judge/play/moral question/discussion

[totodile1014]

Hi guys, I'm new here and this is my first thread.

Should all effects of Poke-Powers, Poke-Bodies, Attacks, Stadiums, or anything else be told to your opponent every time?

for example

If I have an active Scizor grass:Stormfront 25/100) and was attacked last turn by an attack that did 60 damage, should i tell my opponent that Scizors Poke-Body: Honeycomb Defender will lower that attack by 40 next turn?

I could see how that would be the right thing to do, but as a player (especially in an important tournament), it would give me an advantage if my opponent wouldn't take note of that until after he/she has called the attack.

As an active-type Judge, if I notice this kind of thing happening, is it ok to butt in to the game and let the player know about the Poke-Body? or would that be messing up the player's dirty strategy?

 

[NoPoke]

As a judge you say nothing until the play is made.

As a player it is completely up to you. Personaly I wouldn't think any worse of you if you kept quiet until the attack was announced or any higher of you if you helped your opponent. It is a tournament and you don't have to help your opponent beat you. If your opponent is making mistakes don't rub it in - win or lose you are expected to play nice

 

[PokePop]

Hi guys, I'm new here and this is my first thread.

Should all effects of Poke-Powers, Poke-Bodies, Attacks, Stadiums, or anything else be told to your opponent every time?

for example

If I have an active Scizor grass:Stormfront 25/100) and was attacked last turn by an attack that did 60 damage, should i tell my opponent that Scizors Poke-Body: Honeycomb Defender will lower that attack by 40 next turn?

I could see how that would be the right thing to do, but as a player (especially in an important tournament), it would give me an advantage if my opponent wouldn't take note of that until after he/she has called the attack.

As an active-type Judge, if I notice this kind of thing happening, is it ok to butt in to the game and let the player know about the Poke-Body? or would that be messing up the player's dirty strategy?

It would be a "very bad thing" if you, as a judge, alerted a player to a Body's triggered effect ahead of time.
Players are supposed to be aware of the play field and if they miss something about the game state, that is their own look out.
Now, if it is not noticed and too many damage counters are applied, THEN you need to step in and make sure that the game state is maintained correctly.
But it would be bad to remind players ahead of time that they need to take things like this, or Special metal energy, into account when preparing for their attack. You just make sure the result is applied correctly.

I remember early in my judging career at a Super Trainer Showdown when a player had a Slowking in play and his opponent played a trainer. The opponent hesitated a moment, to give his opponent time to call Mind Games. He didn't. He had forgotten. I had to bite my tongue to keep from reacting in any way to signal him that he was missing something.
After a moment, the opponent went on and used the effect of the Trainer.
I just walked away. It would have been major interference if I had said anything.


Now, if you are the player, you can certainly remind players of things like this, but you don't have to.
What you do have to, is when you use any Power or Body to take an action, you must make it very clear what effect is allowing you to take that action.
That is all that you or a player is responsible to do.

 

[totodile1014]

ok thank you very much

 

[poke_master2008]

What would happen in this situation? (Just getting a heads up before it may hapen)

[Dealing with 10 and under]

Player A has an Electivire Lv.X active. Player B has a pokemon with 20 HP left. Player B is unaware of what Electivire Lv.X's Body does and attaches an energy to that pokemon therefore activing Vire's Body and KOing the pokemon. After attaching the energy Player A then tells Player B what has happened. You (as a judge) witness what has happened.

What would be the correct thing for the judge to do?


Thanks for any responses i get.

 

[bulbasnore]

[Dealing with 10 and under]
...
What would be the correct thing for the judge to do?

At a Championship Series event?

Answer any questions from the children.

If the opponent offers a takeback, independent of any kind of prompting from you, decide if you'll allow it (in the simple case, I certainly would).

If the child is upset, help him or her to lose with grace and coach that it takes time but he or she will get to know the Pokemon's better the more she or he plays. Remind that it is permitted to ask to look at any Pokemon if you don't know what it does.

 

[NoPoke]

it is a tough example with the 10-

You need to be sure that the opponent had ample oportunity to find out what electivire lvx does.

I end up with 'generic' advice : There is no need to rush. You have plenty of time to find out what all the cards do before you make any decisions. If you are unsure just ask a question. We are here to help both players have a fun,fair, and enjoyable game. That kind of thing. In the end though you do have to let some train-wrecks happen. Which may then require words of comfort to the loser. I've found that getting the player to realise that half the other players in the room also lost their match helps them to not feel that it was a personal failing. You do your best to defuse the pain of the loss but you have to let it happen.

I'm assuming in the above that there is no indication of any gamesmanship by the opponent.

 

[PokePop]

Careful there, Ian.
Even doing that can be seen as coaching a player, especially when said at a critical time such as right before they are about to knock themselves out.

While generic advice like that might be fine at the beginning of a game, at that moment, I would keep my mouth shut.

 

[meganium45]

Ian, I strongly disagree.

If the player attached the energy to the pokemon, you do not, and should not stop the player and say "Wait, are you SURE you want to do that???".

No different than a player using Claydol against an opponent with a Stormfront Tyranitar in play, and then realizing that the Tyranitar Player is attaching energy as a result of the power being used. Can't allow the take-back there either.

A judge should be there to make sure all mandatory actions are taken.

In 'pop's original example, he mentioned biting his tongue over the player not using the Slowking Pokemon Power. I originally went "?", but looked it up, and Slowking's power was Optional - you MAY.

In any optional power, the judge should not step in and "remind" the player to use it.

Example: Opponent uses a Pokemn power, and there is a Stormfront Tyranitar on the opponent's board. The judge should NOT remind the player to use the optional Tyranitar power, or even ask if they wanted to use the Tyranitar Power.

To every suggestion there is an exception. If the opponent is RUSHING, or otherwise trying to keep the player from using the power, then some judging may need to be done.

Example: Opponent attacks with a Cherrim with no grass energy attached and says "20 damage". The additional damage for Cherrim's Poke'body is in no way shut off. The judge should step in and correct to 30 damage. Non-optional, should be administered.

Didn't do that last turn, I probably would NOT put the extra damage counter on, as there is too much water under the bridge. Some judges would. That comes down to a judging philosophy.

Talk to you all later.

 

[bulbasnore]

Tucks away "half the people in the room just lost" - that could come in handy some time!

Definitely, widespread problems (prize setup, not cutting opp deck, tc.) make their way into my pre-event speeches as generic advice.

 

[NoPoke]

Not what I said Vince. See my earlier answer. See any of my answers here or elsewhere: I'm the judge that will avoid answering player questions if the answer may have a direct influence on the game.

The 10- group give judges particular difficulty with pace of play: they frequently rush and often have a very one sided view of what is fair play. Judges do have to be able to address this yet almost anything that is said to a player might be viewed as coaching. If I believe that the player had ample oportunity to make a decision then I will stay silent. I tell players to speed up if pace of play is too slow and I tell them to slow down when it is too quick.

I agree with PokePOP and Vince: very easy to say too much and influence play.

 

[meganium45]

Ian, my only issue was stating that "you need to be sure that the opponent had ample opportunity to find out what the Electivire X does"

If the opponent is playing the energy, then they are making a choice.

The other player did not simply play the Electivire X down during the opponent's turn, they did it during their own turn.

If a player plays quickly, or sloppily, and does not take into account the opponent's board (Dusknoir attacked last turn with the protection attack, Scizor has 60 damage on them, Electivire X is in play, the opponent has an unknown G clearly attached to a Pokemon), then it is at that player's peril.

You and I have seen way too much gamesmanship in our day, and know when to spot it (the "hidden" unown G trick, not showing the energy, all of the other little things and many bigger ones). Gamesmanship is a WHOLE other monster.

Vince

 

[ryanvergel]

Just answer factual questions, and leave speculative questions to the player.

Can I legally do this? Does this entail that? Can I play this down? etc.

and don't answer

should i, will he, etc.

 

[bulbasnore]

You and I have seen way too much gamesmanship in our day, and know when to spot it (the "hidden" unown G trick, not showing the energy, all of the other little things and many bigger ones).

I KNOW you haven't been reading the announcement notes from our first CC, so I guess we're on the same wavelength... those are two of the things we told the players we didn't want to see happen... and AFAIK, they didn't.

][

Ryan, there's a debate among judges - do we answer questions about card effects, interactions before they happen, or not?

"If I attach my benched Unown G to my active, can my opponent use Damage Even on it?"

Some judges would answer, others would defer and say, I can't rule on it unless it happens.

 

[Ertai]

Ryan, there's a debate among judges - do we answer questions about card effects, interactions before they happen, or not?

"If I attach my benched Unown G to my active, can my opponent use Damage Even on it?"

Some judges would answer, others would defer and say, I can't rule on it unless it happens.

I was always under the impression that we could answer direct ruling questions (provided they were worded correctly). As such, isn't the above question an example of a direct ruling question and any judge must answer to the fullest extent?

To me, the question would fall under the same category as "If I attack with Psychic Lock this turn, can my opponent use Cosmic Power during their next turn?" I can't see any judge defering from answering a question like that. I agree that my example is far more simple, but I can only prove my point by using extremes.

Am I missing something? Or did I just make a fool out of myself...

 

[NoPoke]

Ertai: I'm one of those judges that would keep quiet with your question on Psychic Lock. The most you would get out of me is an instruction to read the card and that I will tell you after you have made your choice.

I had one at the weekend. A player wanted to know if he could damage an opponents bench pokemon that had unown G on the bench. All I could say was that he has to decide and I'll make sure that the outcome of the attack is correct. He chose not to target the pokemon with the unown G. May have cost him that game too as attacking it was the correct tactical play at the time.

 

[PokePop]

I was always under the impression that we could answer direct ruling questions (provided they were worded correctly). As such, isn't the above question an example of a direct ruling question and any judge must answer to the fullest extent?

To me, the question would fall under the same category as "If I attack with Psychic Lock this turn, can my opponent use Cosmic Power during their next turn?" I can't see any judge defering from answering a question like that. I agree that my example is far more simple, but I can only prove my point by using extremes.

Am I missing something? Or did I just make a fool out of myself...

The viewpoint revolves around when does judging move into coaching.
After all, if you don't know what your cards do or how they interact with commonly played cards, should you be getting advice on what moves to make or not make in the middle of a game?

 

[Ertai]

The viewpoint revolves around when does judging move into coaching.
After all, if you don't know what your cards do or how they interact with commonly played cards, should you be getting advice on what moves to make or not make in the middle of a game?

That sounds fair enough.

I propose a different situation (this actually happened at the last event that I judged at).

Player A calls me over and pointed a card in his hand while asking how it would be affected by an opponent's effect. I'm a little sketchy on the details, but I'm almost 100% sure that it was more toward the line of asking a technical question than coaching. Now I want to answer but there was no way I could talk about it without ruining the integrity of the hand, and thus granting Player B an advantage if he were to interpret my words to guess the card correctly. As I said before, in my opinion the question was valid and could be answered, but granting the advantage to Player B is unacceptable. In the end, I decided to just speak on it because I was asked a direct question.

What would you guys do? Would you whisper to Player A the answer? Would you speak aloud as I did? Or would you just have said to play the card before you can answer Player A's question?

 

[totodile1014]

That sounds fair enough.

I propose a different situation (this actually happened at the last event that I judged at).

Player A calls me over and pointed a card in his hand while asking how it would be affected by an opponent's effect. I'm a little sketchy on the details, but I'm almost 100% sure that it was more toward the line of asking a technical question than coaching. Now I want to answer but there was no way I could talk about it without ruining the integrity of the hand, and thus granting Player B an advantage if he were to interpret my words to guess the card correctly. As I said before, in my opinion the question was valid and could be answered, but granting the advantage to Player B is unacceptable. In the end, I decided to just speak on it because I was asked a direct question.

What would you guys do? Would you whisper to Player A the answer? Would you speak aloud as I did? Or would you just have said to play the card before you can answer Player A's question?

I had an exact situation like this happen to me recently.

It was Player A's turn and he had a baltoy, claydol, togekiss and rare candy on his hand, with a togetic on his bench that had just been evolved on that same turn. He asked me 'can i do this?' pointing to the rare candy. I immediately though he meant to put baltoy down and rare candy it to a claydol, so i said yes. Then he put the rare candy down and then started to bring out togekiss to which Player B responded 'you can't do that'.

Now if i would have said something like " you can put baltoy down and use rare candy to evolve it but you can't use the rare candy to evolve your togetic again because you can only evolve a pokemon once per turn." instead of just "yes",then that answer would have obviously tipped Player B. Even if i would have pointed at the cards instead of saying card names it would have tipped player B.

I was Judge training (still am) so what do you guys think i should have done?

 

[Lawman]

Ertai and totodile: You got them both wrong. You should never whisper anything to one player. If anything ever gets said, it gets said out loud to both players!

As for the rare candy issue, you cannot tell a player they can RC the baltoy into the Claydol if they ask. Best you can do it tell them to READ the card. RC tells you what can evolve (basic into evo). Togetic is a stage 1, ergo, RC cannot work on it anyway. See how this allows the player to figure it out themselves?

Without knowing what the card was in the hand that A asked about in Ertai's situation, I still believe the best answer is, play it and then I can let you know if X works, etc. Answering the Q while the card is still in the hand is coaching, bc the player obv. didnt know what the effect would be.

Keith