Oklahoma City, Oklahoma | Standard
Time: Friday December 13th – Sunday December 15th
Main Event Players: 328 Winner: Matt Carlson

Friday – PTQ Team Lead (Not Checks)


Timely Judge Call
A table is going to time, and AP asks the judge “how much time is left?” the table had an 8 minute time extension and there were five minutes left in the round, so naturally, the judge told the player they had 13 minutes left. However when the judge called time in the round, the player was surprised! Apparently he had actually wanted to know how much time was left in the round, not how much time his table had left. He spoke with the head judge, because, as we know, you make different decisions when you think you will bump into the time limit, as opposed to when you might not. In the end the player didn't get an additional time extension, but this is a good example of when clarity is important.

Clear Cutting
AP had a forest that had been animated by Nissa, Who Shakes the World, NAP had a Legion's End and wanted to know what would happen if he cast it on the forest. Well, the Forest would be exiled, then any other animated forests would be exiled, then and forest cards in the hand or graveyard would be exiled.

DragonSnatchers
A player in the final round of the PTQ was drawing their opening hand and noticed that one of their sleeves was different than the others (a different image but the same sleeve edge color). The card in the sleeve was a showcase Bonecrusher Giant, which the player was in fact playing, and counting the incorrectly sleeved Giant, he had the four his deck was supposed to contain. I investigated a few other players in the event that had the same sleeves as the discovered sleeve, but they all had the correct number of Bonecrusher Giants. We ended up figuring that he must've somehow swapped Giants with his last round opponent, who had intentionally drawn the current round, and was therefore nowhere to be found.

Saturday – Main Event - Stage


It's Detrimental in Months that Start with N, M & J
Murderous Rider's “tuck” trigger is still detrimental according to 2/2 red shirts this weekend.

Vocal Transmission Difficulties
Our microphone kept cutting out, to address this our HJ ended up just announcing to the players by shouting across the room, normally this would be completely ridiculous at the Grand Prix level, however it was actually kind of okay, since the event was only 400 players. Also in the last round our HJ decided against attempting to announce information about prizes and making day 2 and other common player questions. Instead we handed out a small “information slip” to each player alongside their match slips.

Deck Problem? No, Just a Deck Comlication
Two players are starting game 1. AP shuffles and presents his deck. NAP also shuffles and presents his deck. Then AP presents his sideboard. NAP thinks this is cool and also wants to present his sideboard, at which point he realizes that it's 19 cards (meaning he has a 56 card main board). At this point, he realizes there is a problem and calls for a judge. Technically by policy, this is a GL since the deck has been discovered to be illegal during the presentation period. However I would argue that the player discovered it themselves, since they didn't really need to present their sideboard. Also if NAP had waiting until the game had started then realized their SB was 19 cards and called it, they would've only gotten a warning (except for a few upgrade paths).

Corner Cases
This was a theoretical, but not totally unusual scenario that was brought up. What if AP was in the main event, loses some number of games, decides to drop and then enters a side event. While he's still in the side event, he wanders over and gives outside assistance to his friend in main? By policy we re-enter him into the main event and give him a match loss. Which is kinda... weird. I'd like if we could give him a ML in his side event, but that's a little weird because then we're IPG-ing in a side event, which leads down a dark path.

Trigger of the Void
there is a lot of loud complaining about how Chalice of the Void missed triggers function, if my opponent casts a card into my Chalice and I miss it, that's ok, but if I cast a card into my Chalice and we both miss it that's no good, and the current fix is “put the trigger on the stack now” which uh, does nothing if the spell has already resolved. I spoke with one burgundy in particular who said that whenever he had the opportunity he would deviate and treat it more similar to GRV, where the game would be rewound and the trigger would be put onto the stack only if it did something. I think, honestly other than the current problem of “other judge ruled this differently” this is a really good solution. I wish we could get every judge ever to rule this in this way.

Kenrith, the King Returned to Hand
AP cast Kenrith, the Returned King with Fires of Invention, but only controlled 4 lands. He then activated Kenrith's ability to draw a card, he then played a mountain, gave Kenrith haste and attacked NAP's Teferi, Time Raveler. At this point NAP noticed that he didn't have the five lands necessary to cast Kenrith. I looked at AP's hand and he had two scrylands. He let me know that he was thinking about his line, and thought “let's see what I draw before I play my land for the turn. I forgot this like, wasn't legal.” I was kind of suspicious and brought in a burgundy just to take another look at the situation, but they seemed to think it was ok. I executed the backup, and as it happened, the mountain ended up going back on top of the library, and AP was able to scry it away with his scryland. Making a joke about how this worked out great and that he should commit GRVs all the time, at which point I was like “wait no. WAIT NO THE SYSTEM ISN'T WORKING AS INTENDED” :/

Rotten Triggers
AP missed his Rotting Regisaur trigger, and drew a card before resolving it. I was called to the table, at which point AP tried to scoop. I stopped him, I recalled in other situations like this I'd usually let it go, but the “scoop out of an infraction” is very suspicious. I asked how many cards were in AP's hand, he told me 6, at this point, I also asked if he'd received any other infractions, he said no. I shrugged and let it go at this point, since both those things turn my suspicion meter down. I consulted with one of the HJs to see if I should pursue it further, but he also thought it would be best to leave it alone.

Lying for to Gain Disadvantage
I was called over to a table about 2 minutes into the round, it was table 1 in round 5, AP asked me for a time extension since his opponent had just arrived, I turned to the opponent and asked him why he was late. He professed that he had been in the bathroom. I asked him if he'd spoken to a judge beforehand, AP then said, “yes he has” before NAP had a chance to respond. I uh, didn't believe him but didn't really know how to proceed, so I simply marked the time extension down and spoke with some other judges. Many of them agreed that it was a little disconcerting that a player had lied to a judge, but honestly said they'd do nothing about it. I let them know that if I was the player and this became more prolific, a social expectation would develop, preassuring me to “be a nice guy” and lie to the judge to get my opponent out of an infraction. Similar to how missed triggers are kind of socially awkward right now.

Murderous Shuffle
AP controlled a Murderous Rider that died, instead of putting it on the bottom of his library like a good rule-abiding player, he shuffled it into his library. I was shadowing the judge on the call and he correctly ruled GRV and performed the backup, he looked through the library and put one of the Murderous Riders on the bottom. He then returned the deck, at which point AP asked the judge if everything except the bottom card would be shuffled. The FJ was about to say that it didn't matter, but I gave him a bit of a look and whispered, “just shuffle it”. He shrugged, shuffled, and delivered the time extension. I spoke to the FJ afterwards and let him know that yes, we technically didn't need to shuffle, because the deck was still random, but that players would launch some kind of “it's not random because you looked at it!” nonsense that was no worth arguing about, and it would be quicker to just make everyone happy by shuffling the cards.

Stolen Gales
AP controlled NAPs Cavalier of Gales that died. AP wanted to know how the trigger would resolve. I was shadowing the call, and the judge on the call seemed uncertain, she looked at me and asked me in front of the players how to resolve the call, I let the players know that AP would shuffle Cavalier of Gales into NAP's library and then scry 2 from his own library. Because it was a dies trigger the game checks right before the trigger event, and at that point AP controls the Cavalier, and therefore will control the resulting trigger. I then spoke to the judge afterwards and let her know that it's a little weird to dump a call on another judge since it makes the judge doing it look kinda bad, and that a better strategy is to just say “I'm pretty sure I know the answer but let me just confirm,” and speak to the other judge away from the table. Or just spend the extra few moments looking up the answer. Later on I shadowed her on a call involving Tolsimir, Friend of Wolves, where the wolf that was supposed to fight died in response to the trigger, the question was whether the trigger's controller would gain 3 life or not. This time she looked it up and got the correct answer without undermining herself. (the controller does in fact, gain 3 life.)

Sunday – Deck Checks Team Lead


100% Completion Achievement
When I walked in on Sunday morning, of the 62 players that had made day 2, only 23 of them hadn't been deck checked at all. During my team meeting, I let my team know that we could check 0 decks and still have done our job of checking all of top 8. we obviously didn't do that, but it was a pretty surreal situation. My main goal was not to check a player a third time, I think at a point, it becomes obnoxious. Taking 10 minutes of a players time is kinda lame, taking 20 minutes is not great, and taking 30 minutes is kinda ridiculous. The worst part of magic tournaments are the parts where you're not playing magic, and I made it a goal to not exacerbate that by injecting more waiting periods. Unfortunately for our last deck check of the day, we ended up checking a player a fourth time (his opponent hadn't been checked at all) and on the second one we'd given him a gamer loss. The software only had records of him being checked twice before. I apologized to the player afterwards and let him know that we weren't targeting him, but were instead trying to check his opponents, and he kept getting unlucky. I wasn't thrilled about “lifting the veil” of deck checks to the player, but I felt like it was important that the player didn't think we were targeting him specifically.

The Logistics of the Check
There is software to help Team Leads on day 2 narrow down who will make top 8 and that would help keep track of who had been checked, but I didn't end up using it. Instead I printed out a list of standings every few rounds and circled the players we hadn't checked, just to keep an eye on it any of them shot up to the top of the bracket mysteriously. For the actual lists, we had access to the online list system which was a joy. No more cross-referencing an index of decklists and dinging through piles of paper, just type in your players name and boom! There's the list!

Very Good Idea*
Every event or so I come up with a Very Good Idea(TM) about how to improve sanctioned magic. At this event it was, instead of each round having a set time limit, simply announce that you will DQ the last table playing at the end of the round. How would this affect magic? Would people still play magic but keep an eye out for other matches still playing and start conceding near the end of the round? Would IDs be much more prevalent? Would fast decks be favored more over slower decks?

*Disclaimer: Oftentimes Very Good Ideas (TM) are actually Very Bad Ideas (also TM) that have been re-branded by the Vyseri marketing team and should not under any circumstances be implemented in an actual tournament. Tobi and anyone who was talking to her during the inception of the Very Good Idea(TM) are not liable for angry players, destruction of tournament material, destruction of tournament judges or the destruction of the tournament. It has also been noted that tournaments that are destroyed as a result of, or in direct correlation with a Very Good Idea(TM) being implemented cannot be regenerated.

...In Conclusion
Some folks may know that Sunday this was my successful TLTP attempt, and also the third time I took my TLTP. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the process, I am very much behind my failure on my first TLTP event, but while I don't think I did amazingly on my second attempt, I still feel as if the things that caused me to fail were out of my control. I'll continue to ruminate over the process, and, at the very least, getting another shot at TLTP gave me some more team leading experience.