Atlanta, Georgia | Legacy
Time: Friday September 20th – Sunday September 22nd
Players: 1022 Winner: Cyrus Corman-Gill

Friday – Last Chance Trials


Smoke and Mirrors
I walked by a game and noticed a player had his cards double-sleeved in smoky inner sleeves with light pink outer sleeves. Which inherently is not a problem. However on some cards the smoky inner sleeves were turned backwards, so that it was over the front of the card. I also noticed that his Delver of Secrets checklists were in regular, non smoky sleeves. I knew the pink sleeves were semi-transparent, and figured he could probably see the card backs on the ones with the non reversed smoky inners, I brought it up to the HJ. We looked through the deck and realized that the cards that were reverse smoky inner'd were sideboard cards. The HJs ruling was to do nothing now but to talk to the player after the match about it, issue a warning for marked cards and have him fix them.

One for All
I was checking a deck and noticed that certain cards had significantly more wear on them. In particular all four Force of Wills, the fetchlands and a single Brainstorm. The “wear differential” between sideboard and mainboard cards is normal but I couldn't initially think of and explanation for what was happening here. I checked the rest of the deck while turning the peculiarity of it over and came up with a hypothesis. The cards that were more worn were cards that were used in multiple decks in the format, and this was likely a player that had all his decks sleeved in the same way and switched cards between decks. When I pulled him aside I asked him a few questions and confirmed my theory. The final resolution was to get him to resleeve and issue a warning for marked cards.

LCT every Hour
The new LCT system has LCTs launching every hour instead of every half hour (as well as two sealed events, one at 13:30 and one at 16:30). I think this system is way better because it puts less strain on the scorekeeper, as well as the judge staff, and on average each event has more players in it, so we don't end up with people getting a lot of byes. Logistically, it's generally easier to have one larger event than many smaller ones, so this change I think was a really good idea.

Saturday – Main Event - Pairings


...And This is the Part Where We Switch Decks
I got the pleasure of watching a Death and Taxes deck go up against a dedicated Shared Fate deck. This was a complex match, so I ended up sitting on it for most of the round. The D&T player made a fair amount of mistakes, due to the sheer number of questions and strange interactions, twice he failed to draw a card from activating an ability, once from a Sword of Fire and Ice trigger, and once from a Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. Both times he completed half of the activation and then there was a rules discussion about some interaction, and he just failed to draw. I softly reminded him both times. Later on he tried to Aether Vial a creature exiled by Shared Fate into play. I decided this time I'd finally issue a warning for the batch of mistakes. I was a little softer on both card draws since they were very clearly unintentional mistakes that generated him negative advantage, and he seemed fairly flustered by the pile of complexity that Shared Fate had added to the game.

Unintentional Draw
Legacy is a glorious format. Not once, but twice did I run into situations where players drew the game unintentionally, the first time AP was attacking with Griselbrand and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, NAP cast Deflecting Palm on Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, both players were at 7. The other situation was AP is at 2 and NAP is at 6, I have one nonbasic land and NAP has 3, and I'm casting Price of Progress. Both times I had to explain that they still needed to play until there was a player that had won two games or until time had run out, that the player that went first in the previous game still chose whether he was going first in this one.

Suspicious Lands
AP cast Crop Rotation, looked to his opponent, NAP said it resolves, AP then says he wants to float a mana in response and NAP lets him know that's not how the spell works. A few turns later AP is dead on board and is in the tank. I can tell he has no lines of play that save him, he tries to activate Knight of the Reliquary to fetch a land but has no legal lands to sacrifice. I wasn't sure if this was cheating or not, at the time I got the impression that he was simply very flustered and was misplaying a lot, he also made a few other honest to goodness strategic misplays. Upon reflection though I feel like perhaps I should have asked some questions about his experience playing Lands.

Thalia Wants Tax Cuts!
A player with a fully foil D&T deck calls me over and lets me know that he's missing a card. I let him know he's got 10 minutes to find it or a replacement. He pokes around for a bit and while he's gone his opponent mentions they played G1, and not too much has happened since then that would result in the loss of a card. I let the opponent know it wouldn't be an infraction because we don't infract people for past games. Lukily, with about one or two minutes left the player returned with an upsettingly non foil Thalia.

Eidolon of Malcontent
NAP controls Eidolon of Great Revel. AP casts Councils Judgment, NAP then casts Fireblast in response. AP then tries to argue that the Eidolon trigger has been missed, since AP is at 5, the trigger makes this interaction lethal. I rule that it isn't missed, as it could still be on the stack, and that triggers are remembered until forgotten. I got appealed and upheld.

Retrace Your Understanding
There are two exciting things about Retrace that happened in this MF. First of all, Daze and Retrace interact in the most tech way possible. You bounce a land for Daze's alternate cost and then discard that same land to pay Retrace's additional cost. It's a no mana, no cards in hand Force Spike! Anyways, deck tech aside, I shadowed a judge that thought Retrace was an alternate cost and not an additional cost which would mean that Force of Vigor couldn't be cast from the graveyard by exiling a green card and discarding a land. I didn't want to interrupt the other judge, and wasn't entirely certain myself so I looked it up. The rules did say it was an additional cost. I showed it to the other judge but he still seemed to believe that it was an alternate cost. He seemed fairly confident so I let him make the ruling. He walked away but I was feeling growing unease about the call an the players could tell. I told the players to wait while I double checked the ruling. I saw that one of the judges with a reputation for rules knowledge was nearby, so I quickly questioned him and got confirmation that I was correct. I ran back to the table, apologized to the players and let them keep playing. I then found the other judge and talked it over with him.

The Flickering Dead
What happens when you Flicker an Animate Dead? It just does it's thing again, it enters and attaches to a creature in a graveyard, then it's ETB trigger hits the stack and you go through the whole rigmarole.

When is it Too Late to Rewind?
This was posed as a hypothetical, a Show and Tell player sacrifices Emrakul, the Aeons Torn at the end of the turn and begins shuffling his graveyard into his library. After all the cards have been mushed in the opponent stops him and says he wanted to cast Surgical Extraction on something. I think if the opponent can remember what he wanted to surgical I'm okay just finding all the copies in the library and exiling them, but if he can't then he should've been paying more attention, and has missed his opportunity.

Nested Sleeves
This was also posed as a hypothetical to me (though it may have actually happened in the event somewhere since it seems to weird for a judge to make up). AP calls you over and lets you know that because NAP shuffled his cards roughly, one sleeve split and another sleeve got shuffled into it, then when AP cast his Brainstorm he drew the “double card”. This one's interesting because it's NAP's fault that the sleeve is broken. Normally this would be HCE, but perhaps we fix but don't infract here?

Bluffing or Cheating?
When my opponent casts Show and Tell am I allowed to place a card face down on the table and then when we go to reveal our cards, put it back in my hand? Personally, I think this is fine.

Emergency Deck Check
I had a very weird interaction with a player on day 1. I sat down beside the match and noticed some bent Ponders. I noticed that the Ponder player had a Brainstorm in his graveyard and some other library manipulating spells and so I waited until he cracked a fetchland and passed his turn before grabbing his library and flipping through it to see if the cards were marked. About 5 seconds into my investigation he sharply said, “Judge, I've already been deck checked.” I nodded and said “ok”. I don't really want to take a player at face value when they say this because it would either be false or the cards could have gotten marked afterwards. About 5 seconds later he said, “We're on the clock here,” I was getting a little flustered, and let him know that I would be issuing a time extension. About five seconds later he impatiently said “Judge I need to draw a card.” At this point I was kind of tired of interacting with this player, he clearly didn't want me there and I kind of didn't want to deal with the nonsense. So I gave the deck a quick shuffle and returned it to him. He sharply asked me why I shuffled, I mentioned that the library was random when I grabbed it and random afterwards. Though I was fairly flustered. The reason for shuffling after looking through a players library is that some players are very superstitious and believe that a library isn't “random” if it's looked through. This is, of course, nonsense, but if it makes people feel better to have me shuffle their library, I'll just do it. I decided a better resolution to this problem would be to get a targeted deck check on the player. I took his name to the deck check lead and mentioned the brisk attitude to him, as USC – Minor is a penalty I've been accused of not handing out enough. I wasn't sure if it was appropriate here, and decided to also get consultation on that. The deck check lead mentioned he could also check to see if the player had indeed been deck checked before, because if not, we had a very different kind of problem.
I found out that, yes he had indeed been deck checked before in this event. Additionally another burgundy ended up talking to this player, and on Sunday morning the player came and apologized to me. I also apologized because, as I reflected on it, from the players perspective I had come up while he was running up against the clock, said very little, grabbed his very expensive deck and then shuffled it. Overall it ended up positively.

Sunday – Main Event - Papers


Flip A-Round
We had a table with a 30 minute time extension. The HJ decided we'd flip the round and just hold the two matches affected by the match still in progress. This is always weird to me, flipping an entire event except for one match.

Let Me Put Your Call on the Stack
I was taking one call, that was a simple(ish) oracle/rules question but while this was happening there was a call at the adjacent match. I tried to be efficient and take that call while the players from the first call were looking at oracle text, however the second call turned out to be a more complex GRV mess, and I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to address it “in the middle” of my previous call. This was pretty bad, since I not only ignored the first players halfway through their problem but the second players had to explain the situation twice. One call at a time is always best.

A Dazzling... No Fix
AP casts Sylvan Scrying and NAP casts Daze. Then NAP untaps goes to crack a fetch and realizes that AP didn't have green mana? AP could theoretically have cast Sylvan Scrying, as he had a green land in his hand and therefore the ruling on this is to leave as is. My initial response was to back up, however as my team lead informed me, this is pretty disadvantageous for the Daze player, because now AP knows that NAP has a Daze and can play around it.

The “Revealed From Hand Zone”
AP calls me over and says, “Judge, I cast Ponder and drew a card for the resolution of the spell, then I thought about it for a moment, and decided I might want to change my Ponder, so I placed Badlands in play to let NAP know this was the card I drew for Ponder in case I wanted to change my mind. It might've went in my hand, but it for sure was this card. Then I picked up and looked at the two Ponder cards and put them back. Then I wanted to put the Badlands back in hand, but my opponent thinks I played it.”
This all seemed very reasonable to me, and I was pretty okay just putting Badlands back into his hand at this point, but fist I then asked NAP what happened, NAP responded, “Yeah, so it basically happened like that, I think the Badlands, or rather, Ponder card, went into his hand, I wasn't paying too much attention. Also after he looked at the two Ponder cards for the second time, he also attacked my Wrenn and Six with two Snapcaster Mages and then afterwards he said he didn't want to play Badlands, my Wrenn and Six went to one from the combat and I have a Wasteland in my graveyard.” This was uh, a different story. AP had missed telling me about an entire combat step. A relevant combat step. I was uncomfortable with AP's retelling and he just seemed really shady. I ruled that the Badlands was in play and was appealed. I was kind of relieved since I felt like it was appropriate to get a burgundy involved event just because of the general shadiness of the situation.
After a lengthy appeal and investigation, the burgundy let me know that he was going to allow the player to switch the land if he wanted to. I wasn't thrilled about this, because I felt like AP was not above board here. But he asked the player this in a very circumspect way. He started by explaining that the land 'certainly looked like it was in play,” Then he asked, “What would you like to happen?” to AP, and AP responded by saying, “I'd like to get back to playing,”. Which resulted in AP not switching the land. From my perspective it seemed like the HJ believed that the player had communicated badly (by revealing a land in a way that was ambiguous) and had in turn communicated his ruling badly (implying he wouldn't allow a switch when he would). It felt incredibly strange, and I think I disagree with the final ruling, but not the final result.

The Backpack is Not a Zone
AP calls you over and says “I'm fetching but the two Blood Crypts I registered aren't in the deck” FJ says, “Okay put them in there,”. So AP goes into his backpack and grabs two Blood Crypts, sleeves them up, grabs one for his fetch and shuffles the other in. the FJ goes and double checks the deck and realizes that there are no Blood Crypts registered! The FJ goes back and several turns have passed. The HJ gets called in and investigates, like most weird stories, the HJ determines the player is just dumb. He hasn't really used the Blood Crypt for anything red yet, and game-wise it could be a swamp and the players mana base would be fine. The final resolution is remove the Blood Crypts and replace the Blood Crypt on the battlefield for another land that is legally fetchable with the land you used to grab the Blood Crypt.

...In Conclusion
I had an amazing time at MF Atlanta, it was one of my favorite MFs so far! I love legacy and getting to camp comp REL legacy all weekend was awesome! It's amazing how much the format and REL of an event impact my enjoyment of it (also how busy it is, but Atlanta wasn't particularly busy). I'm so glad I got to work the event, and am looking forward to head judging both Modern MCQs at MF Montreal!