Calgary, Canada | Modern
Time: Friday March 29th – Sunday March 31st
Players: 950 Winner: Attila Fur

Friday – AM Sides Lead


Approach of the Second AM Sides Lead
I've only done AM Sides Lead once before at MF Oakland, I made a few mistakes and got a lot of feedback from it, I made sure this time to go over the feedback I received to ensure that I didn't repeat the same problems as last time. A major point of critique was the uh, somewhat sub-par pre-event correspondence I sent to people, so this time, in an effort to ensure that wasn't a problem I spent the Wednesday and Thursday before the event, taking the time to send out customized schedule emails and ensuring that the break schedule had no issues.

Staffing was kind of tight since CFB knew it was going to be a smaller event, so finding people to cover breaks was a challenge, a lot of the half round breaks were marked as “either the lead or an adjacent judge will cover this for you”. Since I didn't know which judges were going to be close to which events. This actually worked pretty well.

Nexus of Coordination
The other large piece of feedback I received at MF Oakland was that I was hard to find, this is also feedback I've received as the PM sides lead. Some leads like to camp at the main stage and be a coordination nexus, however, I feel as if I have a better feel for what is going on and what needs doing if I'm in the field, this also allows me to identify and fix problems before they become enough of an issue that people need to bring them to me. I didn't want to remain stationary, so instead, I set up a facebook chat and included all my team members in it, that way, if anyone needed anything, they'd be able to communicate with me and the rest of the team, quickly and easily. Also, if a member didn't have data, I determined that it would still probably be easier for them to locate another member of the team with data, than myself or the other lead.

The chat actually worked out really well, while I was on my half round break one of my judges missed checking in for the start of his event, I found this out through the chat, and upon returning from my break I was able to make locating my judge a top priority! (It turns out he had gotten sucked into watching a particularly interesting game of Canadian Highlander in a secluded corner of the room and lost track of time!)

Feedback in Action
The other major thing at MF Calgary was that I noticed pretty early on that kickstart seemed to be having a few odd issues, and events were launching later because of it, I spoke with one of my team members, as well as to kickstart lead about things my team could do to help, as well as offering some suggestions and support, after the discussion I noticed things seemed to be moving a little more efficiently. And on Sunday when he was kickstart lead again, I noticed things were significantly better.

Tainted Donation
There was a player in the Multiplayer Commander event playing a deck based around casting Donate on Lich’s Mastery and then leaving the game, this causes Lich’s Mastery to leave the battlefield, in turn causing a trigger to go on the stack. in the multiplayer rules it states that when a player leaves the game they take all the objects they own with them (cards, spells on the stack etc.) However triggers don’t have an owner per-se and therefore wouldn’t be leaving the game with the player.

Saturday – MCQ Head Judge


Great Expectations
I was very excited about this designation, the thought of being on the mic or using a wall clock was super thrilling, and being able to take appeals and backups was really awesome, also managing 4 people to ensure tasks were being completed was sure to be an exciting challenge! Being MCQ Head Judge is a very significant next step in the leadership process, and I was incredibly honored to have been given that responsibility.

So I was justifiably a little disappointed when my event was smaller than the modern double up, at a paltry 80 players. I sent my fourth judge to help out with main event, because they really needed the support. The event was sealed, but with only 80 players handling product distribution and decklist collection during registration wasn't a huge issue. I decided against using the microphone since the players were far away from the stage and there were only 80 of them, it was pretty nerve-wracking, sealed procedure involves a lot of players staring at you for a long period of time, which always makes me nervous. But the process went smoothly and without a hitch

Deck Registration Lag
There was one player who was registering his deck pretty slowly, so I was forced to give him a GL. At 10 minutes into the round, he still hadn't completed registration for some reason, when we spoke to him, he thought he had a ML and had been taking his time, my FJ decided to take a photo of the players deck and get him playing, however, by the time this was all addressed and done, it was already 18 minutes into the round. I decided this was fine and gave him the 18 minute time extension, since he was already getting a GL I determined that this wasn't really going to drag the event, and honestly, I should've just had a judge take a photo of the deck in the first place, or at least been clearer with my penalty. I got pretty lucky in that he lost the second game of the set pretty quickly so the time extension didn’t come into play at all.

The Breaking of Breaks
One thing that went a little off the rails was breaks, I wanted to start breaking people when the event was well underway in round 1 or 2 however, my people came in at 12 and the MCQ didn't start until 3pm, which means that R1 and R2 were around 5 or 6pm, which is not when you want to be starting breaks. I discussed it with one of my team members, and it was determined that starting breaks during deck registration would've been optimal. I ensured I checked in on the person I sent to main to make sure they didn't miss their break either

Sunday – Scheduled Sides


Back into the Trenches
I wasn’t leading on Sunday, and spent most of the day floating and covering breaks. Because it was a slower show I used this time to mentor some of the more inexperienced members of my team. In particular there was a newer L1 on ODEs that accidentally took a call on the adjacent main event, he immediately called me over to take the call instead. I was a little confused but resolved the call. I asked him about it later and he let me know that he thought only L2s were allowed to work main event. I asked him if he felt comfortable with the IPG and if he would like to take calls on main, and said that he would. so the next three calls in that main area, I flagged him over and shadowed him while he took the calls. I got to give him a lot of feedback and he got some really good experience utilizing his comp REL knowledge.

Back into the Trenches
In a regular REL event, a player opened his hand with SB cards in it. The judge instructed him to fix the hand and deck and then take a forced mulligan down. I spoke to the judge afterwards and let him know that while this was a really good execution of a comp REL fix, at regular we have a little more liberty to excersize mercy. I proposed that letting him fix the deck and then either taking a full, free mulligan or re-drawing the missing cards were both totally acceptable options.

The DQ That Almost Was
I was called over to a match where AP said he cast Runed Halo and asked for a resolution, NAP agreed to a resolution, AP named Grim Lavamancer and NAP attempted to activate Grim Lavamancer in response, I asked NAP what happened and NAP said he tried to activate Grim Lavamancer in response to the cast of Runed Halo. AP disagreed with this story, a nearby spectator also said this is not what happened. I went to began asking the spectator questions, and NAP scooped. I was pretty taken aback. AP looked frustrated, mumbling something about NAP’s behavior throughout the match. I took AP aside and asked him about the interaction, he mentioned that NAP was being pretty unsporting and awkward. NAP walked up and kind of butted into the conversation a bit, I told AP to sit down while I spoke with NAP for a moment. I was fairly certain he had lied to me, and was considering a DQ from the event, I spoke to him, and it was pretty clear he was on tilt from having to play against a prison deck. I calmed him down, but let him know that lying was unacceptable, and that he might not be in R3 of the event. I spoke with the PM show manager, and he asked if I thought this player would be a problem in R3. I didn't think he would be, and we decided to let him stay in the event. I let the player know this, and when I returned, him and his opponent had both reconciled and were smiling again.

...In Conclusion
I was glad to have another chance to Team Lead, I feel like I made a lot of mistakes at Oakland and wanted to show that I could be better than that! Which I think I did, the extra time spent on pre-event preparation really paid off and resulted in a really smooth event. Being Head Judge of the MCQ was a really big step in my judge career, even though it was a smaller event, and I didn’t take any backups and only took one appeal, it was still a big responsibility and something I’m really grateful CFBE trusted me with. I think there were still a few speedbumps on this event, and I’m really excited to try again at Madison and London to be an effective leader.