Crazy MTG Scandals That Changed The Game

Be nice to the judges; judging is hard. The rules were enforced by them as they were written at the time. A lot has changed since then as a result of these incidents, but it’s not the judges fault for doing their jobs.

Mtg tournament players are some of the most ruthless opportunistic group I ever had the displeasure to interact. The judges do their job well. They perform as their clients. Just dissolve all non limited formats. These players don't deserve their own spheres of misery.

That Nguyen guy is a real piece of shit,,, Appealing for that is not cool

In the rule book the steps of the game is numbered, what bullshit it took to change the ruling on this is absurd.

I played MTG from the beginning, a favorite play was first turn Plague Spitter with second turn Spirit Link...Mwahaha!

sorry but what kind of opponents are 1 and 3 "you named borborygmos (who isnt even in the deck) but not borborygmos the enraged (who is in my deck)". who wants to win like that?!
in the 3rd it wasnt a "may trigger"

that combat step one was absurd. especially since it doesn't say "you may", which to me says it must happen. you don't have the option to not do it.

i know competitive magic, things are very specific, but that is how i would rule it were i judging that.

If he said "id like to attack" id at least see what the judge was coming from. but you cant shortcut anyway. He even responded to himself

Sorry but if you haven't declared attackers and you had said "combat" you are not in Declare Attackers yet, you're in the Beginning of Combat step. Until you either say you're declaring an attacker or you are moving to the declare attackers step, you're gunna be in Beginning of Combat. If your shorthand uses a term from another step, your shorthand is bunk.

my god the beginning of combat shortcut is so stupid! I hate how the ignore all context and intent with these rulings and only go by word for word definition.

Is that commentator the guy who helps people with their finances?

EL CAMPEÓN DEL PUEBLO CESAR SEGOVIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PAPAPAAAAAAAA

I didn't notice before watching this but the commentators ability to say Borborygmos repeadetly it's tremendous.

That one with Ceasar pisses me off.

The card was not a MAY trigger

the judge has a responsibility to reset the game to the point where the trigger is on the stack so it can resolve properly, and issue a warning for missed triggers.

The fact htat this happened at a large scale event with multiple judges who apparently didnt know the rule book shows that this event was corrupt and likely staged to secure a win for the asian

The Cesar controversy is interesting because objectively, both Cesar and the judge were wrong. There was a mandatory trigger that Cesar didn't miss, so ACCORDING TO THE ACTUAL TOURNAMENT RULES, the shortcut stops as passing a trigger you didn't miss is an illegal action. However, Heart of Kiran wouldn't be targetable by that trigger, he had to change his target choice to a scrapheap scrounger. But in response to the trigger, he still would have been able to crew heart of kiran in time to attack.

Unfairly exploiting rules to deliberately disadvantage your opponent should be considered a form of cheating.

Nah you should have to say full name

idk about the ruling change on naming, that Borborygmos play was genius to me

Is the dryads whole point to be camouflaged?

Question: if going to combat doesn't begin combat how the hell do you begin combat?

That judge should be banned from judging. I was a DCI judge and one of the issues is you go by the rules and not "short cuts" that are not official.

Combat one for sure. I can understand the first one and the second one. Winning by technicality has always been a thing people do. But that one was a dumb decision. First off, the “skip” is clearly a thing people just do and not in RAW. And it would make more sense if he said “attackers” being the skip but he said “combat” which clearly means he wants to initiate combat. It’d be one thing if it were a technicality, but it isn’t even that as the “shortcut” is not part of the actual rules and is just something players came up with to speed up turns that don’t involve effects that resolve in “beginning of combat”

Borborygmos vs. Borborygmos Enraged : I fully disagree with the ruling. In competitive, you are supposed to know the meta.

The game ITSELF! has a fucking combat stage... The tournament shouldn't be allowed to REDEFINE the rules of the game itself! You can't just omit the combat stage even existing and go "combat means attacking now" that'd WHY we have an attacking AND a combat phase....

That judge shouldve been fired...

I remember watching the Thien and Ceasar match. His intention was so clear as day. I can't believe they ruled against him even though he clearly was announcing to his opponent because of combat triggers. I would never declare attacks when I have to see if you'll react to precombat triggers. Thien was lame for that and he knew it. I hate magic players like him.

Making that change to needle where you can be vague as hell is just stupid as hell.

But mtg is really just making more and more bad decisions so we shouldn’t expect any better

You can shortcut steps!? So I can skip the take damage step?... This is great news!

The people who got screwed over in these clips bytheir opponent being overly pedantic or even intentionally tricky still shook hands at the end of their games.

I wouldn't have. Their opponents knew full-well what they were doing, and they don't deserve the respect.

Don't agree with the land creature rule. It seems way more sick that it's like a trap card. Like if you walked through the forest and didn't know they were creatures

This kind of nonsense puts me off MTG so much. Glad PTCG isn't like this lol

Hey there. I'm here from the future, saying I should have bought 100 Goryo's Vengeance before it spiked in price. 😂

These types of rules especially that last one were such a huuuge oversight on Wizards part. That rule was basically begging to be exploited by an asshole like that. Thank god they changed it, but dude shouldn't have one the first game over a dumb rule like that in the first place

1st one is annoying, but understandable. the correction is for the better.
2nd one is fine imo. i understand calls for change though.
3rd one is absolute bullsh*t. Nowhere in the rules does it state thats a shortcut. its an unwritten rule, so therefor no one can learn the rule prior to play, therefor it cant be enforced.

You really need to edit these out man.

Thien Nguyen simply wanted to win via DQ. Sore loser.

Straight up, Thien Nguyen just tried to capitalize on a situation with a non-native speaker making a very easy language mistake. He was loosing and saw an out that was unsportsmanlike.

What I learned from this video is pro mtg is super scummy no respect just awefull people

I really hate to say it, but Nguyen is an asshole. I could understand it if Segovia said something like "Attackers" or mentioned Attack, but using an obscure phase shortcut to try to force your opponent, who does not speak English very well, to miss a very important trigger is an unbelievably dickish move, whether he was right or not.

Dude. The card clearly says "At the beginning of combat". Thien got away with BS. He knew thats not what going to combat means. There's a ton of cards that have "at the beginning of combat" triggers. So.. with that logic those triggers could never happen. He cheated. Plain and simple. He knew better and took advantage of the judge.

Frankly it is mostly clear what a player wants to do. Then someone can leverage ambiguity to steal advantage, but I humbly think this should not happen with a bit of sportsmanship

imagine having an old card that can only be played at the beginning of combat on opponent's turn (idk if these exist but maybe one day in FS) and they shortcut and make card useless xd

the "beginning of combat" ...'confusion'....is absurd. That judge should have been dismissed on that call. The trigger was not a may ability. It could not be missed or skipped. Additionally, the opponent has just as much obligation to enforce the trigger as the player, therefore it could not be skipped. Just bizarre.

You can't skip the trigger, since it's not optional. So the declaration would be void. As far as I understand.

Nigachu 💀

In the Thien/Cesar one, Thien was 100% being a rule shark. Everyone can tell English isn't Cesar's first language and Thien was trying to cheat him out. Honestly, that is really the one major thing keeping me from trying to become competitive in magic, is the fucking cheats. And "they" even say you have to become good at cheating, if you want to compete. Yalls community is fucked for my guy.

NGL, knew the first mistake was coming from a mile away. people love not saying a cards whole name, and magics been around for 200 years, so of course certain characters are reused