Reno, Nevada | Theros Beyond Death Limited
Time: Friday February 28th 2020 – Sunday March 1st 2020
Main Event Players: 678 Winner: Nathaniel Knox

Friday – PTQ Deck checks Lead & EOR


Paper Playmats
I had a discussion with a fellow judge about playmat distribution for the PTQ, for a while CFBE was simply telling players to go to the prize wall to pick up their playmat. However for the last few shows they've had the judges hand them out at the beginning of the events. This is a bit of a pain if your event is slightly understaffed, since playmats are pretty unwieldy, and distributing them alongside promos and collecting decklists can really slow down an event. The SCG system of handing out a voucher is pretty good because it significantly lightens the load on Prize Wall staff since they no longer need to do a bunch of bookkeeping for PTQ playmats. What was done at Reno was the judges laid out playmats face-down on the tables (since they're randomized) before the event started. This was... kinda dopey, we had to police the area before the event and people ended up peeking at the mats before they sat down anyways, and there were always either too many or too few mats. In addition to this, later on we'd have to go and pick up any no-show mats. I asked CFBE why they changed the system and their primary reason was that players wanted to use the mat they were getting for the first round of the event, which a voucher system doesn't fix. Personally I think players can survive playing one match of magic without a playmat, and that the voucher system would be best.

Sushi God
If a player enchants a God, Heliod, Sun-Crowned, for example with Ichthyomorphosis, what happens? Well as long as Heliod is a creature, things are A-OK, however if Heliod's controller's devotion to white ever drops below 5 then the enchantment will fall off. This is because Heliod's “make it not a creature” ability applies in layer four, the type changing layer, while adding and removing abilities doesn't happen until layer 6. Also, very unlike many other enchantments of this type (ie. Reprobation) Ichthyomorphosis doesn't make Heliod a creature, which would normally solve this kind of problem.

What Have You Done This Time?
An interesting situation came up, players had a three minute time extension but forgot about it and when time was called, they started on their five turns. Somewhere around turn three a judge showed up and noticed that the players should still be in their time extension, but weren't. The judge just shrugged and ruled that they were where both players thought they were (turn 3). I agree with this, when I know I only have three more turns I play SUPER differently than when I have 3 minutes, so it would be really unfair to have the players just jump back out of turns.

Enemy of Triggers
I made a ruling on Enemy of Enlightenment issuing a warning for missing the discard, because I used the popular “would you play this card without this trigger” method to determine whether the trigger was detrimental, I figured I'd play a 5/5 for 6 mana with flying in limited. A fellow judge let me know it was actually considered a beneficial trigger because discarding contributed to the “it actually being a 5/5”. For anything borderline like this it's usually better to just look it up.

Saturday – PTQ – Team “Not Deck Checks”


Who Needs Deck Checks?
At the beginning of the day our HJ announced that while deck checks are an important part of ensuring that players feel like the tournament is fair; if floor coverage got spotty, to abandon checks. It's pretty bad if players have a question and see a judge over on another table ignoring them while completing a deck check. I completely agree with this, taking calls is really important, and can sometimes be undervalued when we get stuck in the minutia of our tasks.

Racist or Just Kind of Mean?
We had a GPHJ with a pretty noticeable accent, around the end of registration for the Grand Prix he let players know that they should carefully check over their decklists to ensure they were accurate. In response to this a player muttered loudly “You should check your accent to make sure we can understand you,”. A judge overheard this and issued USC-minor, the player appealed and the judge brought it to one of the Head Judges (not the one with the accent, though having that judge uphold the ruling would've been pretty funny). There was a fair amount of debate whether this should be USC minor or major. Personally I'm not really sure, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of policing peoples private conversations but if they're loud enough for a lot of people to hear then it's kind of a problem.

No Combo For You Sir
AP cracked his Scalding Tarn and then cast Underworld Breach, at which point his opponent remembered that they had an Ashiok, Dream Render on the battlefield, and that Scalding Tarn shouldn't have been able to get anything. I ruled that we would back up to the point in the game where AP illegally retrieved a card from his library with Scalding Tarn, however we wouldn't be backing up the land play or the activation of Tarn because those were both legal. The player wasn't thrilled about this and kept asking me if we “couldn't just back up to before he played the land” I let him know a few times that policy wouldn't allow this, and offered an appeal a few times, he seemed interested in neither. Eventually I just brought the HJ over in hopes that perhaps he would have an easier time of convincing the player. It kind of worked, the player wasn't thrilled but stopped pushing for alternative solutions.

Sunday – PTQ – Team “Not Deck Checks”


Negate the Gods
Nope. You can't do this, even if it won't be a creature when it resolves, it's still a creature on the stack. And in the library and graveyard and anywhere else that isn't in the battlefield.

Sprawling Glaciers
If I enchant a Snow-Covered Island with a Utopia Sprawl, is the additional mana produced snow mana? I believe no, since it's Utopia Sprawl that's creating the mana.

Special Handling
Dana is a very young competitive player, and her father requested that a judge count her limited decklist after she filled it out. The request was declined, and later on it was discovered that she had only registered 38 cards and received a game loss. There were a lot of different feelings on this matter, on one hand we can't give preferential treatment to some players and not others, however if a player with a counting disability asked us to count their decklist, I feel like we'd make an allowance for that. I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this one, if asked I'd probably just count the list as a customer service thing, however this can get quickly out of hand. We obviously can't count every players decklist.

Interplanar Issues
Interplanar Brushwagg is a very strange card, I initially thought that the “Interplanar Battlefield” was its own zone, just like the command zone or the graveyard and things that targeted permanents couldn't target it, and creatures couldn't block it, since it was in it's own special zone. However in the release notes it's specifically stated that the “Interplanar” Battlefield is simply a different type of battlefield but that effects that reference the battlefield also apply to the “Interplanar” Battlefield.

Very Good Idea*
Oftentimes players have a difficult time locating their specific gathering point, so I feel like it would be best to simply use all the gathering points, just put them all over the room and have players go to “a gathering point” paste the round one pairings to each gathering point. This way people wouldn't get so confused between the blue and black gathering points.

*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 Reno overall, though the stress of the circuit was really starting to weigh on me. Knowing now that this was my last event for the indeterminate future, I wish I'd spent a little longer appreciating and enjoying it. I think personally, the break in events came at a good time. It'll give me a little time to step back and evaluate how I think about and perform at events, and I know I'll be really excited when the next one happens.