player was given by saying "move to combat") and now they are in combat.
The only issue I see is that the non-active player played a spell without being given priority during the beginning of combat. In which case, I believe the remedy is to reset the board to the last known board state (beginning of combat with active player in priority).
Just my $0.02
The issue here really is that his opponent did not acknowledge moving to combat. Had his opponent done that, and then downfalled before the declare attacker step Alvin doesn't get the opportunity to cast the Rabblemaster pre-combat mainphase. However, the rabblemaster trigger still goes on the stack.
DeleteI wasn't there, but when you are skipping steps, it is not required to state every pass before moving on. I don't know how many times I have been in a situation where either myself or my opponent just went straight to combat right after drawing. If the opponent doesn't stop you and say "Before we enter combat" then it is assumed (for skipping purposes) that they pass the priority and we are now in combat.
DeleteIntent and open communication is everything.
DeleteBased on the ruling, the non active players intent was to prevent Rabblemaster from being able to attack, but did not have enough rules knowledge to know how this would work. So he most likely said that he intended to downfall before combat.