Oct 22, 2017| Sealed | Time: 12pm – 8:30pm
HJ: Tobias Vyseri | FJ: Justin Schofield
Players: 21 | Winner: Max Gibson-Flader

This one, this was a fairly quiet tournament, Lsom is a pretty quiet store for issues, mostly because since it's so far from the magic center of BC we really only get grinders who come out to play, and they're pretty seasoned, many of them basically know the fixes, the rules and each other, so judge interference is not needed. (minor violations quickly handled by players to their mutual satisfaction do not require judge intervention) and I generally take a pretty hands-off approach. Player cap was 24, but we only hit 21, my FJ said he'd stick around for the first few rounds and then had some things to take care of, which was totally fine, 21 players is easy to take care of, and 21 players that basically take care of themselves is borderline boring. I was feeling very off in the morning, I think I had a touch of the flu or something because the entire day I had a splitting headache and wavered between feeling cold and like I wanted to vomit, so I was very grateful for my L1 taking care of basically all the tournament set up, when I arrived the computer was set-up, deck registration sheets were ready to go, I got product prepared. I got him to do distribution while I went through opening announcements (I think I hit everything this time! Rounds, number of players, HJ & FJ, CompREL) opening procedure went smoothly, we had a triad, so they all passed right for registration. By the time I was done timing the registration and construction my L1 had already prepped the first round pairings and matches.

There were only a few memorable things that happened, the first of which was a strange first strike question where the player wanted to give his creature first strike but have it deal damage at the same time as creatures without first strike, which I understand would be possible only if there were other creatures with first strike (after first combat damage step players get priority and if you confer first strike to a creature it will then deal damage in the regular combat damage step)
My knowledge of the combat damage step is weak, and as I was saying “no” to a player action I wanted to double check, it took a little extra time and I gave him an extension.

Surprisingly, we had zero tables go to turns in this tournament, so every round ended either early, or on time. One round I had a player that went to Starbucks and wasn't back by the time the round timer for the previous round ran out. I posted pairings seated everyone, but hadn't started the round clock and he still wasn't back. His opp looked at me and mentioned a tardiness penalty, I sighed and said “I'm going to look outside, and if I see him, he doesn't get a penalty, if I don't see him, he does.” I poked my head outside and saw him running over. I waved him in and waited another 30 seconds for him to settle before welcoming the players to the third round and starting the clock. I feel like this was pretty reasonable, most tournaments you generally have 10-15 minutes after the round clock to get back, because of tables going to turns and pairings being posted, I ended up posting the pairings before the round timer expired so the player shuffle time was greatly reduced.

When we got to top 8 draft I was feeling quite sick, I handed out packs and got them started, it was 7 regular grinders and one... random guy. One of the regulars asked me about zone drafting and about looking at the pile between picks, I was caught a little off-balance and was a little embarrassed I didn't mention it. I went over the fact that there would be a review period, not to talk about picks and to zone draft. The new guy had a few questions which I answered. I felt a little unprofessional. When I gave them their deck registration sheets the new guy asked me after about 5 minutes “can I start deck building” which I also felt a little embarrassed due to the fact that I had neglected to mention it was a combined construction-deck-building period. The other memorable thing was in semi-finals I noticed that one of the player's sleeves were unevenly worn (some were very worn while others looked newer, something that naturally occurs as you play, break sleeves and replace them) before the finals I inspected, found no pattern but asked if he could change sleeves. He sighed and agreed, his opponent however said “it's late and honestly, I don't really care, I'd rather not wait for him to change sleeves”. I shrugged and said “if 'the entire tournament agrees that Rudolph can use these sleeves' I'm not going to stop you” I felt that it was a borderline 'marked cards' case, I didn't feel he could really gain an advantage and if his opponent didn't mind I wasn't going to be the one that held everyone up for 5 more minutes for basically no reason.

Other than that it was a quiet day, overall quite pleasant, the players were in good spirits, and the tournament ran well :)