Minneapolis | Limited
Time: Friday July 27th – Sunday July 29th
Limited | Players: 1349 Winner: Magnus Lantto

Friday- Kickstart


I Would Back My Team
I've never been on kickstart team before, and was excited to give it a try. The impression I got was that I'd be constantly busy all day launching events. I really like being constantly busy, so I felt like this would really be the team for me. Unfortunately scheduled sides weren't really as hecti as I had expected. And launching events doesn't take nearly as long as I thought it would and to top it off I was working with All Stars Jeph Foster and Matt Marheine, whom, at various points in the day I felt like could've both done the job of all three of us without many hiccups. What ended up happening was Matt and I traded off events so that we would both get to do Kickstart duties throughout the day, with Jeph directing various tasks as our team lead. I felt a little outclassed at many points throughout the day because of the immense competence of the people around me. It's a little disheartening at times to feel like the weakest member of your team, but I guess that also means I still have a lot to learn. One of my goals going in was learning the logistics of placing events, which isn't something I really get to address while working other parts of sides, and I did get to see that, I'm not sure why, but for some reason I thought picking starting table numbers for events was a lot more exciting and mysterious than “are those tables empty? Put them there!”

Bigger Than You Thought
One event that was unexpectedly huge was the second sealed 2 Headed Giant. The one earlier in the morning had drawn in somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 teams, and so far the largest event to fire had been the Modern Double Up at a rather paltry 62 players. So all of us on Kickstart were extremely surprised to hear that the afternoon 2HG event had 60+ teams enrolled in it! My first task was renumbering an area for the teams, unfortunately, because I misinterpreted the way the numbers were snaking initially, and because we were maneuvering around a large gap, this took way longer than expected and eventually Jeph came over and we worked through it together. Only to find out later when players were attempting to seat themselves that we had failed to prepare enough spots. Because of the way the tables were configured when converting them from regular seating to 2HG seating we lost 2 seats on the end of each table, which meant our counts were off, that coupled with the late adds meant we were just seating people at the end of the row and renumbering during announcements. Luckily these disturbances didn't slow the event down significantly.

Back to Basics
This was the next weirdly huge event. Well maybe not that weird, the Back to Basics event is a sealed event where not only are their players running around with bounties (if you're paired up against one of them and win they will give you a free masters pack) but also an event where each win nets you a Grand Prix promotional foil land. This is always a popular event, so we weren't terribly surprised when it came in at around 400 people. Jeph found some additional hands to aide with the product distribution . I spent most of the rest of my evening helping hand out slips and assisting with turning rounds in some of the larger events while I was waiting to Kickstart my events. A few of the judges commented on this being a little strange, but I mentioned to them that there didn't feel like that many Kickstart tasks, and I was likely more useful out here than prepping more product in the back.

Saturday – Floor Team


Core Confusion
I don't think I've ever been on floor team, so I didn't know a lot of what was expected of us. During the team meeting I recall the lead showing us a pretty complicated spreadsheet of how the day was going to go, and linking it to us. I was a little confused and overwhelmed. I probably should've asked some questions, but I felt a little intimidated and instead decided to just focus on what I was responsible for, relying on the lead to take care of complicated lead things. I also found out we were doing feature matches, I guess this isn't too unusual, but on the schedule the word “features” was absent so I didn't equate it with my tasks until I arrived on Saturday. I've done features a few times at this point and am much less frightened of them now than I was before, and especially with a set as simple as core, I didn't think I'd have much of a problem. I was set to take care of features in round 4 and 7, I wrote this down. The first few rounds there was an air of frustration in the room. I felt like things were moving pretty swimmingly, and continually adjusted myself to ensure that each section had a sufficient amount of judges in it. However, a few other judges touched base with me at the start of each round and brought forth a few grievances about some organizational shortcomings. I'm still not entirely sure what went wrong or why, though I heard that it may have been something to do with a lack of communication. What I can say is that as the day wore on I heard less complaints and the anxiety level in the room seemed to cool.

Does This Team Event Check Decks?
In round 2 we were supposed to cover for deck checks, but it looked like they were still drowning in paperwork. I wasn't entirely sure what we needed to do since after I labeled all the piles it looked like everything had already been organized. I didn't feel like I really understood what was expected of me, but again, was a little too shy and intimidated to ask. Eventually I got sent back out on the floor, which was a much more comfortable assignment.

My First GRV

I did have a chance to mentor a newer L2 during the beginning of the day. I walked by and it looked like he was going to issue some kind of HCE for failing to discard cards. I let him puzzle his way through the ruling but stopped him before he damaged the game, I took him aside and went through the correct GRV alternate fix for the situation, unfortunately I guess I didn't explain it properly because he went back to the table and was going to have the player discard at random. I felt a little guilty, interjected and finished the call correctly. This wasn't fantastic but the call was already taking quite some time already. Later I spoke with him and he actually seemed quite pleased that I had interjected, and I guess he was so thrilled that he spoke to his team lead because she came over to me later and thanked me again. It was a bit of a weird feeling because I felt like I did mentoring all wrong but if the other judge was happy and the players got the right ruling I suppose all was well.

Flusterstorm
The entire morning for me didn't feel especially discordant, but I must've been put a little off kilter because I almost forgot to go to features in round 4! I ended up being slightly late to my assignment, and apologized to one of the members of the coverage team, who, said it wasn't a problem and actually made me feel a lot better. I told myself I wouldn't screw up again and would certainly be on time for round 7, well I almost missed features entirely, luckily another member of my team found me and said “wait, aren't you supposed to be on features”. I felt pretty silly and immediately bolted over to the area. Once again the members of coverage were understanding and mentioned they were happy that they had someone period, late or not. I'm glad I get to work alongside such understanding people.

But He Could've Gained Advantage!
I had a call where a player, let's call him AP had taken a mulligan and without saying anything had looked at the top card of his library and put it on the bottom. The opponent, NAP, called me over and said that this could be an advantageous move. She told me that it was possible that the player could “scry 1” not like the card and them grab additional cards and claim their intent had been to mulligan the entire time. NAP was pretty aggressive in her tone and language, and a little intimidating. I asked a few questions, but felt like the distinction between grabbing a few cards off the top in an obvious mulligan and the deliberate motion of a scry were very distinguishable, and in this case, anyways, AP hadn't even gone for a mulligan so I didn't think there was much of a problem. She continued to press how this could be an issue, however. I agreed and asked her what she wanted out of this interaction. She mentioned she wanted her opponent to get some kind of infraction., I explained that we can't really make up an infraction, the IPG doesn't have a category for something like this, it's either cheating or it's nothing. I knew from her tone and demeanor this wasn't going to work. I firmly stated that my ruling was that this wasn't cheating and I wasn't going to take further action and asked if NAP would like to appeal. She of course did. I went to get an appeals judge. Unfortunately the first one was in another appeal. I checked the second appeals judge, who was in the middle of an investigation. I frantically looked around for a moment before, I don't quite recall who made the decision, but one of the other judges, who I had seen in red in the past was assigned to my call. He explained to the players that he had the GP HJ certification and was handling the appeal because the other two judges were preoccupied. He calmly explained things to the player and the player seemed to accept the ruling. He also showed me the part of the IPG that stated if a player performed the scry action, he had demonstrated intent to keep.

Sunday – Papers Team


The Incredible Shrinking GP Staff
One of the things I noticed was that this Sunday team felt significantly smaller than most other Sunday teams. I noticed it looked like they were perhaps cutting back on staff for Day2. I don't necessarily disagree with this decision, overstaffed GPs are much less interesting to me than slightly understaffed ones. I took point on cutting slips because I feel pretty good at cutting paper and it is kind of weirdly satisfying to see a neatly cut stack of slips at the end. I used to work in a print shop so cutting and modifying and working with paper is strangely cathartic.

You Used to Call My Drafts
As with all limited Day 2s I was very nervous, I am very afraid of calling a draft, as I've never done it before and have only ever seen it done a few times. I know often on Day 2 after fixing a problem in the draft usually results in that judge having to call that draft independently from the rest of the event. I don't like the fact that I've never called a draft and do want to try it but I am very afraid of screwing it up and wrecking the players day 2 experience. I told myself this time I wouldn't chicken out like in Sacremento! I was going to call a draft! I armed myself with a few replacement packs and once again brought up the draft timer on my phone. In draft one I had one such opportunity, the players mentioned that their pack had an extra card. One pack had 12 cards instead of 11, I was the one who took the call, unfortunately I was so daunted by the task of calling a draft, and the idea that a pack simply had an extra card was so flustering to me! I asked them if they had counted their pools and they agreed, and then I was stuck. I kind of panicked and brought another judge over to look into it, I have so little experience fixing drafts and addressing limited mistakes that in the heat of the moment I didn't know what to do. After the other judge had everyone count their pools again, and after we had all determined we had no idea where the extra card had come from, the judge decided to simply remove the basic land and let the draft continue. Obviously this entire process completely unhinged the table from the draft. The other judge looked at me and asked if I could call the draft. I wanted to but was also completely afraid. After a few embarrassing moments of sputtering and nervously floundering he decided to do it.
It was a pretty embarrass experience, because I had really wanted to do it, but had ended up backing down. I think I will need to practice alone at home a few times so that I will feel more confident about doing it at the next event. Later when my team lead asked us our best and worst experiences of the day, I brought this one up as my worst, and it actually generated some interesting discussion about how to fix it. One person said to just leave the broken pack in, which felt strange. We also talked about what to do if someone had actually failed to take a card. I like the LPV make them take a card now, but that feels not fantastic.

What Does Draft Even Mean?
There was another situation in the draft where a I was prowling the aisles and a player flagged me down. I was still pretty frustrated with myself from earlier, and didn't want to unhinge the draft. I was unsure of what the player was trying to tell me, he gestured at the two people beside him. I watched them for a few moments before realizing that they were picking up their packs before everyone else! And doing it pretty consistently each pack. I didn't want to unhinge another draft. So when the player went to pick up a pack prematurely I tapped him on the shoulder and told him to “stop that”. He seemed a little confused but dropped the pack. He went for it again a few seconds later, seemingly a little confused by the instructions being given over the mic, I had initially perceived the situation as the players grabbing the packs early to get a head-start but pretty quickly realized through their reactions that they simply didn't really know what was going on. And weren't event utilizing the extra time anyways. I quickly explained to him that the word “draft” was the cue to grab a card, not to grab a new pack. The two players figured this out, but I decided to issue my first limited procedure violation, to both of them. Not because I felt like they would actually accrue any more, but mostly to placate the other, probably frustrated players at the table.
Later I reflected on how my reaction to the players initially may have been a little harsh and sharp, so I apologized to the player a few times, but he seemed to be okay with the entire thing, explaining to me that he'd never made day 2 before and didn't really know what he was doing.
I think my fear combined with my earlier frustration at myself resulted in a weird kind of reaction to seeing something so flagrantly wrong as someone picking up their pack so early.

Are You Planning on Playing Any Basic Lands
During decklist collection, I usually take a few extra moments to verify three things, that the player has put their name on the sheet, that they have registered a deck, and that they have registered basic lands. At this GP, because Core 2019 has some weirdness going on with the basic land slot (it can be either a dual, a token or a basic) we wanted players to register the basics in their packs to ensure that pool counting could be done if we needed to do it. This was done by registering all drafted basics in the foil slot, this was an extra check I performed on each decklist. As usual I managed to save a few players potential game losses by asking them if they were planning on playing any basics in their limited deck.

Proxy Stamp
Another thing I'm not very familiar with is the stamped product. A player came up to me with an unstamped card, saying it was missing a stamp after draft. I was quite fluttery and didn't really know what to do so I asked another judge. He let me know that since the player hadn't left his draft seat, I could just sign off on it. In the same way that we sign off on decklist mistakes. It was a small thing but reminded me again how completely inexperienced I an at handling limited issues.

How Many Creatures Does Vivian Put Into Play
I sat down at a table at about 15 minutes left in the round. The table already had a 15 minute time extension, and one player with two different GPE penalties. I placidly watched the game, and the player with the penalties, let's call him AP, played a Vivian Reid, he said “activate Vivian” and flipped some cards up, revealing Centaur Courser. And placing it in between his other creatures on the battlefield. I thought to myself “wow I didn't know Vivian put creatures directly into play. That's a great card.” and continued watching. AP passed, NAP took her turn and did some stuff and passed back and then AP activated Vivian again revealing a Llanowar Scout. And said “put it into hand” I noticed that this was different than what had happened last turn. I looked up oracle text on Vivian on my phone, to avoid disrupting the match and saw that she didn't actually put creatures into play. This seemed very strange to me. Since both resolutions were handled really differently. I stopped the players and asked the Vivian player to tell me about what had happened last turn. The player noticeably froze and seemed confused. I asked him about the Vivian and noted the Courser, asking him when he had played it. Slowly both players realized what had happened.
I felt the entire thing was very weird and suspicious, since AP had handled both activations radically differently. I immediately went and got one of the appeals judges for an investigation. The appeals judge did the investigation and after a hefty 19 minutes (the round clock now at -15 minutes) decided that no cheating was involved and instructed me to give the player a gigantic time extension. He also let me know that we'd be flipping the entire round and just delaying this one pod so that the entire event didn't need to wait 20 or 30 minutes for two players.
This was super weird. I stayed by the match to keep track of their time, but luckily it ended in the next two or three minutes so the entire event wasn't delayed at all.
After turning over the entire incident in my mind I don't know if I agreed with the HJ. I feel like at some point after the Vivian activation I recall AP retapping his 5 lands and casting the courser. But I can't totally remember. There is still a part of me that believes AP had noticed the error afterwards but not mentioned it. However I'm not really that experienced in such things, and that is why I deferred to the HJ in the first place.

...In Conclusion
The previous week in Sacremento I felt I had performed pretty poorly, because of some personal issues I wasn't quite at 100% that weekend, and felt very guilty about it. I feel like as Judges we should always be giving it our all for the players and for the game, and if we aren't then we are failing. I went into Minneapolis telling myself I would give it 110% all weekend to make up for my shortcomings at Sacremento. I felt like I somewhat did, I focused on my tasks and did everything I could to make sure things were good for the people around me and the players. Unfortunately, I still felt like this weekend, I fell a little short. The staff around me was very experienced and competent, and oftentimes over the weekend I felt very useless. I don't think this is a bad thing, however, I think it's a way to let me know I still have a lot to learn, and a lot of room to grow. I'm going to keep working hard at events in the future!