Secaucus, New Jersey | Modern
Time: Friday January 13th - Sunday January 15th 2023
Main Event Players: 416 | Winner: David Nunez


Friday - ODEs


Impulsive Plays
AP cast Impulse, but shuffled the cards they looked at into their library instead of putting them on the bottom, because the Impulse is from Visions and it says to do that. It’s an HCE, which means NAP would pick out the three cards to put on the bottom, but that kind of feels like it not only wrecks the game more, but also is very time consuming. I can’t say I support the deviation here, but the “by the book” fix also seems poor.

Ahead of Policy
Currently initiative isn’t well addressed in policy. For instance, if AP takes the initiative, then NAP hits AP, and AP doesn’t remind NAP of the trigger to take the initiative, is that a problem? I think it’s not until NAP passes through their upkeep without venturing into the Undercity. So would we MT-warning if NAP doesn’t venture into the Undercity? But then if that’s the case then we’re reminding NAP of their own beneficial trigger! NAP is allowed to miss that trigger, so when exactly can we give AP a warning for missed trigger? Because initiative isn’t classified as status information players aren’t required to announce changes to it, like city’s blessing and monarch. Personally, I think I’m just going to rule it like status information, you have to announce the trigger when it happens, if you don’t I rule MT-warning and we go from there.

An Iteration on Ponder
AP casts Ponder, but instead of resolving Ponder, they resolve Expressive Iteration, by putting one card in their hand, exiling a card and then putting one card on the bottom. I think the best current fix to this is to take the card in exile and the card on the bottom and let AP put them back on top of their library in an order of their choice, and issue a warning for GRV. I’ve heard arguments for exchanging the card in exile with a card in their hand, since it’s likely that they wanted to cast the card in exile, in that case the fix might look more like, take a card from the bottom, a random card from AP’s hand and the card in exile and then have them finish resolving ponder.

Obscure Upgrades
While talking to a mentee they mentioned that in the Deck Problem upgrades section there’s a specific clause for Lutri, the Spellchaser! It states “if an error resulted in more copies of a main deck card being played than were registered or allowed by companion restriction”. I never realized this was here before, since it’s never come up, and have glazed over it while reading the IPG multiple time. So when my mentee mentioned the “Lutri” upgrade, I was surprised! I think this is a good example of why mentoring can also help grow your own knowledge, oftentimes they’ll ask questions that cause you to really think about what you’re teaching, or they’ll bring stuff up that you either never noticed, or have long since forgotten.

When the Student Becomes the Master
On Friday I had some extra time, so I was going over some common policy issues with my mentee, and one of the major things they stumbled on was Deck Problem, which, well it’s understandably complex. We went over it in detail, with a lot of different permutations of questions and by the end they seemed shaky, but much better.

The next day they were shadowing me on a Deck Problem call where AP had just drawn a Dress Down for the turn. They let me know it was a SB card. They also let me know that the two Mystical Disputes in their hand were also SB cards after I prodded them. It was late in the day and so I felt like making this kind of mistake was somewhat reasonable, though upon reflection I think I should’ve investigated further, at the very least, determining whether their opponent was on blue and if so, I probably should’ve determined whether we were at the point in the game where mystical dispute begins to drop off in value. I executed the fix, having AP reveal the three SB cards in their “hand” (including the dress down they’d just drawn) and the rest of the SB cards in their deck to NAP. Then AP revealed all the MB cards that were in the SB to NAP and had them choose which three would replace the ones in hand and the rest were shuffled into the library. I felt good about the fix, issued the time extension and walked away, only to bump into my mentee who was holding his phone and was wearing a puzzled expression. “Tobi... I have a question..” at this point I knew I had done something wrong, He then asked me why I didn’t ask if the Dress Down was an additional copy of a MB card. I’d asked about the Mystical Disputes, but not about the Dress Down. I shrugged and, feeling silly mentioned I’d forgotten to, since the fact that it was during a draw had caught me a little off guard. I mentioned that I didn’t think there was any game-warping advantage here, so it wasn’t a huge mistake, but it still was a mistake. However I was particularly proud of my mentee for both noticing my error and bringing it up to me. I think this is great and not something we see enough of!

A Grave Problem
As a hypothetical, another judge brought me the situation where AP shuffles a large graveyard of 12 cards into their library by accident. If the players can’t remember enough of the cards in the GY, the current fix for this is to have NAP HCE their library, however this feels terrible, and will likely end us up in a worse game state than if we simply left the cards in the library. The judge I was speaking to proposed we have AP mill an equivalent number of cards. I feel like this isn’t the worst solution, especially if the cards in the GY were self-milled and that’s why they weren’t particularly memorable. To be clear, every time I’ve ever had to fix this problem, both players have been able to re-create the graveyard with some accuracy, and therefore it usually ends up being a GRV backup.

Saturday – Modern 20k EOR Team Lead


Love For the Late
I think as a whole the program is moving away from being overly draconian about tardiness and missing decklists at the beginning of an event. At SCG NJ players without a decklist at the start of round 1 weren’t given tardiness, they were given 10 minutes to sort it out. I like this policy, the GL felt a little too harsh for a makeable mistake, and honestly I don’t see a ton of advantage to be gained from doing this. If anything the rush list is a strict disadvantage.

Grist Your Problems Away
AP casts Chord of Calling to fetch Grist, the Hunger Tide, but before that resolves NAP casts Hallowed Moonlight, what happens? Grist enters normally, Hallowed Moonlight cares about what Grist will be on the battlefield, not what it is anywhere else. Similarly if AP controls March of the Machines and has a Bonesplitter entering the battlefield, Hallowed Moonlight will exile that. However it’s different if NAP controls Grafdigger’s Cage, in this case, Cage cares about what Grist is in the library just like Chord of Calling, and in the library Grist is a creature card, so Cage will prevent it from entering.

Feigned Evocation
AP evokes Solitude and then before the Evoke trigger resolves, they cast Feign Death. This is incredibly tech, Solitude will come back with a counter, AP gets another ETB trigger AND Solitude sticks around afterwards.

2 Heads Are Worse Than One
2-headed giant is a confusing format that breaks a lot of cards. If NAP1 controls a Crawlspace, can AP1 attack NAP2 with more than two creatures? Yes. The only thing that Crawlspace does is prevent AP1 from attacking NAP1 with more than two creatures, if for instance, AP1 has creatures that care about what player they dealt damage to. Initiative works similarly, you have to attack the specific player that has it, and only one player will have initiative.

Dress For the Occasion
I had a player ambush me with a myriad of Dress Down questions, and decided to pass them along to a bunch of the judges on the event. First, AP controls Batterskull and NAP casts Dress Down, the Batterskull Germ is a 4/4 with no abilities. However if NAP casts Dress Down THEN AP casts Batterskull the token will be a 4/4 with vigilance and lifelink because the token is created then equipped to Batterskull, which gives it a more recent timestamp. Finally if AP controls a creature equipped with Sword of Fire and Ice and NAP casts a Dress Down, the sword will grant +2/+2, no protection but WILL still have he damage trigger, since that trigger isn’t being granted to the creature, it’s on the sword itself.

Sunday – Modern 20K EOR Team Lead


Unlicensed Casting
AP cast Expressive Iteration and exiled Unlicensed Hearse, then after it resolved and AP passed the turn they realized that the Hearse was a sideboard card, and that it’s supposed to be a Force of Negation. Policy doesn’t cover this situation well. Current policy has us replace the Hearse with the Force, which is... terrible. We’re obviously not putting a Force of Negation onto the battlefield. There are a few more sensible options. Returning the Hearse to the SB and putting the force either in exile or into the library, are both fine in my opinion. I think a game loss is also warranted here, AP had many opportunities to notice the issue and now it’s broken the game. And finally we could put the force back into AP’s hand, and return the Hearse to the SB, or shuffle the force in and have AP draw a card. I actively hate this one since it rewards the player that made the mistake.

A Bored Problem
Deck problem is a very complex fix right now, arguably more complex than HCE. We ran into an issue where AP was in game two but had less than 60 cards in their MB. The current fix has us putting MB cards at random from their SB into the deck. This feels fine, honestly, but I think this is the first time it’s come up for me, and I had to take a moment to read the IPG to confirm exactly what the correct fix was. While I’m all in for less game losses, actually executing IPG fixes has become orders of magnitude more complex in the past 5 years, and I’m starting to get worried that policy writers are having a complexity creep issue. Also, more and more, players are looking at me weirdly when I execute certain fixes because they just feel so foreign and weird, I’m wondering if perhaps we want to scale things back a bit?

...In Conclusion
I had a good time at SCG New Jersey, it’s always nice to go to an event and be able to rely on a solid, clean and well-run event where I’ll have everything I need to succeed. Personally I don’t feel like I did very well at this event, my handling of EOR was messy and in the first couple rounds ghost matches weren’t discovered until a few minutes after time. We were having integration issues with Purple Fox that were never fully resolved, and left me feeling lost as to what I could do better in the future. I got some names of people who have successfully done EOR in the new world with MTGMelee and before my next designation as EOR lead, I’m probably going to touch base with some of them and see if they have any insights I can use to improve my methods.