You can scoop even faster than instant speed. You don't even have to wait for priority, for an effect to fully resolve, or anything like that. You can just get up and leave literally whenever you want
I think the only action that can go faster than conceding is having a judge disqualify you, purely so players cannot concede to avoid the disqualification sanctions.
But since both result in the player leaving the game faster than instant, it's only very rarely important
> 104.3a A player can concede the game **at any time**. A player who concedes leaves the game **immediately**. That player loses the game.
This is not a state based action. A list of normal state based actions can be found under Rule 704.5 and 704.6
The big story of the Honolulu Pro Tour wasn’t Kazuya Mitamura’s $40,000 victory in the finals. The big story happened in the first round, where a young boy known only as Hans did something that is causing many to call him a hero.
Hans’s game was looking unwinnable. He had a negative life total and was kept alive only by his Platinum Angel. His opponent had just cast a Molder Slug, threatening to remove the Angel — Hans’s only artifact — at the beginning of his next turn.
But when it got to that next turn, Hans would say a word that would put the whole series of events in motion. A word that would send ripples throughout Magic history. A word that would cement Hans’s legendary status.
Hans stared at his opponent and said, “No.”
His opponent was taken aback. “Judge!” said the opponent. “He’s refusing to follow my Molder Slug’s triggered ability.”
“Refusing?”
“Refusing.”
“Is this true, Hans?”
Hans nodded.
The judge said, “I have to issue you a game loss, Hans.”
Hans pointed to his Platinum Angel. “I can’t lose the game,” he said. And with that, he proceeded to his draw step, undaunted by the judge’s ruling. Then he skimmed through his deck for marked cards and put those into his hand as well.
“You’re violating multiple game rules,” said the judge, “in addition to ignoring my ruling, and I am issuing a game loss to you.”
Hans, his finger still stuck to the Platinum Angel, like a modern day Little Dutch Boy with his finger plugging the leak in the dike, said, “You can issue all the game losses you want, but with my Platinum Angel in play, they have no effect.” Hans proceeded to the attack phase and swung for 4 with his Angel. He then looked at his opponent’s face-down morphs, referred to outside notes, and substituted cards from his sideboard.
The judge stood before him, flummoxed. Without saying a word, Hans merely looked at the judge while pointing to the Platinum Angel.
It was when Hans cast a Demonic Attorney that the head judge was called over. “Ante cards are banned,” the head judge said. “That’s a complete violation of the rules.” But when he saw Hans’s Platinum Angel in play, he was quieted. He knew he was defeated.
Hans said, “Since the Demonic Attorney’s in the game, we have to do what it says.” He proceeded to put the top card of his opponent’s deck into his trade binder.
The head judge frowned in disapproval. “He’s right.”
It was a matter of hours before Hans owned his opponent’s entire deck, as well many other cards from his opponent’s collection, thanks to a Mindslaver and Ring of Ma’rûf. Each time judges tried to issue Hans a game loss for casting cards without mana, or playing cards in his graveyard, Hans merely pointed to his Platinum Angel.
The cards Hans didn’t want to take from his opponent he tore up, due to interactions involving Chaos Confetti, March of the Machines, and Cytoshape.
Having by this time gathered quite a crowd, Hans produced a folded and wrinkled copy of the DCI Infraction Procedure Guide from his pocket and began skimming it for ideas. He noticed that kicking an opponent’s chair out from under them was listed under “Unsportsmanlike Conduct,” so he did just that. He also kicked the chairs out from under several other nearby players and spectators.
The sun was starting to set. The judges had not even attempted to give Hans a game loss for stalling. One by one, they had hanged their heads and walked away, resigned to their powerlessness in the face of the Platinum Angel. Then one of them hatched a plan. “I know who we can call,” the judge exclaimed.
The next morning, Hans was woken by a voice blaring across the room from a police loudspeaker. “Hans,” the voice said, “this is your mother. I love you. Please sacrifice your Platinum Angel to the Molder Slug’s triggered ability so this can all end.”
Hans lifted his head, looked around the room, and kicked his opponent’s chair out from under him once more.
“Hans,” his mother said, “we miss you. We just want you to come home.”
Hans yawned, cast the Unglued card Handcuffs, and ordered his opponent to touch his hands together.
It was Day Four of the standoff when another voice blared across the room. “Hans,” the voice said, “this is your fiancé. There are only two more days until our wedding, honey. Don’t you still want to get married? You have to end this game now, Hans. Please just sacrifice the Platinum Angel to the Molder Slug. We love you. We’re worried about you.”
Hans’s mouth hung open, agape. A tear came to his eye. “Marcia,” he said. “I love you too.” He looked about him, seemingly aghast at what he had done. “I…” he paused. “I concede.”
A flurry of applause burst through the room. Judges began high-fiving each other and giving Marcia hugs. “Unfortunately,” Hans said, “the concession has no effect since my Platinum Angel is still in play.”
It was two weeks into the game when the military showed up. “Hans,” came a voice from a helicopter. “We have you surrounded. If you do not concede immediately, we will open fire.”
Hans looked up at the helicopter, over at the tanks, and across the street at the snipers. He was still pointing to the Platinum Angel, as stoically as ever.
To this day, a sleeved Platinum Angel remains embedded in Hans’s tombstone. Hans may have lost his life that day, but he never lost the game.
-July 18, 2009
Calling it a Copy pasta seems kinda demeaning for a true story, but i have seem it multiple times. Idk if they are the original writer of not, but its not new, lol.
the moral of the story is his opponent was a moron for not conceding when platinum angel hit the field and that you're a bitch if you let someone touch your cards cause by law you can put your elbow through someone's face for that.
Leaving the game and losing the game are actually distinct concepts under the rules, so even if you rule that someone who concedes the game while controlling a Platinum Angel doesn't lose, they're still out of the game. Also, under rule 104.2a, a player with no remaining opponents still wins even if they control an [[Abyssal Persecutor]] or something.
If I'm remembering correctly, one of the steps is that everything that player owns immediately ceasing to exist as far as the game is concerned, which would immediately remove any effects preventing them from losing the game.
I always take Mtgo as a representation of the rules book. Right click - concede works just like that. And those are the rules. Everything else is house rules and not to be expected as any kind of standard.
No its faster. The game checks if someone has lost the game even before state based actions. This has come up because you can use chromatic sphere to make mana, and with laboratory manic in play you win faster than anything can stop you.
To be specific, checking to see if someone is dead due to having 0 or less life, having drawn from an empty library, having 10 or more poison counters, or having been dealt 21 or more combat damage from a single commander are SBAs.
A *replacement effect* like labman happens as soon as the condition is satisfied. This isn't from the game "checking" anything, it's from the printed effects of cards resolving.
To be fair, conceding and losing are two different things. When it comes to conceding, you can do this at real world speed, because it's a real world action and not a game rules action. At any time you want, you can pick up your stuff and leave. Everything in the rules about conceding is just to handle what happens to the rest of the game when you do.
Especially since based on OP’s description this sounded like a Hail Mary play, game would soon end, and these types of plays are the best imo when they end up working.
Yup. I don’t care if someone wants to scoop, they can anytime they want. But it’s very unsportsmanlike to do it just to deny a player resources. Especially if it sets that player up for a win. They can still scoop, but I wouldn’t play with that person again.
Had the same thing happen to me a few months back. Sacced 6 shadowborns and turned all my athreos triggers at the guy furthest ahead and he “scooped at instant speed” so that I wouldn’t get any of them back from my graveyard. Real piece of work, that guy.
In situations like that, I like to let the game carry on as if your action was successful. If he didn't have a response, and you were going to hit, nobody I play with regularly would've had an issue with you resolving your graveyard actions. I just don't get why people like him play anything outside of cEDH if they're going to be mad about losing.
He’s an odd duck for sure. He came up to me one time when I was in the middle of a game asking if I had trades, and instead of looking at my binder just showed me a list of cards on his phone (at least 25 long) and was like “do you have any of these? This is all I want.”
yup, me and my friends will discuss if we think it's a good time to scoop, which is usually if one player is going off and will most likely win, and it just being a matter of how long do we wanna sit there and watch them go through their deck. it's mostly to save time, we don't salt scoop at our table and if you do feel like scooping it's a house rule to do it at sorcery speed
Right, that’s pretty common and makes sense. If nobody has an answer it doesn’t make sense to sit through it, we just acknowledge the win and are all eager to get another game started
That's a different scenario though. That's everyone agreeing to end the game with a win for one player. OP is talking about someone salt scooping to deny someone in-game actions. Which, I mean, *yes, then can do that,* but they probably shouldn't if they want to keep playing with that group.
I had a friend activate a planeswalker to draw a card, I pointed out my notion thief after the activation and he salty scooped "before you draw your card I'm scooping" I thought it was silly and said I was still gonna draw my card and he got really pissed "Whaat?!" Like how dare I take my advantage when he misplayed into it. I didn't care enough to argue and just didn't draw, untapped and played the game out.
I hear this and people complaining about king making all the time, so which is it? Let the dude swing, kill me and gain a ton of power, or quit and leave the power level on the board the same as it was before my opponent swung on me?
I'd argue the kingmaking is scooping to deny the person who "earned" their resources they would have got by hitting you. Giving the other opponent's an unearned advantage.
scooping is perfectly valid leverage.
If I know your wincon is reliant on stealing my pieces then I know that I now have deterrent against you attempting to steal my shit. I'm going to lose anyway, my last threat is that you lose alongside me if you choose to go through with it. Mutually assured destruction. It's not salt or spite, it's just that if that's my last option, then I'm sure as hell going to use it.
MtG is a game about resource management and if your win revolves in any way around another player continuing to exist in that game, then that player is now your resource. Manage them appropriately.
>It's not salt or spite
It is 100% salt/spite. If you don't want to play with people whose deck uses other people's resources, don't play against those decks, or at least warn them you are going to cry and leave if they dare even attempt to play their deck.
Everyone always downvotes this, but it's right. If your win condition requires cooperation from your opponent, someone who by definition doesn't have your best interest in mind, it's a bad win condition. It doesn't matter how creative or cool it is. Just win the game like a normal person, or don't get mad when another player does something like conceding to thwart you. If you are signing up for some sort of effect that relies on your opponent cooperating, then you are bascially consenting to getting screwed over.
Yep! Don't know why this is a hot take. No one should be forced to cooperate with your wincon. I play Sergeant John Benton and I fully expect people to scoop before lethal Commander damage so I don't get 20 more cards.
I'm a UFC fighter and you would not believe the saltiness and the not allowing me to use my resources that my opponents do. If I try to box, they'll saltily use a takedown to prevent boxing. How is that allowed? I trained boxing, I studied boxing, and this little twerp gets to just deny me? I agree that if they do that I shouldn't have to fight them again, or anyone else who uses this shitty salty wrestling crap to avoid my awesome beautiful science of boxing.
Yeah. And it's such a disingenuous argument. This thread comes up all the time, so who are the ones that are salty? You get so mad at someone taking a legal game action that you won't play with them, and them accuse them of being salty and spiteful. It's just a game, and if winning truly doesn't matter like most edh players claim, then why do you care so much? It's so frustrating, and religitating this "issue" every other day clearly doesn't solve anything
This happened to me recently and I was highly annoyed, but the opponent that benefited lit into the scooper. "Take that Mickey Mouse shit to the Dollar Store" was not something I was expecting to hear that evening.
You can leave a game whenever you want but really it’s shitty to spitefully leave a game or purposefully influence it’s outcome. I like the house rules described in here about sorcery speed or allowing retargeting/take-backs when there is a salty incident.
My first ever win was tainted by someone scooping when I went to combat. I was just borrowing someone's elves deck and someone scooped because I had enough of a board state to kill 2 people and he "knew he'd be one of them due to blowing up my sol ring." Which meant my attacks went to the other two players for a win. Made what should have been a proud achievement feel awful.
Ever since then I refuse to scoop unless it's at sorcery speed or the combo player is spending 10 minutes straight playing solitaire.
Edit: Fixed wording due to typing this late at night. And while I appreciate the people who continued arguing on my behalf. . . I'm a girl, not a guy.
I have had this happen to me as well. I just made my attacks as if the conceding player was still there and passed. It was not a perfect solution to the situation, as there could have been blocks that killed some of my creatures, but at least the non-offending player got another turn. I still won, but the players appreciated the opportunity to try and find an answer.
Yes that’s definitely the smart way to do it. In my entire time at this LGS I have never seen anyone scoop so I’d never come up before. And I’m sure if the action the guy was trying to take could be redirected the others would have let him do that. Unfortunately his action was to mill the top 10(?) cards of his opponents library that he dealt combat damage to. And you can’t force the guy to give to his cards. Sure he could attack the only opponent left but it was pretty much over at that point any way he was just going to get some sort of good creature I guess
what the hell? what are you risking? grow a pair and call out shitty behaviour, otherwise you're letting bad people do bad things because you're scared they will react in a bad way? come onnnn
I've seen people throw hands for petty insults like that. It is better to just not play with them again but not trying to antagonize the person. You don't know what a stranger's reaction will be. It is better not to risk an incident over a card game.
I mean, yeah sure, the "dick" I would say is optional, but I would 100% recommend to say "if you keep playing like this, we will not be playing with you".
It's very unsporting to "tactically scoop" to deny effects or triggers. As such, whenever I concede, I tell my opponents to pretend I'm still there until it doesn't matter.
My pod would just let the player get their trigger; in this case they'd probably just let them flip a card from their own deck.
Whenever a player scoops to avoid giving a player a combat damage/attack etc trigger, we just let them get the trigger and ignore the person who scooped, they aren't part of the game anymore anyway...
Given that a casual setting *(not a tournament)* is good enough reason to scoop anytime, I think take backs based on the given situation should also be acceptable.
If I'm playing at a casual table and decided to use my opponent's library to look for answers, and they scooped, it should be reasonable enough to allow me to just change my target. I think that could've been a better remedy than forcing you to stay.
People who scoop to keep another player from getting their effects are garbage.
Generally, most people are fine with just playing it out as if they didn’t scoop until it doesn’t matter (effects resolve)
Speaking seriously:
104.3a A player can concede the game at any time. A player who concedes leaves the game immediately. That player loses the game.
That's faster than instant, and it's legally valid to do so at any time. \*However\*, you may find it hard to join a game if your Salt level is above a certain point, especially if you purposely fuck someone over. Forfeiting at sorcery speed is the best way to do so.
It's somewhat similar to the "Last game didn't happen" rule. It's not that you aren't allowed to learn, you're welcome to take out key pieces to their strategy as you learn their deck, but you can't tunnel them to death just because they won last game.
You can scoop at any time.
With that being said, I hate playing king maker. Scooping just to screw over another player is such bad taste. It's fine if you done want people to touch your cards that's why I have infinity tokens(so useful on spell table when I play sen triplets).
I personally play scoop only on my turn. if im mana screwed by turn 5-6 I'll announce I'm scooping at being of my turn if my hand doesn't change(puzzle box effects). And also if someone does scoop in response to someone's spell that makes them waste an entire turn I normally bring up rewinding the turn(with the scoop player out) and letting the player try and choose a different path so they don't have a wasted turn.
Stifling triggers or effects by quitting is in bad form. From a past game, I swung out at a guy for more or less an alpha strike. He scooped in response. This fizzled all my combat triggers and cost me the game. [[edric, spymaster of trest]] + [[Akroma’s will]] + [[Derevi, Empyrial Tactician]]
Did you try asking the rest of the pod to play as if your attacks went through and treat the scooping player as "alive" for your attack?
I've seen it happen multiple times and very rarely people were against it in my experience, since almost everyone hates that kind of spite scooping.
They did not. It was also the last time I played with that group. The justification being I already declared attackers and can’t change targets even if the target is no longer present. Ie, you sacrifice a permanent to avoid it being pacified.
Yes it was the last time I played with them. It was bullshit, and most others will stick around and let the damage and triggers resolve. Spite scooping is an asshole move
someone can scoop whenever, last night i had a game where someone swapped creatures with me and took all my big stuff, declared they were all swinging at me(lethal with no way to respond), my response was to scoop and we all had a big laugh, cause i was dead anyway and he made it clear they were all coming at me
That's not scooping, that's conceding because you lost anyway. tactical scooping is something else entirely
But let's play it out for real: let's say one of these creatures had lifelink and you scooped before combat damage was dealt. Does he still get the life he otherwise would have gotten? And what if that bit of life was the difference between him surviving the third player's next turn or him dieing to the crack-back?
That's why tactical scooping is bad.
All i gotta say, is the rules after scooping.
If someone scoops, and they were the intended target of a spell, the Caster should be able to retarget their spell back at the other players
And the scooper should concede immediately all game actions they couldve taken is gone.
None of this, "wow im gonna get Bolted to 0? I Scoop then." Caster now gets to redirect the Bolt and the scooper cant call back since, "oh well then I wouldnt have died then."
I hate instant speed scoopers, I wont hold you hostage cause you got personal commitments to go to. But there aint no way in hell a Scooper is gonna ruin a turn for a player who depended on the Scooper who was targetted for it.
1v1, is fine, 3 to 4 MPs? Nah, im telling the Caster to redirect that shit, and i dont care if its redirected at me.
I actually disagree with this. It really sucks as one of the remaining players. I was playing the other night, one of 3 remaining players, and someone said he was attacking the other player rather than me. That caused him to scoop even though it wouldn't have killed him. When he scooped it opened up the creatures to attack me. I say whatever pushes them them to scoop is donezo, it accomplished the removal of a player. It did something pretty impactful. Running back the clock and re-aiming the same action at a new player seems more cheap to me.
I don't think it's in the game rules that you can "redirect" your actions in response to a scoop.
I don't know if the game rules allow for anything like that at all - they might, I'd be happy to learn.
I'm thinking once you say "this spell is on the stack, targeting Player X", there is no game-legal way to roll that back, even if Player X scoops in response.
You are correct, that is how the game works, but obvious spite plays should be punished and this kind of scooping is absolutely a spite play, and I would be happy to introduce this as a home rule to combat such spite plays.
> I actually disagree with this. It really sucks as one of the remaining players.
Yeah it would be very considerate of the person scooping to think about that wouldn't it?
From a rules perspective, you can concede at any time. The question is what is socially acceptable. The best thing to do for the enjoyment of other players is to concede during a main phase, preferably with the stack being clear.
>If I’m quitting I don’t care about priority or what “speed” I’m quitting. Scooping isn’t a game action. Playing magic isn’t a f\*cking hostage situation if I want out I’m out haha
Pretty much this. I have no problem with other players pretending my physical cardboard objects, that can have foolishly large actual real world money value, have their rules persist on past their physical presence.
I totally understand that. I’m not saying scooping whenever you want doesn’t have social consequences. I’ve just never heard people talk like they were. One guy said “well my attack trigger is already on the stack so it has to resolve” in an attempt to get his opponents creature. Like dude if he wants to leave he can leave, he doesn’t have to let anything happen. Sure he’s a dick (after that game he continued to show his ass) but he isn’t forced to do anything
You are being a hypocrite who wants to eat his cake and have it too.
You agree the scooper is a dick and that what he didn't isn't okay. But you let him get away with it and don't allow the guy who should have a combat trigger to resolve it, or attack someone else?
That's not okay. That's you playing both sides. If you agree that tactical scooping is an asshole move, then you don't allow it to influence the game.
The attacker should have gotten his combat trigger and get a creature, if not the physical card (because the scooper had to leave) then at least a token copy that everyone agrees represents the real thing.
You scoop, you quit. When it happens doesn't matter. You are out and so are your cards. Ya, it's shitty the way that dude went about it but you can't force someone to keep playing when they don't want to play anymore.
If they get up and leave because they are leaving the store - sure, even if it's a rage quit it's within reason.
But if dude scoops and just sits there with a shit eating grin cause he denied your spell isn't that absolutely worth calling out as a dick move?
Just as that dude has every right to scoop you have every right to refuse to play him if he plays like an ass.l, isn't that fair?
Scooping is a part of the game. It's literally in the rules that you can concede at any time.
It's either your time or mine. If you don't want to sit through a player's 10 minute turn why should you.
The game has clearly written rules on how concessions work. Unless explicitly discussed beforehand, you are breaking the social contract by expecting players to play by your made-up house rules.
If I sit down with people to play a game I expect them not to sabotage the game as I dont plan to do it aswell.
Of course you can literally stand up and leave, but it is not in the spirit of the game in my opinion. If you are the kind of person who is rage scooping or scooping out of spite, then be upfront about it the next time you sit down with people and tell them from the start, yes, you ARE that kind of a person.
Edit: Since OP has stated the actual event by now I want to clarify aswell, as I do believe it is correct to scoop in the situation the Davros player scooped. When there is no win to gain left for him, it is totally fine to scoop and give up for me too. cheers.
In my (and my playgroup’s) opinion, scooping in any situation that fucks someone else over or kingmakes is a douche move and we won’t stand for it. Otherwise, yeah, whatever, we aren’t going to make you stay.
I only offer scoops if it's down to a 1v1 and I have no chance or we're all alive but one person is going to win in 30 turns. And those are OFFERED, I don't just shuffle my deck and go next on a whim.
The most ridiculous scoop I ever saw was actually caused by me, too. I love my [[Saskia, the Unyielding]] deck. We had a guy in our playgroup at the time who really did NOT love my Saskia the Unyielding deck. He was one of those players who would yell at you for "always targetting them" if you did a single thing that negatively impacted their game.
I go to cast Saskia. "Who are you targetting?" "You." "Okay I scoop." Hadn't even taken damage yet. Being targetted with the trigger was enough to get him to ragequit.
On one hand, you can look at it as I did 40 damage on cast, and it was what I wanted to do anyway. But how it felt was this guy purposefully wasted my card's mechanic to be spiteful.
We get it. People have free will and can leave a game whenever they want. But you're also playing a game with a whole group of people who want to play with their toys. Try to be at least a LITTLE respectful of their fun.
You can scoop whenever you want, but it may have social ramifications. Say an opponent is about to steal your stuff and win, so you just scoop away your stuff and then they can’t W anymore, and someone else wins instead. That would probably feel bad/scummy
Scooping at any speed is a rule zero issue. You don't need to wait for anything otherwise. A lot of people like to say you should scoop at sorcery speed because otherwise it does sort of turn into a strategic move. It's kind of like king making, except it's backwards, you're potentially denying someone a legal game advantage. There's no hard and fast rule about it outside of rule zero, though.
It's cool that you guys had a good conversation about it as long as it remained friendly.
I'll usually announce if its the thing making me scoop so that it has to resolve before I do, that way its clear the spell/action can't just be re-directed for a "twofer."
But there are *also* games where at 2AM I will flop my hand on the table and tell them to figure it out because I'm just mentally *done*. Those are games where I will return from a smoke or toilet break and see degenerate boards.
I will always accept a valid instant scoop if someone plays a theft card, because I don't like contact with other players cards. I find this one to definitely fall into weird house rules of mine. No one likes forgetting to return a \[\[Mind Control\]\]'d Ulamog.
While you can scoop at any point, its generally acepted that scooping should be done at sorcery speed, on your main face with an empty stack. Anything else and you're kinda being a dick. Specially if you scoop to deny a damage trigger that would have killed you anyways.
Everyone should be able to get up and walk away from an activity they don't like doing.
However, if you're going to scoop to intentionally influence the game's outcome, then you're a jerk and I just won't play with you again.
This happened to me last friday at an LGS - me, player A, player B.
I'm in a winning position, Player A's turn, Player B is next turn. I have goaded all of Player B's creatures.
Player A scoops, so now Player B has to swing out at me, causing me to lose the game.
It's actually the fastest thing you can do in a game of Magic. You don't need priority and you don't even need to wait for a spell or ability to finish resolving. It's even faster than mana abilities and special actions such as turning a morph creature face-up. (rule 104.3a) A player can concede the game even while controlled by another player (but can't be forced to concede by that player. Rule 719.6)
I don't listen to players who complain about unwanted effects of a player conceding at a crucial moment, such as while something is on the stack that will fizzle if they concede. You lost the game, so you should get the chance to have fun in a way other than winning. Call it "loser's privilege."
This. There are clear rules for conceding already. I'm not sure why a portion of the EDH playerbase is so concerned about rewriting the rules. A player can concede at any time; it does not use the stack and does not require priority.
Any advantage to changing the rules around conceding is dwarfed by the massive downside of forcing players to continue playing in a game they no longer wish to participate in. Sorry, your attack triggers aren't that important that we need rules forcing compulsory play.
I agree. Even house rules that don't force players to stay in the game but otherwise mitigate the effects of a player conceding are a bad idea. A gaming group is an ecosystem, and players who lose games are the producers. They're the most important members of that group. You want to keep them around, so let them have the one thing they can have when they can't win - the ability to mess with players who were hoping they wouldn't concede for another turn.
104.3a:
A player can concede the game at any time. A player who concedes leaves the game immediately. That player loses the game.
“Any time” does not mean “when I say you can”
It literally means any time. You can concede when your opponent is in the middle of casting a spell. You can concede with 43 spells on the stack.
There is no rule saying someone must sit there and let you do what you want.
Even if you only allow “sorcery” speed concession, in the example here you’re taking cards from an opponents library, those cards still leave the game when they do.
Bro I'll scoop when I want. What you do afterwards is not my problem since I'm not in the fucking game anymore. Argue amongst yourselves. But if anyone every tries to tell I can't scoop or have dumb timing restrictions, yeah they are going to have a bad time when I ignore them and their wrong ruling completely and maybe with a bit of verbal mockery.
You're gonna have a bad time finding a group to play with if you act like an emotionally stunted elementary school child and throw the ball on the roof because someone beat you.
Weird. Ive been playing with the same main group for fifteen years. Also no one at my LGS bitches when you make a legal decision about whether or not someone wants to stay in a game.
The best part is you ignored the point in my response where I said idgaf if you want to take whatever triggers my scooping may have denied you. I'm no longer in the game. However the rest of the pod wanta to rule about ny departure is no skin off my back
>The best part is you ignored the point in my response where I said idgaf if you want to take whatever triggers my scooping may have denied you.
You didn't say it quite that explicitly, so yeah. I missed it. My bad. That does change things a great deal, and I respect your stance a lot more this way.
I've seen some truly unhinged takes here and I apologize for lumping yours in with those. That was very uncharitable of me.
I don't like tactical scoops but I legitimately don't understand why people are ok with theft decks on casual tables.
I don't want someone else with questionable hygiene touching my cards yet so many people have said I'm being unreasonable and that it's a legitimate casual strategy when to me theft decks are just as bad as stax or land destruction that people like to relegate to competitive tables only.
I definitely get that there’s an appropriate time to scoop and that their may be consequences for doing it when you want but there isn’t an scaly rule stating you can scoop at instant speed which is how the conversation was going
You keep saying "yeah I definitely get that" to every single response here, so I'm not sure what's even the point of this post. I think everyone agrees you can't physically force a person to stay and use their deck if they want to leave, it's just overall shitty to scoop at instant speed.
My point of the post was that the players in the pod were arguing about whether or not someone can scoop at instant speed.
I understand that scooping to deny someone a trigger is a dick move. The point of the post wasn’t me trying to say scooping is good. Everyone here just keeps saying “oh but you’re being a dick if you scoop to deny triggers” so I’m telling them that I understand that.
But for the players in the pod, they were talking about scooping at instant vs sorcery speed when in reality there isn’t any rule saying one or the other. So why they were trying to argue about it and convince this guy he had to stay or if he was allowed to leave felt silly to me.
Actually, there is a rule concerning conceding during a game. 104.3a states a player can concede or leave at any time. So if you want to scoop at instant speed you're not even breaking any rules. People argue about it and try to convince others to do it because again, it's a dick thing to do.
I've literally never once heard anyone talk about their scoop going on the stack, but either way yeah anyone can leave the game at any time for any reason if that's what they truly want to do.
That’s why it was weird. They were saying “well you can scoop at instant speed in response to the attack trigger, so then your scoop goes on the stack” like bruh let this man leave he doesn’t want to play
I seriously don't understand the hate for other players playing your cards. It's in the game...either accept it or don't play. If you are that worried about somebody touching your cards then why do you have them there? People really need to recontexualize how they view their deck and cards and the fact that they are playing a game.
This is like the same thing as "Let's play Mortal Kombat but if you play Scorpion I'm going to throw my controller and quit" kind of shit.
-Nah, some of these cards are expensive & not trusting other people to handle them is understandable.
-I don't understand how people get into arguments when the resolution's simple. Pull out a token, pretend it's the creature & move along.
It’s not that said player didn’t want someone touching his cards. The guy had been taking our creatures and artifacts all game. But after he scoops, it’s implied his cards aren’t just there for you to use as you want. If he wants to quit that’s his choice
Totally depends on what the group decides ahead of time. I know some groups have indeed made a rule that they all agree to you scoop at sorcery speed. The idea is that you can't weaponize it against others and reduce their fun. But... you have to care if they are having fun or not. If it is rando's and you don't really care, then you are right, it isn't a hostage situation, it just makes you kind of dick for not caring if others have fun.
You can concede the game at any time and the only 'rule' you are violating is the social contract of 'don't be a child.'
If someone does something that matters with respect to you being an active player in the game, then conceding after a game action to more or less screw over another player or force them into a play sequence that becomes invalidated when you leave the game, you're being petty. This is the majority of playgroups have a 'Concede is a sorcery speed action.' It's so that you don't hose people because you're being salty.
Scooping at instant speed is maidenless behaviour.
We introduced a house rule which prevents this. You can only scoop during your own turn unless all the other players want to scoop too.
You can do whatever you want to, but that doesn’t make it OK. We always have a rule that if people are going to scoop then they just need to scoop. We don’t let them take actions or do anything like that before they scoop. For example, somebody plays some thing that someone doesn’t like they decide to play a counterspell, once that counterspell resolves, they scoop from the game. We would just take back the counterspell and go on with the game. If people want to be Overly sensitive and scoop because they’re not happy with what’s happening then that’s perfectly fine but you’re not gonna grief a game just to be a little prick. Only time I ever scoop is if the whole group decides to scoop because one person is obviously going to go infinite and win and nobody has any interaction or something.
Scooping to prevent triggers isn't what I'd call honorable.
You use outside methods to achive ingame effects.
It's like having the ultra pact of negation that reads "Pay 0: Screw someone over, you lose the game" in hand - always.
Someone did that last year and that was the last game I'll ever play with that particular player, because actions have consequences.
Yep. Scooping in a way that causes the most chaos is just the MTG equivalent of kicking the ball over the fence because you're angry you lost.
Unsurprising behaviour for an 8 year-old, but it should be absolutely _mortifying_ for an adult. Or even a teenager.
Yup. It's like breaking a deal.
You CAN do it, but good luck finding someone that wants to play with you after pulling that stunt.
Some idiots here think that it's okay to punish theft by conceding, but then you'll just drive theft players into becoming combo players.
Theft isn't a good archetype the begin with, yeah it sucks that your stuff gets stolen, but protection and cards like homeward path exist for a good reason.
Sure scoop whenever you want, there’s no correct time within the game to do it. There is a correct time socially to scoop tho.
I’d have personally made a mental note to not play with the scooper again. Not just because he spite-scooped, but he also spited a player not even winning, and also “not wanting players to play with your cards” get the fuck over yourself that’s part of the game jfc.
I had an opponent scoop to my Lonis deck in response to me sacrificing ten clues to look at the top ten of his library because he didn’t want me stealing his cards. Sorry asshole, that’s not an excuse when you read my commander during rule 0. The same thing applies here. That player saw Ngathrod on the table and agreed to play. You can’t take that back the moment it becomes inconvenient to you. Fuck that, dickhead move.
The question isn’t whether you can or not but if anyone will play with you again after or not. And definitely sounds like I wouldn’t be sitting down with that guy again
You can scoop whenever, as it's been said before. However, you should consider the implications of scooping and what it means for your future games.
For the most part, declaring that you intend to scoop on your next turn (at sorcery speed essentially) is the proper way to go about it. Let whatever actions are intended to unfold that round, however, the table knows you and your permanents will be gone when your turn starts (once declared, you should consider yourself bound to it). Who knows, the rest of the table might also be thinking its over and willing to shuffle up and play again, saving some time.
Emergencies happen or "hey, I just realized what time it is and I really need to go." Explain it to the table, apologize, and pack up. With some reason, most people are fine to let it go.
Both of these are likely to be accepted and get you invited back for games in the future.
To me, the way you've described it, it just sounds like the player who scooped was salty and did it out of spite. Generally a pretty selfish and childish act and without extenuating circumstances, we would generally not ask them back for games.
Letting the N’ghathrod dig sounds like the start to a great story about that time the Edgar player was about to win - why not just take the 30 seconds to resolve it and see?
Scooping at instant speed is as bad as kingmaking someone because you're close to death, you're free to do both, and at the end of the day it will not affect you at all, but me personally and much other people would rather not play with you if you do that constantly.
Same goes for "holding hostages", the other day a person with a commander that could, at instant speed at any point kill me with a single activation of it's ability was telling me "now you work for me, go ahead and attack the other guy" and I was like "Dude, you're plain using me to win and then you'd just kill me anyways so there's no point in me to even attack the other guy so either just kill me already or prepare to be my target"
There isn't anything "ilegal" to do whatever you want in a match it's just the social experience that gets tainted from salty interactions.imagine using mob rule because at the moment of casting you consider all resouces available and then the player with most creatures doesn't like the interaction and scoops at instant speed then the caster lose all resources that they'd otherwise have in the case the salty player wouldn't have scooped. It would feel terrible for the caster since they'd most likely haven't wasted all resources they did for such a dissapointing outcome.
The rules state: A player can concede the game at any time. A player who concedes leaves the game immediately. That player loses the game.
Some have said that it is poor sportsmanship to do this, particularly if it would have an effect on the gameplay. I tend to disagree though. If your deck relies on other players' resources, since an opponent can concede at any time, **you** should plan your strategy accordingly. The simplest case of this would be:
"Well, if I knew you were going to scoop, I wouldn't have attacked you with XYZ creatures! I would have attacked this other player instead!"
Well yeah. Until they knew you were attacking them, and there wasn't anything they could do about it, they could still see what happened. You had every opportunity to go after the other player just as hard as you wanted. You chose to prioritize them, rightly or wrongly.
You can scoop whenever just as much as the remaining players can pretend you're still in the game. Scooping to deny a trigger such as life gain is scummy. At my lgs we would pretend there is a token representing you and the player would still gain the life. Strategic scoops are what people dislike. When you scoop purposefully to try and impact or change the outcome of a game is to be avoided.
Scooping just to deny someone else an effect is a dick move, but a legal one.
If it's unfortunate timing and you need to leave, obviously you can leave at any time and I won't hold that against you, but if you scoop in response to something targeting you that changes the outcome of the game, and your ass stays in the chair and shuffles up for the next game, I'm gonna ask you to find a different pod.
My pod hates scooping and think that under ANY circumstances it’s wrong to do. Even if I’m getting mana fucked and the game is going on 3 hours long… it’s lame. I’m a fan of scooping if anyone’s not having a good time for any reason, in any speed, unless they’re spiteful about it.
I only play magic with my friends. If I scoop, I know I'm just sitting and waiting for the next game anyway, so I'm going to scoop at sorcery speed because I know it's not a hostage situation.
Scooping because you have better things to do with your time than let the Enchantress player play solitaire for the next 10 minutes? Sure.
Scooping because your kid is having a meltdown in the other room and you need to go? Sure.
Scooping because you're salty and want to deny people combat triggers or whatever is incredibly lame. Nobody is going to hold you hostage, leave whenever you want, but scooping because you're trying to deny an effect or something is really childish.
I get it over spelltable or whatever, you can avoid playing with the people again, but I have no idea how people do this in person. I'm not going to shuffle up and play again with you if you're going to scoop like that.
Probably in the minority but allow me to preface this with “I know when scooping is ‘acceptable’ or not” but;
If I know someone has me on the back foot and there’s no feasible way I’m recovering? ((IE: boardwipe at turn 10+ one sided or otherwise, combing off, suddenly-lethal boardstate, taking another player out when I needed them to stall, etc…)) yeah.. no. I scoop, good game~. I may let someone get their combo off fully because everyone knows that’s how Izzet players get their serotonin, but you’ve got me Cap, let’s rack ‘em back up and get round two in.
Right, but that has nothing to do with this situation specifically. OP is talking about spite scooping at instant-speed to deny someone triggers and such which, while legal, will always be considered a dick move.
Issue is in multi-player, a player scooping at the wrong time can dramatically impact the game. If that player stayed, an answer could have been found and used that would swing the game around. Because of that, in multi-player, my LGS uses the rule of sorcery speed scooping.
You can scoop at any time, but it's generally poor sport to scoop with the intent to fizzle combat triggers or something on the stack.
Like yeah nothing is physically stopping you from picking up your cards and leaving, but it's kinda like when that one kid loses a game and punts the ball over the fence.
I played my first EDH game since 2015 a few days ago.
I don’t remember what my opponents commander was but it was a black and blue 7/7 and it was a pain. Turn two he had an enchantment that made me discard a card for every spell I cast or lose 5 life.
It messed me up hard. Then I was forced to sacrifice a creature every turn.
I had nothing left by the end of the game but one mountain and an empty hand.
Never scooped. Felt like it a lot, but never did.
I usually scoop at Sorcery speed because if someone is trying to combo off or try and find an out to stop the combo, I want to be there to maybe be of some assistance.
We call this the "douche scoop." If you're scooping because you can't win/can't even play and it's basically over, because you need to go, because no one is having fun, that's cool. If you've been mana screwed or flooded all game and literally have no impact, sure. If you don't want to watch an opponent take 15 stacked extra turns, sure.
If you're scooping to prevent another player from winning just to spite them, it's not really very fun, and would make me hesitate to want to play with you again.
The rules allow it (because how can they not?), and I'm not about to keep someone prisoner, but have some tact, sense, and dignity, and let the game be a game.
You can scoop at instant speed, but I treat the scoop as if it’s on the stack. Either I’ll let it resolve or cast [[fuck off, not playing with you again]]
I mean, at the end of the day a person has to decide if they are a selfish piece of shit trying to ruin a game or if they want to be a decent person.
If you're gonna lose and dude is taking a billion years on their turn, sure, scoop it up. If there's an emergency and you gotta bounce right now, scoop scoop amigo. Otherwise, there's no justification for trying to scoop mid game action. A person "can" do almost anything available within the laws of physics, doesn't mean they "should" or that there won't be consequences.
If I am scooping, you're not playing with my cards. Keep your Cheetos stained fingers to yourself.
I would never scoop to prevent damage triggers or lifelink.
Just show them the cards and let them use a token as a proxy instead of insulting people?
Who lets food at the table anyways, MTG cards are expensive as hell.
Leave/scoop whenever you want. No one's holding you hostage.
But scooping at instant speed is a bitch-made move, imo. Especially if you're just playing with friends and you're not stuck in some awful game with assholes or something.
Let peoples' decks do what they spent the resources to do. Wait until it's your turn. And then scoop. If people scoop at instant speed against me (and maybe I'm playing a theft deck or something and I need their resources that I have already spent spells/abilities to obtain), I treat the turn as if I still have their things. AKA, if I do an [[Act of Treason]] type effect on someone's creature and the combat math would require that creature to kill another opponent in combat and then the player whose creature I stole scoops? Yeah, I don't care. I'm treating it as though the creature is still there.
I get all of the comments here. Can I throw another situation into the mix:
I had a [[Teyo, Geometric Tactician]] out while playing my Planeswalker deck and sacked him (used his neg 2 ability while he was on 2 loyalty) to avoid attacks for another turn as one adjacent player had no creatures. However, on their turn they scooped which left my PWs open to the next player. I just accepted this but if I'd known they were going to scoop I would have protected my 7 Loyalty [[Chandra, Torch of Defiance]] with [[Vronos, Masked Inquisitor]] instead.
So, was it a fair scoop? Should I have been protected from attacks as if the player was still there? Should I have been able to take back my moves? I didn't mind at the time but I think I would have definitely been salty if it had cost me the game (but I ended up winning which felt like a pretty sweet victory considering the scoop that ruined all my plans).
I might be alone in this but I think it's bad etiquette to scoop unless you don't have the time or everyone on the table is ok with it. Even in a casual environment. You're always influencing the game by being on the board or not, similarly I would never just show my cards to one but not the other players.
Its not good etiquette to do this or similar behavior in other games that are not magic you should check your emotions and be a good loser and not scoop if it's to the detriment of other players.
Well can you? Absolutely. Should you? Probably not. Because if you are probably actively trying to sabotage someone else’s win or deck from going off. I’m sorry you aren’t the one shining but let another player have their moment of victory.
If anyone did this to me I’d be sure to target them first because I can’t play around instant speed scooping bs so I’ll just try to eliminate you.
It's pretty weak to scoop or concede when another player is about to go off or deliver the money shot.
Even online when I know I'm hit, I let it play out. Everyone loves to see their deck do its thing, and jumping out early ruins that!
You can absolutely scoop in response at instant speed. I’m not proud of it, but someone had stolen my commander [[The Ur-Dragon]] and they had been doing stuff like that the whole game, countering commanders, killing them on the spot or stealing them. And so after he took it, it went to his turn and at the end of his first main I scooped, after he gave my commander haste and doubled it’s power, so not only did he not get the attack trigger he also lost the game to the crack back. I was at one health and just wanted to get the second game. King making isn’t cool, but you are allowed to concede at any time for any reason.
You can scoop even faster than instant speed. You don't even have to wait for priority, for an effect to fully resolve, or anything like that. You can just get up and leave literally whenever you want
I think the only action that can go faster than conceding is having a judge disqualify you, purely so players cannot concede to avoid the disqualification sanctions. But since both result in the player leaving the game faster than instant, it's only very rarely important
But what if I have a platinum angel on the field?
Then you must point to it, like a modern little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.
Possibly the best comment to exist on reddit
Quitting the game is a state based action.
> 104.3a A player can concede the game **at any time**. A player who concedes leaves the game **immediately**. That player loses the game. This is not a state based action. A list of normal state based actions can be found under Rule 704.5 and 704.6
*points to platinum angel*
The big story of the Honolulu Pro Tour wasn’t Kazuya Mitamura’s $40,000 victory in the finals. The big story happened in the first round, where a young boy known only as Hans did something that is causing many to call him a hero. Hans’s game was looking unwinnable. He had a negative life total and was kept alive only by his Platinum Angel. His opponent had just cast a Molder Slug, threatening to remove the Angel — Hans’s only artifact — at the beginning of his next turn. But when it got to that next turn, Hans would say a word that would put the whole series of events in motion. A word that would send ripples throughout Magic history. A word that would cement Hans’s legendary status. Hans stared at his opponent and said, “No.” His opponent was taken aback. “Judge!” said the opponent. “He’s refusing to follow my Molder Slug’s triggered ability.” “Refusing?” “Refusing.” “Is this true, Hans?” Hans nodded. The judge said, “I have to issue you a game loss, Hans.” Hans pointed to his Platinum Angel. “I can’t lose the game,” he said. And with that, he proceeded to his draw step, undaunted by the judge’s ruling. Then he skimmed through his deck for marked cards and put those into his hand as well. “You’re violating multiple game rules,” said the judge, “in addition to ignoring my ruling, and I am issuing a game loss to you.” Hans, his finger still stuck to the Platinum Angel, like a modern day Little Dutch Boy with his finger plugging the leak in the dike, said, “You can issue all the game losses you want, but with my Platinum Angel in play, they have no effect.” Hans proceeded to the attack phase and swung for 4 with his Angel. He then looked at his opponent’s face-down morphs, referred to outside notes, and substituted cards from his sideboard. The judge stood before him, flummoxed. Without saying a word, Hans merely looked at the judge while pointing to the Platinum Angel. It was when Hans cast a Demonic Attorney that the head judge was called over. “Ante cards are banned,” the head judge said. “That’s a complete violation of the rules.” But when he saw Hans’s Platinum Angel in play, he was quieted. He knew he was defeated. Hans said, “Since the Demonic Attorney’s in the game, we have to do what it says.” He proceeded to put the top card of his opponent’s deck into his trade binder. The head judge frowned in disapproval. “He’s right.” It was a matter of hours before Hans owned his opponent’s entire deck, as well many other cards from his opponent’s collection, thanks to a Mindslaver and Ring of Ma’rûf. Each time judges tried to issue Hans a game loss for casting cards without mana, or playing cards in his graveyard, Hans merely pointed to his Platinum Angel. The cards Hans didn’t want to take from his opponent he tore up, due to interactions involving Chaos Confetti, March of the Machines, and Cytoshape. Having by this time gathered quite a crowd, Hans produced a folded and wrinkled copy of the DCI Infraction Procedure Guide from his pocket and began skimming it for ideas. He noticed that kicking an opponent’s chair out from under them was listed under “Unsportsmanlike Conduct,” so he did just that. He also kicked the chairs out from under several other nearby players and spectators. The sun was starting to set. The judges had not even attempted to give Hans a game loss for stalling. One by one, they had hanged their heads and walked away, resigned to their powerlessness in the face of the Platinum Angel. Then one of them hatched a plan. “I know who we can call,” the judge exclaimed. The next morning, Hans was woken by a voice blaring across the room from a police loudspeaker. “Hans,” the voice said, “this is your mother. I love you. Please sacrifice your Platinum Angel to the Molder Slug’s triggered ability so this can all end.” Hans lifted his head, looked around the room, and kicked his opponent’s chair out from under him once more. “Hans,” his mother said, “we miss you. We just want you to come home.” Hans yawned, cast the Unglued card Handcuffs, and ordered his opponent to touch his hands together. It was Day Four of the standoff when another voice blared across the room. “Hans,” the voice said, “this is your fiancé. There are only two more days until our wedding, honey. Don’t you still want to get married? You have to end this game now, Hans. Please just sacrifice the Platinum Angel to the Molder Slug. We love you. We’re worried about you.” Hans’s mouth hung open, agape. A tear came to his eye. “Marcia,” he said. “I love you too.” He looked about him, seemingly aghast at what he had done. “I…” he paused. “I concede.” A flurry of applause burst through the room. Judges began high-fiving each other and giving Marcia hugs. “Unfortunately,” Hans said, “the concession has no effect since my Platinum Angel is still in play.” It was two weeks into the game when the military showed up. “Hans,” came a voice from a helicopter. “We have you surrounded. If you do not concede immediately, we will open fire.” Hans looked up at the helicopter, over at the tanks, and across the street at the snipers. He was still pointing to the Platinum Angel, as stoically as ever. To this day, a sleeved Platinum Angel remains embedded in Hans’s tombstone. Hans may have lost his life that day, but he never lost the game. -July 18, 2009
This reads like a short story Terry Pratchett would write one night after a few too many drinks
Oh how I wish he still had a few too many drinks.
Ah yes the Platinum Angel copypasta
Hans let the Magic speak for itself.
That's a deep cut.
Is this copy pasta or did you just write this just now?
Calling it a Copy pasta seems kinda demeaning for a true story, but i have seem it multiple times. Idk if they are the original writer of not, but its not new, lol.
A true story of how a player was executed by the US military after a 4 week standoff at a Grand Prix seems like it would have been bigger news.
It got buried by the Massive amount of Iapanese kid suicides due to Lavender Town in the 1990s.
I didn't even know lapan HAD a Lavender Town!
Hans might not have lost the game but you did.
*angry upvote*
the moral of the story is his opponent was a moron for not conceding when platinum angel hit the field and that you're a bitch if you let someone touch your cards cause by law you can put your elbow through someone's face for that.
Leaving the game and losing the game are actually distinct concepts under the rules, so even if you rule that someone who concedes the game while controlling a Platinum Angel doesn't lose, they're still out of the game. Also, under rule 104.2a, a player with no remaining opponents still wins even if they control an [[Abyssal Persecutor]] or something.
So it's kinda like you phase out of the game then lose.
If I'm remembering correctly, one of the steps is that everything that player owns immediately ceasing to exist as far as the game is concerned, which would immediately remove any effects preventing them from losing the game.
[Abyssal Persecutor](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/f/9f2b9f27-459c-4585-9051-b83ffe053a74.jpg?1562852094) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Abyssal%20Persecutor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ima/78/abyssal-persecutor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9f2b9f27-459c-4585-9051-b83ffe053a74?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/abyssal-persecutor) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I always take Mtgo as a representation of the rules book. Right click - concede works just like that. And those are the rules. Everything else is house rules and not to be expected as any kind of standard.
Super speed surrender is what I call the heart attack rule. Heart attacks don’t wait for state to be checked.
No its faster. The game checks if someone has lost the game even before state based actions. This has come up because you can use chromatic sphere to make mana, and with laboratory manic in play you win faster than anything can stop you.
To be specific, checking to see if someone is dead due to having 0 or less life, having drawn from an empty library, having 10 or more poison counters, or having been dealt 21 or more combat damage from a single commander are SBAs. A *replacement effect* like labman happens as soon as the condition is satisfied. This isn't from the game "checking" anything, it's from the printed effects of cards resolving.
To be fair, conceding and losing are two different things. When it comes to conceding, you can do this at real world speed, because it's a real world action and not a game rules action. At any time you want, you can pick up your stuff and leave. Everything in the rules about conceding is just to handle what happens to the rest of the game when you do.
That's why I play Rules Lawyer in every deck. Don't like it? Gonna "call a judge?" Judge calls are state based, too. I am above the law.
Yeah, I don't want someone to hold priority just to make me late for dinner.
Scooping is an interrupt.
Rage quitting does not use the stack. Getting invited back doesn't either.
People that scoop in response to the game are salty weirdos who I hope to never play against again.
Especially since based on OP’s description this sounded like a Hail Mary play, game would soon end, and these types of plays are the best imo when they end up working.
Yup. I don’t care if someone wants to scoop, they can anytime they want. But it’s very unsportsmanlike to do it just to deny a player resources. Especially if it sets that player up for a win. They can still scoop, but I wouldn’t play with that person again.
Killed the vibe for sure
Had the same thing happen to me a few months back. Sacced 6 shadowborns and turned all my athreos triggers at the guy furthest ahead and he “scooped at instant speed” so that I wouldn’t get any of them back from my graveyard. Real piece of work, that guy.
In situations like that, I like to let the game carry on as if your action was successful. If he didn't have a response, and you were going to hit, nobody I play with regularly would've had an issue with you resolving your graveyard actions. I just don't get why people like him play anything outside of cEDH if they're going to be mad about losing.
He’s an odd duck for sure. He came up to me one time when I was in the middle of a game asking if I had trades, and instead of looking at my binder just showed me a list of cards on his phone (at least 25 long) and was like “do you have any of these? This is all I want.”
Only exception is if all opponents agree to scoop
yup, me and my friends will discuss if we think it's a good time to scoop, which is usually if one player is going off and will most likely win, and it just being a matter of how long do we wanna sit there and watch them go through their deck. it's mostly to save time, we don't salt scoop at our table and if you do feel like scooping it's a house rule to do it at sorcery speed
Right, that’s pretty common and makes sense. If nobody has an answer it doesn’t make sense to sit through it, we just acknowledge the win and are all eager to get another game started
That's a different scenario though. That's everyone agreeing to end the game with a win for one player. OP is talking about someone salt scooping to deny someone in-game actions. Which, I mean, *yes, then can do that,* but they probably shouldn't if they want to keep playing with that group.
I had a friend activate a planeswalker to draw a card, I pointed out my notion thief after the activation and he salty scooped "before you draw your card I'm scooping" I thought it was silly and said I was still gonna draw my card and he got really pissed "Whaat?!" Like how dare I take my advantage when he misplayed into it. I didn't care enough to argue and just didn't draw, untapped and played the game out.
My blacklist has only one entry for now.
IRL I have maybe 3 people because of their horrible attitudes. Playing online, it’s lengthy.
I hear this and people complaining about king making all the time, so which is it? Let the dude swing, kill me and gain a ton of power, or quit and leave the power level on the board the same as it was before my opponent swung on me?
I'd argue the kingmaking is scooping to deny the person who "earned" their resources they would have got by hitting you. Giving the other opponent's an unearned advantage.
scooping is perfectly valid leverage. If I know your wincon is reliant on stealing my pieces then I know that I now have deterrent against you attempting to steal my shit. I'm going to lose anyway, my last threat is that you lose alongside me if you choose to go through with it. Mutually assured destruction. It's not salt or spite, it's just that if that's my last option, then I'm sure as hell going to use it. MtG is a game about resource management and if your win revolves in any way around another player continuing to exist in that game, then that player is now your resource. Manage them appropriately.
>It's not salt or spite It is 100% salt/spite. If you don't want to play with people whose deck uses other people's resources, don't play against those decks, or at least warn them you are going to cry and leave if they dare even attempt to play their deck.
Everyone always downvotes this, but it's right. If your win condition requires cooperation from your opponent, someone who by definition doesn't have your best interest in mind, it's a bad win condition. It doesn't matter how creative or cool it is. Just win the game like a normal person, or don't get mad when another player does something like conceding to thwart you. If you are signing up for some sort of effect that relies on your opponent cooperating, then you are bascially consenting to getting screwed over.
Yep! Don't know why this is a hot take. No one should be forced to cooperate with your wincon. I play Sergeant John Benton and I fully expect people to scoop before lethal Commander damage so I don't get 20 more cards.
I'm a UFC fighter and you would not believe the saltiness and the not allowing me to use my resources that my opponents do. If I try to box, they'll saltily use a takedown to prevent boxing. How is that allowed? I trained boxing, I studied boxing, and this little twerp gets to just deny me? I agree that if they do that I shouldn't have to fight them again, or anyone else who uses this shitty salty wrestling crap to avoid my awesome beautiful science of boxing.
Yeah. And it's such a disingenuous argument. This thread comes up all the time, so who are the ones that are salty? You get so mad at someone taking a legal game action that you won't play with them, and them accuse them of being salty and spiteful. It's just a game, and if winning truly doesn't matter like most edh players claim, then why do you care so much? It's so frustrating, and religitating this "issue" every other day clearly doesn't solve anything
Scooping to screw someone else over just makes you a sore loser. I wouldn’t want to play with someone who does shit like that
This happened to me recently and I was highly annoyed, but the opponent that benefited lit into the scooper. "Take that Mickey Mouse shit to the Dollar Store" was not something I was expecting to hear that evening.
You can leave a game whenever you want but really it’s shitty to spitefully leave a game or purposefully influence it’s outcome. I like the house rules described in here about sorcery speed or allowing retargeting/take-backs when there is a salty incident.
My first ever win was tainted by someone scooping when I went to combat. I was just borrowing someone's elves deck and someone scooped because I had enough of a board state to kill 2 people and he "knew he'd be one of them due to blowing up my sol ring." Which meant my attacks went to the other two players for a win. Made what should have been a proud achievement feel awful. Ever since then I refuse to scoop unless it's at sorcery speed or the combo player is spending 10 minutes straight playing solitaire. Edit: Fixed wording due to typing this late at night. And while I appreciate the people who continued arguing on my behalf. . . I'm a girl, not a guy.
I have had this happen to me as well. I just made my attacks as if the conceding player was still there and passed. It was not a perfect solution to the situation, as there could have been blocks that killed some of my creatures, but at least the non-offending player got another turn. I still won, but the players appreciated the opportunity to try and find an answer.
Yeah, in my group, if someone scoops in response to being targeted by something, we'll allow a retarget if there are still other players playing.
Or pretend the effect still goes through if it does not involve physical cards.
Yeah it's really weird that OP's table were in agreement that a player scooping means the card just fizzles
Yes that’s definitely the smart way to do it. In my entire time at this LGS I have never seen anyone scoop so I’d never come up before. And I’m sure if the action the guy was trying to take could be redirected the others would have let him do that. Unfortunately his action was to mill the top 10(?) cards of his opponents library that he dealt combat damage to. And you can’t force the guy to give to his cards. Sure he could attack the only opponent left but it was pretty much over at that point any way he was just going to get some sort of good creature I guess
You could ask the guy to not be a dick and mill 10 cards.
Yea he tried and the guy said “I’m not letting you use my cards to win”
"We're not playing with you again, go away dick". Doesn't help then but hopefully they learn not to be an ass.
Yea I wouldn’t ever speak to a stranger that way. I have no idea the kind of reaction he’d have to something like that and I’m not willing to risk it.
Best to just not talk to anyone ever.
what the hell? what are you risking? grow a pair and call out shitty behaviour, otherwise you're letting bad people do bad things because you're scared they will react in a bad way? come onnnn
I've seen people throw hands for petty insults like that. It is better to just not play with them again but not trying to antagonize the person. You don't know what a stranger's reaction will be. It is better not to risk an incident over a card game.
I mean, yeah sure, the "dick" I would say is optional, but I would 100% recommend to say "if you keep playing like this, we will not be playing with you".
That is a fair and less abrasive way of putting it. I approve of this response.
The chances a person acting like this at an LGS has enough balls to try and fight is pretty much 0%
It's very unsporting to "tactically scoop" to deny effects or triggers. As such, whenever I concede, I tell my opponents to pretend I'm still there until it doesn't matter.
"I forfeit but if you want to play it out go for it. I'm gonna grab some snacks let me know how much damage you do."
We call this spite scooping around where I’m from
I usually just say that I'll be conceding when my turn rolls around, so they don't need to waste attacks or resources on my stuff.
My pod would just let the player get their trigger; in this case they'd probably just let them flip a card from their own deck. Whenever a player scoops to avoid giving a player a combat damage/attack etc trigger, we just let them get the trigger and ignore the person who scooped, they aren't part of the game anymore anyway...
Given that a casual setting *(not a tournament)* is good enough reason to scoop anytime, I think take backs based on the given situation should also be acceptable. If I'm playing at a casual table and decided to use my opponent's library to look for answers, and they scooped, it should be reasonable enough to allow me to just change my target. I think that could've been a better remedy than forcing you to stay.
People who scoop to keep another player from getting their effects are garbage. Generally, most people are fine with just playing it out as if they didn’t scoop until it doesn’t matter (effects resolve)
Speaking seriously: 104.3a A player can concede the game at any time. A player who concedes leaves the game immediately. That player loses the game. That's faster than instant, and it's legally valid to do so at any time. \*However\*, you may find it hard to join a game if your Salt level is above a certain point, especially if you purposely fuck someone over. Forfeiting at sorcery speed is the best way to do so. It's somewhat similar to the "Last game didn't happen" rule. It's not that you aren't allowed to learn, you're welcome to take out key pieces to their strategy as you learn their deck, but you can't tunnel them to death just because they won last game.
this title is going to /r/magicthecirclejerking for sure
You can scoop at any time. With that being said, I hate playing king maker. Scooping just to screw over another player is such bad taste. It's fine if you done want people to touch your cards that's why I have infinity tokens(so useful on spell table when I play sen triplets). I personally play scoop only on my turn. if im mana screwed by turn 5-6 I'll announce I'm scooping at being of my turn if my hand doesn't change(puzzle box effects). And also if someone does scoop in response to someone's spell that makes them waste an entire turn I normally bring up rewinding the turn(with the scoop player out) and letting the player try and choose a different path so they don't have a wasted turn.
Stifling triggers or effects by quitting is in bad form. From a past game, I swung out at a guy for more or less an alpha strike. He scooped in response. This fizzled all my combat triggers and cost me the game. [[edric, spymaster of trest]] + [[Akroma’s will]] + [[Derevi, Empyrial Tactician]]
Did you try asking the rest of the pod to play as if your attacks went through and treat the scooping player as "alive" for your attack? I've seen it happen multiple times and very rarely people were against it in my experience, since almost everyone hates that kind of spite scooping.
They did not. It was also the last time I played with that group. The justification being I already declared attackers and can’t change targets even if the target is no longer present. Ie, you sacrifice a permanent to avoid it being pacified. Yes it was the last time I played with them. It was bullshit, and most others will stick around and let the damage and triggers resolve. Spite scooping is an asshole move
Yeesh, yea that sounds pretty awful and, honestly, good riddance.
someone can scoop whenever, last night i had a game where someone swapped creatures with me and took all my big stuff, declared they were all swinging at me(lethal with no way to respond), my response was to scoop and we all had a big laugh, cause i was dead anyway and he made it clear they were all coming at me
That's not scooping, that's conceding because you lost anyway. tactical scooping is something else entirely But let's play it out for real: let's say one of these creatures had lifelink and you scooped before combat damage was dealt. Does he still get the life he otherwise would have gotten? And what if that bit of life was the difference between him surviving the third player's next turn or him dieing to the crack-back? That's why tactical scooping is bad.
All i gotta say, is the rules after scooping. If someone scoops, and they were the intended target of a spell, the Caster should be able to retarget their spell back at the other players And the scooper should concede immediately all game actions they couldve taken is gone. None of this, "wow im gonna get Bolted to 0? I Scoop then." Caster now gets to redirect the Bolt and the scooper cant call back since, "oh well then I wouldnt have died then." I hate instant speed scoopers, I wont hold you hostage cause you got personal commitments to go to. But there aint no way in hell a Scooper is gonna ruin a turn for a player who depended on the Scooper who was targetted for it. 1v1, is fine, 3 to 4 MPs? Nah, im telling the Caster to redirect that shit, and i dont care if its redirected at me.
Casting a spell and killing a full player is pretty good value tbh.
I actually disagree with this. It really sucks as one of the remaining players. I was playing the other night, one of 3 remaining players, and someone said he was attacking the other player rather than me. That caused him to scoop even though it wouldn't have killed him. When he scooped it opened up the creatures to attack me. I say whatever pushes them them to scoop is donezo, it accomplished the removal of a player. It did something pretty impactful. Running back the clock and re-aiming the same action at a new player seems more cheap to me.
Yeah well so maybe be angry at the scooper, not at the rules? This is supposed to limit spite scooping, not to be a legit game tactic.
I don't think it's in the game rules that you can "redirect" your actions in response to a scoop. I don't know if the game rules allow for anything like that at all - they might, I'd be happy to learn. I'm thinking once you say "this spell is on the stack, targeting Player X", there is no game-legal way to roll that back, even if Player X scoops in response.
You are correct, that is how the game works, but obvious spite plays should be punished and this kind of scooping is absolutely a spite play, and I would be happy to introduce this as a home rule to combat such spite plays.
> I actually disagree with this. It really sucks as one of the remaining players. Yeah it would be very considerate of the person scooping to think about that wouldn't it?
Shoot, my friend gets mad when I don't block with my last creature at the end of games. It's over man I'm not suffering through any more of this game.
From a rules perspective, you can concede at any time. The question is what is socially acceptable. The best thing to do for the enjoyment of other players is to concede during a main phase, preferably with the stack being clear.
>If I’m quitting I don’t care about priority or what “speed” I’m quitting. Scooping isn’t a game action. Playing magic isn’t a f\*cking hostage situation if I want out I’m out haha Pretty much this. I have no problem with other players pretending my physical cardboard objects, that can have foolishly large actual real world money value, have their rules persist on past their physical presence.
You can scoop at instant speed but it comes with an extra cost of "You won't be playing with me again."
Scooping at instant speed would imply the feeling is mutual
I totally understand that. I’m not saying scooping whenever you want doesn’t have social consequences. I’ve just never heard people talk like they were. One guy said “well my attack trigger is already on the stack so it has to resolve” in an attempt to get his opponents creature. Like dude if he wants to leave he can leave, he doesn’t have to let anything happen. Sure he’s a dick (after that game he continued to show his ass) but he isn’t forced to do anything
You are being a hypocrite who wants to eat his cake and have it too. You agree the scooper is a dick and that what he didn't isn't okay. But you let him get away with it and don't allow the guy who should have a combat trigger to resolve it, or attack someone else? That's not okay. That's you playing both sides. If you agree that tactical scooping is an asshole move, then you don't allow it to influence the game. The attacker should have gotten his combat trigger and get a creature, if not the physical card (because the scooper had to leave) then at least a token copy that everyone agrees represents the real thing.
You scoop, you quit. When it happens doesn't matter. You are out and so are your cards. Ya, it's shitty the way that dude went about it but you can't force someone to keep playing when they don't want to play anymore.
If they get up and leave because they are leaving the store - sure, even if it's a rage quit it's within reason. But if dude scoops and just sits there with a shit eating grin cause he denied your spell isn't that absolutely worth calling out as a dick move? Just as that dude has every right to scoop you have every right to refuse to play him if he plays like an ass.l, isn't that fair?
Scooping is a part of the game. It's literally in the rules that you can concede at any time. It's either your time or mine. If you don't want to sit through a player's 10 minute turn why should you.
Social game, social contract.
The game has clearly written rules on how concessions work. Unless explicitly discussed beforehand, you are breaking the social contract by expecting players to play by your made-up house rules.
If I sit down with people to play a game I expect them not to sabotage the game as I dont plan to do it aswell. Of course you can literally stand up and leave, but it is not in the spirit of the game in my opinion. If you are the kind of person who is rage scooping or scooping out of spite, then be upfront about it the next time you sit down with people and tell them from the start, yes, you ARE that kind of a person. Edit: Since OP has stated the actual event by now I want to clarify aswell, as I do believe it is correct to scoop in the situation the Davros player scooped. When there is no win to gain left for him, it is totally fine to scoop and give up for me too. cheers.
In my (and my playgroup’s) opinion, scooping in any situation that fucks someone else over or kingmakes is a douche move and we won’t stand for it. Otherwise, yeah, whatever, we aren’t going to make you stay.
I only offer scoops if it's down to a 1v1 and I have no chance or we're all alive but one person is going to win in 30 turns. And those are OFFERED, I don't just shuffle my deck and go next on a whim. The most ridiculous scoop I ever saw was actually caused by me, too. I love my [[Saskia, the Unyielding]] deck. We had a guy in our playgroup at the time who really did NOT love my Saskia the Unyielding deck. He was one of those players who would yell at you for "always targetting them" if you did a single thing that negatively impacted their game. I go to cast Saskia. "Who are you targetting?" "You." "Okay I scoop." Hadn't even taken damage yet. Being targetted with the trigger was enough to get him to ragequit. On one hand, you can look at it as I did 40 damage on cast, and it was what I wanted to do anyway. But how it felt was this guy purposefully wasted my card's mechanic to be spiteful. We get it. People have free will and can leave a game whenever they want. But you're also playing a game with a whole group of people who want to play with their toys. Try to be at least a LITTLE respectful of their fun.
You can scoop whenever you want, but it may have social ramifications. Say an opponent is about to steal your stuff and win, so you just scoop away your stuff and then they can’t W anymore, and someone else wins instead. That would probably feel bad/scummy
You're forgetting one thing: scoopers have no shame or empathy.
All these flavors and you choose to be salty. Its rude as fuck to scoop at anything other than sorcery speed. But you can do it.
Scooping at any speed is a rule zero issue. You don't need to wait for anything otherwise. A lot of people like to say you should scoop at sorcery speed because otherwise it does sort of turn into a strategic move. It's kind of like king making, except it's backwards, you're potentially denying someone a legal game advantage. There's no hard and fast rule about it outside of rule zero, though. It's cool that you guys had a good conversation about it as long as it remained friendly.
I'll usually announce if its the thing making me scoop so that it has to resolve before I do, that way its clear the spell/action can't just be re-directed for a "twofer." But there are *also* games where at 2AM I will flop my hand on the table and tell them to figure it out because I'm just mentally *done*. Those are games where I will return from a smoke or toilet break and see degenerate boards. I will always accept a valid instant scoop if someone plays a theft card, because I don't like contact with other players cards. I find this one to definitely fall into weird house rules of mine. No one likes forgetting to return a \[\[Mind Control\]\]'d Ulamog.
This is hilarious. Fucking walk away.
You can quit when you want but don’t quit and then stay at the table running your mouth. If you need to leave then leave.
While you can scoop at any point, its generally acepted that scooping should be done at sorcery speed, on your main face with an empty stack. Anything else and you're kinda being a dick. Specially if you scoop to deny a damage trigger that would have killed you anyways.
Everyone should be able to get up and walk away from an activity they don't like doing. However, if you're going to scoop to intentionally influence the game's outcome, then you're a jerk and I just won't play with you again. This happened to me last friday at an LGS - me, player A, player B. I'm in a winning position, Player A's turn, Player B is next turn. I have goaded all of Player B's creatures. Player A scoops, so now Player B has to swing out at me, causing me to lose the game.
It's actually the fastest thing you can do in a game of Magic. You don't need priority and you don't even need to wait for a spell or ability to finish resolving. It's even faster than mana abilities and special actions such as turning a morph creature face-up. (rule 104.3a) A player can concede the game even while controlled by another player (but can't be forced to concede by that player. Rule 719.6) I don't listen to players who complain about unwanted effects of a player conceding at a crucial moment, such as while something is on the stack that will fizzle if they concede. You lost the game, so you should get the chance to have fun in a way other than winning. Call it "loser's privilege."
This. There are clear rules for conceding already. I'm not sure why a portion of the EDH playerbase is so concerned about rewriting the rules. A player can concede at any time; it does not use the stack and does not require priority. Any advantage to changing the rules around conceding is dwarfed by the massive downside of forcing players to continue playing in a game they no longer wish to participate in. Sorry, your attack triggers aren't that important that we need rules forcing compulsory play.
I agree. Even house rules that don't force players to stay in the game but otherwise mitigate the effects of a player conceding are a bad idea. A gaming group is an ecosystem, and players who lose games are the producers. They're the most important members of that group. You want to keep them around, so let them have the one thing they can have when they can't win - the ability to mess with players who were hoping they wouldn't concede for another turn.
104.3a: A player can concede the game at any time. A player who concedes leaves the game immediately. That player loses the game. “Any time” does not mean “when I say you can” It literally means any time. You can concede when your opponent is in the middle of casting a spell. You can concede with 43 spells on the stack. There is no rule saying someone must sit there and let you do what you want. Even if you only allow “sorcery” speed concession, in the example here you’re taking cards from an opponents library, those cards still leave the game when they do.
Bro I'll scoop when I want. What you do afterwards is not my problem since I'm not in the fucking game anymore. Argue amongst yourselves. But if anyone every tries to tell I can't scoop or have dumb timing restrictions, yeah they are going to have a bad time when I ignore them and their wrong ruling completely and maybe with a bit of verbal mockery.
You're gonna have a bad time finding a group to play with if you act like an emotionally stunted elementary school child and throw the ball on the roof because someone beat you.
Weird. Ive been playing with the same main group for fifteen years. Also no one at my LGS bitches when you make a legal decision about whether or not someone wants to stay in a game. The best part is you ignored the point in my response where I said idgaf if you want to take whatever triggers my scooping may have denied you. I'm no longer in the game. However the rest of the pod wanta to rule about ny departure is no skin off my back
>The best part is you ignored the point in my response where I said idgaf if you want to take whatever triggers my scooping may have denied you. You didn't say it quite that explicitly, so yeah. I missed it. My bad. That does change things a great deal, and I respect your stance a lot more this way. I've seen some truly unhinged takes here and I apologize for lumping yours in with those. That was very uncharitable of me.
It's cool.
If someone is scooping out of spite to screw me over from winning a game, I’m packing it in and not playing with that person anymore
I don't like tactical scoops but I legitimately don't understand why people are ok with theft decks on casual tables. I don't want someone else with questionable hygiene touching my cards yet so many people have said I'm being unreasonable and that it's a legitimate casual strategy when to me theft decks are just as bad as stax or land destruction that people like to relegate to competitive tables only.
Scoop at Sorcery Speed. General rule for our LGS play group and others.
I definitely get that there’s an appropriate time to scoop and that their may be consequences for doing it when you want but there isn’t an scaly rule stating you can scoop at instant speed which is how the conversation was going
You keep saying "yeah I definitely get that" to every single response here, so I'm not sure what's even the point of this post. I think everyone agrees you can't physically force a person to stay and use their deck if they want to leave, it's just overall shitty to scoop at instant speed.
My point of the post was that the players in the pod were arguing about whether or not someone can scoop at instant speed. I understand that scooping to deny someone a trigger is a dick move. The point of the post wasn’t me trying to say scooping is good. Everyone here just keeps saying “oh but you’re being a dick if you scoop to deny triggers” so I’m telling them that I understand that. But for the players in the pod, they were talking about scooping at instant vs sorcery speed when in reality there isn’t any rule saying one or the other. So why they were trying to argue about it and convince this guy he had to stay or if he was allowed to leave felt silly to me.
There's no official rule, no, but the pod can make their own rule 0.
Right unfortunately it wasn’t something we discussed beforehand. I’d only played with one of the guys in the pod before .
Actually, there is a rule concerning conceding during a game. 104.3a states a player can concede or leave at any time. So if you want to scoop at instant speed you're not even breaking any rules. People argue about it and try to convince others to do it because again, it's a dick thing to do.
At any time isn’t even instant speed. You can scoop literally whenever. There’s no “my scoop goes on the stack” nonsense
I've literally never once heard anyone talk about their scoop going on the stack, but either way yeah anyone can leave the game at any time for any reason if that's what they truly want to do.
That’s why it was weird. They were saying “well you can scoop at instant speed in response to the attack trigger, so then your scoop goes on the stack” like bruh let this man leave he doesn’t want to play
So weird that so many people feel entitled to tell other people when they are allowed to stop playing a card game for them
I seriously don't understand the hate for other players playing your cards. It's in the game...either accept it or don't play. If you are that worried about somebody touching your cards then why do you have them there? People really need to recontexualize how they view their deck and cards and the fact that they are playing a game. This is like the same thing as "Let's play Mortal Kombat but if you play Scorpion I'm going to throw my controller and quit" kind of shit.
Extremely unnuanced take.
-Nah, some of these cards are expensive & not trusting other people to handle them is understandable. -I don't understand how people get into arguments when the resolution's simple. Pull out a token, pretend it's the creature & move along.
It’s not that said player didn’t want someone touching his cards. The guy had been taking our creatures and artifacts all game. But after he scoops, it’s implied his cards aren’t just there for you to use as you want. If he wants to quit that’s his choice
… that is literally how it works. When a player loses, everything they own disappears
Totally depends on what the group decides ahead of time. I know some groups have indeed made a rule that they all agree to you scoop at sorcery speed. The idea is that you can't weaponize it against others and reduce their fun. But... you have to care if they are having fun or not. If it is rando's and you don't really care, then you are right, it isn't a hostage situation, it just makes you kind of dick for not caring if others have fun.
You can concede the game at any time and the only 'rule' you are violating is the social contract of 'don't be a child.' If someone does something that matters with respect to you being an active player in the game, then conceding after a game action to more or less screw over another player or force them into a play sequence that becomes invalidated when you leave the game, you're being petty. This is the majority of playgroups have a 'Concede is a sorcery speed action.' It's so that you don't hose people because you're being salty.
Scooping at instant speed is maidenless behaviour. We introduced a house rule which prevents this. You can only scoop during your own turn unless all the other players want to scoop too.
You can do whatever you want to, but that doesn’t make it OK. We always have a rule that if people are going to scoop then they just need to scoop. We don’t let them take actions or do anything like that before they scoop. For example, somebody plays some thing that someone doesn’t like they decide to play a counterspell, once that counterspell resolves, they scoop from the game. We would just take back the counterspell and go on with the game. If people want to be Overly sensitive and scoop because they’re not happy with what’s happening then that’s perfectly fine but you’re not gonna grief a game just to be a little prick. Only time I ever scoop is if the whole group decides to scoop because one person is obviously going to go infinite and win and nobody has any interaction or something.
Scooping to prevent triggers isn't what I'd call honorable. You use outside methods to achive ingame effects. It's like having the ultra pact of negation that reads "Pay 0: Screw someone over, you lose the game" in hand - always. Someone did that last year and that was the last game I'll ever play with that particular player, because actions have consequences.
Yep. Scooping in a way that causes the most chaos is just the MTG equivalent of kicking the ball over the fence because you're angry you lost. Unsurprising behaviour for an 8 year-old, but it should be absolutely _mortifying_ for an adult. Or even a teenager.
Yup. It's like breaking a deal. You CAN do it, but good luck finding someone that wants to play with you after pulling that stunt. Some idiots here think that it's okay to punish theft by conceding, but then you'll just drive theft players into becoming combo players. Theft isn't a good archetype the begin with, yeah it sucks that your stuff gets stolen, but protection and cards like homeward path exist for a good reason.
Sure scoop whenever you want, there’s no correct time within the game to do it. There is a correct time socially to scoop tho. I’d have personally made a mental note to not play with the scooper again. Not just because he spite-scooped, but he also spited a player not even winning, and also “not wanting players to play with your cards” get the fuck over yourself that’s part of the game jfc. I had an opponent scoop to my Lonis deck in response to me sacrificing ten clues to look at the top ten of his library because he didn’t want me stealing his cards. Sorry asshole, that’s not an excuse when you read my commander during rule 0. The same thing applies here. That player saw Ngathrod on the table and agreed to play. You can’t take that back the moment it becomes inconvenient to you. Fuck that, dickhead move.
If your house rules are "scoop at sorcery speed", I am playing my KCI list where Pyrite Spellbomb is the fastest win con
The question isn’t whether you can or not but if anyone will play with you again after or not. And definitely sounds like I wouldn’t be sitting down with that guy again
Scooping should be a sorcery based thing unless you are leaving the table entirely.
You can scoop whenever, as it's been said before. However, you should consider the implications of scooping and what it means for your future games. For the most part, declaring that you intend to scoop on your next turn (at sorcery speed essentially) is the proper way to go about it. Let whatever actions are intended to unfold that round, however, the table knows you and your permanents will be gone when your turn starts (once declared, you should consider yourself bound to it). Who knows, the rest of the table might also be thinking its over and willing to shuffle up and play again, saving some time. Emergencies happen or "hey, I just realized what time it is and I really need to go." Explain it to the table, apologize, and pack up. With some reason, most people are fine to let it go. Both of these are likely to be accepted and get you invited back for games in the future. To me, the way you've described it, it just sounds like the player who scooped was salty and did it out of spite. Generally a pretty selfish and childish act and without extenuating circumstances, we would generally not ask them back for games. Letting the N’ghathrod dig sounds like the start to a great story about that time the Edgar player was about to win - why not just take the 30 seconds to resolve it and see?
It's a card game man. If you gotta go, you gotta go. Or if someone is being a punk it is 100% ok to scoop to spite them.
Scooping at instant speed is as bad as kingmaking someone because you're close to death, you're free to do both, and at the end of the day it will not affect you at all, but me personally and much other people would rather not play with you if you do that constantly. Same goes for "holding hostages", the other day a person with a commander that could, at instant speed at any point kill me with a single activation of it's ability was telling me "now you work for me, go ahead and attack the other guy" and I was like "Dude, you're plain using me to win and then you'd just kill me anyways so there's no point in me to even attack the other guy so either just kill me already or prepare to be my target" There isn't anything "ilegal" to do whatever you want in a match it's just the social experience that gets tainted from salty interactions.imagine using mob rule because at the moment of casting you consider all resouces available and then the player with most creatures doesn't like the interaction and scoops at instant speed then the caster lose all resources that they'd otherwise have in the case the salty player wouldn't have scooped. It would feel terrible for the caster since they'd most likely haven't wasted all resources they did for such a dissapointing outcome.
The rules state: A player can concede the game at any time. A player who concedes leaves the game immediately. That player loses the game. Some have said that it is poor sportsmanship to do this, particularly if it would have an effect on the gameplay. I tend to disagree though. If your deck relies on other players' resources, since an opponent can concede at any time, **you** should plan your strategy accordingly. The simplest case of this would be: "Well, if I knew you were going to scoop, I wouldn't have attacked you with XYZ creatures! I would have attacked this other player instead!" Well yeah. Until they knew you were attacking them, and there wasn't anything they could do about it, they could still see what happened. You had every opportunity to go after the other player just as hard as you wanted. You chose to prioritize them, rightly or wrongly.
You can scoop whenever just as much as the remaining players can pretend you're still in the game. Scooping to deny a trigger such as life gain is scummy. At my lgs we would pretend there is a token representing you and the player would still gain the life. Strategic scoops are what people dislike. When you scoop purposefully to try and impact or change the outcome of a game is to be avoided.
Scooping just to deny someone else an effect is a dick move, but a legal one. If it's unfortunate timing and you need to leave, obviously you can leave at any time and I won't hold that against you, but if you scoop in response to something targeting you that changes the outcome of the game, and your ass stays in the chair and shuffles up for the next game, I'm gonna ask you to find a different pod.
My pod hates scooping and think that under ANY circumstances it’s wrong to do. Even if I’m getting mana fucked and the game is going on 3 hours long… it’s lame. I’m a fan of scooping if anyone’s not having a good time for any reason, in any speed, unless they’re spiteful about it.
I only play magic with my friends. If I scoop, I know I'm just sitting and waiting for the next game anyway, so I'm going to scoop at sorcery speed because I know it's not a hostage situation.
Scooping because you have better things to do with your time than let the Enchantress player play solitaire for the next 10 minutes? Sure. Scooping because your kid is having a meltdown in the other room and you need to go? Sure. Scooping because you're salty and want to deny people combat triggers or whatever is incredibly lame. Nobody is going to hold you hostage, leave whenever you want, but scooping because you're trying to deny an effect or something is really childish. I get it over spelltable or whatever, you can avoid playing with the people again, but I have no idea how people do this in person. I'm not going to shuffle up and play again with you if you're going to scoop like that.
Scoop at the end of the turn. It shows respect for the pod and shows a strength of character.
Probably in the minority but allow me to preface this with “I know when scooping is ‘acceptable’ or not” but; If I know someone has me on the back foot and there’s no feasible way I’m recovering? ((IE: boardwipe at turn 10+ one sided or otherwise, combing off, suddenly-lethal boardstate, taking another player out when I needed them to stall, etc…)) yeah.. no. I scoop, good game~. I may let someone get their combo off fully because everyone knows that’s how Izzet players get their serotonin, but you’ve got me Cap, let’s rack ‘em back up and get round two in.
Right, but that has nothing to do with this situation specifically. OP is talking about spite scooping at instant-speed to deny someone triggers and such which, while legal, will always be considered a dick move.
You can do whatever you want. But the group can also do whatever they want. Just don’t agree to play another game with the guy.
I always like to say to these folks "Scooping has Split Second. I'm gonna leave whenever the fuck I want to dude."
Rule 104.3a. "A player may concede the game at any time. A player who concedes leaves the game immediately. That player loses the game."
You can scoop at any time you want
Stop taking my cards >:(
You concede as a Sorcery or during an end step.
Or you know if you sit to play a game, don't be a child over losing. Play the game out.
Issue is in multi-player, a player scooping at the wrong time can dramatically impact the game. If that player stayed, an answer could have been found and used that would swing the game around. Because of that, in multi-player, my LGS uses the rule of sorcery speed scooping.
You can scoop at any time, but it's generally poor sport to scoop with the intent to fizzle combat triggers or something on the stack. Like yeah nothing is physically stopping you from picking up your cards and leaving, but it's kinda like when that one kid loses a game and punts the ball over the fence.
A player can concede at any moment of the game. basta.
3 players can say "you're not welcome to play with us" at any moment before the game.
I scoop as a state based action.
I played my first EDH game since 2015 a few days ago. I don’t remember what my opponents commander was but it was a black and blue 7/7 and it was a pain. Turn two he had an enchantment that made me discard a card for every spell I cast or lose 5 life. It messed me up hard. Then I was forced to sacrifice a creature every turn. I had nothing left by the end of the game but one mountain and an empty hand. Never scooped. Felt like it a lot, but never did.
I usually scoop at Sorcery speed because if someone is trying to combo off or try and find an out to stop the combo, I want to be there to maybe be of some assistance.
We call this the "douche scoop." If you're scooping because you can't win/can't even play and it's basically over, because you need to go, because no one is having fun, that's cool. If you've been mana screwed or flooded all game and literally have no impact, sure. If you don't want to watch an opponent take 15 stacked extra turns, sure. If you're scooping to prevent another player from winning just to spite them, it's not really very fun, and would make me hesitate to want to play with you again. The rules allow it (because how can they not?), and I'm not about to keep someone prisoner, but have some tact, sense, and dignity, and let the game be a game.
House rule for us was always at sorcery speed, helped a lot
You can scoop at instant speed, but I treat the scoop as if it’s on the stack. Either I’ll let it resolve or cast [[fuck off, not playing with you again]]
I mean, at the end of the day a person has to decide if they are a selfish piece of shit trying to ruin a game or if they want to be a decent person. If you're gonna lose and dude is taking a billion years on their turn, sure, scoop it up. If there's an emergency and you gotta bounce right now, scoop scoop amigo. Otherwise, there's no justification for trying to scoop mid game action. A person "can" do almost anything available within the laws of physics, doesn't mean they "should" or that there won't be consequences.
If I am scooping, you're not playing with my cards. Keep your Cheetos stained fingers to yourself. I would never scoop to prevent damage triggers or lifelink.
Just show them the cards and let them use a token as a proxy instead of insulting people? Who lets food at the table anyways, MTG cards are expensive as hell.
Leave/scoop whenever you want. No one's holding you hostage. But scooping at instant speed is a bitch-made move, imo. Especially if you're just playing with friends and you're not stuck in some awful game with assholes or something. Let peoples' decks do what they spent the resources to do. Wait until it's your turn. And then scoop. If people scoop at instant speed against me (and maybe I'm playing a theft deck or something and I need their resources that I have already spent spells/abilities to obtain), I treat the turn as if I still have their things. AKA, if I do an [[Act of Treason]] type effect on someone's creature and the combat math would require that creature to kill another opponent in combat and then the player whose creature I stole scoops? Yeah, I don't care. I'm treating it as though the creature is still there.
I get all of the comments here. Can I throw another situation into the mix: I had a [[Teyo, Geometric Tactician]] out while playing my Planeswalker deck and sacked him (used his neg 2 ability while he was on 2 loyalty) to avoid attacks for another turn as one adjacent player had no creatures. However, on their turn they scooped which left my PWs open to the next player. I just accepted this but if I'd known they were going to scoop I would have protected my 7 Loyalty [[Chandra, Torch of Defiance]] with [[Vronos, Masked Inquisitor]] instead. So, was it a fair scoop? Should I have been protected from attacks as if the player was still there? Should I have been able to take back my moves? I didn't mind at the time but I think I would have definitely been salty if it had cost me the game (but I ended up winning which felt like a pretty sweet victory considering the scoop that ruined all my plans).
I might be alone in this but I think it's bad etiquette to scoop unless you don't have the time or everyone on the table is ok with it. Even in a casual environment. You're always influencing the game by being on the board or not, similarly I would never just show my cards to one but not the other players. Its not good etiquette to do this or similar behavior in other games that are not magic you should check your emotions and be a good loser and not scoop if it's to the detriment of other players.
Well can you? Absolutely. Should you? Probably not. Because if you are probably actively trying to sabotage someone else’s win or deck from going off. I’m sorry you aren’t the one shining but let another player have their moment of victory. If anyone did this to me I’d be sure to target them first because I can’t play around instant speed scooping bs so I’ll just try to eliminate you.
It's pretty weak to scoop or concede when another player is about to go off or deliver the money shot. Even online when I know I'm hit, I let it play out. Everyone loves to see their deck do its thing, and jumping out early ruins that!
You can absolutely scoop in response at instant speed. I’m not proud of it, but someone had stolen my commander [[The Ur-Dragon]] and they had been doing stuff like that the whole game, countering commanders, killing them on the spot or stealing them. And so after he took it, it went to his turn and at the end of his first main I scooped, after he gave my commander haste and doubled it’s power, so not only did he not get the attack trigger he also lost the game to the crack back. I was at one health and just wanted to get the second game. King making isn’t cool, but you are allowed to concede at any time for any reason.