Indianapolis, Indiana | Team Non-Unified Modern Time: Friday September 6th – Sunday September 8th
Expected Player Count: 1500 | 3 Burgundies for Day 1
Players: 330 Teams (990 Players) Winners: Qadi, Karani, & Brown

Friday – PM Sides Lead


The Challenge of Finding Work
Friday was aggressively overstaffed and underplayered. There were a lot of reasons for this, one of them was event burnout, this was the first MF after Vegas, which is a big spending point for a lot of players, also the Indianapolis ComicCon was the previous weekend, and finally, as a midwestern event, a lot of judges mentioned that the event was quite “driveable” for players, meaning they were less likely to take Friday off to attend the event. I think the last factor was probably the most relevant as Saturday and Sunday were significantly busier (though still quite slow). To illustrate the point, until about 2pm we launched a single ODE, a commander pod that finished before I arrived at 1pm. The 8 ODE judges were literally doing nothing all morning. We only launched a single Turbo Draft, and by the end of the day while I'm not certain, I believe the amount of ODEs we launched throughout the day could be counted on two hands. Near the end of the day I pulled some ODE judges to help cover some scheduled sides. But for the rest of the day I kind of let the team know it was pretty slow and that as long as events were covered, it was a good day to talk with peers and that if they came back from breaks kinda late it wasn't a problem.

Space Management
One of the things I did was near the end of the day was moving LCTs (or rather, Team Practice) into the ODE area, this was doable because the events were all sub 10 teams, so the lack of table numbers wasn't a problem, and the ODE area had the space to support a few extra events. This solved the common problem of the last LCT of the evening being completely orphaned on the other side of the room. I also tried to condense the scheduled side events to allow judges to manage more than one event at the end of the evening. However, my plan was “no sir'd” by the Show Manager on the grounds that he wanted each vendor to have some players near them. Which I agree is reasonable, however it made releasing bored judges at the end of the day kind of awkward.

Commander Blunder
In the ODE area a group of four commander players signed up roughly around the same time, and ended up waiting for over an hour for their pod to launch because something odd happened in registration. The players were understandably upset. As an appeasement the players were given an extra 20 tix.

Limited Nightmares from PAX
These weren't Indianapolis events, but stories I got from the sides lead at PAX, which happened the week previous.

In a draft the players were on pack one, a judge was called over and one of the players explained that they were almost done drafting pack one but that one player had accidentally opened his second pack and circulated it in with the draft. Backing up the draft was obviously pretty impossible by this point, since the error happened quite a few picks ago. The judge decided that the best way to fix this was to simply give the player an extra pack. This is not a great “policy” for this kind of problem, but as a one time fix I feel it's fine.

In a Core 2020 Sealed event two players were given Core 2019 sealed pools, they both opened their first pack, realized the issue, and called a judge. The judge on the call asked for the other five Core 2019 packs back, let the players keep the pack they opened, and told them not to include it in their sealed pool. She then gave them shiny, new 6 pack sealed pools containing only Core 2020 packs.

Saturday – PM Sides Lead


Ascending is Easier than You Think
AP plays Dusk Charger while he has Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner and 8 other permanents in play. He wants to know if he can draw the card from Dusk Charger. The answer is yes, Ascending is a static ability that applies immediately, after a player gets city's blessing, continuous effects are reapplied before SBAs are checked. So by the time we're looking for triggers... triggering, the Dusk Charger is a 5/5 and qualifies for Kiora.

What Are We Playing For?
Commander event prizes are being changed again! Previously it was 20 tix for everyone and 40 for the winner, then it was 50 tix for everyone (after the tix inflation event of MF Washington) at the beginning of R1 and R2 with a note that players are allowed to “gamble” the tix if they want. Now it's just 100 tix at the beginning of R1. I witnessed two commander events that suffered because of this, as many players didn't want to bother coming back for the second round. I think the lack of prizes for winning, while it is good at promoting playing for fun, already makes people lukewarm on playing round 2, the lack of any incentive to return to the event results in a lot of players just wandering off and making R2 a logistical nightmare for the HJ involved. I think 40 to each player each round and 10 in the middle for the winner is a better solution because 10 tix is negligible enough that any spikes are probably not going to swoop in and destroy people, but it gives players a reason to be in an event rather than just playing casually in the free play area.

Counterfeit or Proxy?
I was watching the scheduled commander event during R2 and noticed a very foily Scrubland in play. I took the opportunity to pose the question as a theoretical to two the L1s on the event and asked what they would do. Counterfeits and proxies are kind of strange to deal with since they aren't explicitly covered in any of the documents (to my knowledge) and while in competitive the line of DQ or not is fairly clear, it's always a bit of a challenge when it comes to commander. The L1s postulated using the JAR guidelines for “illegal, insufficient or another players cards in the library” and talked about replacing it with a basic land, there was also some banter about whether a DQ was merited here. Personally I think in something like commander I'm more likely to be a little softer, especially if it's an obvious proxy. In this particular case I brought it to the attention of the player, and the others at the table immediately mentioned how upfront that particular player had been about it being in his deck at the beginning of the match and clearing it with them. Seeing as there were no prizes on the line and it was halfway through the round, I let the player know that I wasn't going to do anything about it for now, but that if he were to enroll in another event he should remove the card.

How Does a Trigger.. Trigger?
AP casts Bone Splinters sacrificing Kykar, Wind's Fury to destroy another creature, the question was whether AP would get a spirit. The answer was that no, AP would not get a spirit. After an event happens we look back to see if anything triggered, and in this scenario Kykar, the permanent that would've triggered is gone by the time casting a spell is complete.

I Didn't Even Know we Could Sanction That!
The format for this event was a weird one, Team Non-Unified Modern. I've always thought unified was a little bit of a strange restriction on team events. It's kind of confusing to players and I feel probably generates a lot of “random” feeling game losses. I think the motivation for running unified is so that coverage isn't 6 mono-red decks all squaring off, but realistically, that's not totally likely, and if the format is healthy, the decks are going to diversify naturally, as different players have different strengths. Another interesting thing about the format was that in Unified Modern (or unified anything) the beginning of the game is critical, because if you look over and your partner is playing against burn, you now know that you're not playing against burn. In non-unified, you can't get that kind of info, I kind of think this makes the format a little more skill testing.

How Many GRVs at Regular does it Take to Get a “Tournament Loss”
I was sitting on a match near the end of the day, it was a Tron mirror, one player was clearly a little more experienced or at least more cognizant of the rules than the other. AP downticks Karn, the Great Creator and grabs Liquimetal Coating, he plays it and on NAPs upkeep, he activates it targeting his NAP's Ghost Quarter. At the the time AP has all three Tron lands. NAP looks a little confused, AP says “you can't activate its abilities” NAP is uneasy and asks me, “Er is this at the speed of an instant?” I could tell AP was hoping NAP wouldn't realize he could activate Ghost Quarter in response. I answered, “It's an activated ability, so the same speed as an instant, and goes on the stack just like everything else.” In retrospect I think this may have been a little too... helpful. In the future I think I'd probably not have said the last little bit. NAP then asks, “So can I respond to it?” I replied, “Yes.” NAP then decided to activate it in response by saying “Ghost Quarter your Urza's Tower,” AP looked a little disgruntled that his plan to trick NAP hadn't worked and grabbed his Urza's Power Plant, put it in his GY and began searching or a basic land. I thought about it for a moment, and asked NAP to clarify which land he had targeted, he quickly said “Tower”, I turned and looked at AP who then noticed that his Tower was still in play. He apologized and switched the lands. I think it was fairly critical that NAP was able to activate Ghost Quarter that turn, since if he had not been able to AP would've been able to untap and play Mycosynth Lattice, locking NAP out of the game. The Tower mistake seemed to have very little bearing on the game, other than the fact that Tower is the better of the three Tron lands.

A few turns passed and AP was at 11 and had a worse board position than NAP. AP had Karn, the Great Creator and an Ensnaring Bridge, NAP had Thought-Knot Seer, Mystic Forge and Reality Smasher in play. NAP asked how many cards AP had in hand and he said “3”, NAP then look at AP's hand a little more closely as he was flicking it and asked “4?” AP responded, “Oh right, 4, sorry”. NAP played Karn, the Great Creator, animated Mystic Forge and attacked for 8, destroying AP's Karn and dealing him 4 damage. This was another weird mistake. After the match had concluded (AP lost) he flagged me down and mentioned that NAP had failed to fill out the match slip. The players had been prized out at the table in order to let prize tix staff go early. NAP asked me if he could fill out the slip in his favor. I looked at him flatly and said, “No because I know what actually happened,” He told me this wasn't policy and in the past the he had been allowed fill it out however he wanted. I let him know that we usually called the missing player up to the stage to confirm reality. I tried to ask him why he wanted to fudge this result since it didn't really gain him anything. He didn't seem very interested in listening and told me this was a “bad judge call”, and walked away sulkily.

The next morning in the Modern Double-Up the player from the previous night came up to me and apologized mentioning he had been exhausted and grumpy the previous day. I thanked him for the apology, however I was still suspicious and let the HJ know that that this player had done some suspicious stuff the previous event. I also flagged sides lead because we had a lot of extra judges on staff and he mentioned the idea of having and undercover judge watch this player, however I'm not sure if that ever actually got followed through with.

Upon reflection I think a DQ would've been reasonable here, however by the time I kind of reconciled myself that this was the correct solution the player was gone, his 20 tix in hand.

Ideas Through Depths
AP cast Ideas Unbound and looked at the top five cards of his library, one of his teammates was like “uhm dude,” at which point a judge was called. The judge performed an HCE, which consisted of revealing the 5 cards to the opposing team and having them pick two of them to shuffle back into the library. AP then added the 3 cards to his hand, which in this case, were unfortunately now all lands.

Sunday – Scheduled Sides


Stoneforge of Saint Traft
AP attacks with Stoneforge Mystic and says “Stoneforge at you, and the 4/4 angel token at your planeswalker.” NAP was, understandably, quite confused and called for a judge. The judge ruled that no, unfortunately you do not get an angel token (this ain't Geist of Saint Traft!) and the attack you declared is legal so you can't change your mind and have Stoneforge Mystic attack NAP's planeswalker isntead.

...In Conclusion
MF Indianapolis was a really quiet event. I was lead most for Friday Saturday, so I didn't feel the full brunt of the boredom, but I definitely got the impression that my judges would rather there have been more players. I encouraged them to engage in discussions with peers, and even tried to engage in some such discussions myself. This event I ended up talking to a lot of my peers in regards to my own rather stagnant feeling advancement and I got a lot of good advice on how to move forward. Overall Indianapolis was a good event for me, and I'm looking forward to Syracuse this weekend!