Cincinnati, Kentucky | Team Trios
Time: Saturday March 23rd – Sunday March 24th
Open Players: 970 Winner: Minor, Ambrosio & Cresopo jr
Legacy Classic Players: 150 Winner: Zach Allen

Saturday – Main Event – Slips Team Lead


Reading the Policy Explains the Policy
I've never been team lead on something like a main event before so I was pretty excited, having the ability to authorize HCEs and backups was really interesting, I was also allowed to authorize Game and Match Losses for things that weren't tardiness.

About half way through the day, a member of my team came to me with a player who had shuffled his SB into his deck and drawn his opening hand. I let him know that it was a warning unless the player had additional copies of SB cards in his main. Unfortunately the player did in fact have additional copies of SB cards in his main, and my judge issued the GL. Unfortunately the GL upgrade is only valid if the game has already begun, and drawing hands and determining mulligans is a part of the pre-game procedures, ergo in this situation the upgrade does not apply. During lunch the FJ was chatting about it with some other members of the team, who, unlike the two of us, decided to double check policy and determine that no, a game loss was not correct there. The FJ informed me and HJ of the mistake, and reconciled things with the player. We were lucky that the player was more interested in playing and wasn't too bothered about the mistake. But it was a pretty big screw up and a reminder to always check the IPG no matter how certain you think you are, especially for more aggressive penalties.

The Power to Do Nothing
It turns out that the most exciting thing about approving backups at SCG Cincinnati was not approving backups.

I was brought a situation where a player had forgotten to put a lore counter on his Eldest Reborn. Afterwards, he had activated Karn, Scion of Urza, selected a card and then both players had realized the mistake. I mulled over the situation, backing up here would constitute a rewind of the Karn activation and would require that we shuffle in the two revealed cards, effectively allowing the player that had committed the error to “re-roll” his Karn. I don't like backing up through effective card draws and I really don't like backing up through card draws when the backup could potentially give an advantage to the erroneous player. Therefore I let the FJ know that it was probably a bad idea to do this, and we didn't.

You Thought You Had Colorless, I Thought Knot
AP player cast Thought-Knot Seer without colorless mana, resolved the triggered ability, passed turn, his opponent drew for turn, cast Elvish Visionary, drew for Visionary, and then realized the mistake. I decided to investigate a little because knowing which lands tap for colorless and which don't seems to be not that hard of a distinction in legacy. I asked him a few questions about how long he had been playing and why he thought he could tap Horizon Canopy for colorless. He mentioned that because Horizon Canopy had a “pain” ability, he thought it was a pain land, and thus tapped for colorless. This didn't seem like a super solid explanation, because he paid two life to cast TKS, and pain lands only cost you life when you're using the colored portion. He mentioned that he was borrowing the deck from a friend and hadn't been playing it that long. I decided that he seemed innocent enough. But it still felt a little odd to me.

I allowed this backup to happen, I talked through it in depth with my FJ, mentioning the fact that because of AP's notes on the elves player's hand, we knew what cards had been drawn and needed to be returned (a Wooded Foothills and a mystery card) I also mentioned that since we were putting the two drawn cards back on top in a random order there was a chance that the elves player drew Wooded Foothills and had a chance to shuffle away the next card before casting Elvish Visionary. I was pretty 50/50 on whether to backup here, but decided that it felt better to do than to not.

There is a Fine Line Between Cheating and Incompetence
I sat down to a match where a control player (Dovin) was going to game three against an aggro player (Chandra). One of Dovin's team members had drawn their match, and the other team member had won, effectively making it so that either a draw or a win ensured his team took the match. The table had a five minute time extension, and Dovin took about 3-4 minutes to shuffle and sideboard, doing a meticulous pile shuffle as well. This made me pretty uncomfortable, since while Dovin probably knew he couldn't take the game in the time allotted, and also that Chandra definitely could. I spoke to the HJ about this as well as another judge adjacent judge. The HJ suggested we take a look at how he acted in the next round to see if what he was doing was significantly different than what he had done this round.
One of the major things I noticed was that while all his actions were completed in a timely manner, I felt like he was taking a lot of additional actions in order to run down the clock, such as pile shuffling, regular shuffling, shuffling his opponent's deck, sideboarding and mulliganing in a leisurely manner. Which technically doesn't actually count as Stalling. For something to be considered Cheating – Stalling, by definition it has to be Tournament Error - Slow Play first, which, completing multiple extraneous illegal actions, is most assuredly not. A judge watched the player next round, Dovin took G1 and then took 7 minutes to SB and shuffle for game two including a pile shuffle, FJ brought it to one of the HJs, the HJ instructed the FJ to issue a slow play warning and to continue watching. Dovin lost G2 and then did a light shuffle and a hasty SB for game three, expressing the need for expediency.
The HJ was brought into the situation at this point for an investigation, but ultimately elected not to DQ the player. Dovin claimed he sped up in response to the SP warning, and was also a newer player that was getting heavy assistance from his teammmates on how to SB. I still feel a little uneasy about this because when I watched him at the end of the previous round he didn't seem particularly new or inexperienced to me, just judging by his playstyle, demeanor and the way he handled his cards. However, I do trust that the HJ investigation perhaps revealed some things that were not evident to me.

Chancellor of the Trigger
AP reveals Chancellor of the Dross at the beginning of the game and puts a die on the table, T1 neither player does anything but play lands, on T2 AP casts a Faithless Looting and the NAP says “float blue, Daze,” and bounces his Island, AP then removes his die from the table, assuming the Chancellor of the Dross trigger has been paid. Then after Daze resolves NAP says, “With my floating mana, Brainstorm” and AP calls for a judge. The FJ on the call consulted me, and I felt it was simply a miscommunication, and the trigger had not been forgotten, and AP had stopped the game when he realized that NAP was no longer on the same page. The ruling was appealed and upheld, but the call generated a lot of interesting discussion, does the ruling change with the removal of the die as a physical marker? Initially, that element wasn't expressed to me when the call was relayed, but I still ruled that AP had not forgotten their trigger.

Sunday – Legacy Classic – Paper Team Lead


Army of Two
Being a TL on a smaller event always feels a little odd, because you probably have like 1-2 people on your team and realistically you're not so much leading as working alongside them to get all the tasks done. And this is what Sunday felt like, my FJ and I kind of just worked together to ensure everything got accomplished.

Thoughtful Thoughtsieze
AP cast Thoughtsieze NAP got halfway through revealing his hand and then said “Oh wait I'd like to Force of Will that,” AP, having seen he was dead to his reanimator opponent next turn, wasn't really okay with this and called a judge. The FJ consulted with me on this ruling and I said that it felt like it fell pretty nicely under the MTR reversing decisions rule, the FJ seemed surprised by this, as he had been fairly ready to lock the NAP out of casting Force of Will. I said that the only information gained here was by the opponent, and that this felt very similar to playing a land and then going “Oh no wait, I'd rather do something else.” The FJ thought for a moment agreed with me, and made the ruling. AP decided to appeal, but we were upheld.

Irreversible Decisions
AP fetched and cast Thoughtsieze then after NAP had revealed his hand, AP said that he had fetched the wrong land, while this may be true, I decided that a lot of information had been gained and allowing him to change the land he fetched would be pretty incorrect. His current fetch legally allowed him to cast Thoughtsieze. So I locked him in on that decision.

In a similar but slightly different situation, AP cast Council's Judgment pointing to NAP's Monastery Mentor, NAP then said, “In response to your target, I'd like to Swords to Plowshares my Monastery Mentor.” At which point AP was like, “Uh Council's Judgment doesn't target,” NAP then wanted to take back his Swords to Plowshares. I let him know that this did not fall under the MTR reversing decisions rule, because again, information had been gained.

Please Draw a Random Card From Your Library
AP player failed to draw a card for turn and then NAP realized the mistake halfway through AP resolving a Ponder (he'd rearranged the top 3 cards but hadn't drawn any yet). The FJ on the call determined that it would be unfair for him to draw his card now after having manipulated the cards on top, so instead a deviation was approved where the top 3 cards were set aside, and AP drew the fourth card down instead.

...In Conclusion
SCG Cincinnati was a really exciting experience for me, team leading on a larger event was pretty new and I got a pretty good sense of what it must be like for day 1 TLs at a GP. In some ways it was a cozier more intimate atmosphere than a GP because the staff and event size was so much smaller. Highlights were hearing about an Animate Dead trigger being Stifled (the result being an enchantment just hanging out on the battlefield enchanting a card in a graveyard.) and overhearing judges discuss how they felt about the phrase “plow your mom” as a legitimate contraction for “Swords to Plowshares targetting your Mother of Runes.” Overall I think I enjoyed SCG Cincinnati more than I expected, and there were a fair number of new exciting experiences both to learn from and share with others. I'll definitely be looking to work more SCG events in the future, maybe even one day I'll get to HJ a classic!