Time for negotiation after playing a card before terms are set

Jeff Kuta wrote:

Contrast that with someone saying during their Master phase, hypothetically, "I'm considering playing Pentex Subversion on your vampire. What will you do so that I play it on someone else's vampire instead?" The person who initiates this discussion may be bluffing.

This.

Jeff wrote:

It is atomic. That is the whole point. If someone plays a Pentex Subversion without declaring a target, and then pauses for some table discussion about which minion to target, they have gained a huge positional advantage in any (illegal) negotiations. The card is actually being played.

This would be great but it isn't what happens in practice everywhere [probably part of the reason for Michael's question] and there's nothing to stop you playing the card [not replacing] and taking an age to decide the terms with or without input from the table as it's not codified around dragging out it's not just what you would expect a reasonable [reasonable minded that is] player to do.

Jeff wrote:

It is atomic.

Squidalot wrote:

This would be great but it isn't what happens in practice everywhere [probably part of the reason for Michael's question] and there's nothing to stop you playing the card [not replacing] and taking an age to decide the terms with or without input from the table as it's not codified around dragging out it's not just what you would expect a reasonable [reasonable minded that is] player to do.

Except that the rulebook explicitly does say that you have to declare costs and effects when you play a card. Any card. Every card. If you're not certain about the card effects, then don't play the damned card. It's pretty straight forward.

I suppose people in some locations need to be better educated, and judges need to be vigilant if these shenanigans occur on their watch.

But certainly, we don't need experienced, high-caliber players advocating others to defy the rules of the game. It is cheating, plain and simple.

I'm kinda on both sides of fence.

Biggest problem in strictly playing by the book is the fact that you can abuse this problem if you want tostall.

I'm my first EC at Heidelberg my prey was playing a Week of Nightmares deck and he apparently had this idea of keeping everyone in the game for him to oust/sweep in the very late part of the game so he basically interrupted everyone doing anything by starting discussions about cancelling the card being played/discussed with Sudden or DI (which he packed many in his deck).

It almost got to the point where the player in question would interrupt untapping. ("Hold your horses, dammit! This is mandatory and can't be cancelled..." )

I thought him to be a grade A a-hole and later on when I got to know him better he kinda turned out to be one too. But in a nice way...
Love ya, mate.

Jeff wrote:

Except that the rulebook explicitly does say that you have to declare costs and effects when you play a card. Any card. Every card. If you're not certain about the card effects, then don't play the damned card. It's pretty straight forward.
...SNIPPED STUFF...
But certainly, we don't need experienced, high-caliber players advocating others to defy the rules of the game. It is cheating, plain and simple.

Jeff, the Rulebook has three phases to combat, the CRR has 6 IIRC and James Coupe has recently suggested that at least 9 are required. Invoking the rulebook seems to be not the best place to put your trust.

The rulebook does not prohibit a sequence where a player reveals a card and debates its targets. As has been used in many other places, without an explicit exclusion it must be legal.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Jeff, the Rulebook has three phases to combat, the CRR has 6 IIRC

The CRR has many more steps than that. It just groups them into six broad areas. e.g. the rulebook has "Range", and has an explanation of "before range is determined in there", whereas the CRR has a separate step. It doesn't change how things work, though, since we don't really have any effects in the game that care whether two steps are sub-steps of a parent step, or two steps in series, or anything like that.

The rulebook could - if it wanted to - not even split out Range, Strike and Press in an explicit fashion, while still maintaining the same order in which things happen. Makes pretty much zero difference.