PPTQ Report – Oct 1, 2017
Treasure Chest Games | Modern | Time: 12pm – 7pm
HJ: Tobias Vyseri
Players: 33 | Winner: Jon Jeffrey Well, this was a fun one, the previous tournament at this store was not well received, mostly because of the prize support and the vocal nature of the winner.

You can read my report on it here! https://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/36471/

The prize support was such a point of contention in the community, that the day before the event, I was attending a PPTQ as an attendee and a few players came up to me and asked me for prizing details on Treasure Chest.

I arrived and things were similar to the previous time, no printer no floor judge. Deck registration sheets were available though. The first thing I addressed was prize support, I asked the TO can I get a “packs in the pot per player” so I could tell people when they inevitably asked. This time she nodded and told me a firm 3, and admitted that she had spoken to the other stores in the area. I felt a lot more comfortable about this, and while the designation wasn't on their facebook page, it was something I could tell people as they walked in.

buy in was $20, we got 33 players = $660 in the pot
at 3 packs/player valued at $4/ea we get =$396
judge fees were $108
$660-$108-$396 = $156

which, while $156 overhead is significant, it's not as damaging as almost $300 vanishing

players seemed much more comfortable with this breakdown and I heard basically no complaints about prizing.

When I touched base with the TO they also mentioned a “problem player”, I've seen him around and he is generally kind of frustrating to play against and has been known to get in arguments with people. I also saw him do something once that initially seemed fine but upon reflection was probably cheating. I kept an eye on him when I had a spare moment, I tried not to 'loom' too much and floated in the area, fortunately he seemed to be on his best behavior :)

The paperless thing was a little daunting, I'm not a loud person, and am not keen on calling out matches. In the previous tournament there were few enough matches that just having everyone cluster around the screen was fine, but in this one that was not going to work, so I had to yell out at all the players every round. There were actually surprisingly few problems with this. Every round about 5 people came up to verify opponents, but this was honestly fine. I took results verbally which, while always a little unnerving was also fine.

I collected decklists and handed out promos at the beginning of round 1 (it was release weekend so everyone got a promo) I made three announcements at the beginning of the tournament, as there were 3 significant rules/policy changes, one about blood moon, one about legendary planeswalkers, and one about the path to exile/ghost quarter communication policy. I didn't go into detail about the rules changes, as that would run well past most players attention spans, and they're not terribly common in modern, instead opting for brevity and inviting players to be aware that are changes and call me if anything comes up.

In round 1 I made the mistake of deck checking a Lantern control player and having to give them a 12 minute time extension. It was pretty awful for the other attendees.

Luckily they seemed fairly light-hearted about the whole thing. In round 2 I had a deck check in progress when a player came up to me to ask me a strangely concise sounding theoretical question. I stopped him and asked “did this happen just now?” he kind of said yes, so I went over verified the mistake before it could damage the game any more and issued the correct penalties and fix.

The initial player seemed confused at my actions as he viewed his contribution as “interference” I began explaining CompREL and how WotC structured their policy when I saw a hand come up from row 2, I asked them what the issue was and the player said “we were just wondering if you were done with our decks”

I apologized profusely, and got the decks back, handing out another hearty 10 minute extension. I was lucky these two didn't go to time, though I looked pretty unprofessional.

I vowed to skip round 3 deck checks and for the remainder of the tournament only check one of the two decks I grabbed. I'm not entirely used to being alone on the floor yet and think I might have an ambitious idea of how long it takes me to check two decks.

The rest of the tournament was pretty mellow. The local L3 decided to turn up and play so that was a little frightening but I think I was too busy being flustered by everything else that needed doing to actually spend any time being nervous.

The calls were all pretty light, there was a rest in peace & spell question as well as two CMC questions (flip and split cards) that I nailed.

Top 8 went smoothly, the finals culminating in a tron vs. company-combo match, company got it's infinite scry combo off in game 2 and asked me about shortcuts, I recall speaking to some other judges about this and agreed to allow him to “cut” to the card he was scrying to. He picked up his library and found the chord of calling and put it on top, to which I said “no you are supposed to cut to that” I had noticed when he first pulled the card out and took note of where it was in the deck, so I took the deck and returned it to the correct state and then allowed him to cut.



He performed all subsequent shortcuts properly.

Otherwise things went well. Overall I felt like the tone of the tournament was pretty relaxed, players seemed to be in high spirits.

I feel like the event went well for Treasure Chest :)