Calgary, Alberta | Modern
Time: Saturday October 15th, 2022
Main Event Players: 75 | Winner: Jakob Allan
Role: Floor Judge


Keeping up with the Modern Tech
I discovered at this event that Solemnity stops Urza’s Saga (and any other relevant sagas) from doing anything. This may be tech.

Blasted GRVs
AP played a blast zone with zero counters on it. Two turns later, after NAP had cast and resolved an Indomitable Creativity putting Archon of Cruelty onto the battlefield. AP realized that it should have a counter on it. While Blast Zone on zero destroys tokens, and is thus very suspicious against the creativity deck, the fact that this player hadn’t actually uh, done that when the Creativity player “combo’d off” put me firmly in the “no cheating” mindset. Another judge mentioned that if the player had realized that they now needed Blast Zone to count to 8 (for Archon) it’s possible they thought the fix would simply be to put a counter on now. This is somewhat reasonable but it felt like a bit of a stretch for me, and I decided to simply rule GRV no backup.

Card Confusion
AP gave their library to their opponent to cut, accidentally leaving the bottom card of that library in the middle of their battlefield, their opponent cut, then they returned the library to it’s original position and then drew a card for the turn by putting it on top of the face down card on the battlefield. Upon picking up the two cards they realized that this was, in fact, not their hand, and that their hand was on a different place to the right of their playmat. I ruled HCE and had the opponent select a card after seeing both of them, to shuffle back into the library and let them keep the remaining card as their draw for the turn.

The Possibilities Aren’t Endless
If you control two Possibility Storms and cast a spell, the first trigger to resolve will do its thing as normal, but I was curious what would happen to the second trigger. As it turns out you use last known information about the spell that initially caused the trigger and continue resolving that trigger as if it had actually exiled the thing. Also perplexingly enough there isn’t any clarity on whether missing the trigger on your opponent’s spells is considered detrimental. I kinda think it is, because it’s a symmetrical ability and doesn’t seem inherently detrimental, but there isn’t a ton of guidance anywhere on this.

An Unappealing Ruling
AP plays a saga and announces the counter, and there’s ambiguity as to whether they announce the trigger. Then they say “pass”. Before NAP untaps, AP says “oh wait, I have a trigger.” This didn’t seem like a big deal and ruled reversing decisions since like, literally nothing had happened since AP had passed the turn. I got snap appealed and overturned. I was a little blindsided by the overturn. Very shortly after the call there was another call on the game, NAP once again wanted to catch AP on an ambiguously remembered trigger, I sensed the tone of NAP and knew that if I ruled against him he’d snap appeal anyways, so I flipped it immediately over to the AJ who hadn’t yet left the area. The AJ ruled against NAP and NAP politely asked if there were any warnings. The AJ said no and play resumed. Finally AP fetched for Dwarven Mine, then while they were finishing shuffling mentioned that they wanted to cast Indomitable Creativity targeting the created token, NAP said that they hadn’t announced their token. I flipped it to the AJ again and he ruled out of order sequencing, NAP asked again about a warning and the AJ said no, but sensing the tension took the player aside to talk about their attitude. While it’s fine to ask about a warning, and I didn’t think it was too out of line, NAP was definitely getting angry. He was horribly losing the game due to mana screw and I could see that he was on tilt. After a short conversation the AJ managed to de-escalate him and get the players back to playing. I was still a little jarred by the overturn and discussed it with some other judges while the AJ was still talking with NAP. My tone was a little unprofessional since I felt very squarely in the right. The other judges agreed with my ruling and then I realized that I probably should’ve waited to first talk to the AJ before randomly discussing the call with the other judges. After the AJ had finished de-escalating the player I spoke to them about the appeal, and managed to convince them I was right, and apologized for effectively whining about the call before talking to them about it. I also let them know that it was generally customary to talk to a FJ away from the table before overturning them. Luckily the AJ was a very chill dude and took it all in stride but thanked me for the apology and feedback.

Double Game Loss All the Way
If AP has both a deck problem and a marked cards upgrade do they just get a match loss? There’s the line in policy that says if you get multiple warnings stemming from the same issue you just give the most severe penalty, but these are kinda different issues? I initially thought that by policy you just give the match loss and that others were deviating when they only issued one game loss, and many of the people I talked to confirmed this. However, after uh, having someone read the IPG to me there's a line that says "If a player would recieve multiple game losses at the same time, they only recieve one". So that solves that mystery I guess.

Policy Problem
AP casts Sylvan Wayfinder and reveals four cards, one of them is a sideboard card and it’s game 1. Policy says this is technically a deck problem, and a warning, but the fix only addresses replacing cards in game zones, not cards revealed from the library. I feel like “by the book” we don’t actually reveal a new fourth card from the library. However I’m willing to bet this is more of an oversight than an intentional outcome, so I think I’d allow the opponent to choose which sideboard card replaced the revealed mainboard card, as if they were replacing cards in the hand or exile.

Companion Confusion
If AP has an 80 card Yorion deck in legacy and registers a black lotus on their decklist, this would be a decklist problem, and a game loss. We’d remove the black lotus, however would we be allowed to apply the companion fix, of moving sideboard cards into the mainboard to bring the deck back up to 80 cards? The deck isn’t below a legal deck size, but it does now violate the companion restriction? Or maybe we’d put in basic lands instead? I think this is a corner case, but personally I’d put in basic lands, since the sideboard card fix is only applicable if you’re trying to fix a violated companion restriction that arose from weird sideboarding, not from a different, unrelated deck problem that resulted in your deck now violating a companion restriction. At least, that’s how I currently see things.

Unholy Backup
AP casts Unholy Heat, then illegally casts Ragavan, the Pilferer for {U}, then casts Consider, putting a Scalding Tarn in their Graveyard and drawing a card. AP then passes the turn, NAP draws and untaps, then realizes the error. If we were to backup, we’d have NAP retap their permanents and we’d put a random card from their hand back on top of their library. We’d return consider to AP’s hand and shuffle Scalding Tarn back into their library. We’d then put a random card back on top of their library. We’d then untap their land for Ragavan and put it back in their hand. While the backup isn’t super clean, I don’t see any huge issues with it.

...In Conclusion
I think the biggest lesson I learned was to be more graceful when getting overturned. The AJ was less experienced than me, and didn’t market the overturn to me before giving it, which ticked me off a little. While this is a frustrating situation, I think I could’ve handled it better. And it definitely highlighted an arrogance that I hadn’t noticed was there. I’ll have to make sure to keep a handle on that otherwise it could start becoming a real problem.