Calgary, Canada
Time: Saturday February 18th 2023
Modern: 103



Saturday Open HJ


Standard Procedure
So like, standard is not very popular right now. The modern open was slated to start at 10am with the standard qualifier starting at 10:30. I think this is kinda dumb because that means approximately zero main event players will be entering the standard qualifier. The TO’s argument is that if the event starts later judges have to stay until like 10pm to finish it off. Okay... that’s fair. Anyways, as expected at 10:30 we had 7 people registered, we spoke with the players and they were willing to wait while we tried to scrounge up an eighth. Eventually we found someone who converted their commander deck into a serviceable standard deck and the event launched at 10:45.

Build-A-Team
So me and team games have a sordid history. I absolutely hate team games like “find 8 Ragavans” or whatever, since I find it really distracting. On the other hand I like team meeting games. Goofy icebreaker questions can be a lot of fun. My favourite so far was at SCG Baltimore, where I started out asking everyone’s favourite type of pizza but somehow our conversation got derailed and we ended up talking about having wings (like bird wings). Finally when the conversation simmered down enough for us to move onto the next person, they said their name and then said “and the question, what was it again, if I had wings where would they be?” in response to which I burst out laughing and said “well actually the question was ‘what’s your favourite type of pizza, but THAT team question is way better, so let’s go with that one”. I think it was decided that hip, head, and heel wings were serviceable but the best wings were the traditional back wings. This time I decided to roll rules prep into the team game. I emailed everyone in advance letting them know that at the team meeting the introduction format would be “answer the previous question, introduce yourself, then ask a rules question that could conceivably come up in the modern event today to the next person”. This ended up taking a while, but later on in the day, a few of the judges mentioned that the rules we’d discussed in the meeting came up during the event! My concerns are that it has the capacity to really put people on the spot if they don’t know something, which is an awkward balance to strike. The only feedback I got on it was that people seemed to like it, so I guess it went well?

Creative Scoops
AP cast Indomitable Creativity and NAP said “okay you got it.” AP thought this was a concession, since they were getting two Archon of Crueltys with it and began picking up their cards. After AP had scooped up all their lands and shuffled them into their library, NAP said “No, it wasn’t a concession, I just meant that Indomitable Creativity resolves”. After asking a few questions about communication the judge on the call came to me asking what to do. I said that there was no universe where we ruled GRV leave the game as-is (where AP Armageddon’d themselves) and no universe where we rule that AP has scooped. I said that I felt the best ruling was to rule GRV and have the players reconstruct AP’s lands to the best of their ability, and put in random lands (as long as it’s not like a Lotus Field deck) until we have the correct number of lands on the battlefield. However I mentioned that it sounded like NAP was probably going to concede pretty quickly anyways, and that the first thing the FJ should do is talk to NAP away from the table and ask them if they actually have any outs, and if not, were they going to concede immediately, because then we could avoid wasting a bunch of time fixing AP’s lands. The FJ agreed and almost immediately upon their return to the table, NAP decided to scoop all on their own.

Dissonance in the Ranks
We all know the strategy of asking mom first, and if that answer is no good, we go to ask dad to see if we can get a more favourable answer. Ideally this isn’t a problem that judges should encounter because we should be unified in how we’re making rulings.
This is, of course, not reality.
Apparently before the event began a player asked a judge if they could have their sideboard guide on their phone. The judge said this was fine as long as the phone was in full view of the opponent. Then when the player began using the guide their opponent called a judge to make sure things were on the up and up. However that judge noticed that the player was flipping through multiple decklist photos, and did not think this was on the up and up. That judge confirmed the story with the original judge and seeing that they were at odds with each other, they both came to me to see what the correct ruling was.
The MTR says “Between games, players may refer to a brief set of notes made before the match. They are not required to reveal these notes to their opponents. These notes must be removed from the play area before the beginning of the next game. Excessive quantities of notes (more than a sheet or two) are not allowed and may be penalized as slow play.” I interpret this as saying “players can have whatever notes they want, as long as they don’t take too long to look through them” so I’ve been ruling that players can have a giant binder of sideboarding notes as long as they don’t take forever to go through it. Mostly because I want to avoid what I used to do every time I had to create a cheat sheet for school, and have players bringing a single piece of paper with size 4 font and a magnifying glass.
The other judge on the call took the MTR to mean “players are not allowed to have excessive notes, and they should only have a couple sheets of paper”. Personally, I think both interpretations are completely valid and also completely in opposition to each other. My ruling was “I’m the HJ so we’re doing it my way. When you’re HJ I will happily do it your way.” Since we needed the call to not take any longer than it already had. I intended to go and have a deeper philosophy discussion about it later with all the judges, but ended up not getting around to it.

The Path of Reflection
AP controls Path of Ancestry and Mana Reflection. If their commander is a knight and they tap Path for WW and use both mana for different knights, how many times do they get to scry? Twice, the CR states that if a replacement effect changes one mana into more than one mana, and the original mana had a triggered ability associated with it, it will effectively duplicate those triggers for each additional mana. (CR106.6a)

Vast Rules
I feel like every event I learn something new about Dress Down. AP casts Vines of Vastwood on their creature, and afterwards NAP casts Dress Down, can NAP target AP’s creature? No. Vines of Vastwood changes the game rules, it doesn’t confer any kind of ability to AP’s creature that Dress Down would remove.

Let’s Hammer Out this Trigger
AP controlled Sigarda’s Aid and an animated Inkmoth Nexus, and cast Colossus Hammer. They put the Hammer off to the side and said they wanted it to attach to their Inkmoth Nexus. Then they paid a mana, activated the Nexus again, put the Hammer under the Nexus and attacked NAP. NAP said that it looked like AP had activated Nexus in response to the Sigarda’s Aid trigger, and hadn’t said anything verbally when the Hammer came in. I ruled that while AP didn’t communicate great, it did sound like they had attempted to communicate, and I felt the intent was clear enough, since this is also an incredibly common line in HammerTime. I offered to back up to when the Sigarda’s Aid trigger was targeting the Nexus in the event that NAP wanted to respond, but NAP just shrugged and said they were dead if that was the ruling. I feel like this situation was very much NAP attempting to capitalize on a potential communication ambiguity to try to wiggle out of a sure loss, which I’m not a fan of.

Bloody Layers Are At It Again!
I saw a FJ that looked like they were struggling on a call. AP was casting Blood Moon and in response NAP activated their Inkmoth Nexus and wanted to know what the Nexus would look like after the Blood Moon resolved. The FJ thought about it for a bit, and then said that since the Blood Moon had a more recent timestamp, it would remove flying and infect from the Nexus, but wouldn’t change the type, only the subtype. I nodded agreeing that this all sounded reasonable. There was a small tickle in the back of my brain, but I brushed it aside because this was obviously the correct ruling. We both patted each other on the back and that was that.... Until the end of the day when we were doing our team debrief and the judge mentioned the punted ruling. I was like “wait what” and then was like “omg I literally talked about this with another judge a few days ago”. Rules are never going to be my strong suit, and no matter how many times I avoid punting a Blood Moon ruling, every now and again I’m just going to randomly miss for no reason. Luckily the FJ managed to find one of the affected players afterwards and rectify the incorrect information that had been transmitted.

...In Conclusion
I’m not going to lie, most of the event I was looking forward to the Mock Tournament the next day. Face to Face opens are kinda smallish events, and I’ve done a lot of them at this point that there are very few surprises and challenges. The Mock Tournament however, was a novel thing where I was trying a BUNCH of experimental stuff. I think this somewhat negatively impacted my ability to mentor the other judges on the event, but also, my event staff was fairly experienced, both my TLs were seasoned veterans that were chosen as mentors to their respective team members. My Appeals Judge had previously been HJ of many opens before me, and needed almost no guidance, and deck checks was a completely autonomous entity. And to top that all off, everyone did a great job, there was almost nothing to course correct since the event ran so smoothly. Regardless, I had a great time working this event and am looking forward to working more Face to Face events in the future.