Phoenix, Arizona | Pioneer
Time: Friday February 7th 2020 – Sunday February 9th 2020
Main Event Players: 941 Winner: Ben Weitz

Friday – PTQ Slips


Enchanting Land
A spectator called me over because he thought AP had played an extra land this turn, it was the GW enchantment deck and there were about 20 permanents in play. I tried to ask the players what had happened the previous turn, since identifying whether they tapped out or not, and what they had mana for is usually a really good way to determine how many lands they had the previous turn (and ergo, how many lands they should have this turn). Unfortunately, neither of the players had a good recollection of the prior or current turn's actions. While investigating I discovered that AP controlled a Hushbringer, and was still scrying with his Season of Growths. I decided to figure out the land thing first and then issue the infraction for Season of Growth. I asked a few questions to see how advantageous playing an additional land this turn was. NAP didn't think it was particularly relevant, and neither did AP. However, considering the board state, AP would win if he drew an All that Glitters or Ethereal Armor, which he mentioned to me, and each enchantment he cast allowed him to draw three cards off his three Season of Growths, so the extra land actually allowed him to draw an additional three cards. In the end there wasn't really enough solid information to go on to determine whether a land had been played or not, and so I ruled that he had not played an additional land. The biggest mistake was that I forgot to interview the spectator.

Forced GRV
AP controls a Venomous Hierophant that's enchanted with Ichthyomorphosis, AP destroys the Ichthyomorphosis and NAP tells AP he should mill 3. AP does and then thinks better of it and calls for a judge. The final ruling on the call was GRV for AP and FTMGS for NAP. Which I think is technically correct, but I feel like NAP telling AP to break the rules feels less like FTMGS and more like a GRV.

The Sea and Stars are One, Forever
AP casts One with the Stars on NAPs Thassa, Deep Dwelling while NAP doesn't have devotion, if NAP later gets devotion does Thassa, Deep Dwelling become a creature? No, Thassa is inherently a creature and has an ability that stops it from being a creature, if devotion is met that ability stops suppressing its “creature-ness” however One with the Stars is still knocking creature off the typeline.

Drawing Cards is for Chumps
AP was in a Regular REL side event and cast Omen of the Sea and scryed 2, then he scryed 2 from another effect and realized that he forgot to draw a card from the Omen of the Sea. He was currently holding the two cards he was scrying, and I saw they were both Islands. Since he should've drawn one of these cards, I simply told him to select one at random to draw, and put the other one on top and complete the second scry 2 action.

Faith in Triggers Alone
AP controlled two Pious Wayfarers and cast an enchantment. He and points to one Wayfarer and says “trigger here” then casts another enchantment and points to the other one and says “trigger here”. He attacks and NAP doesn't block. AP then says “take 4”. I think this is fine, AP's initial declaration of triggers was ambiguous, but he clarified it when it became relevant. If he'd said “take 6” I think I would also be okay with that. If he said “take 2” I would say a GRV has been committed here as he clearly didn't miss *all* his triggers.

Mishra's GRV Factory
AP cast Gadwick, the Wizened into his opponent's Narset, Parter of Veils and drew 6 cards. (oops!) Then AP cast Growth Spiral and at this point both players realized that he shouldn't be drawing a card, and shouldn't have drawn all those other cards! The fix here is double GRV and either rewind or don't, the rewind entails returning Growth Spiral to AP's hand and taking six random cards out of the hand and putting them on top of the library. One of the drawn cards was a Fabled Passage so the opportunity to shuffle a bunch of cards away was there, but even so, I think backing up results in the least amount of damage done to the game.

A little while later, AP cast Omen of the Sea into the very same Narset, Parter of Veils and drew another card, I investigated a little because while this was AP's second GRV, it would be NAP's third, and would make NAP take a game loss. Both players at this point were aware that policy worked like this because we'd explained it to them earlier. It was determined that AP wasn't trying to bait NAP into a third GRV and was just bad.

Later on in that same event, NAP ended up picking up a fourth GRV for an Elspeth Conquers Death issue and ended the event with a total of six GRVs for some combination of Narset and Elspeth Conquers Death issues. The running joke is that playing UW in standard right now is effectively playing Judge's Tower.

A Marked Issue
If AP breaks a sleeve while presenting their library, and then calls for a judge is that a warning for Marked Cards? I think by policy it is, but honestly I wouldn't issue the warning there.

GRV Tribal
NAP had ticked Elspeth Conquers Death up to its second chapter, taxing AP's spells. On his turn, AP cast Omen of the Sea for two mana scryed two and then picked up a card but didn't mush it into his hand, and called a judge. I issued GPE – LEC and executed a very nice GRV-style rewind. Then after discussing it with another judge we realized that I'd made a mistake and it really should've been double GRV. Additionally this was pretty relevant, because it would be the Omen of the Sea players third GRV, which would result in a game loss. I let the HJ know about the mistake and he decided to address it and issue the GL in the third game. I'm not sure I totally agree with this remedy. Another thing to note is that if NAP simply ticked up Elspeth Conquers Death, but didn't announce the corresponding trigger, then this is simply a missed trigger scenario, and not any amount of GRVs.

What is “Outside the Match”?
In the PT there is a decklist review period, however this is technically considered outside of the match for the purposes of writing notes. This means that players can't write a bunch of notes down about their opponent's decklists and then use those notes during the game. (They can however try to memorize the decklist and then rewrite it once the game starts so long as they're not doing it in a way that could be considered slow play.)

Saturday – Main Event – Deck checks


MPE Doesn't Fix Everything (It Actually Fixes Very Little)
AP took a mulligan but forgot to put a card on the bottom, then put Leyline of the Void into play. I knew issuing MPE and forcing a mulligan wasn't really a good way to fix this. After consulting with another judge we determined that policy worked best if we considered pre-game actions “part of the game” and issued HCE instead here. I think a more correct fix, however is to issue a warning and simply have the player put a card on the bottom immediately.

A Revealing Ruling
AP controlled Courser of Kruphix and cast Grisly Salvage, both players wanted to know if the sixth card down would be revealed during the resolution of Grisly Salvage. Initially I said it would be, recalling a ruling I made a while ago regarding Lantern of Insight and Jace the Mind Sculptor's 0 ability, wherein you do reveal the fourth card down. NAP mentioned to me that this wasn't the same because Grisly Salvage only “reveals” the cards instead of drawing them. I took another look at Grisly Salvage, and kind of embarrassed agreed that NAP was correct, and the sixth card down wouldn't be revealed.

More Lands for the Land God
AP called me over and said that they had played an additional land this turn. I did a very small investigation just to see if it went anywhere, both players agreed that having an extra land at this point in the game was pretty relevant, and that AP had been playing pretty correctly up until this point. However both the fact that NAP didn't think anything sketchy was going on and the fact that AP called it on himself kind of pushed me off the cheating track.

Whose Trigger is it Anyway?
NAP cast Emrakul, the Promised End and is taking AP's turn, AP has a Tireless Tracker and NAP plays one of AP's lands, and misses the trigger to create a clue. Is this a warning for NAP? Policy is a little unclear on this one. The IPG does state that NAP is responsible for AP's triggers, however it doesn't specify whether normally beneficial triggers become detrimental if NAP is controlling them. I think that philosophically NAP should get a warning, otherwise he can just miss all of AP's beneficial triggers with no detriment to himself.

I Really Just Want to Issue GRVs
AP cast a God's Willing but thought it was Defiant Strike and instead of scrying 1 they drew a card. I was about to rule GRV but decided to check with another judge before issuing the ruling, the other judge looked at me kind of funny and was like “uh, isn't this just a very stock-standard HCE?” After thinking about it for a moment, I agreed and issued that instead.

Social Deviation
A player got particularly salty about receiving a GL penalty which cost them the match, and needed some time to cool off. They weren't the last table and previous rounds had turned very slowly. The player set a timer for themselves to get back in time. Unfortunately, the round managed to turn much more quickly than expected and the salty player returned two minutes late to their next round. The HJ decided to deviate and not issue the GL on the grounds that the player was pretty emotional about the entire situation and didn't really have the clarity of mind to alert the judge that they might be a little late.

Sunday – ODEs


Take Your Cards and Leave, No Really, Just Leave
For Mystery Booster drafts CFBE still has a policy that players need to draft and play at least one round before leaving, this is to avoid things like drafting and dropping and value drafting. There are very divisive opinions on this policy and I'm not sure if it's helping or hurting more. I think in the long run it does more good than harm because while it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to effectively “force players to play magic” if they know they will be playing they are more likely to at least try to enjoy the game, rather than sulkily ruin the experience for themselves. Though there are definitely a few that will do that.

Rewinding at Regular
AP cast Watcher in the Web as a morph creature because he thought it was the Sagu Archer that I verified was in his deck (but not in his hand at the time), this was noticed a turn and a half later when AP was trying to check its morph cost and realized his mistake. I thought about it for a bit, and asked each player a few questions though after a short investigation I figured it probably wasn't anything weird. In the end I executed a somewhat lengthy backup since I felt like leaving Watcher in the Web as a permanent 2/2 for 3 was very punitive but didn't see a better fix that didn't involve backing up.

Mysterious Rulings
The card Metagamer was ruled to have the text “Mythic Championship” changed to “Player's Tour” as is stated in the release notes.

AP has a Grizzly Bears with Hidden Strings encoded on it. NAP casts Act of Treason on Grizzly Bears, who casts Hidden Strings? NAP will get to cast Hidden Strings because the encoded card is glued to the creature, not the player!

AP controls Jeering Homunculus, do NAPs creatures have to attack next turn? Yup. Goad creates two requirements, one that the creature attacks and one that the it attacks a player other than AP. When declaring attackers we have to satisfy the greatest number of requirements, therefore attacking AP satisfies one requirement (the maximum number of requirements you can satisfy in 1v1 with goad.)

AP casts Reflector Mage on a morphed creature, can NAP morph the same creature next turn? Yes, morph creatures have no names!

Very Good Idea*
Right now we have a very good policy for dealing with cards that get destroyed throughout the course of an event, we can just issue a proxy. However if a player gets ruined, what do we do? Take for instance an incorrectly ruled HCE, the player now has knowledge of something they shouldn't have knowledge of, and has therefore been damaged throughout the course of the event. I think a good fix to this is to allow players to nominate proxy players. I think in the Pro Player contract there should be a line that says something to the effect of “if the need arises, you must act as a proxy player for a player damaged in a tournament”. Obviously we can't have people ripping pros out of matches to be proxies, so we'd need to have a contingency about the player not currently being in a sanctioned game of magic. But I think this would be a very good solution to botched judge rulings.

*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. 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 had a good time at MF Phoenix, though I made a lot of weird IPG mistakes that kind of frightened me. I think this event was a pretty harsh reminder that I need to re-read and spend some time reviewing and refreshing myself on the IPG. Also I feel like the current state of double GRV is a little broken. Not only did two players kill themselves on the PTQ on Friday, but the same thing happened on Sunday with different players. People are just dying to policy because there are so many invisible continuous effects flying around in standard, and when each unnoticed violation ends in both players getting a warning things get out of hand pretty quickly.