Hello there !

I just judged another tournament, this time a huge Local Qualifier with 55 players. Helped by two veterans players, Neecow and JackFrost, Once again, a lot could be said about the tournament, but today I will just address an intersting case that happened during the top 8 match between Reshiram and Feefye. We’ll talk spirit and letter of the law.

 

The Board (roughly)

 

 

What is happening

Reshiram and Feefye are both playing heavy monster decks, so their boards are full of cards. Reshiram attacks with a first blue wyrm and it goes through. They then transform the second one and attack with it. They’re pretty much stacked like the picture above. Due to some actions on Feefye’s end, Reshiram decides to activate With of the Fens action ability to sacrifice a blue wyrm to prevent a monster from blocking his attack.

Given the current situation and the fact the first blue wyrm will die at the end of turn due to its action ability, the play makes absolute sense there.

Reshiram grabs the Blue wyrm on top to put it in the break zone while saying “I’ll sacrifice a blue wyrm to deak -7000”.

Technically, Reshiram selected the Blue wyrm currently attacking. You guessed where we’re headed.

 

Resolution

I was at the table at this time, hopefully. Feefye said directly it was the blue wyrm attacking that was sacrificed so both player turned to me.

If you follow perfectly the letter of the law, Reshiram just screwed really badly his attack phase.

If you follow the spirit of what he was doing, there’s no question to be asked there.

If it were a freeplay game, the question would not even have been asked at all.

 

As a judge, where do you stand? There can be as many answers are there are judges. I’ll just give my opinion here, with the reasons.

 

A judge is tasked to guarantee a fair environment for everyone. This is a hobby, at best a type of competitive activity. No one will die if we do everything wrong. Worst case scenario, someone might miss out on a few hundreds euros/dollars. Players are here to have a great time, and given how the game is, we’re more like friends and family than fierce competitors.

Reshiram’s action were quite obvious and anyone playing a bit of the game knows it is an honest mistake. Given it was 4PM, with 30+°C out there (86F), it would have been mean to punish the player for this. But he also have to know and remember to be more careful about this kind of things.

This is why my ruling was as follow :

Witch of the Fens effect works as intended by Reshiram, and the blue wyrm sacrificied is the one that already finished its attack. This means attack is still ongoing wand we’re in the blocker declaration step. Reshiram will also be given an Official Warning as a reminder to be careful and not do it again.

 

Being judge or not, what would you have done in this situation? Tell me in the comments or on social media!

In the meantime, it has been asked on X to the official account : Click here to find out their answer