Ask the Judge, 12/23/2005: Feature Friday

Mana Weaving, by Peter Jahn

[We have another guest writer this week. Peter Jahn is a regular SCG columnist and, I am sure, needs no further introduction. This is a subject that every player should be familiar with, but many are not. —Seamus]

Recently, judges debated whether mana weaving was legal and/or acceptable. Mana weaving is the process of stacking your deck in a 1 land, 2 non-land pattern, or something similar, before shuffling up. The short answer is that it is legal—it's just really, really dumb.

A lot of casual players mana weave their decks. This seems to date back to the days of having decks with 20 lands, 20 creatures and 20 spells. Back in the day, that was a standard method of (mis)building decks—and mana weaving was a way of ensuring that those decks didn't lose quite as often as they should have. That was then—but some people still try this now.

The first question is whether mana weaving is illegal under the rules. A quick search of the Comprehensive Rules, Universal Tournament Rules and Magic Floor Rules all fail to find references to mana weaving. It is not specifically banned. However, there is a rule that has a direct bearing.

At the start of a game, each player shuffles his or her deck so that the cards are in a random order.

— MtG Comp. Rules, Sec. 101.1.

and

... Regardless of the method used to shuffle, players' decks must be sufficiently randomized. ... By presenting their decks to their opponents, players are stating that their decks are correct, legal, and sufficiently randomized.

— DCI Universal Tournament Rules, Sec. 21.

Having lands evenly distributed throughout your deck is not random. Having your lands evenly distributed in your deck is called, in the common tongue, [in the parlance of our time... -S] stacking your deck. It gives you a distinct advantage. If you doubt that, then consider whether this seems fair to you: whenever your opponent is mana screwed, he can restart the game. You cannot.

Playing with a mana woven deck is an advantage.

However, the rules don't care about what you do before you present your deck, provided you sufficiently randomize your deck before presenting it. Getting true randomization is tricky—it requires more shuffling that you might think. But, provided you shuffle enough to completely randomize the deck before you present it, it's okay. Let's put it another way. Mana weaving is okay, provided you shuffle enough to completely undo the mana weaving. You just have to take extra time to completely undo everything you just did.

Here's another little rules snippet:

Before each game, competitors have three minutes to shuffle their decks and present them to their opponents for additional shuffling and/or cutting. This three-minute period includes sideboarding, if applicable ... Shuffling requirements specified in section 21 apply during these steps.

—DCI Universal Tournament Rules, Sec. 23.

Yes, there is a specific limit on the amount of time you can spend sideboarding and shuffling. If you want to waste that time mana weaving, then doing the extra shuffling to undo that mana weave, you can. Just remember, three minutes is not a lot of time. It is a real time limit, and real penalties apply if you exceed it. Typically, at lower level tournaments, that penalty will just be a short lecture from the judge (technically, a "caution"), but it can be worse. If, for example, you have won game one and appear to be deliberately stalling so that your opponent will not have enough time to finish game two, that is cheating, per the rules, and you can be disqualified.

You are allowed to mana weave your deck, but as a judge, if I see you wasting time like that, I am going to be watching the clock pretty closely. If you go over the three minutes, I am going to call you on it. The first time you may just get a caution, but if you exceed the 3 minute rule a couple times, the penalties will escalate into game and match loses—and even disqualification if it still continues.

Here's another relevant rule.

After decks are presented and accepted, any player who does not believe his or her opponent has made a reasonable effort to sufficiently randomize his or her deck must notify a judge.

—DCI Universal Tournament Rules, Sec. 21.

Must. The opponent is required to call a judge if they have any question about whether your deck is randomized. Now the statistics are messy, but 7-8 riffle shuffles are a minimum number that could even begin to randomize a deck—and sticky cards, worn sleeves and so forth will increase that number. That's almost impossible to do in three minutes, if you start by wasting time mana weaving your deck. Therefore, if you mana weave, then shuffle and present within the timeline, your opponent still has almost no choice but to call a judge.

Even if your opponent believes you shuffled enough and does not call a judge, you are probably not out of the woods. Here's another rule:

Spectators and members of the press who believe they have observed rules violations should inform a judge.

— DCI Universal Tournament Rules, Sec. 14.

If an onlooker notices something fishy, they are supposed to notify a judge. That means that if a spectator notices you mana weave your deck, and suspects your shuffle was insufficient, then he or she is supposed to notify a judge. The rules don't say "can" or "may"—they say "should." In short, if you mana weave and you aren't called on it by your opponent, the odds are pretty good that, sooner or later, some spectator is going to question your shuffling technique and call a judge on you. That is exactly what they are supposed to do.

So what happens once the judge is called? Generally, the judge is going to come over and ask you how you typically shuffle, then ask both you and your opponent how you shuffled this time. After that, the judge is going to take your deck and study the card order to see whether it is, in fact, random.

One of four things is going to happen, based on what the judge finds.

1) The deck is random.

The judge will spend a couple minutes studying your deck, during which time you get to sit there wondering whether you are going to get a game loss, or even be expelled from the tourney. Most people do not find this enjoyable. Eventually, if everything is okay, the judge will tell you and your opponent that the deck is random. Your match will get a time extension—meaning that your match might delay the whole tournament and the whole room may end up waiting for you.

The judge will almost certainly recommend that you not mana weave your deck in the future. More importantly, you should now assume that the judges will keep an eye on you for the rest of the tournament, especially if you continue mana weaving. If you make mistakes in shuffling, sideboarding or in the early game, the odds of being caught and penalized will have gone way up.

By the way, this is the best possible outcome.

2) The deck is not random.

This is bad. You have deliberately manipulated your deck in a manner that creates an advantage (ensuring that you are not mana screwed is a huge advantage), failed to shuffle it sufficiently and then presented it. You and the judge are going to have a very serious discussion. If you argue that you had no idea that what you were doing was wrong, and had no idea that it gave you an advantage, and the judge believes you (which might happen if you are six years old and this is your first ever tournament), or somehow otherwise convince the judge that it was an honest mistake, then maybe you are just going to get a warning or game loss. If the judge thinks you should know the rules—for instance, if he has already talked to you about mana weaving—the you are probably going to get disqualified for cheating, which means you get booted from the tournament, the DCI investigates, and your reputation with the local judges and players suffers.

3) The deck is random, but looks stacked.

Random means that the deck is in one of the billions of billions of possible starting positions—and some of the possible random outcomes are two spells, one land stacks—just like one possible random outcome is a deck stacked in alphabetical order. It's unlikely, but not impossible—and if your deck does randomly end up looking like it was freshly mana woven, judges are not going to give you the benefit of the doubt. They are going to treat it just like item 2 above, because you did start by mana weaving the deck. You stacked it, now it looks just like the way you stacked it: any rational person is going to assume that you did some type of shifty fake shuffle—not that you just got stung by a one in a gazillion chance.

A far more likely event is that the deck will look close to mana woven—and the difference between random-but-almost-ordered and ordered is a very tough call. You are basically gambling with how, exactly, the judge will make that determination—and the penalty if you lose is a DQ.

4) The deck is random, but the deck check will reveal some other problem.

I wrote an article that discussed deck checks. There are a lot of possible problems that can be discovered during a deck check—everything from bent cards to worn sleeves to failure to desideboard to having dropped a card without noticing and presenting a 59 card deck. All of those problem will, if spotted by a judge, get you a penalty. Several of them result in game loses, or worse.

And, of course, you can also expect the judges to keep a close eye on you all tournament, as described back in outcome number 1.

A quick question: have you ever been deck checked in a tournament? Did you enjoy it? How would you like to be deck checked every round—or every game?

Just mana weave your deck.

I was hoping to end this article by quoting the [O]fficial policy pronouncement from the WotC staff on this, but I cannot find it. I'll just reiterate:

Mana Weaving is not illegal. The rules only care whether your deck is randomly shuffled when you finally present it to your opponent.

However, note that the exact same thing can be said of marking your deck. You could write the name, or a special code linked to the name, on the back of each card to identify the card, and that would not be illegal—provided you had completely erased all evidence of the marking before you presented your deck. It is not illegal until you actually present the deck.

Neither of these is a good idea.

PRJ

jahnp AT itis DOT com

Feel free to discuss this in the forums.