PPTQ Report – Feb 4, 2018
Greyhaven | Standard | Time: 11am – 8:30pm
HJ: Tobias Vyseri
Players: 26 | Winner: Liam Malcolm

This was another pretty relaxing tournament. Which was really nice after the two incredibly hectic ones I had earlier, the first thing that happened was a player called saying he was stuck in traffic and was going to be about 5 minutes late. I let him know it was okay and I'd just give him an extension if he had his decklist and sideboard ready to go as soon as he came in.

it was a little diversion from policy, but I was starting the event on time (which is not normal) and felt like I could treat it similarly to a bathroom break, and I'd rather have another person in my event than not. A 5 minute delay is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I also wanted to use this as an opportunity to see if I could change someone's DCI in the middle of an event. I entered him as a 1111111 DCI so that he would be paired like everyone else.

He arrived about 7 minutes late and still had to register a few cards, this really peeved me off, but rather than waste any time considering an infraction I got him seated and issue the extension, which ended up around 10 minutes, long, but no longer than a deck check. I was worried, but got lucky since that table finished before end of round anyways.

I didn't see a way to change his DCI mid event, so I dropped the 1111111 DCI person and entered the player with the correct DCI and paired him against his opponent as a workaround solution.

The other thing of note was that this was a paperless tournament, so all results were reported verbally, this was totally fine. There were no problems this time.

Later in round 1 a player came over to me and said “so we just finished round 1, I began side-boarding and realized that the DFC's in SB are distinguishable because my sleeves are semi-transparent.” I double checked his decklist to ensure there were no other DFCs other than the ones in his sideboard, I didn't feel like a game loss was correct here since he hadn't had any opportunity to gain any advantage. I checked the IPG to see if there was a downgrade option and realized that by default it was a warning and only upgraded if “The Head Judge has the option to upgrade this penalty to a Game Loss if he or she believes that a player noticing the pattern of markings would clearly compromise the integrity of the game.”
which it didn't. Which was really nice. The player was also grateful for the lack of game loss.

It was kind of weird when I went over to his opponent, made note that it had been about 3-5 minutes and they would be getting a time extension but didn't really offer any more info since that would be giving his opponent information about his sideboard plan.

In round 2 I did deck checks, during which I had a player who had finished his game ask me for his deck-list, I had to ask him to wait, since I was running it solo and didn't want to interrupt the check.
I feel like old me would've taken that call and delayed the entire event. But having been in a situation where a deck check extension keeps everyone waiting, I knew that this was not the correct course of action. I apologized to the player later, but he was a veteran and a regular and was super understanding about the entire thing.

I had very few calls and infractions, top 8 was one of those affairs where everyone knew what they were doing and had already seated themselves.

One entire car of players all made it into top 8 so finals had a very jovial and relaxed atmosphere.

The finals were actually the driver and one of the players he had driven, who was also borrowing an entire deck. Which sparked an interesting question consisting of “Judge what do I do if Anthony asks for his entire deck back right now?”

I decided that in this weird corner case, I would let the players solve the fact of whether or not the deck was returned on their own, and if the discussion took too long slow play warnings would start happening.
Then at the end, either Liam would still be in possession of a legal deck or he was not, at which point he would have 10 minutes to find a replacement matching his decklist or fill all slots with basic lands.

Overall it was a very fun tournament, the players seemed generally in good spirits and there was a lot of laughter in the air which is always a good sign, I think!