Knowledge of cards

TorranceCircle wrote:

I'm trying to think of when a judge would refuse to do this (thereby raising the question of obligation). Maybe when a player is speculating as to a card he thinks another player may have, and wants to know the exact card text of that card?

I've never seen a Judge refuse a "How does X card work?" question during a game if the answer was remotely relevant to play. If you keep pestering the Judge about all possible cards, you might get a Stall Warning, but I would argue that card text and effects (and ESPECIALLY rulings and errata) are considered to be public knowledge.

Xaddam wrote:

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?

All that seems covered by Tournament Rules 1.5 .

etherial wrote:

I've never seen a Judge refuse a "How does X card work?" question during a game if the answer was remotely relevant to play. If you keep pestering the Judge about all possible cards, you might get a Stall Warning

More problematically, in most tournaments, judges are in short supply. Either there's one main judge, or you're using the multi-judge system and many of them will still be playing games (at any given point in time).

Using up lots of judge time is often going to be a problem. The judge can't keep an eye on the table with two new players, or the table with the really troublesome deal-making situation, or wherever else the judge might prefer to direct their attention.

Miasmat wrote:

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.

Then again, scounting can also be done by a group of people who between rounds share the info on the decks they played against in the previous round.

Pascal wrote:

Xaddam wrote:

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?

All that seems covered by Tournament Rules 1.5 .

1.5 only gives the head judge/organizer the option to disallow use of electronic devices. It says nothing about the other, and in my opinion more interesting, question (knowledge of card text being a right vs an advantage for those with good memory).

I could see that card texts are only a "rightful knowledge" (knowledge everyone has a right to) if you actually have the card in front of you, but I could also see that the entire Card List is "rightful knowledge" at any point in the game.

Since several dozens of cards don't actually do precisely what the card text says and another couple of dozen cards have multiple versions with different card texts floating around, I think the fairly obvious answer should be "card texts are rightful knowledge" to everyone, even if they don't happen to have the memory.