Cheating at MTG

>It's the first time anyone physically OWNS the cards, thats the important part.
That's not what my gif was about, why the fuck are you cheating at a magic event

Are you fucking 12 years old?

Isn't that a pasta? I remember reading it during amonkhet but lots of people seems to have fallen for it.

OP is being a smug motherfucker but he's right. Happened to me in Gatecrash sealed, got to top2 and my opponent had a deck of just lands and tithe drinkers. We splitted so I didn't care, it was super-casual anyway, but thinking back he was a piece of shit.

Not a pasta, I just wrote it.

I might become a judge soon and while most judges in my area play in the tournaments they are referee-ing for, I won't just so I can catch assholes like you.

good luck.

You have an easier time noticing while playing.

are you The Queen of your store user?

You're an asshole but you aren't exactly wrong.

You also forgot the obvious one, don't have more rare+mythics in your deck than you could possibly have gotten in your packs.

At bigger events you complete a checklist with cards that you opened and then they redistribute them

I remember doing this at the first sealed event and it was such bullshit opening choice rares and knowing you'd never see them again

my current lgs is more trusting despite hosting 100+ person events, thank god

They can't ban you from the venue for leaving as soon as you open your packs.
It doesn't seem relevant, but the also can't ban you from the store for leaving whenever if they didn't give you notice of the redraft policy before you start of the event.

reminds me of the story of when some guy was at a MM event and opened two goyfs, one of which being foil

so he snapped a photo and dropped out

I sure as shit would.

It was my understanding that rare redrafting was a violation of the DCI and that stores are provided prize stuff from from WotC to prevent that shit.

Cheap bastards got pissy about having to give products after taking money, so they talked WotC down to allowing it.

user, the store owner or tournament organizer can eject you from the venue at any time if they want to.

I was at GP Vegas, the first one, when Modern Masters was being drafted as the main event. I was down the table from a guy who opened two non-foil Goyfs and one foil Goyf. He immediately called a judge and dropped with his Goyfs. Was amazing.

They aren't talking about rare redrafting, they're talking about how at big big events like GPs you open a sealed pool, record it, and the judges then redistribute the pools so you don't play what you opened.

You could not be more wrong. Stores are able to do rare redrafts, but (by the tournament rules) you can drop with your product at any time. Doesn't mean you won't get asked not to come back, though.

Years ago rare redrafting was the norm. It's shifted over time.

>Years ago rare redrafting was the norm. It's shifted over time.
Nah, that was always 100% dependent on location. Here in central ohio it was unheard of.

Interesting.

My boss has been involved in the Magic scene since around the time Beta came out, but mostly in the Northeast US. Might have been different there.

My friends and I used to do team drafts with rare redraft for prizes (and to get people to pick for strategy, not money). Had some $150 draft pools a time or two.

You're not exactly wrong but like said attentive players will call you out on it. I've called someone out on certain uncommons being played and after a deck check he had 9 extra cards in his sealed pool. Guy wasn't a regular and his behaviour was just highly suspicious by not just myself but a few others and he still lost to me. Then there's another guy that did something completely obvious and added a Nicol Bolas to his Hour of Devastation prerelease. Now opening a Nicol Bolas is plausible in your packs, except when it says 205/199 and your Nicol Bolas is clearly from the INTRO PACK. Since then though we haven't had anyone attempt to slip extra cards into their prerelease sealed packs in events and we've instructed many new players against doing so.

You must be proud user.

>Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver
u got next levelled

>except when it says 205/199 and your Nicol Bolas is clearly from the INTRO PACK
Maybe he was an idiot, or maybe he just had serious fucking cajones.

leads me to think it was high-level trolling attempt

He told me that he pulled it from a pack. And my reply was "hahaha no you're full of shit dude" Most people might just overlook and think "Oh it's just Nicol Bolas" but I don't think he realised the card numbering in the bottom left sort of works against what he claims.

Congrats, you've netted yourself a slight increase in your odds of getting a few extra bucks worth of cards.
Good thing you didn't waste that time and effort getting to know people, helping new players, or improving your deck-building skills.

Basically, if you're a shitty enough player you need to cheat at a casual prerelease, you're not winning against the better players anyway, and they're more likely to notice you cheating. Which means your cheating only works on bad/new players, which if you could actually play the game worth a damn, you'd be beating anyway.

>splitted

This isn't a cheating story but it happened last night so I'm still salty

An opponent was using his activated abilities during my turn. But not like, during my turn. I'd say my turn ended and then he'd say "okay well before my turn starts I tap this guy (and another copy of him)", then his turn would start, he'd untap, and then use them again.

Basically the fucker was waiting to use the abilities so if I attacked he could still block with them. He wouldn't usually have to tap them on his turn so they could always be untapped when I was attacking.

I eventually cast a card with an activated ability that I could wait to use until he used his to undo it but still.

For more context, he would scry for 1, like up to four times in a row. I'd wait til he wanted to keep a card and then tap to put his top card on his library into his graveyard. At the "end" of his turn of course. So then I could untap and do it again immediately on my turn. GAH

Pool swaps are a thing of the past now too. You open your pool, register it, swap it, register that new pool. Then swap back and keep the pool you opened.

... it sounds like he’s just using the end step intelligently. As long as he’s always doing it at the END of your turn, it’s 100% legal and just good strategy.

this is an extremely discombobulating post

But I've finished attacking, I resolve whatever end of turn shit needs to resolve and I say "I end my turn". But my turn isn't over yet?

We got into a small argument and I looked it up. It looks like that means my turn is over. Even if I had to do cleanup stuff like discarding excess cards he wouldn't be allowed to cast spells then.

Like I hand it over to him and he does his taps and whatever before drawing, untaps, draws, and then taps them again. If it was something more "fuck you" than scry cards, like burn cards or something I don't think it would be as easy to let slide. Like he's waiting until I don't have priority, have used my mana, and can't declare more attacks. Again I'm not saying it's cheating but I think he's playing real loose with the rules

>I cheated
>my OPPONENT was the piece of shit

The turn doesn't just magically end when you declare it after the combat phase. It still goes through the second main phase and the ending phase, and he is well withing his rights to do something during those phases. Sounds to me like you need to learn the rules better instead of being salty about people who did. This is basic magic.

No, he's just doing things on your end step. He has a priority stop there, so everything's well within the rules. If you play at an LGS where people have a good grasp on the rules, this comes up all the time. It's the best time to activate these types of effects, because, as you point out, it leaves the creatures able to block, and allows them to act with the most available information.

>But I've finished attacking, I resolve whatever end of turn shit needs to resolve and I say "I end my turn". But my turn isn't over yet?

No, learn the rules

Yeah, there’s a step after the second main phase called “the end step”. There are some things that can happen in that step, but if nothing triggered at the beginning of it, you as the active player don’t have a reason to use it (you did your stuff in the main phase, while you could use sorceries). But because it’s a step in the turn, you still have to give priority to your opponent and allow them to act with instant “speed” spells and abilities while it’s your turn (and vice versa, they do the same on their end step).
When you say “I end the turn”, that’s a shortcut. What you’re really sayin’ is “I pass priority to you, and assume that you are going to pass it back and move to the next phase, which is cleanup, in which nobody can act, THEN the turn is over.” By acting in your end step he’s saying “no, I’m going to use the priority opportunity in your end step to do some stuff before the turn ends.”
That stuff is stuff you can respond to, or let resolve, but when the stack is empty again you have priority as the active player once more. That’s when you say the “I end the turn” shortcut again, and this time the shortcut works because he’s done the stuff and passes priority too.

So when my turn is over, his doesn't start until when? I'm just trying to understand. If I finish my attack phase and dont want to do anything else, how does my turn actually end?

I'm not mad that he's getting a good setup (waiting til the last minute), it just seems like the definition of when a person's turn begins and ends is way more nebulous than I was led to believe

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.

Also: obligatory “Veeky Forums is bad at Magic”

It's not nebulous at all. There's just a lot of tiny steps:
>Untap, Upkeep, Draw, First Main
>Declaration of combat, Declaration of Attackers, Declaration of Blockers, Combat Damage, End of Combat
>Second Main, End, Cleanup

By moving from "Second Main" to "End" all you really do is stop being able to play non-instant cards. You and your opponent can still do all the other stuff. A brand new turn begins with Untapping.

How did I cheat, exactly?

It may be helpful to remember that whenever you try to switch between phases of a turn Upkeep>Main 1>Combat>Main 2>End Phase your opponent has an opportunity to activate effects before you can change phases.

When you say, I end my turn, what you're actually saying is "move to end phase?" and your opponent has an opportunity to activate effects before you leave Main 2 and then again they have an opportunity to activate effects before you leave the end phase.

Hope this helps you. The rules can be quite confusing sometimes.

Shit, misread your post. I thought you were saying you cheated to get to top 2. My apologies user.

His opponent cheated.

sorry I'm a tard

Learn what priority is and how it passes from one player to the other. This will answer all your questions.

Turns in Magic are divided into steps and phases. At the beginning of a step or phase, any turn-based actions (untapping, drawing a card, etc.) happen, then anything that triggers at the beginning of that step/phase as well as any triggers that result from the turn-based action go on the stack, then the active player (whose turn it is) gets priority to do things. No player can ever get priority in the untap step, and players only rarely get priority in the cleanup step.

List of steps/phases (with turn-based actions):

Untap (active player untaps all of their permanents)

Upkeep

Draw (active player draws a card)

Main Phase 1

Beginning of Combat

Declare Attackers (active player declares which creatures are attacking, and which players/planeswalkers those creature are attacking)

Declare Blockers (non-active players in turn order declare which creatures they're blocking with and what those creatures are blocking)

Combat Damage (combat damage is assigned and dealt)

End of Combat

Main Phase 2

End Step

Cleanup Step (any "until end of turn" effects stop, damage is removed from creatures, active player must discard down to 7 cards)

In order for the game to progress to the next step/phase, the associated turn-based action must be completed and then all players (in turn order) must pass priority over an empty stack -- they have to choose to do nothing.

When you say "your turn", that's a shortcut defined in the tournament rules as "I will pass priority in each step and phase until we get to your turn". If your opponent accepts your shortcut, it's their turn. If they choose to act at some point in the middle, you can respond.

No worries. Happens.

>When you say "your turn", that's a shortcut defined in the tournament rules as "I will pass priority in each step and phase until we get to your turn". If your opponent accepts your shortcut, it's their turn. If they choose to act at some point in the middle, you can respond.
This makes a lot more sense, thanks

The real rub here is that it was this guy who got me into MtG and explained to me that once you say your turn is over, it's over and you can't do anything else (to avoid like "oh shit wait I forgot to do something"). I guess he's still technically right but it was really misleading

>is wrong
>gets called on it
>admits mistake, everyone moves on
This really shouldn't feel as novel as it does.

Magic's priority system is kind of a mess, so some confusion is understandable.

>Magic's priority system is kind of a mess,
It's really not. It's a talking stick. It's just hard for newer players to grasp than some other mechanics, because it's invisible.

Omfg there are YouTube tutorials of what decks to make days before the prerelease. Jesus christ.

It doesn’t feel novel for this board. It feel a little novel for Magic threads, though....

It's POSSIBLE he meant it as 'so don't say it's over until you've done everything, because people will hold you to it'. Or said it as the simple version but then couldn't hold back when actually playing.
Regardless, if he's doing stuff at your end of turn, you can do stuff in response (though it has to be activated abilities/instants, not play creatures/artifacts/enchantments/lands/sorceries)

And it's also never ever explained by people who explain the game, unless you read the rules it's not very obvious at all what all the steps in a turn are

why would you be a colossal faggot and ruin the two best ways to play magic?

That MTG reference is cool but man, i could not watch past the first episode. I was just cringing and feeling so bad for the main character i just coulnt handle it anymore. It'd be a real endurence test for me to watch all of watamote.

I have a question. If I declare attackers, and when my opponent declares blockers I use a removal spell against a blocker, does the damage from the attack hit the player, or does it hit the blocker that was just removed?

I was in this exact senerio and my opponent said that the damage would hit the creature , even though it was destroyed in the declare blockers step. He did let me go back, and did not counter the spell, but it doesn't make sense to me.

The removal I used was jitte, which might affect some things.

If a monster is blocked (as in was assigned a blocker in the blocker step), it does not deal damage to players. It must deal damage to the creatures that were assigned to it until they are dead. This holds even when all the blockers were destroyed later.

Note that you do deal damage in this situation when you have trample, as you deal enough damage to kill all creatures (0) and all leftover damage goes to the player.

If you killed the creature before damage was dealt, then your creature is dealing damage to the air.
The blocking creature is dead and has left play, but the attacker is still blocked.
Anything that involves the attacker dealing damage or the defender taking damage doesn't happen at all when that happens.
If the attacker had trample, it would deal its full damage to the opponent (since zero is being assigned to the blocker)

Further points -
The last point you can cast something to get rid of a potential blocker and not have it actually block something is right after attacking, before blockers are declared. It's best to say 'I'm attacking with XYZ, and before blockers are declared, doing ABC' if you're doing so.
Making something lose Flying/Reach, killing one of two creatures blocking something with Menace, or anything else that would prevent conditional blocking is pointless after blocking is declared. Once you're blocked, you're blocked. Same goes for granting those things - if you give something Menace after it's blocked by a single creature, it's still blocked just as normal and thus pointless to do so.

I'd never cheat at a tournament because I only play to show everyone how big my dick is and how much better at card games I am than them.

I always wonder how many people cheat at sealed though. A guy who was friends with the shady storekeeper had 4 Pack Rats in his deck at the Return to Ravnica prerelease. Glad I didn't have to play against him, real subtle asshole.

Oh, ok. That is a little strange, but not implausible. Thanks everyone

The confusing part is that steps may be skipped or not when players know what is happening. People just skip upkeeps and end of turns unless they are doing something, so just allow your opponent to backtrack if they say they want to do something before they untap, the game gets really slow if you ask every time if they are going to do something.

Think about it this way - your soldier is charging across the battlefield, trying to go for the enemy leader. Then an enemy soldier blocks his path, he has to take care of this instead. Some of your guy's buddies keep going - they still make it past to beat up the leader, but for now, your soldier has this other dude to take care of.
So they start to fight, and your dude takes a swing, when suddenly the other guy just falls to the ground, dead. Or maybe he disappeared, turned to ash, whatever. Your dude still had to stop. He's lost that momentum to be able to keep going. That holy sword that radiates holy magics when he smites his enemies isn't doing shit because he's not smiting anything, fucker's already dead and gone.
A fucker with Trample is someone who will just keep barreling past because FUCK OBSTACLES. They bring the blockers along with them for the ride, and if said blockers suddenly cease existing that's less crap slowing them down.