Knowledge of cards

Historically card text knowledge has been resvered to those with great memory or who has the card in front of them. But now that smartphones are becoming common everyone with one can access all card texts easily. This has caused me to think.

Is the knowledge of cards a right or is it an advantage reserved for those with good memory? Am I allowed to check up card texts on my smartphone? If I ask the table "what does X do?", are they obliged to help me? If they're obliged, do they recite from memory or do can I have them check it up on their smartphone? Are the judges obliged to share card texts with all players who asks for it?

In general players don't need to answer questions when asked about cards not in play or being played. Lying about those cards isn't outright forbidden, but as a Judge I would consider it unsportsman-like conductship, and issue a caution, etc.

Regarding the use of electronic helpers: the tournament rules have the following passage:

1.5. Electronic Devices

The head judge or tournament organizer may choose not to allow players to participate with electronic devices (such as cellular phones, pagers, and/or portable audio units) turned on.

But the keyword is may, imho.

I wouldn't mind the use much, if you don't do it too often and it doesn't take too much time. id est, do it preferably on another player's turn. You should know your own cards in your deck.

Yes, people with a better memory are at an advantage, so are better or experienced players.

In my opinion, players should not be allowed to do ANY KIND of research during the game -- only judges.

The background is: You could not only research card texts, but also deck lists (and the like), so you would be able to "guess" online, what kind of deck you play against ... if you were fast, you could also ask someone outside the game for assistance ...

Yes, this is painting worst case scenarios, and, of course, such information is not that big advantages as it is in a game like chess ...

Hakuron wrote:

In my opinion, players should not be allowed to do ANY KIND of research during the game -- only judges.

The background is: You could not only research card texts, but also deck lists (and the like), so you would be able to "guess" online, what kind of deck you play against ... if you were fast, you could also ask someone outside the game for assistance ...

I agree with Hakuron. Net-deck and/or somewhat rigid archtypes are fairly common and having players hit up the smartphone for TWDA lists to check for (probable) ratios or to remind themselves of which cards they have to be on their guard against strikes me as undesirable.

Asking the judge for the cardtext on whatever card is absolutely fine, however.


Drain

So, could I be super wasteful and print out a hardcopy of every card that exists and check that instead? This would be WAY slower than a smartphone search. Or, more extremely, can print out the TWDA?

I think a smartphone search is totally reasonable, since it speeds up a manual search of these hardcopy resources.

Every player at the table has different experience levels with their opponents' decks (e.g. maybe you saw my deck in a previous round, maybe you are from my playgroup, maybe you know that I always play S&B decks).

I think, as long as your knowledge was gained in a way that all players could access, go for it. If someone wants to borrow my phone to check Vampidroid, I'm happy to share it.

Now, this brings me to my person pet peeve - I hate scouting other people's decks at tournaments. If you're ousted, don't go watch the other tables with the intent to discover what each other player is playing that day. It would be nice if there was a Loser's Lounge, where ousted players could hang out, away from active games, until the next round started. If you figure out what I'm playing WHILE playing against me, cool, use that knowledge in future rounds, but please don't tell the rest of the tournament what my deck's surprise is today.

Scouting bothers me because the knowledge exchange isn't reciprocal - you find out what I'm playing, but I don't learn anything about your tricks.