Greetings judges!

We know that the Penalty Guidelines haven’t been updated in a while, but that fact will not be true for much longer. Right now many people are working on a total revision of that document. It’s still going through changes and shifts as philosophies are debated and codified. However, we want to give you an overview on some of the major changes that you’ll notice.

No more Procedural Errors – This was one of the biggest stumbling blocks for consistency in the past. Some judges would think an infraction would be a Minor and others would feel that Major was more appropriate. This led to a trend of players getting dissimilar penalties for very similar infractions. In the new PG, we’ve clarified the infractions to make it easier for judges to see what error goes where.

Expanded Examples - Some judges are adept at spotting an error, but wanted a little more guidance on how to better resolve the situation. In each infraction, where the fix could get complicated, we’ve added how to go through the process of the penalty and the repair of the gamestate if any.

Failure to Maintain Gamestate infraction – Upper Deck has long held the position that both players are responsible for the gamestate and how it evolves. A player is required to point out any error in the game regardless of who it benefits, but we understand that sometimes things get missed. That’s where this infraction comes in. Each time this infraction is given to a player, we want it to have the reminder about responsibility tacked on. This warning is never upgraded, but repeated instances of forgetting things to a player’s benefit may be cause for an investigation.

Rules Levels – I personally have long held the opinion that some tournaments should have a higher enforcement that others and I’m happy to say that change has made it into this document. All tournaments will either be Normal or Competitive Rules Level. There will be some infractions that will carry a higher penalty at Competitive Level and others will have a different “fix” to allow for the casual play of Normal Level. We want to maintain the low stress environment of local events while still enforcing a higher standard of tournament play at big events.

Expanded Tournament Errors – There has long since been a set of behavior that was incorrect to display at an event, but didn’t quite have an infraction to put it in. We’ve tried to make sure that judges have the tools to correct these behaviors and educate players as well. Players are responsible for following the Tournament Policy in any sanctioned event that they enter into.