Orlando, Florida | Standard
Time: Friday August 10th – Sunday August 12th
Players: 997 Winner: Gabriel Joglar

Friday- Scheduled Sides


The Smallest Hall of Them All
The first thing I noticed about Orlando was the fact that the hall was so tiny! I've been in a fair amount of GP halls and this one felt like it could hold around 1300 people total! Scheduled sides on Friday were seemed pretty busy for a hall of this size. Sure they weren't huge, our biggest was around 60, but I've been in larger venues with smaller Friday sides. I was a little worried that we might run out of space on Saturday. For the most part while our player to judge ratio wasn't optimal sides were pretty mellow and there were no catastrophic issues.

True Neutral Toiletry
The other thing I noticed was the fact that the closest bathroom to the hall was marked as a gender neutral bathroom, which is great and progressive and all, but I'm used to basically having my own personal washroom at GPs, and now I don't have that. From a purely utilitarian standpoint, the gender neutral washroom simply makes sense, since now more people can be divided between the two washrooms which will cut down on lines and subsequently potential game losses for tardiness.

Saturday – Deck Checks


Staff Shrinkage
I don't know how I haven't discovered this yet, but deck checks and deck lists are different teams, I also noticed we were down a slips team, instead product was doing that as well. Which was strange. The event felt a little staff light, we ended up with about 900 people in the main event which made beginning of round a little hectic, since the only judges on the floor were floor team, while the rest of the teams were trying desperately to complete their tasks. Right off the bat I felt like this was going to be a busy GP and I wasn't wrong, there were an immense amount of calls, and a lot of them were very strange or unusual, in addition to this the sheer number of appeals was insane.

Two Explores, Two Explores!
I was sitting on two matches near end of round and beside me I overheard a player say “I think you've already played your land for the turn” the player apologized and took back his move. He seemed like a pretty proficient player and was playing quickly so this seemed fine, and I didn't feel the need to step in. A few minutes later I heard a spectator say, “Hold on you've already played your land for turn,” it was the same player, and I decided that this was probably the match I should be watching. I marked down the GRV when the spectator pulled me away, he mentioned that the extra land had seemed suspicious, and that he felt like the land had been critical to a spell the player needed to cast that turn. I noted that it was a control mirror and they were both on around land 6 or 7, a relevant point in the game, I hadn't stopped the players because I wasn't sure if this was quite relevant enough to investigate, but after hearing the spectators concerns it seemed more critical than I had previously assumed. I went over to speak to the players but unfortunately while I had been talking to the spectator the match had finished. I still felt like something needed to be done, so I spoke with one of the appeals judges about the incident, however as the match had ended there wasn't much that he could do either, other than say “yeah that sounds suspicious, I wish you'd stopped the match so we could ask some questions”. I still felt like some due diligence was owed to look into this player further, so I asked a fellow judge to watch the player during the next round, both because I was on deck checks so I might miss doing it if I tried to catch him after I completed my duties and to get a second opinion on the situation. The judge reported back to me, and mentioned no additional strange errors.

There's No Such Thing as Intentional Slow Play
I took a call at a table and noticed that one of the players seemed a to have a large deficiency in understanding the game state, I figured this was a good place to sit down both to quickly answer any additional calls, and to monitor for slow play. Also the opponent was getting a little visibly irritated, so my presence my prevent any strange outbursts. There were a lot of questions and misunderstandings during the game that I managed to clear up. I considered giving the confused player a slow play warning since his pace was not great, however they ended up not needing the two additional turns, and I also felt like a slow play ruling was going to cause a pretty unpleasant reaction from the player, resulting in an appeal and a bunch of other time consuming nonsense. At the time I recall thinking his pace was pretty borderline anyways, but perhaps I should've just issued it anyways. After the match I spoke to the older player about playing quickly in the future. He was a little defensive and mentioned his opponents multiple Asian and foreign cards, saying something along the lines of “I could've made it take a lot longer”, this sounded a lot like intentional slow play to me. Which is uhmm, cheating: stalling. I was pretty uncomfortable with it, but put that to the side while I spoke to the other player about his aggressive tone, and mentioned that it would likely have the opposite effect of making his opponents play faster, and if he was a little nicer it would be better for everyone. He agreed and listened, but also mentioned that his opponent hadn't been so 'incompetent' in the first two games. Coupled with my uneasy feeling about the conversation with the older player I felt like this was a pretty good case for a DQ. I was going to speak to the appeals judges right away, but they were currently tied up in investigations. I decided, since I couldn't get ahold of them now, I would have another judge watch the older player in the next round and gauge his pace of play. If he was playing competently, there was basically an airtight case here. Unfortunately when I checked in with the other judge at the end of the round, he had gotten caught up in an investigation and had missed his opportunity to watch the player. I understood, since this event was basically a giant investigation workshop with some event thrown in, but was pretty sure that player had been doing something that was not okay and wanted to get my last piece of evidence before bothering the appeals judges with it. The judge agreed to look into it again the next round, but when I checked in it appeared that the player had left the event. I suppose this could be considered the problem “taking care of itself” but I am still a little uneasy about the resolution of the entire thing.

Teferi Trigger Untaps My Opponents Lands
I got called to a table where a Teferi, Hero of Dominaria end of turn trigger had been missed, the opponent wanted to put it on the stack and have the Teferi controller untap his lands, I began to work through the trigger, since I hadn't had an opportunity to encounter this at Comp REL yet, it took me a little bit to resolve how to handle the situation. The initial player who had made the call was very impatient and kept interrupting me as I worked through the scenario. In addition to this a spectator began to ask if the trigger could target untapped lands, since it didn't ask to target tapped lands, I began to explain to the spectator that it doesn't target anything at all, when the initial player who made the call said something along the lines of “I've never heard of a spectator influencing a judges ruling, I would like to speak to the head judge” Without having really delivered or explained anything to any players, I sighed and grabbed the head judge. The HJ succinctly delivered a ruling and also educated me on a few ways to explain the ruling better in the future. I was a little worried that he'd make me look silly in front of the players because I hadn't really finished giving them a correct ruling, but he didn't undermine me at all, which I really appreciated. The player also argued with the HJ for a little while before finally accepting the ruling. Overall I felt a little frustrated after the interaction, but also feel like I could've handled it better myself, I wasn't familiar with how Teferi's trigger was being handled at Comp REL and thus didn't deliver a confident, quick ruling which gave the player a lot of time to try and talk me into a ruling more favorable to him. To clarify at Comp REL Teferi, Hero of Dominaria's trigger to untap two lands, must untap two lands (which means you can't select untapped lands) and since it doesn't target players can tap lands in response. Unless a player is particularly unintelligent, he will never have to untap his opponents lands.

The day was harrying to say the least, I felt as if almost every call was some kind of player dispute or a player doing something suspicious, it was a very strange event. Very few calls ended with both players satisfied and content with the ruling.
The very last call of the day I got appealed on a very simple rules question, which was upheld. I left the building a little exhausted, and having watched very little magic.

Sunday – Floor/Features


Nexus Woes
I got to watch a lot more magic, most notably a lot more nexuses. That card was not a good idea for multiple reasons. I've called the deck “taking turns” in my mind because that's all I ever saw it do (I believe the current popular colloquial name is turbo-fog) if you've every played against a taking turns style deck you know how frustrating it is to be tapped out and have to watch your opponent durdle in the hopes that they just accidentally fizzle somehow. I sat beside many of these players, I even chatted with a few of them after or while the taking turns player was going off, to help cheer them up and lighten the mood. I enjoyed these moments because I felt like I managed to make a rather negative player experience a little less negative. It made me feel good after a stressful Saturday to actually be able to make some players smile.

Featuring Nothing
I also got to be on features, but for a GP with basically no coverage area features was more like a glorified VIP area, a few little tables and some cordoned off space was basically it. This was also pretty pleasant, because I've always found more competent players to be more professional, more well adjusted people in general. They were very polite and respectful and it was overall a very enjoyable to watch some good magic being played. The feature area was serious, but fun, with many of the players cracking jokes with each other. It was a nice change from the previous day.

Team Lead Checklist
I noticed pretty quickly that my team lead was taking his TLC, and with a little observation I figured out that another team lead was also taking theirs. I'm not sure what to make of it, but my interactions with them all day felt a little.. artificial, my team lead gave me feedback, gave us all a team building question and made sure to have a meeting and constantly checked in on me. Technically everything was done right, but it all felt a little disingenuous, in the sense that I felt like he was just checking boxes. I feel like this wasn't a failing of my team lead, but rather the metric or knowledge of the metric that they are being judged on. Perhaps I am wrong, but I got the impression, especially at this event, that to complete the TLC there are a number of boxes one needs to check to pass, and as magic players, and people who are used to very pointed quests in general, we will certainly check those boxes. But I feel like as a means to an end it makes each action less meaningful. I guess what I'm saying is that not every team lead should feel obligated to give feedback. Feedback should be given when it's relevant. When it means something. More often than not I don't get feedback at a GP, which is fine, because it means the times I do get feedback I have the mental bandwidth to process and ruminate upon it. Having handy checklists for tasks is great when those tasks are concrete like many of the tasks at a GP, but when those tasks are more ethereal and interpretive, like mentoring, or training, I feel like simply checking off boxes during the event is not going to actually help accomplish what we are striving for.

...In Conclusion
The meta at GP Orlando can be summarized pretty nicely with this image. This might explain why it was so stressful on Saturday. Being around unhappy and dissatisfied players is extremely draining for me. In very few of my interactions was I able to completely satisfy players with a ruling. The reason I judge is to make players happy, and when I can't do that I feel like I'm failing at my job. I feel that in some ways this is one of my strengths as a judge, but also a pretty critical weakness. I feel like often I don't want to upset players so I hesitate to investigate or press them for information. Especially in the case of the slow play guy. Perhaps I should've more aggressively issued that ruling, maybe I would've gotten appealed but then an appeals judge could've looked into the situation and given it the attention it needed. Sunday was much better, the players were much happier in general and it was easier to keep them that way. Overall it was a tough GP for me, but it's in the things that are difficult where we learn the most, so I'll think about the challenges I faced at Orlando and postulate about how they can help me improve as a judge.