Time: Saturday July 14, 2018 Modern | Players: 160
HJ: Niko Skartvedt
FJ: Tobias Vyseri, Peter Davies, Jovy Eramila, David Poon
Winner: Andrew Steven Johnson

Putting things into Perspective
I remember when I first worked a Face to Face Open it felt gigantic, there were 100+ players all playing real magic decks in the realest tournament ever. It was one of the largest events I'd ever worked. I remembered thinking how frightening it would be to make announcements to such a large group of players and I recall being very intimidated!
This Saturday when I walked in I recall asking my fellow FJ's if it was smaller than last time. They shook their heads and actually told me we had gotten more players than the previous two. It was a really jarring experience, and really showed me how much my perspective has changed in the last year or so.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall...
Last time I worked the open, I worked with Jovy as well, and before the event started we had some free time, so I had went over some basic policy stuff with him and the other L1 as well as some common interactions. In a bit of a humorous turnaround, this time Jovy came up to me and the other L1 and told us about the new Krark-Clan Ironworks combo and how it worked and a few common questions. Which helped me nail those calls later in the day.

A Task for All and All For a Task!
We were all assigned different tasks to take care of for the event. Jovy was in charge of deck checks and organizing lists, Peter was in charge of pairings and slips, and I was supposed to... Well almost all of us had assigned tasks.
I was told to help out and mentor Peter. Which honestly, I think I prefer the 'miscellaneous' role, I enjoy doing a variety of different things throughout the day, and I also enjoy mentoring.
However, I hadn't worked with Peter in a long time, and knew that he'd been on staff for many Comp REL events since I'd seen him last, I wasn't sure if my typical “here are some policy scenerios” would come off as patronizing. Also the morning was so busy I didn't really have time for any of that anyways. Our first task was packing bags, and boy oh boy, can I tell you about packing bags. Having just come back from nationals where my Friday literally consisted of only packing bags, I felt like a bag packing master.

A Wise Player Once Told Me, If It's Randomized, It's Collectible
Each goody bag had a randomly colored box of sleeves in it. Some player seemed disappointed with their sleeves, and I encouraged them to trade with those around them. They seemed to enjoy this. Later I saw players gambling packs of sleeves on various activities like flipping coins. Peter brought this up to me as a concern, since wagering is such a huge issue in magic, I mentioned it felt very similar to flip it or rip it, and since it didn't effect anyone but the participants in the gamble it was probably fine and that we should let them enjoy their activity.

Backseat Judging
Afterwards I went over the decklist index system vs sorting method with Jovy and asked what he was planning on doing. I know Jovy is a super strong rules and policy guy, but his experience, as an L1, extends largely to FJ at PPTQs, which rarely get large enough to merit flipping into the index system for decklists. It seemed like a new thing for him, and was glad that he had a task that would challenge him! He decided to try the index system, and I heard no complaints so I felt like it must've went well.
I then went over to Peter, I didn't bother asking whether he knew how to cut slips or post pairings since I had seen him do both before, but instead asked if he'd ever made a tape ball before, when both him and Jovy admitted they hadn't I made one and presented it proudly. Obviously tape balls are not the most exciting thing in the world so I told them both to act excited to which they both enthusiastically played along and gave me a very audible “ooooh!”. Which devolved into laughter shortly afterwards.

Call Me, Maybe?
I noticed another judge tanking a little on a call before handing it over to another FJ during product distribution in round 1. I left them to it while I gave players bags and sleeves and stuff. After product was done I saw that the second FJ was still on the call. I was a little concerned and as I was walking by he came up to me and asked me if I could look into the call, I declined and told him to make a ruling and if the players were unahappy to appeal.
I spoke with the FJ later, explaining that two judges had already looked into the call, having the players explain it to a third judge with the potential of a fourth seemed nuts, and very time consuming.
the FJ agreed with my philosophy here, and mentioned that he hadn't gotten appealed, so it was probably fine. I flew by later and saw the players had only been given a three minute extension which I knew objectively was wrong. I proposed 7 minutes to them and they both seemed more comfortable with that instead

Lightning Scoop
I walked up to a table where a player had said “Lightning Helix, peezy” the opponent let it resolve and said” 17/23?” The helix player agreed, went to mark down the change and then said “No wait, I wanted to target Young Pyromancer.” I was just about to ask the Lightening Helix player what he thinks the term peezy means, when he abruptly said “alright you know what I scoop”, both me and the opponent were pretty shocked, since I hadn't event gotten into any controversial questioning yet. My thoughts were “Was the opponent pressuring the Helix player, and from the Helix players perspective was this an angle shot he didn't want to deal with?” or “Was the helix player doing something possibly suspect/cheating and was he trying to run away?” It was lower tables so there were a lot of things moving through my mind. I confirmed with the Helix player that he was okay with scooping and got him to sign the match slip, I asked the player if he wanted to talk to me about anything and he admitted that he had been having a kind of crap day, mentioning he had been late to this match and was already making mistakes. After a few quick sentences he calmed a little and let me know that he wouldn't be dropping from the event and simply wanted to take this round to cool his head and untilt himself.
I spoke to the opponent later letting him know that his actions were not what had caused the Helix player to become upset. I also touched base with the helix player later who mentioned he had felt much better after coming back and had enjoyed the last few rounds.

Fatal Misclick
I walked up to the table, and the first player said “okay, so eot I cracked a fetch, and said push Foundry Street Denizen, my opponent went to grab the denizen, and by then I'd grabbed my land and said oh, wait no, I wanted to push piledriver” Both players were tapped out after the push, and nothing had happened since then. Speaking with the players I determined that piledriver was played precombat, and the push player argued that if his intent had been to push denizen, he would've done it during combat, as his opponent was tapped out at that point. I felt this was reasonable and decided that it seemed like the push player had made an IRL 'misclick' and that a reassignment of targets was reasonable. I asked the goblins player if he wanted to appeal, since this felt like something I might get appealed on no matter what I said, but he didn't, which made me feel a little better about the entire ruling.
There was also a really interesting story about a Nature's Spiral related DQ, but something I just learned this event, is that we're not supposed to talk about DQ's before they're done processing. I was glad to have learned that!

...In Conclusion
When I walked in I thought the event would be really boring, but it was surprisingly busy, I enjoyed doing a little bit of everything, and even learned a few scorekeeping things while our primary scorekeeper was on break! It was really neat seeing how much my perspective on events has changed over the last little while as well, often I think we improve without realizing it because it happens in such small imperceptible doses, which makes me feel like I'm not improving at all, which can be frustrating. So it's nice every now and again when there's tangible evidence that all my experiences are amounting to anything at all.