Seattle, Washington | Legacy & Standard | Time: Thursday April 5th – Sunday April 8th
Legacy - Players: 1600 | Winner: Daniel Duterte (Grixis Delver)
Standard - Players: 1400 | Winner: Gan Yan (Mono Red)

Thursday – Last Chance Trials


My First LCT
This was kind of interesting, since I haven't been on last chance trials before. I wasn't really sure if they were CompREL or regular at first (when I got on shift I found out they were Comp) also they were 4 rounds instead of the usual side event 3. Now if you've ever done sides at a GP you know that the room is loud and no one can hear you scream (just like in space) and so starting times become a little fluid because Game Lossing 20 people is not good customer service, and not really practical. Which is fine at Regular, but at comp we kind of have infractions for tardiness. Luckily it was agreed upon by many of the staff members that enforcing stuff like this was going to be an appeal-laden mess, especially in a single elimination tournament, so instead we opted for a softer GL at 5 and ML at 10. This didn't really slow us down a whole lot, and saved me and others a lot of headaches. Another weird nuance was that instead of being run on-demand they were run every 15 minutes (alternating between legacy and standard) I've never been on LCT's before so I'm not sure if this is how it's usually done, but it felt kind of strange. Especially because basically no one was interested in standard LCTs on Thursday. Which lead to some mid-day restructuring. At first we were told to run our first two rounds and then hand off the last two rounds to another team (so that we avoided situations where one judge was watching like 3 players and instead we had one judge watching 9 players, 3 from three different events) this was changed when it became pretty clear that a lot of the standard LCTs just weren't firing, which freed up a lot of judges, and space, allowing judges of events that did fire to watch them through to completion. Another thing that struck me as odd about LCTs is that they're single elimination, which meant my events shrunk dramatically each round. It was a little jarring after running so many scheduled side events that started as 150 person events and basically ended with the same number of people. I'd start with 50 people and go into round 25 with half that.

The Worlds Smallest LCT
My first event was a 9 man standard (this is literally the minimum number for an LCT to legally award byes) and boy did it have issues, a few minutes after the announcement, I only had 50% of my players. Which meant I had like, 4 players. I certainly wasn't going to GL basically every match, so instead I did another announcement and managed to track some of my people down. It worked out okay, because two of my players didn't have decklists. The current policy was that if they didn't have it in R1, they needed to get it to me by the start of R2, but since half my players were missing I just let them fill it out while we were waiting for the rest to filter in. The next issue was that the scorekeeper forgot to put in my starting table number, so my pairings and match slips were wrong. I didn't really want to bother her again, especially for such a tiny event, and with just 4 matches it wasn't hard to fix manually. But that coupled with the really tiny event and players filtering in whenever made the entire thing feel very casual. Afterwards I had a 50 person legacy event that ran WAY more smoothly for some reason.

Dude, Where's My Event?
When I was trying to fire my 5pm legacy event, I was told to find the HJ of the 4:45 standard and find out their last table number so I could remit it to my scorekeeper. This proved to be pretty difficult, since the events seemed to end at the 4:30 legacy. Eventually I just used that table number, however while I was looking for the 4:45 standard event three players came to me and asked me about it. I told them I didn't really have any information, but that it should be announced soon.
When I went back to the scorekeeper to give them my table number and inquire about the standard on behalf of the players I was informed that that event had been canceled. This concerned me because we had 3 players out in the wild still believing their event was going to fire. On my way back to the launch of my event I did catch one the players and had the opportunity to tell them that their event wasn't firing, but I think I should've asked score-keeping to make some kind of announcement for them. I didn't know if it was my place to make the kind of request, since I felt it might be stepping on the HJ of that events toes, and I did discuss it with the HJ of the event later and he seemed to think it was fine, but I can't help but wonder, how long were those other players waiting? I think in the future I'll probably just request the announcement on their behalf.

Friday – End of Round Legacy - Day 1


Do Androids Dream of Purple Foxes? (AKA My First Experiences with EOR)
This was a little jarring at first, since I've never done end of round before and only learned about Purple Fox through diffusion (ie. By hearing that we were using the app and derping around until people stopped telling me I was doing stuff wrong). I was hoping my team lead would kind of go through things in a little more detail than he did at the meeting during the beginning of the day, but he had previously sent us a flurry of emails which probably covered what I wanted him to go over. I think I might've been a little cocky because I'm pretty comfortable around technology, and so I only skimmed the emails when I should've read them a little more closely. So that was on me. In the future I'll be a little more careful and will read everything over, even if I think I might know it already (there will always be something new). Thus my lack of preparation lead to my first round being kind of messy, luckily there were some experienced judges on the floor that were quick to give me some suggestions for feedback and changes I could be making to improve. After stumbling through my first round I had a pretty strong battle plan for round 2. Unfortunately I was going on break for round 2. So I gave my replacement my super strong battle plan instead.
He actually seemed impressed by my explanation which made me feel a lot better after my rocky start. I remembered how at GP Toronto I kind of made some mistakes and it ruined my entire day, and decided that was not going to happen again this GP! When I got back I felt like round 3 EOR went very smoothly. As did the rest of the rounds. Until I found out in round 8 that I was supposed to be clearing my white matches with the auto clear button. Also I found out in round 7 that I was supposed to be meeting at main stage at the start of every round, which I also hadn't been doing.
Overall I feel like while I wasn't perfect, I felt pretty confident in my EOR performance. I like to think one of my strengths is learning new things. Especially software things.
I also felt a lot better than at Toronto, I got the opportunity to be on main event again, but it didn't feel so scary and intimidating this time. I was able to deliver my rulings with confidence, and only got appealed once, on a tardiness penalty (which often isn't much of an appeal). I managed to nail all my rules questions and even managed to execute policy very competently, I felt pretty good about the day. And was glad to be given the opportunity to work the event.

If A Legacy Deck Falls in a Forest, Will a Judge Pick it Up?
I found it completely astounding at how many people derped off and just left their legacy decks lying on tables. I returned no less than two of these to lost and found. These things are worth more than cars guys! I know at the start of one round I was doing my usual wandering and I noticed a player at his table riffling through his bag looking distraught as the announcement was made to start playing. I turned my head away and looked back and he was gone. I exchanged a glace with his opponent and asked “so, where did your guy go?”. The opponent shrugged. “He started looking through his bag, said something about missing a deck and ran off”. “is he coming back?” The player shrugged. I floated around and eventually at 43 minutes on the clock the player came back looking much less panicked. Another judge was on the tardiness call already but I walked over to see how it was unfolding, the player was explaining that he sat down, realized his deck was missing and disappeared. I corroborated this story with the judge taking the call, mentioning that, while he didn't explicitly tell a judge what he was doing, I saw him in his seat at the start of round, and kind of knew where he was going. Because of this we managed to save him the game loss and just give him a time extension.

Friday – End of Round Legacy - Day 2


Day 2: Cardmagheddon
It was a little intimidating to be on day two of a GP. And everyone on my team seemed very experienced and competent, so I felt pretty outclassed. I still wasn't super confident in my EOR abilities, but I tried my best not to be a total mess. During round 2 I was trapped in a weird situation, there were two players who seemed a little at odds with each other, me and another judge were covering the area, and we both agreed that someone needed to sit on the match to ensure nothing weird happened, he was watching it while I floated the area, but he ended up getting a call on an adjacenet match that turned into an lengthy appeal. I decided to sit on the problem match in his stead but got pretty absorbed and by the time I looked back up at the clock it was already 7 minutes to time. I thought about my EOR responsibilities, but felt like we had more than enough people to cover it, and this seemed a little more important. When the match finally ended I returned to the front stage and was sharply told to go and sweep and stop gathering at the front. I was a little taken aback by this, but wandered into the field to find something to help with, even though that is precisely what I went up front to ask about. Luckily at the beginning of next round I managed to touch base with that team member, and realized that she was a little frustrated since I had been missing from EOR the previous round, and while she agreed my reasoning was fine, perhaps in the future I will delegate a little better so I can take care of my assigned tasks.

Premature Preordain
Because there were a lot of us oftentimes there would be 2+ judges at each call. I was the second judge at such a call, where the player cast a preordain, and rushed through the resolution, to his opponent's chagrin, the opponent had wanted to respond. The judge on the call issued a GRV and backed up the preordain. Which is *fine*. However I recalled the days of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy in standard, where rushing through his ability could dramatically change the game state. I didn't feel like rushing priority was an intractable offense, just a miscommunication, and felt like while backing up was totally legitimate, issuing a GRV felt kind of strange. The other judge disagreed, but we were both interested in getting some other thoughts on the clearly divisive topic. At the end of the GP we managed to reconnect and found that there were a fair amount of people on either side of the fence.

Marked Cards or Just Air?
I took a marked cards call during R4, the player took me aside and explained to me that he could tell a card in his opponent's deck was clearly marked, I took a look, and sure enough, I could pick it out, I shuffled a few more times and got it. But then I lost it completely. 3/5 times I got it but couldn't pick it out anymore. I was a little disgruntled, I couldn't issue marked cards but tell the player to change nothing, that was nonsense. Additionally, and I wouldn't have taken the call if I'd known this was the case, but the 'marked cards' player was actually a local TO that uhmm, I get the impression he doesn't have a terribly high amount of respect for me. So while I was trying to figure out why this card had disappeared he turned and looked at me and said “yeah I know my deck has a lot of foils, but like, can you maybe check with someone else or something” I sighed, this wasn't unreasonable since I'd been scrutinizing the pile for a minute or two at that point, but when I'd realized it was him I felt much more nervous about the call. I checked with another judge and he also couldn't find the card. At that point I finally managed to logic out that the card was a sideboard card, and that it probably hadn't been shuffled as much as the other cards, and was filled with air at the beginning of my investigation, but through a few riffles, was no longer airy. In retrospect, this is a really good way to mark cards invisibly and perhaps I should've issued the infraction anyways. Unfortunately I think I was a little nervous around this particular player and it threw me off a little.

Sunday – ODE's
I've done ODE's a few times now, and feel pretty comfortable with the software and the flow of things, there were a few people on my shift that hadn't done it before, so I took a bit of a step back from launching drafts to allow them a chance to learn and try it out. We were pretty busy so there were lots of things to do! I've never seen turbo town so busy before!

We Can't Call Them Losers
I know one of the things I brought up in the break room was how I never say 'loser tickets' I usually say 'these tix are for the person who doesn't win' someone else mentioned that we can call them a non-winner, but also brought up the fact that the strangeness of that syntax just draws attention to the fact that you're not saying loser. I then brought up the idea of calling it prizes for first and second, because this didn't talk about winning or losing at all, and also, it might make the players think for a second before realizing that what we've just said is basically nonsense. I decided to implement the “first, second” speech pattern for turbo town.
By the end of the weekend I was pretty exhausted, I also feel, that as with anything, when you first begin doing it there is a period of rapid growth that is very exciting, and after a little while your growth slows down, I feel like I may be at that point currently, where I have to focus more on the details of what I'm doing as opposed to just trying to take everything in. I know my delegation and teamwork skills are still quite weak. And I know I still need to work on the finer points of my IPG and Comprehensive rules.