Montreal, Quebec | Sealed
Time: Friday October 7th – Sunday October 9th
Players: 1080 Winner: Christopher Leonard Huu Nguyen

Friday – PM Sides Lead


Who Am I and What is My Job?
PM sides feels like a relatively new designation, in the past I feel like there have been individual PM leads for each section of sides. Now, there is simply one lead for all of sides when the AM shift leaves. I am harshly petitioning for the name of this position to be changed to the Omnilead. Ahem, anyways it felt pretty strange, since during the day I felt more like a secondary Scheduled Sides lead that occasionally dropped in on ODEs and LCTs. And when all the leads exited around 6pm I was suddenly juggling a bunch of extra responsibilities. Notably, while ODEs and Scheduled Sides were relatively close to each other, LCTs were on the actual opposite side of the hall, which made making rounds kind of difficult.
Also it made the end of day a little strange, since my last time as PM Sides Lead, I was able to take over the last two side events personally, and dismiss all my team members early. This time, however, I remember there being two LCTs still running, one turbo draft match as well as a match of legacy, so it was a strange sort of leap-frogging thing that I did where I released my scheduled side person, and finished the legacy event for them, then moved over to ODEs and released my ODE person, then after that finished I walked all the way over to LCTs and let my final person go home.

More Like Slow Chance Trials! Wait that's a terrible joke-
LCTs, as a side note, did not finish until about 11pm, for whatever reason they were dragging pretty significantly. Which ended in an amusing scenario where the closing manager, came over to my small cluster of judges and players to let us know that the hall was closed. I looked at him levelly and said “But what about this LCT?” to which he replied, “Wait, there's still an event going on? Oh, well, I guess the hall's not closed.”

Underrealm Logic
I spent a fair amount of time in LCTs and one particular question was how to properly resolve missing Underrealm Lich's replacement effect. I was initially going to GRV rewind, and allow the player to resolve the ability properly (seeing as the card they had drawn for the turn was still distinct from their hand), however when I described the fix and infraction to the player he mentioned that this had happened before and the other judge had ruled it differently. He mentioned that the other judge had simply instructed the player to just mill two cards now, and issue no infraction. I thought for a moment, and decided that this was a much more elegant fix. After applying the fix I discussed the call with another judge that had been watching me make the ruling and we talked about the dangers of not tracking the mistake with an infraction and whether any advantage at all could be gained here. Ultimately it didn't seem like there was a ton of advantage that the Underrealm Lich player could be generating with this fix, especially since the two times it happened he called it on himself.

Welcome To Ground Zero
I noticed we had a fair amount of newer judges on LCTs, in particular a very green L1 that seemed a little rough on the IPG. I had a lot of extra time before the section leads left, so I spent some time going over some common rulings with him, in addition to a few of the other wide-eyed rather new looking judges on the floor. Usually on sides you don't get a lot of opportunities for mentorship if you're not leading because you're kind of glued to a particular event and so are they, so one of the benefits of being lead was that I got to spend some more time helping and training the people around me.

Saturday – PM Sides Lead


Goblin Misguided
I accidentally took a call in the Modern Double Up, AP cast a Monastery Swiftspear, in response NAP revealed a Teferi, Hero of Dominaria from the top of her library, thinking AP had attacked with the Goblin Guide he'd been attacking with every turn, AP was upset because NAP had a fetchland and could now make the decision to change the top card of her library in response to the Goblin Guide trigger. The correct fix at Comp REL is to shuffle, making the library random again and issue a warning for LEC. But when I suggested this both players seemed very adverse, you see in AP's eyes the top card wasn't a “random card from the library” it was “Teferi, a nonland card” and with the possibility of a shuffle NAP was gaining perceived advantage here. I could've just enforced the “correct” fix and been done with it, however it was regular and I didn't want anyone walking away thinking the other had received any advantage, I proposed to the players that regardless of fetching the next card revealed for guide would be considered to be Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. While this is, and I must stress, not really okay in terms of fixes, both players seemed much happier and more comfortable with this than the alternative. When I mentioned this to one of my roommates in the evening he looked offended enough to make a Reddit thread. I'm interested in other people's opinions, is this the worst ruling you've ever heard? Is this a classic “other judge” story?

This is Why We (Used to) Do 1v1 Commander Events
I had a newer judge on a commander event, I remember seeing them over by the pairings board before the event started, and I remember thinking to myself, “maybe I should just quickly go over how a commander event works at a GP because it's kind of weird,” and then I was like “nah there is no way PM sides lead AND Kickstart didn't tell him,”
I ahem... have some bad news for you. That news is that assumptions make an ass of you and me and I could've solved a lot of problems by simply asking if he knew how to run a commander event. Half way through round 1 I knew something was up when I didn't see a round end time on his paper. He had given some weird estimates for round end time to a few players, and the players seemed a little confused about the logistics of it all. I ended up calling time earlier than 90 minutes because some players had been told otherwise (and when you tell a player something they make play decisions based on that info). Also the amusing judge call of “judge I just fetched an expedition Breeding Pool with my expedition Temple Garden” came out of this lovely event. (just shuffle the 'pool back in no big deal)

One of the Most Flammable Substances in the Known Universe is an ODE
Organizing letting everyone go for both the staff photo as well as the Welcome to the Fold photo was difficult, since you don't want there to be no judges left anywhere, sides need to keep running, so having a few people remain was pretty important. Letting everyone run away for photos was part of the reason the above mentioned commander event had some problems. Then after everyone returned, and while I was still trying to moderate this commander event, all the other leads went home. Which meant the ODE scorekeeper left as well, which meant that the way we were handling Turbo Drafts was changing (since after the scorekeeper is gone events are no longer put into Kefka) meaning the judges usually handle prize tix, but lately CFB has had a closer eye on their prize tix, which resulted in an even more convoluted method of having judges return player registration slips to prize tix with the location of the event written on the back, and also telling players to go up to prize tix to report in pairs.
This worked fine on Friday when I went over and explained to the ODE judges how things were going to work, but on Saturday in all the chaos of the day, I missed that critical piece of information. Which meant ODEs were in a bit of a chaotic mess for a good while until I and some other industrious workers were able to go over there and quell the problems.

Discord Among the Regency
A big problem that I encountered on Saturday was the fact that both me and Elliot (the AM Sides Lead) were not communicating properly with each other. Often I would assign a person to a task and then right after Elliot might assign them to a different task. A way I attacked this on Sunday was I agreed with the AM sides lead to first ask a person if they had been previously assigned a task from the other lead, and he agreed to do the same, to avoid successive task reassignment.

Sunday – PM Sides Lead


An Empire Gracefully Ends
It was less hectic than Saturday, ODEs had many more judges and so did Scheduled Sides, and as a result the amount of problems we encountered were significantly diminished. For the most part, since things ran smoothly, I spent my time interfacing with judges, and ensuring they felt both cared for and were enjoying themselves. In the evening I had a long meeting with the AM lead where I got some really useful advice. A major point of contention was the evening team meeting. He was a huge advocate, mentioning that it helped encourage a feeling of camaraderie with different members of the team. I however, heavily favored a staggered release of my judges, mentioning that having a short, personal debrief with each of them before letting them go felt both more meaningful and more efficient. I didn't give the closing meeting a try this time, but may if I find myself in another leadership opportunity.

...In Conclusion
I had a lot of fun at Montreal, and learned a lot about leadership. It's definitely a challenge for me for sure! I have a tough time delegating tasks, and one of my major assets is that I am a monster when it comes to task completion. So that was something I had to address and consider. Communicating effectively with other leads was another thing that I really got to see function poorly and well over the course of Saturday and Sunday. The advice I got from all three AM leads was valuable and meaningful and gave me a lot of information to ruminate on. As always, I'm grateful to be on the GP circuit and am so thrilled to be afforded these kinds of opportunities. I'm looking forward to my next GP, and my next chance to apply the things I've learned.