In my last (well, I suppose now second-last) post in this blog I explained how the draconian rules enforcing and moderator behavior at the MTG Salvation forums completely killed my passion for the game and its rules, and why I stopped posting in this blog. It is my understanding that the forum is actually moving more and more towards an even more draconian attitude when it comes to the rulings forum, where less and less discussion is allowed.
This is actually a very common thing when it comes to MtG rulings forums out there: Many (perhaps most) of them are absolutely and completely draconian: Only one question and one singular answer from an approved judge is allowed. Period. In many forums everybody else is banned from giving any answer (or if not banned per se, any further posts and discussion is generally quickly removed and the thread locked.)
Honestly, I never understood why this is done, nor why it seems to be so common. The rules of the game are very complicated, and judges are sometimes wrong. They are people, and they are not perfect. The people who understand the entirety of the Comprehensive Rules inside out, from beginning to end, and every single one of even the most complicated and obscure tidbits, is quite small. There are literally tens of thousands of L1 judges, and even L2 judges, out there that get some things wrong, and don't know every single tiny detail and complicated interaction.
And, as it sometimes happens, sometimes the Comprehensive Rules themselves are actually deficient and might need improvement and corrections. I believe that I myself once noticed such a defect in the rules, which eventually led to its fix.
Some time in early 2013 I noticed a curious situation involving an effect instructing a player to cast a spell (without paying its mana cost), and that spell having a mandatory additional cost involving revealing a card of a particular type from the player's hand. I asked about this at the MTG Salvation rulings forum. Back then the forum was still more open-minded, and an actual lengthy discussion ensued. A bit later I made a blog post about that exact question I posed: A hole in the MtG rules?
As a result of that discussion, one of the more senior judges participating in the discussion asked the question at the official Wizards of the Coast rulings forum (which still existed back then), and a similarly lengthy discussion about it ensued there.
Eventually this led to fixing the hole in the Comprehensive Rules with the addition of rule 118.8c: "If an effect instructs a player to cast a spell “if able,” and that spell has a mandatory additional cost that includes actions involving cards with a stated quality in a hidden zone, the player isn’t required to cast that spell, even if those cards are present in that zone."
What I find particularly interesting is that the release notes for the set that introduced that rule change specifically mentioned the cards Wild Evocation and Disaster Radius as an example of such an interaction. These were the exact cards I used in my original question (and the blog post made based on it)! From all the possible cards that could have been used as an example, they chose the two that I had used. This led me to believe that it was precisely my question that eventually led to this rule fix.
I think this is a perfect example of why allowing free discussion in rulings questions is important.
If back then the MtG Salvation rulings forum had been the absolute draconian type where only one answer from an approved judge is allowed on any question, and zero discussion, what would have likely happened is that some judge would have just given an answer like "in a tournament you would need to call the judge to verify that you don't have a creature card in your hand", and that's it. No discussion would have ensued, and this hole in the Comprehensive Rules would probably had never been patched, and it would still exist to this day.
