PPTQ Report – April 30, 2017
Pastimes | Sealed | Time: 12pm – 10:30pm
HJ: Tobias Durose | FJ: Andrew Chell
Number of players: 33 | Winner: Stephen Barnett

We had 32 people at 12:05 and then one guy walked in and asked if we had space for another person. So instead of 5 rounds it was 6 rounds.
The sealed procedure went well, I gave them 20 minuted for opening and registration, and 30 minutes for construction and everyone pretty much finished on time. Notably for the opening and revealing procedure I gave them the instructions all at the beginning and let them do it at their own pace (as soon as the first person was finished the second person could start) I'm not sure if this was the greatest idea, and many players seemed uncertain if they were to wait for me to tell the other person to open or not. I might not do this again and might lean in favor of a more structured sealed procedure. Hmmm...
for the most part though, everyone finished on time and seemed to know what they were doing, there were two players that went to the bathroom at roughly the same time which was weird since they were also registering each others sealed pools. I deck checked them later and looked over their sheets and nothing seemed amiss, however so perhaps I was simply being over zealous.
Andrew, my fabulous floor judge took care of the triad at the back which was fantastic, and organized the decklists as he acquired them, which really expedited the entire clerical organizational process.
During registration/construction I made sure to let players know when their time was running out (5 minute warning) & I feel like this may have contributed to the lack of stragglers in this process. I mean, the skill and experience level of the room was also quite high, so there was that too. My opening announcements were fine, but I failed to introduce myself and Andrew as judges, nor did I mention the REL of the event (which is intuitive but still needs to be mentioned)
I fixed it in the second round by doing both these things in my start of round announcements. But it was still a little upsetting. I did, however feel like I had the players attention and they heard me for the most part, again perhaps I was doing something right, or perhaps the maturity and skill in the room was driving that, who knows.
Deck checks went well, except for the fourth round deck check. So I took the two decks ran though one, no problems, then the other guy I just couldn't find his decklist, after about 8 minutes had elapsed I decided the best thing was to just return it without checking and imply I had checked and resolve the errant decklist later, to not delay the tournament, and then he opened his big mouth and was like “so GL for lands right?” and I had to awkwardly respond “erm well actually we couldn't find your decklist, so you dodged this one for now.” I looked really stupid. His opp. Seemed a little disconcerted too. I got Andrew to dig around in the pile and eventually we found it, it was misfiled. I deck checked the player next round but he had fixed whatever problem he thought he had made by then. Which is fine, I guess. Still it was... sub optimal on our part.
Another thing was a potential slow play candidate, there was a player, I haven't seen him around, he seemed fairly new, and older guy with some kind of disability, his hands were shaking visibly. During the sealed procedure he seemed a little lost but I answered his questions and he managed to work himself out. I was very concerned about having to call slow play on him. I understand it is part of the game but calling it on a guy who clearly has some kind of physical debilitation seems incredibly harsh. In R1 I gave him the old “you do need to try and play a little faster”, he said he was trying. And I told him to do his best. I kept an eye on him throughout the tournament just in case because yes I don't want to be harsh, but at the same time it also isn't super fair to his opponents to be drawn into ties. Luckily only one of his rounds went to time and he seemed to be playing reasonably so I was spared having to give him a warning or anything.
The other thing that happened was one player got a GRV-GPE for I don't know, something kind of insignificant and I also gave his opponent a failure to maintain, because you know, persisting illegal game states and all that. The opp seemed pretty upset and was like “why am I responsible for his stuff?” and I went and explained the “maintaining a legal game state is everyone's responsibility” thing but was sure to mention that triggers were not something he needed to worry about, but had the option of calling. He still seemed a little upset, and when I asked “is this clear” he was like “well no but..” (I think there was a tacitly implied 'I can't appeal this ruling') so I told him that he could come to me afterwards and I would be more than happy to explain anything in the IPG to him & gave the table a time extension. Afterwards he chatted with me and seemed moderately placated. I still feel a little bad but I think I did everything I could.
Otherwise the tournament was fairly quiet. The top 8 draft went very well, no hiccups, players were quiet and focused.
I accidentally called a player by another players name and felt bad for like, 2 hours of the top 8. That was a thing.
In the finals match there was a layers question regarding enigma drake (the */4) and illusory wrappings that it totally nailed. It was kind of funny because the wrappings player drew the card, and as he turned to me to ask me away from the table I already knew what the question was. I told him my answer but said I wanted to confirm, quickly checked layers on my phone and we sat back down. He played it the opponent looked at me and was like “are you sure?” and I was like “unfortunately, yeah”.
Elsewhere in the top eight someone tried to play a Nissa with no blue mana and earned himself a GRV.
Otherwise things went well. The tournament ran smoothly, players seemed happy. All was well :)