Portland, Oregon | Standard
Time: Friday December 20th – Sunday December 22nd 2019
Main Event Players: 455 Winner: Dylan Nollen


Friday – PM Sides Lead


Dig Out of an Infraction
This theoretical situation was brought up during the pre-event conference. What if AP casts Dig Through time, picks up 10 cards, takes 2, puts them into their hand, and then returns the remaining 8 cards to the bottom of the library? The infraction falls neatly under HCE, however, the only prescribed fix is to take the 8 cards off the bottom of the library and to “thoughtsieze” three of them back into the library. This feels... kinda like a waste of time. Personally, I think that no fix feels kind of bad since AP got to look at three extra cards. The fix of “thoughtsieze” two cards from the hand back into the Dig Through Time set and then “thoughtsieze” three of those cards away feels very punitive, however.

Inventive Violations
AP controls four lands and Fires of Invention. AP casts two Cavalier of Flame and then activates its first ability twice, (ignoring the ETB trigger) and attacks for 16. Then AP passes the turn. NAP untaps, attacks, casts Rankle, Master of Pranks and passes back. AP untaps, draws Hallowed Fountain and then realizes that they only had four lands, and couldn't have played Cavalier of Flame. I felt like this was a little far for us to backup, but decided that it was valuable enough to execute. In this case it was pretty obvious that AP had drawn Hallowed Fountain (which they also confirmed) and if we execute the backup without returning Hallowed Fountain to the top of the library, the backup effectively does nothing. I didn't realize this at the time and just authorized what was effectively a Comp REL backup. Luckily the Hallowed Fountain was randomly selected to go on top, so the backup wasn't pointless.

You Just Angle Shot Yourself out of the Event
AP plays Ogre Errant and says “the ETB trigger targets Rimrock Knight” and declares an attack with Rimrock Knight. NAP blocks the knight with a single creature and says “your card doesn't work like that.” NAP was investigated as this seemed like a very borderline angle shot. I'm still not entirely sure where I sit on this, if you believe NAP allowed AP to illegally resolve a trigger and only pointed out the error when it was advantageous to them then yes, this is cheating. If you believe that NAP didn't let the trigger resolve and only pointed it out when it mattered, letting AP say nonsense (which we do allow players to do ie. I target this thing with Council's Judgment) then it's just an angle shot.

Saturday – FJ Scheduled Sides


Borderline Border Color
I walked by a game in the scheduled commander event and saw a gold-bordered Reflecting Pool. I flagged the HJ of the event who told me that CFBE had told her it wasn't a problem as long as the other players at the table didn't have an issue with it. I found this very strange and went to hear CFBE's logic on the matter and I had some followup questions about counterfeits. It turns out it was a bit of a miscommunication, in the Command Zone, if the players are playing casually, CFBE doesn't mind if they use gold-bordered cards, artist proofs or obvious proxies (they still have a problem with straight-up counterfeits) however if it's an event that the player paid to be in, they disallow anything that is not legally a Magic card.

A Humble Horror
AP controls a Thing in the Ice with one ice counter on it, and casts Opt, putting Thing in the Ice's flip trigger on the stack. Before that resolves, NAP casts Humble targeting Thing in the Ice, what happens? Thing in the Ice still transforms, but the backside is just as Humble as the front side, and therefore, the transform trigger doesn't go on the stack. This was brought to me as a double check on a ruling already made, and one that was unfortunately made incorrectly. I encouraged the judge to reconvene with the players and let them know the correct ruling. I think this is really important because even if the game where the ruling was made is over, the situation might come up again, and it would be nice if it were handled correctly. And even if the match is over, if the players talk about the ruling later with their friends and find out it was incorrect it corrodes player confidence in judges.

A Legacy of Dissonance
Mystery Booster playtest cards are a wild and fun experience for players and judges alike. At the most recent MagicFest however, I ran into an interesting scenario involving the cards with the “Legacy” mechanic. The card and the release notes both instruct the player to physically mark the card however at the past few MagicFests the floor ruling has been that we don't force the player to physically mark the card and damage their property, instead, we have been allowing them to mark a sleeve or a piece of paper on the side. I feel as if this is a policy issue, and that CFBE is allowed to bend policy in some cases (ie. locking PTQs at 6 rounds regardless of attendance) however if someone views this as a rules issue, its not at all okay for CFBE to change it. (ie. CFBE can't say “Today Oko costs 2UG in the main) Personally I believe that because Mystery Drafts are a really casual fun experience, I'd rather not force the players to mark their cards if they don't want to, of course there's the opportunity for cheating, but I feel like using Gold Mine a sixth time is not only a fairly low value cheat, but it's easy enough to catch that it probably won't be a problem.

You're Getting a Better Seat Whether you Like it or Not.
I had a player in my event that was using their own rolling chair (not a wheelchair, like an office desk rolling chair). I didn't really know why they were doing it, I assumed it was probably for some kind of medical reason. I decided to simply, quietly tell the scorekeeper to give them assigned seating at the end of the row to minimize the disruption the chair would cause. Another judge asked me why I didn't ask the player whether they wanted assigned seating and I mentioned that it might make them feel singled out. I think people with special needs would rather not be constantly asked whether they require assistance, and if we could instead just make their lives easier without them realizing it, that would be the best of both worlds.

USC... Something
AP lost their deck in the PTQ and angrily signed their match slip, so angrily in fact that the pen slid off the slip and made a giant mark on NAP's playmat. The HJ was considering USC - Aggressive Behavior or USC - Major, however I think it might be more accurate to call it USC minor, since AP didn't intend or direct their anger at NAP or their things, it happened by accident, which doesn't fall under the definition of USC-Major or Aggressive Behavior.

Sunday – PTQ HJ Pioneer - 124 players


Qualification Stealing
I had a player in the PTQ that was already qualified for the PT. My scorekeeper brought this to my attention, after speaking with the player it turns out that his roommate (who was also playing in the PTQ and was qualified for the PT) had an email from Scott Larabee (tabletop operations manager for WotC) that said that players qualified for the PT were allowed to play in PTQs at MagicFests. I brought this up to CFBE who let the players know that this was incorrect, and that they'd investigate why Scott had said this, but that for today the two players would be allowed to continue playing. Afterwards I asked the player if he'd shown Scott's email to anyone else and his response was a very concerning “Oh yeah, tons of people!”

Far Too Marked
I had a call where a player was drawing their opening hand for game 2 and noticed some pen marks on their sleeves, they called over a judge. I pulled the player aside and investigated, I noticed that the most distinct marks were on their singleton Elspeth, Sun's Champion and their Lyra Dawnbringer. They were an UW control deck and these were their only win conditions. After some questioning it was determined that the player had in fact called the issue on themselves and that the opponent was completely unaware of the marks. I issued the marked cards game loss, since I felt like the markings were distinct enough that the player could've used them to gain an advantage. However, upon reflection, I think the ruling may have been too harsh.

1+1+1+1=4
AP controlled two Hardened Scales and a Metallic Mimic naming construct, and cast a Walking Ballista for X=1 and wanted to know how many counters it would enter the battlefield with. The FJ on the call answered 4 and was appealed, I took the appeal and let the player know that these were all replacement effects, and while they could choose the order in which they applied, it wouldn't change the amount of counters Walking Ballista was going to enter with.

Shaping a Spellskite
My FJ brought me a question regarding Shapers' Sanctuary and a spell targeting two of the Sanctuary players' permanents. However I misunderstood initially and thought it was a question about a spell that had two instances of the word target that were targeting the same permanent. This was something I didn't know so I went to another judge to double check, I asked them the following question. AP controls Shapers' Sanctuary and Spellskite. NAP casts Kolaghan's Command choosing the 'deal 2 damage mode' and the 'destroy target artifact' mode, choosing Spellskite as both targets. How many cards will AP draw? While the other judge was deliberating, my FJ clarified the question: NAP casts Casualties of War targeting a creature and a land that has been animated with Nissa, Who Shakes the World, how many cards can NAP draw? This is a much simpler question, the answer here is two, I let the FJ know and then continued speaking with the other judge. After much deliberation, the main event judges came to a consensus that due to an official ruling on Wild Defiance the answer was that AP would draw one card in the Spellskite scenario.

Scorekeeping Conundrum
I had a scorekeeper error that resulted in a player who should've gotten a loss instead getting a win, the player that actually lost had also dropped, so we couldn't simply switch the records and the opponents. Instead we had to do a cascading repair, which meant breaking a few other matches so that all players were playing opponents with the correct number of match points. One of the matches I broke was already on turn four and the player involved in it was very upset, since he didn't realize this was a thing we could do. He questioned me a few times, and I offered to let him talk to the scorekeeper since I figured she could explain it a little more clearly than I could.

Let's Not Perish That Thought
AP accidentally drew two cards for turn, however, he knew what both cards were because the previous turn he had cast Serum Visions to scry 2. In this scenario the HCE was issued, and the hand was revealed to the opponent, but instead of shuffling the selected card into the library, we just put it on top since, well, AP should know what's on top anyways!

Set the Course to GRV
AP cast Chart a Course after attacking in combat and discarded a land, then passed the turn. NAP cast Supreme Verdict and passed back. AP cast Young Pyromancer and an Opt and then before resolving Opt realized the issue. My FJ came up to me with the backup, I didn't think it was great since a lot of information had been gained. The Supreme Verdict and the second Young Pyromancer are both pretty meaningful spells that I'd rather not back up through. I took a look at AP's hand to see if they had a Dig Through Time or anything else that might make them want to discard an additional card. Not having Dig Through Time in hand and choosing to discard seemed like a fairly low value cheat, and therefore the cheating angle seemed pretty weak. Additionally the AP could've simply cast Chart a Course pre-combat if they really wanted to discard a card. In the end we opted not to back up. The mistake I made here was not asking the players if they'd take a different line of play if the backup was executed, I think I could've asked a few more questions since the players know the lines better than I do.

Flicking Players
A main event judge came up to me because one of his local players had let him know that his opponent had been flicking his cards weirdly, mostly just touching his deck a lot and running his thumb along the side of the library. The judge that the player spoke to let me know that it was possible that the player had some sleeves that were a slightly different size and that by doing this odd flicking motion the player might be able to ascertain where the cards in larger sleeves were in the deck. The player also mentioned that the motion had stopped when a judge was watching. I thanked the player and asked the judge if he'd go watch the match undercover, he agreed and stood by the match for a while. He said nothing looked too out of the ordinary, after the match had concluded he sat down with the player and asked them to do a deck tech with him, this was a non-intrusive way for him to closely examine the players sleeves without the player noticing, I thought this was a really neat way to conduct this investigation. Afterwards the judge let me know that everything seemed fine.

Promotional Game Loss
I was deck checking a player and noticed they had two of the promotional basic lands in their deckbox, the promo for the PTQ was an Arcbound Ravager, so the lands were probably from side events the player played in the day prior. The player was playing Izzet and the lands were a Mountain and a Swamp. I spoke with my deck check judge and we both agreed that a GL was in line with current policy but felt very “gotcha-y” and I wasn't super excited about issuing it. We checked the opponent's deck and found that 2/4 collected companies were slightly marked, we could pick them out of the library consistently, but during the course of normal play it would be difficult for a player to pick them out. With very few ways to shuffle the library in Pioneer, cheats involving marked cards go down in value dramatically, and this one was already pretty minor. Again we both agreed that this was a by policy GL but felt very much like a judge “gotcha”. In the end we decided to issue both mostly as a bit of an informational ruling for the players, since tangibly, the game losses would offset and wouldn't have any real impact on the match.

Later on my scorekeeper spoke to me about the GL for the basic land promos and mentioned that on the main event during the previous day, that particular GL had been downgraded. After speaking with him, I kind of agree that this GL doesn't feel great. I think if my PTQ hadn't been first thing in the morning (meaning the player might've gotten the promos the same day as my PTQ, not the day previous) I might've downgraded, or if the game loss wasn't going to offset I might've also downgraded. I want to note that this line of reasoning does not feel great though, giving an infraction to one player because another player got one is a very, very dangerous line to walk down. Upon reflection I think the correct ruling would've been to deviate and downgrade both to warnings.

Very Good Idea*
The Very Good Idea(TM) that came up at this event was why don't we take some of the work off of CFBE and instead let the players decide who the HJ of the Grand Prix is. I think we could stage something similar to a political debate where players can ask the judge their opinion on the hot topics of the day, “How do you feel about the Narset double GRV policy?” or “If we vote you in will Murderous Rider be detrimental?” or maybe “If I miss my Chalice of the Void trigger, will you deviate?” I think in this way we'll get GPHJs that support policies and rulings that are popular with the players.

*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
I haven't worked Regular REL in a very long time at a MagicFest, (aside from being thrown into Mystery Booster land a few times) so it was actually pretty nice to brush up on my JAR and attack situations from a non-IPG perspective. I also just had a lot of fun in general, being PM sides lead on Friday was really weird, did I mention I was in the hall until midnight HJing the draft PTQ that started at 10:30am? The top 8 for that event definitely should've been on Saturday morning or.. or something. I had a ton of fun on Saturday with scheduled sides, and Sunday really challenged me! There were two investigations and 3 appeals, along with a healthy number of double checks and just calls in general. I had a great time at Portland and am looking forward to MF Austin!