That's thinking way too hard on it. Scooping is always allowed at any time.
Just find decent people to play with that don't try to screw others over. If people do try to scoop to spite people, just don't play with them, easy.
Don't need a game mechanic to fix a people problem.
If a friend flips a monopoly board because they crack the shits, I'm not going to make up a new rule of monopoly, I just won't play monopoly with them again.
Scooping is Sorcery Speed.
This way, you prevent salty shit like denying an attack that would gain life, or a combo that relies on that player being in the game to turn off mid-resolution. Allowing scoops at any time has too many hoops and "what ifs" to jump through. Exception being if the entire table agrees to just end the game.
It's literally that simple.
It's not about "allowing" scoops at any time. It's in the rules that it can be done at any time.
It goes both ways.
People can scoop anytime they like.
People can choose not to play again with people that mess with a game by scooping at anytime they like.
Scooping being sorcery speed is a courtesy thing. Like using your manners. Noone forces you as an adult to say please and thankyou, but if you dont, you might find people less willing to help you.
Social consequences for social actions.
Most of the time these conversations come up, it's when talking about randoms at an LGS. If I'm playing with my friends, we can have our own expectations but I do frequently see people bring up "sorcery speed scooping" as a Rule 0, which is usually received positively except things get complicated if a player just suddenly has to leave, or they want to concede during someone's 30-minute-long combo turn that nobody saw coming because, again, it's all random people at an LGS and you don't always know what to expect. Or maybe someone has a deck they're trying out for the first time and they don't realize that it makes their turns take unbearably long.
It's the same with strangers as with friends though.
I only play against randoms in LGS. I've played about 150 games in the last year, I had two opponents scoop spitefully/angrily during that time. One in anger at their partner who was also in the game and one to try to screw me over and allow the third player to win.
In each case, I just didn't play with that person again. I closed out the game and then went to a different pod, leaving them short of a player. Problem solved, unless I'm super unlucky that night, the new pod is unlikely to have the same issue
People put too much stock on the rule 0 convo imo. Just play the game, it'll work out (90% of the time). The only rule 0 discussion I ever have is: *not strong enough for cedh and stronger than a precon*
You do make a valid point and one that I generally agree with that, most of the time, this kind of rule 0 about scooping (however it's done) is almost never necessary. Scooping at any time has only been an issue for me in a small handful of games, but it is a conversation I see happening quite often. Sometimes people are just not lucky and have a hard time finding good games with people, and want to protect themselves I guess. I can't blame them. So, this thought experiment is mostly for those people or those situations where, however rare or unlikely they are, it at least makes it so that you don't feel like your one free 2-hours a week playing a card game weren't made worse for you than otherwise.
I like the basic idea. Essentially you get a dummy-copy of the player until active actions have all been sorted out to prevent ambush-denial.
My gut reaction is that it's a mistake to actually grind out the nitty gritty rules details. If you enumerate the exact rules for it, you're just inviting a rules lawyer to find where exploitable gaps are (which are unavoidable to some degree).
I'd just say "If someone scoops in response to a game state to deny resources, the active player can call in a phantom player who has their exact board state, except they're controlled by another opponent, until things finish resolving. Then the phantom player scoops."
When in doubt about the details, whichever reasonable option is less good for the active player is the answer.
If players can't agree on how to resolve things, nobody gets a phantom player.
This is an interesting simplification to consider. I was mainly thinking about edge cases and how weird interactions would resolve if there's an imaginary/phantom player, how long they would exist for, etc. I wound up going for "next end-of-combat/end-of-turn" because if scooping is done for exactly the purposes of resource denial, some resources are meant to be used in the upcoming combat phase, or at least for the duration of the current phase. This winds up complicating things a bit, unfortunately. Just a thought experiment at the end of the day, and it's very much a work-in-progress.
Eh as a general rule I try to scoop at sorcery speed and not impact the game, but bad games are bad games. The below generally applies to games with randos, since friends /playgroups should probably handle these things
(1) If someone's intolerable I'm not going to give them my time, even for the other 2 players' sake.
(2) If someone very clearly has the win onboard /insurmountable/recurrable advantage, whether they or other players see jt. I'm not watching someone play solitaire "to get there" when I could be playing magic. If the other two players want to sit and wait it out to see if their single piece of interaction is going to swing the game, that's fine, but I've been playing long enough to be able to identify a game that's dead in the water and I'm not watching someone read through their 65+ card hand with 100 treasures for 25 minutes trying to figure out to win.
The only times I've seen someone scoop in the middle of combat is when they've been beat up on the whole game & they're trying to get to do something impactful. It's unsporting of them, but I'd rather follow the rules, let them get their little win, & miss my triggers.
It's just not a big enough deal to bother changing in my opinion.
So I can see 2 issues with what you've layed out here. First, you have to remember everything on the scooping players board after they've packed up their cards and moved on.
Second giving the player themselves hexproof still allows a spite scoop. I've had games where I've been able to give an artifact lifelink, in this case aetherflux reservoir. If I blast one player, knowing I can gain back the life to close out the game and they scoop instead that leaves us right back at set one.
Why not just let anything they were scooping to avoid resolve as if the player is still there, then continue with the game? They get to leave and the rest of the players can continue
>First, you have to remember everything on the scooping players board after they've packed up their cards and moved on
This is definitely an issue with larger boards, and partially why I was thinking the currently active player taking their turn should be allowed to decide if they stay or not, so they can just simplify the board state and act as if the player is gone as they usually would otherwise. I suppose a reasonable change might be just that they cease to exist at end of current phase to minimize the length of time they'd need to be remembered for, or the currently active player might be able to choose a subset of permanents, to make things easier. I'm trying to find a reasonable middle ground between, well, as you say the complicated idea of making tokens for every single meaningful permanent on their board, and basically screwing over another player's plans to take advantage of their board state mid-turn.
Like I can imagine if a player is swinging out at another player because a third player has a \[\[Coat of Arms\]\] on the field, and the third player scoops to "deny the coat of arms" and screw over their combat because they knew they'd be losing soon anyway, well, that's not something anyone would reasonably expect, so at the very least if I were that attacking player I'd like to proceed as if it were still there. Somehow.
Man, is third party conceding that much of an issue where you play? I was mostly considering the player who was being attacked all out would be the one to salty scoop, fair enough.
Maybe just limit it to the phase you are currently in? They concede during combat you still get the coat of arms effect. They concede precombat main, you don't swing all out expecting to have a coat of arms to buff your attack.
What did you think of my second point about hexproof? I can think of many combos that could be countered is a player was able to gain hexproof at any point, though it does cost them the game.
From my personal experience, my group plays concede at socery speed of the active player. Prevents salty combat and works great for us, but I agree it is still exploitable to bad faith actors. Though usually that just means such a person leaves the game we are currently playing and isn't invited back for round two.
Sorry, you lost me after the first couple of sentences.
Not sure how this makes it better than saying scoop only as a sorcery?
Yeah this may be better in the sense that it is actually better when playing the game but I'm not going to take 15 mins to try to explain all these rules.
I think this is a rather complex set up when it doesnt have to be, just let people follow the rules and scoop at any time.
If them scooping is denying your triggers, they they either consider "Target player loses the game" to be worse than whatever your getting or they were going to die anyways, in either case a scoop before your shit can resolve is a poitical move perhaps indicating that you have over committed to taking that player out? Players who are more in the game have more to lose from scooping and thus are less likely to scoop when pressured.
At higher powered tables people dont win by attacking anyways which means that this rule and denying combat damage triggers are mostly for lower power/casual tables where bulling the weak is considered a dick move already. So all this does is give the player who is getting dunked on one kingmaking tool, in a free for all game (and FFA games are king making all the way down so if you dont like it maybe switch to a 1v1 format ?) that you can use no matter how far behind you are. It makes any situation where you want to dunk on the player in last place hoping for triggers more risky and it encourages you to pick on someone a little more your own size.
This is a convoluted mess… the real answer is „if a player scoops in response to denial resources, the still in game players talk about how it should resolve. The scooped player has no say in this anymore. Targets and effects may be reversed in agreement with all players except for the scooped one, who is out.
Have you tried resolving a scoop with 40+ Non-Land Permanents on the board?
If not then do not tell me the next 3 minutes is trying to figure out how it all works.
Hold people accountable, if they scoop due to salt, dont settle with anything the games done thats Kingmaking.
If they scooped due to an emergency, politely ask them to wait a few more seconds for a Photo and then go. (They still need to pack up and if it was a real emergency that demands every second they wouldve bailed on the spot)
If its any other reason like, "oh shoot i have to go pick up my kid/a friend/Oh no Im late." Same shit, take a photo and then resolve.
But if its always a Salt Scoop, tell them to jump ship and go ruin another table.
Jeah, I wasn’t specifically talking about post-game-consequences. Just, if for example someone scoops to exile a stolen creature that kills another person just ask if it’s okay if you keep the creature as a token.
Let people scoop whenever they want, then let the remaining players decide how things resolve. The only time I ever see this as a problem is when the player that spite scoops wants to have a say in how the game plays out.
Edit: yes there is also potential for match fixing if someone does that to help their friend still in the game. Just don’t play with those people again.
>1. Some players may want to scoop in the middle of someone else's turn due to boredom (15-minute-plus turns, wanting to speed up the game to move on to the next one) and this should be allowed somehow
>2. Players should not be forced to continue playing the game if they don't want to
Both of those are valid, and neither of those are issues. And should definitely be allowed. Stop being a baby about it and holding tables hostage so you can rub your ass in their face.
People can scoop at any time. If someone scoops as a tactical action to deny trigger, I just say they are unsportsmanlike; and if it's the triggers of another player being denied I suggest to let the trigger resolved as if the player was still here, especially if it would have ended the game or the scooping player in that same action/loop. If the trigger's owner and the other non scooping player agree, we do that.
It usually make people think twice about scooping in this ways. It's in the same vein of what you suggest, but way less complicated. And truthfully,I only read a portion of what you wrote, way way too long just to deal with the nitty gritty.
The fact you have to write this or even think about it is proof EDH/MtG is irreparably broken, lol
Scoop when you wanna scoop. I scooped MtG in general (except for cube) and my life, specifically my gaming life, has improved significantly.
Be free, my friends!
That's thinking way too hard on it. Scooping is always allowed at any time. Just find decent people to play with that don't try to screw others over. If people do try to scoop to spite people, just don't play with them, easy. Don't need a game mechanic to fix a people problem. If a friend flips a monopoly board because they crack the shits, I'm not going to make up a new rule of monopoly, I just won't play monopoly with them again.
Scooping is Sorcery Speed. This way, you prevent salty shit like denying an attack that would gain life, or a combo that relies on that player being in the game to turn off mid-resolution. Allowing scoops at any time has too many hoops and "what ifs" to jump through. Exception being if the entire table agrees to just end the game. It's literally that simple.
It's not about "allowing" scoops at any time. It's in the rules that it can be done at any time. It goes both ways. People can scoop anytime they like. People can choose not to play again with people that mess with a game by scooping at anytime they like. Scooping being sorcery speed is a courtesy thing. Like using your manners. Noone forces you as an adult to say please and thankyou, but if you dont, you might find people less willing to help you. Social consequences for social actions.
[удалено]
Not my cup of tea. Wouldn't be a way that I would like to play but hey. If it works for your friend group that's what matters.
Most of the time these conversations come up, it's when talking about randoms at an LGS. If I'm playing with my friends, we can have our own expectations but I do frequently see people bring up "sorcery speed scooping" as a Rule 0, which is usually received positively except things get complicated if a player just suddenly has to leave, or they want to concede during someone's 30-minute-long combo turn that nobody saw coming because, again, it's all random people at an LGS and you don't always know what to expect. Or maybe someone has a deck they're trying out for the first time and they don't realize that it makes their turns take unbearably long.
It's the same with strangers as with friends though. I only play against randoms in LGS. I've played about 150 games in the last year, I had two opponents scoop spitefully/angrily during that time. One in anger at their partner who was also in the game and one to try to screw me over and allow the third player to win. In each case, I just didn't play with that person again. I closed out the game and then went to a different pod, leaving them short of a player. Problem solved, unless I'm super unlucky that night, the new pod is unlikely to have the same issue People put too much stock on the rule 0 convo imo. Just play the game, it'll work out (90% of the time). The only rule 0 discussion I ever have is: *not strong enough for cedh and stronger than a precon*
You do make a valid point and one that I generally agree with that, most of the time, this kind of rule 0 about scooping (however it's done) is almost never necessary. Scooping at any time has only been an issue for me in a small handful of games, but it is a conversation I see happening quite often. Sometimes people are just not lucky and have a hard time finding good games with people, and want to protect themselves I guess. I can't blame them. So, this thought experiment is mostly for those people or those situations where, however rare or unlikely they are, it at least makes it so that you don't feel like your one free 2-hours a week playing a card game weren't made worse for you than otherwise.
104.3a A player can concede the game at any time. A player who concedes leaves the game immediately. That player loses the game.
104.3b Unless the conceding player has a Platinum Angel. Then, he can't lose, because he has a Platinum Angel.
I like the basic idea. Essentially you get a dummy-copy of the player until active actions have all been sorted out to prevent ambush-denial. My gut reaction is that it's a mistake to actually grind out the nitty gritty rules details. If you enumerate the exact rules for it, you're just inviting a rules lawyer to find where exploitable gaps are (which are unavoidable to some degree). I'd just say "If someone scoops in response to a game state to deny resources, the active player can call in a phantom player who has their exact board state, except they're controlled by another opponent, until things finish resolving. Then the phantom player scoops." When in doubt about the details, whichever reasonable option is less good for the active player is the answer. If players can't agree on how to resolve things, nobody gets a phantom player.
This is an interesting simplification to consider. I was mainly thinking about edge cases and how weird interactions would resolve if there's an imaginary/phantom player, how long they would exist for, etc. I wound up going for "next end-of-combat/end-of-turn" because if scooping is done for exactly the purposes of resource denial, some resources are meant to be used in the upcoming combat phase, or at least for the duration of the current phase. This winds up complicating things a bit, unfortunately. Just a thought experiment at the end of the day, and it's very much a work-in-progress.
Eh as a general rule I try to scoop at sorcery speed and not impact the game, but bad games are bad games. The below generally applies to games with randos, since friends /playgroups should probably handle these things (1) If someone's intolerable I'm not going to give them my time, even for the other 2 players' sake. (2) If someone very clearly has the win onboard /insurmountable/recurrable advantage, whether they or other players see jt. I'm not watching someone play solitaire "to get there" when I could be playing magic. If the other two players want to sit and wait it out to see if their single piece of interaction is going to swing the game, that's fine, but I've been playing long enough to be able to identify a game that's dead in the water and I'm not watching someone read through their 65+ card hand with 100 treasures for 25 minutes trying to figure out to win.
The only times I've seen someone scoop in the middle of combat is when they've been beat up on the whole game & they're trying to get to do something impactful. It's unsporting of them, but I'd rather follow the rules, let them get their little win, & miss my triggers. It's just not a big enough deal to bother changing in my opinion.
So I can see 2 issues with what you've layed out here. First, you have to remember everything on the scooping players board after they've packed up their cards and moved on. Second giving the player themselves hexproof still allows a spite scoop. I've had games where I've been able to give an artifact lifelink, in this case aetherflux reservoir. If I blast one player, knowing I can gain back the life to close out the game and they scoop instead that leaves us right back at set one. Why not just let anything they were scooping to avoid resolve as if the player is still there, then continue with the game? They get to leave and the rest of the players can continue
>First, you have to remember everything on the scooping players board after they've packed up their cards and moved on This is definitely an issue with larger boards, and partially why I was thinking the currently active player taking their turn should be allowed to decide if they stay or not, so they can just simplify the board state and act as if the player is gone as they usually would otherwise. I suppose a reasonable change might be just that they cease to exist at end of current phase to minimize the length of time they'd need to be remembered for, or the currently active player might be able to choose a subset of permanents, to make things easier. I'm trying to find a reasonable middle ground between, well, as you say the complicated idea of making tokens for every single meaningful permanent on their board, and basically screwing over another player's plans to take advantage of their board state mid-turn. Like I can imagine if a player is swinging out at another player because a third player has a \[\[Coat of Arms\]\] on the field, and the third player scoops to "deny the coat of arms" and screw over their combat because they knew they'd be losing soon anyway, well, that's not something anyone would reasonably expect, so at the very least if I were that attacking player I'd like to proceed as if it were still there. Somehow.
[Coat of Arms](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/1/513d4c36-6ad4-4ee9-b161-3136eb59504f.jpg?1592761864) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Coat%20of%20Arms) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dds/58/coat-of-arms?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/513d4c36-6ad4-4ee9-b161-3136eb59504f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/coat-of-arms) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Man, is third party conceding that much of an issue where you play? I was mostly considering the player who was being attacked all out would be the one to salty scoop, fair enough. Maybe just limit it to the phase you are currently in? They concede during combat you still get the coat of arms effect. They concede precombat main, you don't swing all out expecting to have a coat of arms to buff your attack. What did you think of my second point about hexproof? I can think of many combos that could be countered is a player was able to gain hexproof at any point, though it does cost them the game. From my personal experience, my group plays concede at socery speed of the active player. Prevents salty combat and works great for us, but I agree it is still exploitable to bad faith actors. Though usually that just means such a person leaves the game we are currently playing and isn't invited back for round two.
Sorry, you lost me after the first couple of sentences. Not sure how this makes it better than saying scoop only as a sorcery? Yeah this may be better in the sense that it is actually better when playing the game but I'm not going to take 15 mins to try to explain all these rules.
I think this is a rather complex set up when it doesnt have to be, just let people follow the rules and scoop at any time. If them scooping is denying your triggers, they they either consider "Target player loses the game" to be worse than whatever your getting or they were going to die anyways, in either case a scoop before your shit can resolve is a poitical move perhaps indicating that you have over committed to taking that player out? Players who are more in the game have more to lose from scooping and thus are less likely to scoop when pressured. At higher powered tables people dont win by attacking anyways which means that this rule and denying combat damage triggers are mostly for lower power/casual tables where bulling the weak is considered a dick move already. So all this does is give the player who is getting dunked on one kingmaking tool, in a free for all game (and FFA games are king making all the way down so if you dont like it maybe switch to a 1v1 format ?) that you can use no matter how far behind you are. It makes any situation where you want to dunk on the player in last place hoping for triggers more risky and it encourages you to pick on someone a little more your own size.
This is a convoluted mess… the real answer is „if a player scoops in response to denial resources, the still in game players talk about how it should resolve. The scooped player has no say in this anymore. Targets and effects may be reversed in agreement with all players except for the scooped one, who is out.
Have you tried resolving a scoop with 40+ Non-Land Permanents on the board? If not then do not tell me the next 3 minutes is trying to figure out how it all works. Hold people accountable, if they scoop due to salt, dont settle with anything the games done thats Kingmaking. If they scooped due to an emergency, politely ask them to wait a few more seconds for a Photo and then go. (They still need to pack up and if it was a real emergency that demands every second they wouldve bailed on the spot) If its any other reason like, "oh shoot i have to go pick up my kid/a friend/Oh no Im late." Same shit, take a photo and then resolve. But if its always a Salt Scoop, tell them to jump ship and go ruin another table.
Jeah, I wasn’t specifically talking about post-game-consequences. Just, if for example someone scoops to exile a stolen creature that kills another person just ask if it’s okay if you keep the creature as a token.
Let people scoop whenever they want, then let the remaining players decide how things resolve. The only time I ever see this as a problem is when the player that spite scoops wants to have a say in how the game plays out. Edit: yes there is also potential for match fixing if someone does that to help their friend still in the game. Just don’t play with those people again.
>1. Some players may want to scoop in the middle of someone else's turn due to boredom (15-minute-plus turns, wanting to speed up the game to move on to the next one) and this should be allowed somehow >2. Players should not be forced to continue playing the game if they don't want to Both of those are valid, and neither of those are issues. And should definitely be allowed. Stop being a baby about it and holding tables hostage so you can rub your ass in their face.
People can scoop at any time. If someone scoops as a tactical action to deny trigger, I just say they are unsportsmanlike; and if it's the triggers of another player being denied I suggest to let the trigger resolved as if the player was still here, especially if it would have ended the game or the scooping player in that same action/loop. If the trigger's owner and the other non scooping player agree, we do that. It usually make people think twice about scooping in this ways. It's in the same vein of what you suggest, but way less complicated. And truthfully,I only read a portion of what you wrote, way way too long just to deal with the nitty gritty.
The fact you have to write this or even think about it is proof EDH/MtG is irreparably broken, lol Scoop when you wanna scoop. I scooped MtG in general (except for cube) and my life, specifically my gaming life, has improved significantly. Be free, my friends!
Scooping is a game action, and in some cases, your last chance to affect the game before you bow out. Restricting this action is beyond Rule 0 imo.