[Report] I AM THE ... dammit, I hate you Jesse.

[Ta Jugs]

GO GO day two 0-2 drops

[M.Maddox]

Damn that guy is freaking hilarious. What a badass ;)

[Mad Zur]

Game 1: Goddammit. I hate Jesse Hatfield. Seriously, I fucking hate Jesse Hatfield. That bastard ALWAYS fucking beats me at the frog. Every goddamn week. Anyway, I win this game. It was pretty savage. His draws were shit.
Game 2: I don't get past 2 mana this game. I remand his turn 4 Werebear, he dazes then replays Tropical Island to play Nimble Mongoose. Fuck you.

I think you have these in the wrong order. My notes have you going 20->13->2->1 in game one and 20->19->18->14 in game two.

Top 4
Jesse Hatfield playing Threshold
Game 1: GODDAMMIT. GODDAMMIT. GODDAMMIT. I FUCKING HATE JESSE HATFIELD. Anyway, I get over my intense desire to pull a Jack Elgin at getting paired up with this asshole again, and manage to sit down to play Game 1. Anyway, the game progresses to me being at 4 and him having a tapped Werebear and 5 lands in play. His hand is Force, Counterspell, Pithing Needle and the card he's drawn for his turn. My hand is High Tide, Reset, Turnabout, Meditate, Brain Freeze, and Twincast. I can win.

Not necessarily; you only have one Meditate for draw and the Freeze won't be lethal so there's a decent chance you end up targeting yourself and relying on Flash.

You really should have appealed. Anytime you think a judge ruled incorrectly, you have the right to appeal to the HJ. That's never going to stand up on appeal, and just because he "resolved it" doesn't mean that it forces you into anything.

There was no ruling to appeal. He didn't mention that he hadn't wanted to target me until after the match.

[Anusien]

Well yeah, I totally would have said, "Judge! I'm not trying to target my opponent with this." and then if Klep says that he is, then appeal. I would have never continued with that faulty game state.

[Deep6er]

I think you have these in the wrong order. My notes have you going 20->13->2->1 in game one and 20->19->18->14 in game two.
Not necessarily; you only have one Meditate for draw and the Freeze won't be lethal so there's a decent chance you end up targeting yourself and relying on Flash.

I don't think so. From our playing each other, I'm reasonably certain that you WERE going to counter the Turnabout as I had only 4 mana floating. I can't do my nifty stack tricks without enough mana, and I would have had more cards and mana than you had counters if that had resolved. I vaguely remember discussing what you counter in a variety of situations and I'm pretty sure this was one of them. As I knew your hand, and was close to death, you knew that I had to go off soon. Therefore, I made what I believe was an informed decision based on the information that I had from our playtesting experiences. I don't think I was wrong, and will maintain that position.


@ Anusien
No, you don't understand. That's one of the shadiest things you can do. If you call a judge on something like that, the judge can easily interpret you for trying to gain additional information as to what WOULD have happened had something gone differently. As you are NOT allowed to do that, it could be construed as intentional misrepresentation and punishable as such. Jesse's position was mostly defensible and my position was highly dubious as I was the one who was DEFINITELY losing. Information like that is highly valuable and it could have been miscontrued easily. In the interests of not having to deal with being called a cheater, I decided to just take my lumps and learn from my mistake. Interestingly enough, the next day, I did the same thing to Anwar. I realized how my mistake was so easily misinterpreted when I looked at it from Anwar's point of view and decided (from now on) to actually say the person's name when targeting Turnabout.

[kirdape3]

You know, from what I'm looking at you ended up with a tournament that looked like this:

Mirror
Bye
horrible matchup which you lose
Bye
average matchup where you win
Bye because your opponent kept a godawful hand twice
Bye

Bye
horrible matchup which you lose

I mean, congratulations on Top 4ing the event - that's not awful - but if your opponents are too stupid to play decks that autolose to one of the three most popular decks in the format and that don't literally roll the other two 100% of the time, then I fail to see how you couldn't have done well so long as you weren't a total buffoon.

Seriously people, stop playing 'pet' decks if you want to win one of these things. If your pet deck happens to not have any glaringly bad matchups that people are liable to play (I mostly play U/W Fish in Vintage. It can't handle the Survival/Workshop aggro deck from 3 years ago. Nobody plays it though, so I don't worry), then fine, but if you're going to play most of Jack Elgin's decks or the 43 land deck then you have to expect to get rolled by combo.

[URABAHN]

I don't think so. From our playing each other, I'm reasonably certain that you WERE going to counter the Turnabout as I had only 4 mana floating. I can't do my nifty stack tricks without enough mana, and I would have had more cards and mana than you had counters if that had resolved. I vaguely remember discussing what you counter in a variety of situations and I'm pretty sure this was one of them. As I knew your hand, and was close to death, you knew that I had to go off soon. Therefore, I made what I believe was an informed decision based on the information that I had from our playtesting experiences. I don't think I was wrong, and will maintain that position.

You swore up and down until you were blue in the face that you knew every single card in Jesse's hand. Now, in your tournament report, you said you didn't know the last card. Which is it? I seem to remember you talking about not dwelling in past, either, using Regionals as a lesson to that effect.

[NoGameShow]

Wow you sure are cocky for this being your first top 8 showing in quite some time.

[herbig]

Wow you sure are cocky for this being your first top 8 showing in quite some time.

As opposed to the 95% of posters who have never top 8ed a tournament even once. But yeah, cocky nonetheless.

Good job and good to see you disprove the myth yet again.

[Anusien]

No, you don't understand. That's one of the shadiest things you can do. If you call a judge on something like that, the judge can easily interpret you for trying to gain additional information as to what WOULD have happened had something gone differently. As you are NOT allowed to do that, it could be construed as intentional misrepresentation and punishable as such. Jesse's position was mostly defensible and my position was highly dubious as I was the one who was DEFINITELY losing. Information like that is highly valuable and it could have been miscontrued easily. In the interests of not having to deal with being called a cheater, I decided to just take my lumps and learn from my mistake. Interestingly enough, the next day, I did the same thing to Anwar. I realized how my mistake was so easily misinterpreted when I looked at it from Anwar's point of view and decided (from now on) to actually say the person's name when targeting Turnabout.

It's only shady if you were actually targeting your opponent. At any rate, even if they do railroad you into targeting him, you still have the choice of what taps or untaps, so there's no way Jesse gets to untap his lands.
That's all sort of an aside. The main point I'm trying to establish is that your opponent doesn't ever get to magically hijack your spells. If you're intending to target yourself or you haven't announced targets and your opponent thinks you're targetting him, you have an obligation to inform them of the correct game state. Otherwise you're letting your opponent target your spells for you. Part of the thing you have going for you is that you always seem to declare everything (although you're saying now that you're less clear about your turnabouts); you even announce "Draw for <cantrip>?" so there's no way you're going to get penalized for that.
Also, at a certain point it becomes ruling by intent. If you say "Turnabout untapping lands" and your opponent acts like it's targetting him; well the intent of the spell is clearly to increase your mana count, and that's going to rule in your favor every time.

The real moral of the story is that you assumed the judge was making a ruling when they weren't. If you had said something like, "Wait, I meant to target myself" even if the FJ rules against you, you at least have the option of appealing.


I was actually asking this as a judging philosophy question on #mtgjudge, and the floor judge was there and responded:

he played the turnabout and I have absolutely no idea if he named a target right away
because I think I was checking the storm count or something
if immediately after the turnabout resolved he said "no, I target myself" or something like that..
then maybe I would have made a ruling
and then maybe he'd have something to appeal
but it never even came to that
they never had any kind of dispute
between the two of them they determined who was targeting whom
I was never consulted
I don't know where here's getting the fact that I was nodding to confirm it

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Yeah, you just completely thought yourself into a circle with that one; if you had just said, "No, targeting myself" the intent would've been clear and 90% odds you would've been fine. Whether or not the judge thought you were shady isn't that relevant; you don't care if he invites you to his birthday party and he's not going to DQ you over it. Working it up into a giant play mistake that you can draw a venn diagram analyzing for four hours and going through replays seems rather melodramatic, but hey, some people like Dual lands and some don't. I'm not going to judge you for your decisions.


Also, "I'm floating mana in response to your turnabouting me" is revealing information only in the sense that my telling you that setting yourself on fire will cause you pain is revealing new information.


This is why you can never be a sith. You're too weak.

[jodawe]

This is very confusing to me. I’ve been playing Solidarity ever since I saw you play it at Gencon 2 years ago. You seemed like you knew what you were doing.

To me, playing Turnabout before a reset during early combo stages makes absolutely no sense. You said yourself you can’t do nifty stack tricks without enough mana. Why waste two of it when you have a spell that would give you the same effect? Waiting to combo after the Wearbear attacks is also confusing. You lose the ability to tap the bear in case you can’t find a way to make your opponent draw a card.

[Ewokslayer]

This is very confusing to me. I’ve been playing Solidarity ever since I saw you play it at Gencon 2 years ago. You seemed like you knew what you were doing.

To me, playing Turnabout before a reset during early combo stages makes absolutely no sense. You said yourself you can’t do nifty stack tricks without enough mana. Why waste two of it when you have a spell that would give you the same effect? Waiting to combo after the Wearbear attacks is also confusing. You lose the ability to tap the bear in case you can’t find a way to make your opponent draw a card.

I don't think he included enough information to throughly dissect the plays, but we can certainly try;

Anyway, the game progresses to me being at 4 and him having a tapped Werebear and 5 lands in play. His hand is Force, Counterspell, Pithing Needle and the card he's drawn for his turn. My hand is High Tide, Reset, Turnabout, Meditate, Brain Freeze, and Twincast. I can win. So, I play High Tide. He says it resolves. Now, I have to do the next cards in the right order but I have to think to make sure.

I don't think so. From our playing each other, I'm reasonably certain that you WERE going to counter the Turnabout as I had only 4 mana floating.

So as for the Werebear being tapped it sounds like it is after damage and he was put at 4 for the last attack. If that is the case we can ask why he didn't try to go off in the second mainphase, in which case the mana floating could be removed by going to the end phase and leaving Jesse with only 1 Force for counters. (As an aside, you really screwed yourself up from the sounds of it Gearhart. I assume you tapped all your lands before you played Turnabout, that in itself could be used as an arguement that you were going to be targeting yourself.)
I think in this situation he might have been trying to indicate that he was going to be slightly mana light thus getting Jesse to try to counter the untap effect which he could power through and get the meditate to resolve.
Sample set of spells
Tide, Turnabout (targeting me), Counter, Twincast Turnabout, Force, Reset, Meditate, Win (Hopefully)
Though with this set of spells if the unknown is Daze or Counterspell, Gearhart losses.
If he leds with Reset it is possible that there would be too much mana in his pool to real make countering it worthwhile from the Threshold perspective.
Sample set of spells
Tide, Reset, Meditate, Counter, Twincast Meditate, Force, Turnabout, Brain Freeze your self (Storm = 7), Hope 24 cards down there is a Flash to win.
In this case Daze is unless and possibly Counterspell if the Freeze hits both Flashs. If this was a sideboarded game Stifle would also be an issue to this plan.

[quicksilver]

This is very confusing to me. I’ve been playing Solidarity ever since I saw you play it at Gencon 2 years ago. You seemed like you knew what you were doing.

To me, playing Turnabout before a reset during early combo stages makes absolutely no sense. You said yourself you can’t do nifty stack tricks without enough mana. Why waste two of it when you have a spell that would give you the same effect? Waiting to combo after the Wearbear attacks is also confusing. You lose the ability to tap the bear in case you can’t find a way to make your opponent draw a card.

He was going to be playing both the reset and the turnabout right then (he knew one would get countered), and since they do the same thing and combined cost the same amount of mana, it didn't really matter which order he played it in. Also he did it EOT, which means that he didn't need to tap attackers that turn since his oponent would die next upkeep before his next attack phase. The werebear swining that turn wasn't lethal that turn, and you only care about damage if it is lethal.

[JZ23]

I don't think so. From our playing each other, I'm reasonably certain that you WERE going to counter the Turnabout as I had only 4 mana floating. I can't do my nifty stack tricks without enough mana,

Why the hell would you counter Turnabout but let High Tide resolve with only five islands??

Turnabout targeting him might be the right play here as long as it was his main phase. If he floats, go to end phase and win.

I can't believe you probably threw that game away by "acting shady" while to me it seems like your opponent was the shady one.

[Ewokslayer]

Why the hell would you counter Turnabout but let High Tide resolve with only five islands??

By the Gro player letting High Tide Resolve he is turning on more counters by being able to cast both Force and Counterspell; plus Counterspell # 2 if that is the unknown card.
From the hand as it is I would guess that the unknown card was either a counterspell or not a blue card. Otherwise the Gro player would have probably found over the High Tide.