Monocle of Clarity

Pascal wrote:

AaronC wrote:

Are you ruling in this post that one can refer to a written document when asking a question through the power of The Monocle of Clarity?

I am merely stating it. Players do it all the time on JoL.

I have never played on JOL, so I have never heard of such a thing. My opinion is that people I play with face-to-face have never of this either. That's why I thought you were joking

Monocle of Clarity
Unique equipment.
During your untap phase, if bearer is ready, you can ask any Methuselah a yes-or-no question pertaining to the game. He or she must answer yes or no truthfully. If the question pertains to the future, the answer is not binding.

It is a real stretch to say that writing on a piece of paper "pertains to the game", since pieces of paper are not part of the playing pieces of the game. Nor are lists of cards that are written in electronic documents.

If someone tried to use an outside writing in my playgroup for this purpose, it would cause dissent and confusion. It is your role to provide clear guidance. I would not be able to research whether this is permissible or not because there is no ruling - Pierre Van Tran's collection of rulings on the VEKN France forum doesn't mention this. His work there is the only comprehensive collection of rulings that I know of.

My opinion is that the use of such outside writings in conjunction with The Monocle of Clarity requires a ruling, not just an acknowledgement. The ruling should preferably explain how the use of such documents would work in tournament play, since it is useful for judges in different regions to have a consistent guideline.

Thats why having excrutiatingly detailed questions that still have a blatant answer are optimal.

"Do you have a bounce card in your hand?"
Is OK but if your prey has out peter blaine, iliana, and vincent day, and you are about to bleed with slava, they could say yes but be holding my enemys enemy, telepathic misdirection, lost in translation, and 4 copies of rolling woth the punches.
Now"do you have a way to bounce a bleed with the cards in your hand and thr minions you have out if i bleex with slava?" Is a yes or no question, and the truth is, no they do not. You asked a very narrow question. Now, if peter blaine tries to block and is met with earth control, he could cycle the 2 auspex cards and draw a deflection, making monacle still bad, but your question worked. If you bleed with daring the dawn, your question has gotten your oust.

Its normally better to ask about things like "are you holding an archon inveztigation?" Or "are you holding a way to cancel a master in your hand that ould cancel one i play from my hand right now, without having to be in play before i ay mine" or, do you have any sce that do not require protean in yiur hand?" If you hold a shape mastery and are a combat deck. Tbere are usez, and there are often befter card slots. But "are you holding card that can cancel my parity shift and make me unable to call it again this turn?" Is better than asking if they have a dt just to have it di2'd or vice versa.

Be specific if yiu use it. If only one carx is you worry, ask. If only one effect "treat aggravated damage as normal" can stop you, ask that instead of asking about skin of bight just to have pentinent resillience or jau vema stop your dawn op weather control or domain outside the hourglass.

See what i mean?

So, now that we're on the topic of Monocle, I still couldn't quite get a clear answer to the question earlier discussed in this thread:

www.vekn.net/index.php/forum/6-rules-questions/18214-monocle-of-clarity-a-questions-about-the-deck-contents?limit=10&start=30

We were discussing this earlier on the weekly games. Do you have to answer truthfully to deck content questions?

Just thinkin, 'cause sometimes you really don't remember. Sometimes you do know exactly how many AIs there are. If you simply don't know, do you have to answer yes/no anyways? Can you lie if you DO know?

It would be cool to have this ruling in the card rulings section in VEKN as well, 'cause it's not really super clear.

Kraus wrote:

We were discussing this earlier on the weekly games. Do you have to answer truthfully to deck content questions?

Yes.

If you accurately know the answer, you must give that answer.
If you do not accurately know the answer, you must give a "Yes" or "No" answer which is correct to the best of your (imperfect) knowledge. [LSJ 20021121] "I don't know" is not an acceptable answer in that situation - it must be yes or no. [LSJ 20021122]

As the asker of the question, it will be extremely difficult for you to know whether the player is accurate or not. It is therefore usually much better to stick to questions that could be verified by (for example) a judge looking over the player's shoulder at their hand/uncontrolled region etc. Answers about information that is actually hidden from the answerer may well be inaccurate. "Oh crap, I forgot to put those Mind Rapes back into this deck." etc.

Kraus wrote:

We were discussing this earlier on the weekly games. Do you have to answer truthfully to deck content questions?

The answer is "No." I believe that in the thread that you reference, Pascal said that you can fail to remember what is in your deck without penalty.

It may be unsportsmanlike according to some people not to tell the truth in that situation. However, you can lie and then, if the card appears, you can claim that you did not remember it was in your deck. Since there is no penalty for doing that, it is legal to do.

Pascal wrote:

Lönkka wrote:

Instead of some of the lists you could ask along the following lines:
"Do you have in your hand a reaction card that untaps your minion(s) or let's them act as untapped?"

These are dangerous as they can be ambiguous. Majesty would fit in the first section,...

Majesty is not a "reaction card", it is a Combat card.