Vegas | Modern & Limited
Time: Thursday June 14th – Sunday June 17th
Modern | Players: 2776 Winner: Matthew Nass
Limited | Players: 2079 Winner: Michael Bernat

Thursday – Beta Qualifier #2


Welcome to Las Vegas
The thing that hit me about the hall initially was that it was huge, the side event and main event stages were bigger than normal, we already had all four colors of gathering point flags out. And all trade in slots with the vendors were full even though we'd only been open for an hour. This was going to be a busy weekend.Welcome to Vegas.

The Beta Beta Qualifier
For my first day of Vegas I was on the Beta Qualifier, which was a 5 round, cut to top 8 Comp REL event where the winner was granted a slot at the Beta Draft on Sunday evening. I felt like it landed somewhere in between an LCT and the main event, kinda serious and competitive but it was also still a side event. I was on a team of 5 people, which was supposed to be self contained, we were to do deck checks, take care of our own breaks and distribute our product and goodies. The first thing we were told was that we had 220 players and no product was prepped, and that we should prep it now, probably, since our event started in 20 minutes. After manically making product bundles. We acquired decklists and posted our pairings, we were a little late and frazzled by the product fiasco, as well as the fact that we had to take care of distributing our own playmats and promos. But it didn't hurt us too much.

Paperwork Vortex
Because it was limited collecting decklists in any kind of order was kind of a lost cause, so I offered to sort the lists, since every time prior to this when a job had been offered, I had been just a little too slow on volunteering. Me having no actual jobs, I decided that sorting lists would be a nice placid way to start the event. I spent most of deck construction and round 1 alphabetizing the lists, and by the start of round 2 I still had a few left, but a fairly high number were totally organized. Another member of the team was supposed to be ensuring this, but at the start of round 2 I didn't know where he was, instead a different person on my team, asked if I would like him to do the swoop. I guess since I was sitting in a pile of lists he thought I would be the one delegating the checks. I didn't think it was a terrible idea to get one done, so I agreed.
Next round we did another swoop and I felt like I had been somehow conscripted into deck check team, I recall by round 3 I finally finished sorting all of the lists, and felt like I had been in a vortex of paperwork for most of the event.

Top 8 is Serious Business for Serious Magic
One thing I did notice about the HJ is that top 8 felt very formal, he seated them for build and seated them all before beginning the final round. To one of the players chagrin, since they were both ready to play but were told to wait.
I'm used to a much more casual atmosphere, since the rounds are unmetered, making players wait feels strange since the faster they start playing the faster the remainder of the event is. I spoke to the HJ about it, and he mentioned that he thought the other players were only going to take another minute or so to get themselves together, not the 5 minutes they actually took, and mentioned that he was actually trying to save time by not making the top 8 announcement 4 separate times. He also mentioned that upon reflection, taking into consideration the considerable waiting period, he probably would've let the pair start playing right away. After the event had launched into top 8 the HJ let us know that he didn't need 5 people for 4 matches, we agreed this was reasonable and went over to sides, I covered the break of a legacy judge and took a few calls, but overall it was a pretty placid day since I spent the majority of it drowning in paperwork.

Friday - Modern Main Event, Day 1


Contrary to Popular Belief, Pairings Boards Don't Arrive Set Up
I was on pairings team, we had a total of 22 pairings boards, with some exciting ranges, like A-A and D-D. This was my first time on pairings and I was glad for the experience, in the past I'd never really considered who set up the boards or how many tape loops to put up, so I got to learn a lot about it. My call time was 8:00 and we were done set up around 8:30 and we were all kind of clustered around the printer. I noticed a large lineup of players in front of one of the scorekeepers, but assumed it was probably not an issue.

Something, Something Decklists
If there's one thing about players it is that they are always really excited to hand you their decklist. When I am taking money for PPTQs and registering players they try to give me decklists, when I'm on my way to the bathroom they try to give me decklists, on Thursday before the main event players were asking me where they could turn in paper decklists. Players really love getting rid of decklists. I get the impression they think they will combust if they hold onto them for too long.
So you can probably understand what happened when an announcement went across the whole room that sounded something like “something, something, something Main Event Decklists”
Obviously, a swarm of players all rushed up excitedly to the stage trying to relieve themselves of their decklists. I didn't entirely hear the announcement myself, but after hearing a few judges around me ask about byes I realized we were only taking lists from players with byes. After a frenzied few moments my hands were filled with lists but the crowd had dispersed. Then for some reason another similarly acoustically challenged announcement was made about decklists and a billion more players came up trying to hand in their decklists regardless of how many byes they had.
After it had died down for the second time, I overheard someone on the stage mention that perhaps they should make a final announcement just in case and the HJ responding “I am very hesitant to make another announcement that includes the word 'decklist'.” Which I think was a strong play on his part. After this experience I now firmly believe that in the very same way that we are forbidden from saying 'fire' over a mic we should also be forbidden from saying anything about decklists.

The Canary in the Coal Mine
It was 9:11 when I mentioned to my team lead that we were 11 minutes late to post pairings, to which she responded, “No Tobi, we were supposed to post pairings at 8:30, we are 40 minutes late” Apparently there were 600 people that needed to be entered into the event at the last minute due to... I'm not sure, but something went wrong and everyone seemed pretty okay with blaming technology.
At around 9:30 we got pairings out and the event began, and this event was massive, we took up two huge blocks of the gigantic auditorium, and were about 3000 people. We were given ranges of tables to distribute product to, which we did. And then hung out in the area afterwards. Calls were frequent since the ratio of judges to players was often one judge for two to three rows of players. It didn't feel understaffed, but definitely felt busy. One thing I was sad about was that I barely got to watch any magic, since I was constantly running from one call to the next.
Then we went to prep for round 2. There were some more software delays, round two came out 30-40 minutes late. It was a little nerve wracking since calls become exponentially harder when players are already upset. Eventually got the round going and I thought the worst was over. How naive I was.

Main Event Meltdown
Then we were about to begin round 3, our team's break was for round 3 so we left. 60 minutes later we came back and it was still the beginning of round 3. This was not good. It was about 1pm by this point, which means in the 4.5 hours of event time we had accomplished 2 rounds of magic. I don't think you need to be a mathematician to realize that this is really bad round economy. Players were notably very unhappy, after standing there forlornly nervously laughing about how our break had 'basically taken no time at all in relation to the main event' CFB decided to pull the switch and offer a full main event refund to any players who wished to drop now. The floodgates opened and players began swarming. There was a line for cash refunds and a form to fill out for credit or debit refunds. I spent the next 30 or so minutes collecting refund forms and telling players about what was happening.

All Judges are Also Firefighters
After the refund frenzy died down, we were still waiting, CFB moved us over to sides, expecting that a huge surge of players that had dropped from main might move over to sides and that sides might catch fire.
I was sent to ODEs, but ODEs and the adjacent scheduled sides seemed fine, I asked the lead if there was anywhere else I could be of more use, and he mentioned that the team trios might need help and to check. I couldn't find the team trios, but did accidentally wander into commander championships land, which was a strange and beautiful place. The event was being run on some kind of point system, I asked how WER was handling something as complex as that, seeing as I recalled that historically pod-based multiplayer brawl events were basically being run analog, in response the HJ laughed and said that the scorekeeper was doing it on an excel spreadsheet. While I was in the commander area, I took a call about Goblin Game (you can hide pieces of paper with numbers on them to represent objects) As well as two questions about casting without paying a spell's mana cost, one where an alternate cost was concerned (Cyclonic Rifts Overload cost), and one where an additional cost was concerned (Tooth and Nail's Entwine). I was told while in the area that prize tix were being given out each round (20 for all and 40 for the winner) so I grabbed some prize tix. I was also told that I needed to wear a special nametag with my favorite commander on it. Finally, after I understood the prize structure, I had acquired my nametag and my tix, my team lead flagged me down and told me that we needed to go back to main. I sighed, said goodbye to the HJ, returned my tix and nametag, demurely leaving my new life behind.

Modern Resuscitation
Round 3 was launched at 2:40pm. As it was being launched CFB also announced that everyone who had been in the main event today was being awarded an voucher for a free entry into any GP in 2018, in addition to the full event refund, if they had chosen to drop. I thought this was pretty good customer service, and a great way to cover the bad PR of having two rounds take 5+ hours. Instead of a billion posts online about how awful waiting was, instead we'd also get posts about people who were 0-2 and planning to drop anyways applauding the infinite value, and players talking about the good value of the GP crashing. I remained on main for the rest of the day, there were a lot of infractions.

Bedlam Backup
A frequent one was Bedlam Reveler's being cast for incorrect mana, since players are required to announce floating mana. It's a rough call because Bedlam Reveler instructs players to discard their hand and draw 3 cards, if handled by the book, you back up backing up through the card draw by putting the three back on top (GRV) and returning the reveler to the player's hand. In an environment where I can see my three cards, call this infraction on myself and then fetch if the cards weren't good after the backup to get new cards means I can gain a lot of advantage here. Another judge was the one that actually brought to my attention that the reason GRV has the option not to back up is because sometimes it is more detrimental to do so. Internally I know this, but usually backing up through a spell and a trigger such as Bedlam Reveler, isn't nearly as significant as it is in this scenario.

Freaky Friday: Modern Edition
Another interesting scenario that was brought to me, was actually a story from my team lead while we were waiting for pairings for round 2

She said that at a previous GP bother players were playing with CFB sleeves and called her over, she went to the table and AP said, “Look at this” She sighed and asked, “Did you draw from your opponents deck?” to which AP responded, “No, we switched decks... several turns ago. We both fetched and presented, it's the burn mirror so we haven't noticed until now. This turn I drew Scalding Tarn, played it and went to crack it before remembering that I don't play Scalding Tarn.

My team lead turned the question back to us. I mentioned that since both players had only played cards that were the same between both decks I'd probably double GRV them, shuffle the Scalding Tarn back in, change decks back and instruct the players to keep playing. Since giving a time extension and killing the game would feel bad, though I admitted that the card counts in either deck could be off. Another judge mentioned a double game loss for deck problem, fix the decks start a new game. I agreed that this seemed more in line with policy.

A Dicey Trigger
A humans player had played Champion of the Parish and moved his hand to adjust the die on his Thalia's Lieutenant while passing the turn. Instinctively, if this was true, then it's not a missed trigger, since even though he didn't verbally address it, he physically did, which is just as valid. However upon investigation, the opponent said he couldn't remember either way how quickly his opponent had decided to touch the die. Based on the information given, I ruled in favor of the humans player half expecting an appeal, which I got. I brought the appeals judge over at which point the humans player revealed that he had actually said pass before moving to adjust his dice. This coupled with his uncertainty and the fact that he had called it on himself made me believe that I had not given the correct ruling, the appeals judge took me aside and asked me what I thought. I pretty quickly told him, “Yeah at this point, I think I was wrong, and kind of want to be overturned.”

How to Cryptically Tie a Logic Knot
AP played a spell, and NAP tapped four lands and cast Cryptic Command, the opp said, “Oh, why didn't you cast that last turn, bounce my guy and kill me?” NAP didn't respond and instead, attempted to put Cryptic Command back in his hand and cast Logic Knot instead. This isn't what I was initially told, since NAP kept insisting that he, “hadn't chosen modes on Cryptic Command” or that he thought “his opponent had scooped” but instead what I derived of the situation after a little investigation. This seemed like nonsense to me, but I still took the call carefully just in case. I ruled that NAP was locked into Cryptic Command and needed to finish choosing modes. The player tanked for a bit and seemed uneasy with the ruling. I felt like he was the kind of player that was going to appeal, and didn't want him dithering for too long, and eating the clock. I asked him if he would like to appeal. Eventually he did appeal, I grabbed Alderfer and he almost immediately upheld my ruling.

Crazy Superstitious or Just Crazy?
I was called over to a table almost immediately after time started. Instinctively I thought it was a tardiness call because it was so early in the round, I was very surprised when I arrived at the table and saw two players sitting there looking disgruntled. The players were rolling to go first and during the roll one of NAP's dice had hit AP's hand during the rolling process and NAP wanted a chance to re-roll the affected die. Saying that his opponent had “interfered with the die roll”, following it up with the concept that “if it had landed on the ground we would just reroll it,”. AP mentioned that he would let the opponent re-roll both dice if he wanted to, but not just the one. NAP insisted that he should be able to re-roll only a single die. This seemed like the dumbest thing in the world to me. But I tried not to let the players notice that, since they were both very frustrated with the situation, and making light of it wasn't going to get either of them on my side. I ruled that the affected die was not to be re-rolled and that the result was to be accepted as if it had not been hit. NAP instantly appealed. Which I kind of knew no matter what happened this was getting appealed. I brought an appeals judge over and he upheld my ruling. NAP then began irritably saying “So it's okay to interfere with dice as they are being rolled?” The appeals judge wasn't really having any of it and told the guy to let the whole thing go.... several times, before leaving. In a huff NAP had asked the appeals judges name and mentioned something about reporting him.
The appeals judge took me aside later and concurred that the entire situation was completely ridiculous, I asked if he would like me to sit on the match, which I full on didn't want to do since it was such a tense atmosphere, but knew that it was probably the right thing to do. The appeals judge agreed that I should probably stay there, so I took a seat to one of the most unfun games of Maigc I have probably ever watched.

A few turns later there was a small spat about Mana Leak being cast after a player had said “sure” to a spell. Which I quickly negated by saying I was watching and this Mana Leak was cast in a timely fashion and that AP was still well within his Mana Leak window for NAP's spell. I looked up a few full art cards for each player since neither seemed to want to take their opponents description of the card at face value. But thankfully nothing insane happened during the rest of the match. Except one thing, actually, when NAP cracked Spire of Industry he pushed the card up in the sleeve while putting it in the graveyard. It seemed like a weirdly deliberate motion, and pushing the card up in the sleeve would make it very easy to pick out while shuffling. Or while casually glancing at the side of the deck, since NAP had the cards facing him when he drew. That was the final game, so I didn't see if he shuffled the Spire in marked or not, but it seemed strange. After the game was over I quickly looked through the deck and noted that some but not all of the cards were double sleeved. I didn't spend a long time checking to see if I could distinguish them while in the deck, because the match was over and this kind of investigation definitely needed more time. Also I didn't want to upset either player any more. Instead, I reconvened with the appeals judge since he had wanted NAP's name for future reference. I mentioned the Spire of Industry motion as well as the double sleeved cards, the appeals judge asked if they were cards of higher value, which I nodded, having taken note of that myself, many of the double sleeved cards included an invocation blood moon, invocation hazoret and other expensive items. The appeals judge also mentioned that he had done some investigating himself and found out from NAP's previous round opponent that he was playing a Japanese version of a card called Untaidake, the Cloud Keeper, and had frequently missed the damage part of the ability, which his opponent reminded him of often, but had never called a judge about.

The appeals judge seemed to think NAP was a casual player that was kind of superstitious, but I wasn't so sure. I didn't really get that impression from watching him play. I let the appeals judge know that perhaps it would be good to do a targeted deck check just to get a better look for marked cards.

I never heard what happened later, but twice, once on Friday, and even the next day, AP thanked me for staying at the match afterwards. Which I felt was a really sweet thing to say.

Saturday – Pauper Champs
I was HJ of the Pauper Championship event! This was pretty exciting because it felt like a big responsibility! It was similar to the Beta Qualifiers, it was a 5 round swiss event with a cut to top 8. my team consisted of 4 people and was supposed to be self contained, we needed to take care of breaks and deck checks on our own. Unfortunately, because of a no-show my team ended up only being 3 people! I knew I'd have to fit in deck checks where I could but that it wouldn't be a priority.

Comp REL, Decklists Not Required
While I was up at the front waiting for my team to arrive I told many players that decklists would be needed at the event. After about the 5th person, a nearby scorekeeper let me know that the information desk was telling players quite the opposite. I booked it over to information and let them know the correct info to be telling players. Unfortunately a lot of damage had already been done. Instead of generating a bunch of complaints and game lossing a ton of players for lack of a decklist I decided to make an announcement when I began that decklists would be collected at the beginning of round 2 instead. This worked out well because we didn't really have the manpower to facilitate collecting decklists, handing out playmats and handing out promos at the beginning of round 1 anyways. I got a single deck check done in round 3, 4 & 5 as well as one in top 8.I had a player in contention for top 8 with kind of dingy sleeves, potentially marked, but probably not. I let him know that if he got into top 8 he would need to change them, which he did.

Announcements Schmannouncements
It was difficult to successfully make announcements because there was a panel going on right beside us, which was using a sound system that was decidedly louder than us judges. Because we were using an index for the decklists (collecting them in order and having a master list of player settings for round 2) it was very important that each player wrote their seat number on their decklist. All three of us positioned ourselves on a different edge of the event and shouted the same announcement to ensure this was heard.

Breaking Judges
After round 2 I was sent a person from side events and was told to give people their 15 minute breaks, which I did. Then next round, I was sent another person to help me give people their full round breaks, but I only had the person for two hours. One of my judgelings was very accommodating and mentioned that he could take either the first or second hour of breaks. The second one... I'm not sure he realized how understaffed everything was, when I asked him when he'd prefer to take his break and he kind of said he didn't know and mentioned that he would just leave when his friends ordered pizza. I wasn't a huge fan of this because we kind of can't just randomly let people go, especially at an event as busy as this one, I let him know there was a break opportunity now, and that I wasn't sure if there would be one later, and if he was opting to go later I couldn't guarantee I could make that work. I said that I would try but if things are on fire I can't really send people on break.
He didn't seem too happy with this but agreed. I think in retrospect I could've been a little kinder in my phrasing, but I was a little taken aback by the way he approached the situation, rather than being deferential and acknowledging the needs of the event, I felt like he was almost offended when I softly let him know that defining his own break schedule might not be an option, then again, perhaps we were all just a little exhausted at this point, since this was the busiest day of the GP.

Red Elemental Blasts Need Not Apply
In round 3 a player came up to me and mentioned that he had some illegal cards in his sideboard. Red Elemental Blast. He let me know that while doing a deck tech with his last round opponent his opponent had let him know the card was not legal. This is a weird kind of corner rule for pauper, is that it uses the mtgo banned list, which means that it allows all commons that were printed as commons on mtgo, unfortuantely, even thought REB was a common up until fourth edition, only 7th edition or later core sets were actually released on mtgo, so anything that was a common before but not after 7th is illegal in pauper. This information, is not easy to find. He mentioned that while he had boarded them in, he hadn't seen them in any games so far. I gave him a deck problem – warning no upgrade, but later over dinner with another judge he mentioned that it should've been a decklist problem – GL. I had felt at the time it should've been a GL since illegal cards are decently severe on the axis of things that you are doing wrong, but hadn't found anything under deck problem. I felt like nothing had been horribly damaged since the player hadn't actually had the opportunity to play them yet, but for next time I will know!

Pyroblast Does Need to Apply
The next thing was later I was checking a deck and found Hydroblast and Pyroblast in the sideboard. Remembering the earlier kerfuffle with the Red Elemental Blast, I decided to double check if these were legal. Sure enough they were. A little while after returning the deck to the player, I was called over to the table for a legality check on Pyroblast, I was glad I had taken the time to look it up earlier so I could now answer the question with confidence. Later during top 8, however the player who had called me overand mentioned that Red Elemental Blast was not legal in the format. I immediately said that the card I had identified as legal was Pyroblast. But he insisted it was Red Elemental Blast. Perhaps my memory is flawed, but I was reasonably certain the player was misremembering. I checked all the top 8 decklists, and my FJ checked the player in question's deck but we only found Pyroblasts. My FJ let me know that he'd check in with the players previous round opponents to see if any Red Elemental Blast's had been cast previously in the event, he managed to locate two of the opponents but neither of them were decks that REB would've been boarded in against. In the end we decided that the player was probably just not remembering correctly.

Collusion or Concurrent Urination?
The first weird thing in top 8 was that one match wanted to go to the bathroom, like at the same time. Meaning I couldn't really watch for bribery or collusion. I also couldn't really follow them to the bathroom or deny them that opportunity, so I just let it go, and it looked like they played magic afterwards, so I can only assume nothing weird happened. One half of the bracket finished while a Delver of Secrets player was getting ground to death by Gnaw to the Bone. After the game the delver player, victorious asked to use the washroom. I'm still not sure if I should've taken his phone, he could've been asking for advice on his opponents decks. I know in the GP top 8 they aren't allowed to leave the top 8 area after starting play. But I've never had a policy of being so strict in top 8 before, and while the trophy was a pretty significant prize, the tix aren't really comparable to cash or anything. While the delver player was in the bathroom, the remaining players got to goof around, including a lively conversation regarding a “fantastic modern deck” including 3 Islands, one Lab Maniac, 4 Surgical Extractions and 52 Relentless Rats. The player returned and I got to watch two delver mirrors in a row. After the event I got to give a big trophy to the winner which was super exciting and bring him over to coverage.

Sunday – On Demand Events
This day was a grind, ODE's were never not busy. Mostly I remember it as a haze of picking up garbage and reporting kefka results. I recall sometime in the morning we ran out of plains, and I got to sit for a little while sorting a random assorted box of land for plains. I also accidentally occasionally took some calls in the turbo area when it caught fire, since there was literally only one guy on turbo town. By the end of the day I was completely wiped out. Sides were so incredibly busy

...And For My Second Last Pick
I also had a call where the players draft had gotten screwed up, one person had 15 cards and the other only had 13, I thought about it, but there wasn't much I could do. At regular we just kind of have to trust the players for the most part, I asked the player what his last pick was and I gave that card to the other guy. The players at the table seemed dissatisfied with this, one of them asking to appeal if either of the affected players wanted to. The player who was missing a card asked that we just keep the draft moving instead. I spoke with my lead, but he said much the same thing, after it's happened there's not much we can do. I asked a few questions of the player with extra cards but got the typical cryptic “I'm not really sure what happened” which I can understand, having been in similar ruined drafts myself.

...In Conclusion
There were a lot of things that ran sub-optimally or went wrong during this GP (unmentioned was that on Thursday at some point the prize wall fell down) but at the same time, I always seem to feel better working a busy GP than a slow one. And there were a lot of things that challenged me this weekend. Overall I had a great time and would do it again in a heartbeat!