Roanoke, Virginia | Standard & Modern
Time: Friday October 29th, 2021 – Sunday October 31st, 2021
Main Event Players: 200(ish) Winner: Corey Baumeister
Head Judge: John Alderfer
Appeals Judge: Jonah Kellman Friday – Challenger Qualifier Deck Check "Lead"


Lead in Everything But Name Alone
I say deck check "lead" because I didn't really have a team, my job was just to "ensure deck checks got done", so each round I'd just grab some other random judge and conscript them into deck checks. Let me just express to you how profoundly irksome it is to do deck checks when you're still technically in an active pandemic. Like players cards are, kind of gross, we all know this. During a pandemic you're just kind of reminded about how unsanitary the whole process is.

I've been informed that in all realism the risk from this isn't that high, but it still feels rather disconcerting.

Esteemed Mentor
The Challenger Qualifier judges got on shift at 9:30 but our event didn't start until 13, so we had a little time on sides to chill out. One of the judges on my team was a very experienced regular REL judge but had very little Comp REL experience. I asked him if he'd like to go over some policy scenarios, he was enthusiastic about the idea, so I began by going over all the normal stuff that happens every event, like LEC, MPE, and GRV. I was glad I ended up doing this, because in going over situations with him, I realized how much I needed to review! A few times I set up a scenario and then when it came to answer it I was like "wait, let me just double check this to make sure!" Even though I've been attending conferences and trying to keep up with judging it's remarkable how much kind of disappears without constant use.

Because I was deck checks later on in the day, one of the things I decided to go over with my mentee (as well as myself) was how to deal with a player playing a deck that violated their companion restriction. Myself and my mentee ended up in a disagreement on how it worked, since we were both reading the IPG differently. (As it turns out, reading is hard and I was reading the IPG wrong.) If this does come up, the player can take a game loss to modify their main deck by exchanging sideboard cards with mainboard cards, removing mainboard cards (if the deck is over 60) or by choosing not to play the companion as a companion.

Double Elimination
A well kept secret of the event was that players with two losses would be dropped from the event, but might still be eligible for prizes (if they got their two losses late, for instance). This was incredibly confusing to players, and it wasn't advertised visibly on the StarCity website either, so there were a lot of questions about it. Luckily, after the first few rounds the papers team got a print-out explaining the whole thing, which dramatically cut down the questions.

Spiritual Confusion
We had a player who was playing UW spirits and in their deckbox along with their sideboard, they had two unsleeved Skyclave Apparitions and one Selfless Spirit that weren't on the decklist. The deck itself was already playing two Skyclave Apparitions, and three Selfless Spirits. Both of us working the check agreed it was definitely a deck problem – game loss, and were slightly suspicious since these were all cards that were clearly playable. The player said that they were last minute cuts, mentioning wanting to improve their matchup against certain aggressive decks as well as against the Niv Mizzet/Bring to Light deck, showing me the Brazen Borrower and Empyrean Eagle they'd put in instead. The reasoning seemed sound enough, and while it could've been cheating, (the player noticing a high density of niv to light decks during round one and switching things up before round 2) I felt like the probability of this was fairly low, and decided to stick with the Game Loss and not push for a DQ.

During this incident I had a rather inexperienced L1 working on the check, he seemed flustered and had a hard time telling us what exactly was wrong at first, (he was the one checking that deck in particular) wasting quite a bit of time floundering around with sorting. I jumped in and helped finish the check, trying to support him without taking over. We ended up losing probably about 3-4 minutes because of it all. Afterwards I spoke to him and he mentioned that during the incident he was trying to do two things at once, complete a deck check and figure out what to do about the extra cards. I asked him what he would do differently in the future and he said that he'd probably compartmentalize better and execute each task one at a time, starting with completing the deck check.

I brought him along for another check the next round, since I felt like he might need a little more experience (and often when people screw up they want a chance to redeem themselves). In the next round we also encountered an error. The deck was a Niv to Light list that was missing 4 lands. It was a decklist that had been digitally submitted to SCG and had been printed out by the staff on site. The total on top of the "lands" column read 28 but the lands listed only counted up to 24. I also noticed that all the fields where land names could be displayed were filled out, I suspected that the computer simply couldn't display more text, but that the player had likely submitted an accurate list. My judgeling, having remembered the lesson of the previous round, finished the check and much more succinctly told me the problem. I took the list up to the stage and confirmed with SCG that this was not a player error but a technological one. I penned in the missing lands and finished the check.

Anger of the Squellers
AP cast Anger of the Gods. In response, NAP cast Rattlechains (I don't know why the player did this, maybe he didn't understand how anger worked, maybe I missed something on board, IDK), AP countered with Mystical Dispute. NAP grumpily slid his Spell Queller, which had previously exiled AP's Crackling Drake across the table. AP mentioned that Spell Queller wasn't his but the Crackling Drake was, assuming that NAP had meant to slide the Crackling Drake back over after the death of Spell Queller but had grabbed the wrong card. At which point NAP said he wanted to counter Anger of the Gods by sacrificing Mausoleum Wanderer. The HJ ruled that Anger of the Gods had begun resolving at this point and that the window to sacrifice Mausoleum Wanderer had passed.

Saturday - Invitational "Not Deck Checks" Team Lead


Midday Hunt
One of the big issues that Midnight Hunt brought to paper magic was the introduction of the Day/Night mechanic. If the changeover is missed by either player it's considered double GRV since it's the responsibility of both players. After speaking with another judge, they mentioned that to fix it, if neither player can figure out what it should be, you only need to figure out the last time the active player cast either two spells or no spells.

Very soon after this discussion I walked up to a table where both players had forgotten about the shift of night to day. AP controlled The Celestus and was in the middle of drawing their card for the turn. I was glad of the very timely policy discussion, and was about to issue the double GRV, but decided to confirm with the judge shadowing me first. They actually brought up an interesting point about saying that AP hadn't missed the Day/Night changeover and was instead in the middle of their Celestus trigger. This might feel a little weird, but if a player remembers their trigger and hasn't taken any actions since it should've triggered policy generally assumes the player is doing the correct thing. I liked this at first but then realized that the Celestus was a loot and also a may, and that it was possible that AP didn't want to loot. I would be okay with this solution if it was a straight card draw, since most of the time players will want to do that, but forcing a player into an optional trigger felt a little weird in this situation. After speaking with the HJ they decided that it was better to just execute the double GRV.

This spawned another Day/Night question. If AP cast Brutal Cathar, but didn't do anything to acknowledge the introduction of the Day/Night cycle, what happens? I thought it might be nothing, since it can be day and no one needs to acknowledge that. Of course a warning would be issued as soon as a GRV had been committed (failing to transform Brutal Cathar at the appropriate time, or a werewolf entering on the incorrect side). However, another judge mentioned to me that it might be considered a CPV since AP failed to mention a change in status information. Currently technically, Day/Night isn't mentioned as status information, however it feels philosophically like it's status information that has just been overlooked from the IPG.

Deck the Halls with Problems
I ended up shadowing a judgeling who had taken a deck problem ruling. They consulted with me before issuing the final ruling. I made sure to prompt them to ask the player whether the sideboard card that they had drawn was an additional copy of a mainboard card, and also to check whether there were any other sideboard cards. Instead of asking the player about this, they took the liberty of searching the player's deck themselves. This was kind of weird, and problematic since a judge won't always know what are and aren't sideboard cards, also it removes the possibility that you reveal or damage a card. Also it's easy to overlook something like additional copies of the SB card, asking a player, however will usually yield quicker, and more accurate results. I let the judgeling know this.

Hidden in Plain Sight
Another judge came up to me with a scenario wherein a player cascades but forgets to randomize the revealed cards. I pondered for a bit, dithering on GRV or LEC but was unable to come up with a good answer, even though the fix of "randomize the cascaded cards now" seemed quite obvious. After letting me flounder for a bit the other judge said "why not Insufficient Shuffling?" I shrugged and said "Why not?" Feeling a little foolish since in retrospect, it seems to very clearly be the correct answer.

Smoldering Ruling
AP played a Swamp and tapped it and Watery Grave to cast Smoldering Egg. NAP pointed out that neither of those lands tap for {R} (which is correct). My judgeling correctly determined that it was a GRV backup, and issued the correct warning and fix. AP had Blightstep Pathway in their hand and asked the judge if they could also take back the Swamp play as well, likely to play Searstep Pathway and then re-cast the Smouldering Egg but more legally this time. My judgeling was uncertain and asked me what I thought. I expressed to them that the entire play felt like one thing, and that it wasn't unreasonable to back up the land play as well.

Furious Triggers
AP controlled Risen Reef and cast Fury, they announced both triggers but decided to resolve the Risen Reef trigger before announcing targets for Fury. I instinctively wanted to simply have them announce targets now, but this isn't supported by policy and it's either back up or don't back up. The judge shadowing me said this also felt somewhat suspicious, so I decided to ask the player why they did this, and if they knew how it worked, they're lame questions but I wasn't really sure what else to ask. I couldn't really find any reason to suspect it had been on purpose, so I executed the backup by putting a random card from their hand back on top. The judge shadowing me mentioned that the card going back could be a land and therefore the player that committed the infraction was actually gaining advantage by making a mistake. While this is true and does make fixing it in this way feel not amazing, I'm not sure if there's anything else we can do here. We don't really have a good case for a deviation since "correct execution of the IPG feels bad" isn't listed as an acceptable reason to deviate. However "correct execution of the IPG feels bad" is a decent indicator that you should at least *consider* deviating and look at the situation a little more.

Notably this isn't missed trigger since the player did make mention of the trigger at the appropriate time, they just put it on the stack incorrectly (which is similar to the reason why incorrectly resolving a trigger is also not missed trigger).

Two-Faced
Do we think it's a problem if a player has double faced cards in their library that are flipped to the back face? This was a question that was brought to me on the floor. I felt like it doesn't matter unless the opponent can see the cards. Another judge mentioned that the name of a card's front face is free information and not having the cards flipped the right way could be considered misleading.

Deck Swap
"Judge! We're both playing 75 card decks and have the same sleeves. We're not sure which deck is whose!" This call comes up every now and again and it's always a bit of a doozy. Both players were playing the "Crashing Footfalls-Yorion" deck. My judgeling took the call, first he looked through one deck, then the other, the player gave some vague hints, but since both lists were so similar the hints were unhelpful. My judgeling was starting to look a little frantic and I was going to step in but the player was a little impatient and ended up just saying in front of his opponent that he was playing Teferi, Time Raveler, and was splashing white (an usual choice for the deck). Flustered the judgeling figured out the correct deck and got the players the right decks. Afterwards I let my judgeling know that it might've been a good idea to take the player away from the table so that he could've gotten very specific information initially.

Cascading Problems
AP called me over because they had revealed an extra card for their cascade trigger. I issued "Looking at Extra Cards" and got them started on the fix (shuffling the extra revealed card back into their library). I sat down to write out the infraction beside when, after a few moments, I heard them say "judge...". I turned around and playfully asked "did you shuffle all the cascade cards back in?". They shook their head and said "No, uh, I think I shuffled my hand into my library". I felt pretty bad since in executing a fix for a small issue a much bigger issue was created. I knew that the fix for shuffling your hand in was Hidden Card Error - reveal the library to the opponent and let them choose the new hand. This is fairly severe so I went to the HJ to see if there was a better fix or something I had potentially missed. The HJ came over and since AP couldn't remember how many cards exactly had been in their hand, they executed a card count and issued the HCE. I felt a little uneasy since I could've certainly helped with the card count or also could've taken care of the entire call myself. I mentioned to them afterwards that they kind of took the call from me, and they expressed that they had misunderstood what I had been asking them for initially, thinking that I had wanted to hand the call over.

Sunday – Side Events


Player's Companion, Judge's Nemesis
The weird thing about side events at SCGCon is that they were doing everything through the MTG Companion app. This meant there were no slips, and no pairings, since all of that was handled by the app. The first issue to deal with is players without phones or with phones that couldn't run the app. SCG solved this problem by simply giving those players fixed seats and instructing them to confirm results with their opponents. The second issue was the round timer in Companion, which was taken care of by judges with the old fashioned paper on the pairings board system. While Companion does have a round timer, it has to be started by the scorekeeper, I'm not sure why it wasn't being done this way? Perhaps to avoid judges having to go up to the SK to let them know when the round should start, and perhaps to avoid judges not knowing when their events would end and players missing the end of round buzz. Another problem that is unrelated to Companion but made more annoying by the app, was double queuing. SCG had some kind of package that gave players free entry to all the events they wanted to play in. Because of this, players would sign up for everything, even if the events were happening at very similar times, and if they didn't have time to make it to their match, they'd just concede to their opponent via the app. Unfortunately this sometimes resulted in a player seeing that their opponent had conceded and never actually going to their seat, which would lead the judge to believe that there was a double no-show and drop both players. This is an issue because if both players are dropped and the next round is started, to re-add the players the scorekeeper needs to delete the entire round back to before the players were dropped.

Printing Troubles
I was charged with running the Sealed Spectacular, however it was spectacularly small, being only 20 players. It was also missing a spectacular amount of rares from packs, about three of the packs for players were missing a rare. I handled this in a different way depending on how things were presented to me. If the pack was still in a pile, I'd just replace the whole thing. If the pack was mixed into their pool, I'd just open a new pack and give the player a rare. It may have been prudent to identify what had replaced the rare in the pack and remove a random card from the pool to perfectly fix the issue (if it was an extra uncommon, removing one from the pack would perfectly fix the pool) however doing a pool count can be lengthy and an additional uncommon likely won't unbalance the pool too much. I think in a more competitive or serious event, a pool count and removal of extra cards should be done, but with a smaller and more casual event such as this, it seemed fine to imperfectly fix the pools.

Missing Vortex
I had a call where a AP failed to take damage from Roiling Vortex but reminded NAP on their turn. AP thought that this might be cheating but because of how missed trigger policy works, it's not, however explaining this to players is always a bit of a doozy.

Disturbing Ruling
During my sealed event, I was asked what would happen if a player cast a card for its Disturb cost, and it got countered. I read the card and then decided that the "If ~ would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead." line only applied while the creature was on the battlefield, and ruled that way to the player. After walking away from the call I began to second guess myself (recalling Abrupt Decay which says "~ can't be countered" which very much does work on the stack.) I decided to double check, and of course, I was wrong. I felt silly for screwing up something rather simple, and overthinking myself. I went to the player, apologized and let him know the correct ruling. Luckily the player I had ruled against ended up winning the match.

Confusion in the Call
AP controlled a Smouldering Egg enchanted with Candletrap, a Lambholt Harrier and cast Defend the Celestus. AP reached over to their Smouldering Egg to resolve the trigger since they had missed several of them previously in the game and their opponent was getting a little annoyed at allowing "late triggers". NAP cast Burn the Accursed targeting the Smouldering Egg, at which point AP said that they intended to target the other creature. I felt like this was reasonable since the Egg already had Candletrap on it, so it didn't make too much sense for AP to be targeting it, and I got the impression that NAP had prematurely cast their kill spell. I ended up backing up to before the kill spell was cast and having AP clearly declare targets.

Layering
AP played Gruul Turf while they controlled Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove. In response to the Valakut trigger, NAP cast Dress. This unfortunately, doesn't work the way NAP wanted it to because while Valakut's trigger is an "intervening if" (meaning that if AP doesn't control five other mountains when the trigger resolves it will do nothing) AP will still control five mountains even after Dress Down resolves, because Dryad of the Ilysian Grove's type-changing ability applies in layer 4 before Dress Down's adding and removing abilities clause which occurs in layer 6 (this is very similar to the Oko/Magus of the Moon question.)

In Conclusion...
It's been a long time since I've worked an event, or even seen this many people in one place. So returning was a bit of a shock at first, however it was surprisingly easy to slip back into the "judge life". Booking travel, taking calls and going over policy scenarios all came back really quickly. Over the past year I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about what I was going to do when I returned to judging as well as attending conferences and reading a ton of self-improvement books. One of the major things I wanted to focus on was giving feedback. It's a very odd concept to me, since I'm used to both "not saying anything at all unless I have something nice to say" and feeling that feedback is profoundly arrogant, since it implies you know more than the other person. This weekend though, I tried to both give and receive lots of feedback even though at times it didn't feel great to me. Overall SCGCon was a lot of fun and in the bleak isolation of the past year and a half it was nice to be around other people and interact with them. On the flip side, the pandemic is still very much happening and things didn't feel quite as safe as I would've liked. Also travel costs are extremely high for me as an international traveller, and very inconvenient. I will be doing Vegas as I've already committed to it, but until the pandemic actually starts coming to a conclusion, and travel requirements relax a bit, I'm hesitant to do more events.