Whose onus is it to make sure the monarchy passes on after the monarch loses the game?
Asked by Yesterday 1 month ago
If I'm playing a game of Judge Tower and am the monarch and lose the game, the next player in turn order is meant to become the monarch.
Also for the sake of argument, in the variant where card 'ownership' matters, another one of my opponents has taken control of a vanilla creature I own with Confiscate, and that permanent should be exiled when I lose the game.
Also also, another one of my opponents has my other vanilla creature exiled under their Banishing Light, which when I lose, should be... exiled.
I forget about all of, or perhaps chose not to perform any of these interactions. We all hate our lives and there is for some reason a fifth player in the game who I haven't interacted with, and they spot all of this. Who loses?
Gidgetimer says... #2
There is no onus to ensure the monarch passes. It does so as soon as the current monarch leaves the game. The token or however you are tracking it is not what "the monarch" is. It is a designation that a player can have. Like with a die on Tarmogoyf for types in graveyards, not representing the monarchy is fine, but if you are representing it, it must be represented correctly. I would argue that with the monarchy no one loses until the player who received it misses the trigger. Since if you were using something to represent it, that something is no longer in a place that is representing the game state.
This becomes moot with your additional scenarios since everyone except player 5 is losing to FtMGS for the cards that should have been removed from the game.
February 21, 2025 4:43 p.m.
Judge Tower is where I'm interested in applying this, yes, but I'm less interested in what should happen in a Judge Tower game, and more what the error is in the most technical view. But yeah, sorry. If I'm citing Judge Tower as the reason behind asking the question, and I'm aware the rules vary a lot, then I should probably have clarified the local rules.
At least in the version I know, you lose specifically if another player points out that you've made a GRV or... most GPEs. It's touch-and-go on FtMBS. Also depends on the offender in question. If noone notices your mistake except for you (after the fact) then it's fair game. Also, you failing to notice that somebody else made a mistake (including Failure to Maintain Board State) and going to move ahead isn't an offense on your part; you won't lose even if somebody else points it out. Only the person who was responsible for that permanent/card/whatever is in risk of losing.
Anyway. I feel like I'm waffling a bit. I need clarification, and I think it's my fault for laying out a confusing question.
Are ye saying that players (2,) 3, 4 should be eliminated because they missed something that should be updated, and they passed to player 5 without acknowledging it? Or because each of them failed to maintain a part of the board state that they were each responsible for maintaining? Or is it primarily or only my own responsibility to remove my own cards from the game when I lose?
In the hypothetical scenario where this isn't a Judge Tower game, and there's a big meanie-pants judge who's handing out warnings for the slightest thing they're technically allowed to, to whom could they hand out warnings if player 5 makes a judge call?
February 21, 2025 5:26 p.m. Edited.
Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #4
Honestly, if the answer to the Judge Tower question hinges on local house rules for exactly how to play Judge Tower then I think you and the other players are the only ones who can answer the question correctly.
If this isn't a Judge Tower game, the only Rules Enforcement Level I've ever heard a multiplayer event being held at is Regular, and that doesn't use the same system of Warnings, GLs etc. that's used for Competitive and Professional REL. At Regular, the Judge educates players on the rules, fixes problems and gets the game moving again. The only possible harsher penalties are GLs for a player repeatedly making the same mistakes during the event after being educated about them or DQs for Serious Problems (aggressive behavior, cheating, theft). If this game is in a Regular REL event then the Judge will use the guidelines on backups and gamestate repair to help figure out who's supposed to be the Monarch right now and get the players playing again. If this is a Regular REL event and the Judge is intent on applying the same infraction tracking practices as in Competitive or Professional REL then they're operating outside of policy and I don't know what to tell you.
February 24, 2025 8:57 a.m. Edited.
Alright, absolutely fair enough. I guess I'll... try to track down a Judge that supervises tournament CEDH events and see if they have a different take? But I'll mark this as answered in the meantime. Thanks much.
February 25, 2025 6:16 a.m. Edited.
Rhadamanthus says... #6
Yeah the big problem is the IPG document that applies to Competitive and Professional REL only anticipates 2-player games (probably easily extendable to 2HG as well) and there isn't an equivalent "[O]fficial" document that I know of covering how to approach games with 3 or more independent players. There may be TOs or groups of CEDH-focused Judges who have developed their own standards and practices for running CEDH at Competitive REL but that's almost another set of "house rules", though at a very formalized level.
Rhadamanthus says... #1
I found a couple of slightly conflicting explanations of the exact rules of Judge Tower. Some sources say a player loses if they "commit a game rule violation" and others say something like "make a mistake" or "break any rules". If it's really based on making a GRV then that's actually a softer interpretation than what Judge Tower is probably meant to be, since "Game Play Error - Game Rule Violation" doesn't include the other separately-defined GPE of Missed Trigger, among other things (Looking at Extra Cards, Hidden Card Error, Mulligan Procedure, Failure to Maintain Game State).
In that context, I think the intent of Judge Tower is to count any GPE as a loss, including any errors involving the rules of Judge Tower itself regarding playing cards, activating abilities etc. In that case if it's clear no one other than the fifth player noticed the issues before they pointed it out then everyone other than the fifth player loses, since you did GPE-GRV by not removing the cards you "owned" from the game when you lost and the other players besides the fifth did GPE-FtMGS by not noticing the problems and continuing to play instead of fixing them.
February 19, 2025 10:32 a.m. Edited.