Sealed | Time: Friday May 4th 2018 – Sunday May 6th 2018
Players: 1043 | Winner: Robert Brown

Friday – Last Chance Trials


First Chance Trials
For my first event of the day, I had an L2 from Brazil that needed to be shown the ropes of American GPs, and LCT's in particular, so to speak. I went through a few things, but felt like my explanation was a little messy. To remedy this when he had his own event to manage near mine, I made sure to keep an eye on it and offer support when needed. Luckily he seemed to pick things up pretty quickly, and before long, didn't need my assistance at all :)

Half-Round Investiganza
In addition to this, I had deck checks run a targeted check on a player that had done something strange in round 1, it wasn't at all deck related, but I felt like if he was doing weird stuff in one area, he might be doing strange things in another. Sure enough there were some U/R cards in his sideboard that weren't part of his pool. The cards in question ranged from mediocre to okay in the environment, and the deck the guy was playing was a 5-color special. The deck check team called me over, and was fairly confident this was malicious cheating, but I wasn't so sure. I let the deck check team lead run the investigation since I wasn't very confident in my investigation skills. I felt like the deck check lead was a little aggressive in how he ran the investigation, and the player didn't seem to have a lot of opportunities to talk. I still didn't really think this was cheating and asked for another opinion. We brought over an L3 who agreed with me, in thinking this was just an innocent mistake. I thoguht about it and figured that even if this was cheating, it was pretty bad cheating. In the end ?I let the player know and apologized for the time it took. Which ended up to an insane 25 minutes. I feel like I should've been more confident in my initial assessment and just made the ruling 5 to 10 minutes earlier.
The stress of waiting had clearly disheveled the player and I feel like it was a pretty negative experience all around.

Saturday – Slips


Paper, Paper Everywhere
It was my first time on slips, so there was a lot to learn, I knew we would be cutting and distributing slips, however I hadn't known prior to this that the slips team was also responsible for organizing all the slips during the EOR.

The first round I was in the back sorting slips, at about 5 minutes after the timer had ran out I felt like we were low on slips, my team lead also commented on this, but neither of us could really think of a reason why. I was also implementing a new sorting method from the previous round, so I thought perhaps due to the new piling method, there simply appeared to be less slips than before. Eventually, one of the HJ's came by with about 200 slips in his hand, and let us know that we had two scorekeepers with slips piles not just one. Which then resulted in a hilarious mad scramble of organization over the next few minutes as we all lamented the fact that we hadn't simply asked main stage where the rest of the slips were.

That Feel When You Sideboard Out Your Best Card
There was an interesting call about a player who had presented his deck and had drawn his hand, when his opponent called me over and mentioned a History of Benalia in the “graveyard” from the previous game.

I was about to issue deck problem when the player let me know his deck was actually 42 cards, and as it was game 3 he had in fact presented a legal deck. I thought about it for a little while, and in the moment, I ruled that he had “sideboarded it out”. At the time it felt bad, but reflecting on it, I think it was also simply incorrect, and that a better ruling would've been asking the player if he had intended to sideboard it out, and if not shuffling it in. However, this ruling is abusable when you consider the fact that this method could be used to avoid drawing certain cards in ones opening hand.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Iciest of Them All?
Also early in the day I misruled a Wall of Ice /Helm of the Host interaction (the helm creates copies of the card under the wall, not 0/4 walls) and then later saw a cluster of judges over by the table. I was embarrassed that I had made such a silly mistake, so I didn't inquire about it immediately. But at the end of the round the player found me to let me know I was incorrect, however, he seemed in good spirits and mentioned that even though I had ruled it wrong, it ended up working out for him ( I assume after he got he correct ruling his helm of the host suddenly began making more relevant tokens than it had before). This was a huge relief, since the literal worst thing in the world is to rule something incorrectly and ruin someone's game because of it.

This Round in the Feature Area: Missed Triggers!
I was on features for the first round, as features team was taking care of sleep in special registrations. While watching a match, one of the players had resolved and cracked a Rite of Belzenlok. The resulting demon, has a detrimental trigger that unlike sagas, happens in the upkeep (when things are supposed to happen, goddamnit!) Instead this player kept remembering it after his draw step. While I was watching the game, both players seemed satisfied with the late resolution of the ability, and I didn't feel the need to step in at any point, as minor problems solved by players do not require judge interference. And I personally think that judges are here to assist players if they need it, but if the players have things well in hand and are playing in a way that is agreeable to both of them (and not in egregious opposition to the rules) then leaving them to their own devices is probably fine. However, later I spoke later with a colleague about this and he mentioned that issuing the warning might've been a good idea, even if it was just to placate the online chat.

Sunday – Deck Checks


3,2,1, Draft!
I've never been on day two of a sealed GP before, so this was very exciting for me! Watching a called draft was super interesting, I've never really experienced a called draft before, so I was grateful for the exposure to it. There was an opportunity for me to call a draft, because one table I took a call at got out of sync but I was too nervous at the time to take the opportunity. In retrospect, I regret it and wish I'd just gone for it.

Cryptic Scriptures

I was on deck checks, and while collecting decklists I had some truly unusual stuff handed into me, one decklist was filled with check marks, interspersed with numbers, when I asked the player what the checks represented he said “oh, a check mark is means I'm playing all the copies of that card in my pool” I felt like this was a little weird and let the player know that we would consider the check marks as 1's and asked him to change any that shouldn't be considered as 1s.

I had another player who had used x's to represent 1's but 2's to represent twos for some reason. I asked to confirm that the x's were ones and decided that this was fine but kind of weird.

I also had a player who called me over to let me know that he had switched his played and total column, but upon closer examination there were a few cards where there was a zero in his played column' (which was supposed to be his total column) but a nonzero number in his total column (which was supposed to be his played column. Which lead to a lot of mining of words until I managed to get my point across by saying,“So this is what you're playing in your deck?” “yes”
“but there's none in your pool”
“uh oh”

On deck checks we ran into a few weird ones, some players forgot to register their sideboard cards (possibly a byproduct of having their entire pool pre-registered on day 1) I also had another player who forgot to register only his white cards.

Today, We Have 1 Mana Off on All Kicked Spells!
I want to talk about the policy regarding checking with an L3 for HCE's & backups, I'm not opposed to this policy, since HCE's and backups can be very damaging when botched, and it's important, especially on day 2, that they be done properly.

I had a good backup candidate, it was a GRV with a fairly simple rewind, a player had played Keldon Overseer used the triggered ability to steal a creature, done combat and passed turn. The opponent untapped and realized that the spell couldn't have been cast with kicker since his opponent didn't have enough mana. I proposed the backup to the players, they seemed okay with it.
I went to an L3 for a quick approval, and he decided to come over and investigate. This was fine, getting a second pair of eyes on the situation was probably not a bad idea, since there is non-negligible incentive to cheat on day 2. Then he decided to get the HJ which, again is fine. And then the HJ decided that all was well and we'd go through with the backup, at which point, he instructed the L3 to take care of it.

For me it felt kind of lame, since not only did the players need to explain something fairly simple to three different judges, but they also needed to go through the same backup agreement they had already went through with me.
I know it was with the best of intentions, but I feel like in this situation I would've preferred if the L3 had simply supervised my backup, rather than taken it over. If he lets me do it with supervision. Then I get to learn something, and he's still there to ensure nothing goes wrong.

I Would Like to Move that Stack and Hand are One and the Same
On the flip side, later I had another problem that required an L3's approval, but it went very differently. This was a situation where a card had appeared out of nowhere, I did a card count, none of the cards on board drew cards, and I verified who had been on the play and whether mulligans were involved. Cards appearing out of nowhere is a weird kind of thing, and I wouldn't have minded a little more investigation on this, so expecting a similar experience to earlier, I let the players know the HCE fix and then went to grab an L3 for approval and for further investigation. This L3 however, just said 'your HCE seems fine' and didn't even come back to the table with me. I appreciated the confidence invested in me, but actually wouldn't have minded some more assistance. I went back to the table, and issued the fix, at which point there was a bit of a disagreement, since the extra card had been discovered as dub was being put on the stack, the player appealed this, saying that he thought the dub should be part of the thoughtsieze, I didn't agree to this, but listened to the players reasoning, I let him know that this thoughts were valid and that I would get an appeals judge. My ruling was ultimately upheld, and while the player didn't seem terribly satisfied, he didn't seem incredibly upset either.

...In Conclusion
I enjoyed my time at Dallas, I think one of the lessons not mentioned here was that on Thursday I had a very frustrating experience with my Airbnb and didn't manage to get much sleep, in fact all weekend was rather sleepless for me, but I told myself I wouldn't let one bad experience ruin my entire day, like it had at GP Toronto earlier in the year, and I am happy to say that while it wasn't my strongest performance at a GP I most certainly didn't allow anything to get in the way of my enjoyment! And overall it was a very good weekend!