Vancouver Regional Championship
Vancouver, British Columbia
Time: Friday March 10th – Sunday March 12th 2023

Friday – Standard Super Qualifier HJ
Players: 71 | Winner: Francis Toussaint


Slow Challenges
To be perfectly honest, I think slow events are harder than busy ones, I constantly seem to have difficulties dialing back and end up being too chill and missing a bunch of stuff. Decklists and checks were were being handled by the unified checks team, and I had 3 FJs for 71 players, which, I mean realistically, I could’ve done the event with one judge. After the team meeting in the morning, we still had about half an hour before the event started, I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I let my people just sort of loaf around for a bit. Then as round 1 started I realized that tape loops weren’t on the boards and halfway through the round I realized that we were missing an event cover sheet and time extension slips. I was a little annoyed, since I had so much extra time and still somehow missed stuff. One of my FJs suggested having a checklist and I think that’s probably a good idea for future evens I’m HJing.

Proxy Win
AP discovered some proxies in their deck halfway through game two, but because they wanted to test for the event on Saturday, they didn’t call a judge. AP ended up winning the match, but revealed the proxies (which were sharpie on basic lands and had never been played during the matches) to their opponent afterwards and conceded to them, their opponent was confused and called a judge. I felt vaguely uneasy about the whole thing, but we don’t infract for errors in previous games (generally) and since deck problem stops being an issue after the match I felt like this was in that basket. It didn’t seem like cheating, since, well AP had conceded to NAP, so they didn’t really appreciate any advantage from it. I told AP not to do that again and that was that.

Shredding a Warning
AP cast a spell targeting their Ledger Shredder, which was then copied by Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief. They announced their Ledger Shredder trigger, at which point a judge was called over, who explained that copying a spell wouldn’t trigger the Shredder. The judge consulted with me and asked whether we should give a warning or not, I said that nothing had actually gone wrong yet, so I didn’t want to issue a warning, the judge on the call mentioned that AP had attempted to put a trigger on the stack when there was no trigger to be put on the stack and NAP stopped them, and that NAP stopping them shouldn’t preclude a warning. At the time I disagreed and no warning was issued. However in retrospect, I think this is actually a pretty valid point, since my policy incentivizes NAP to just wait until AP has made the game harder to fix before calling attention to the error. Upon reflection I think this was a mistake and I should’ve issued the warning.

Invoking Rules
Invoke Despair is a super-played card right now in standard. The big question about this one is whether the instructions are sequential or simultaneous, the short of it is, it’s sequential, meaning that NAP will sacrifice a creature (or do the alternative), then an enchantment (or do the alternative) and finally a planeswalker. This matters, for instance, if NAP for some reason controls a Banishing Light exiling their own planeswalker, they’ll have to sacrifice both.

Free to Play
A somewhat contentious ruling I made was a tardiness game loss. AP arrived late to their match, the judge on the call explained this was a game loss, and NAP appealed. I went over and spoke to the players, NAP mentioned that he really wanted to get testing in, and just wanted to play magic. I let the players know that I didn’t see any reason to deviate from policy, but also that I was going to walk away, and those two players were going to play some number of games, and report some kind of match result. And then I left. I spoke to some other judges about this and they were quite chagrined that I had basically tongue-in-cheek told the players that they could flout the game loss. I countered by saying that if the players really wanted to, they could manipulate this through some number of janky concessions and draws. The other judges countered by saying that the tournament shouldn’t have to wait on this player who was late to finish their match and that the game loss was to help ensure the match wouldn’t go overtime. This is actually quite reasonable and not something I thought about at the time. One of the other judges mentioned that they’d be fine not issuing the game loss but telling the players that they also wouldn’t get a time extension. I think this is a really interesting line, and I think if the time extension was over 6 minutes I’d probably try to make that deal, in this case though, it was two minutes, so I’m fine letting the match happen and giving them the extra time.

Triggertastic
My least favourite card right now is Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. This thing’s trigger is just an argument factory. NAP controlled Sheoldred and AP drew for turn, cast Wedding Ceremony, and then put a counter on it for the end step trigger and passed the turn. After speaking with both players extensively, it seemed like NAP had sufficient time after AP cast and resolved Wedding Announcement to mention the trigger, so I ruled it missed, but really, it was very on the cusp, and over the weekend I had several similar calls.

My Investigation Trigger Goes on the Stack
I was about half way through my break, and was just settling down to play some Slay the Spire and drink my bubble tea when one of my FJs tapped me on the shoulder and said “Tobi I might want to DQ a player in your event” I paused for a moment, did a double take and then said “excuse me, what?” I sighed, put down my game and asked what was going on.

AP is at four life and controls Ledger Shredder. During their upkeep AP casts a draw spell, drawing March of Otherworldly Light, they find it, and cast it on NAP’s Sheoldred. AP then attacks for the win. As the players are packing up their stuff a spectator mentions that AP should’ve died from their Ledger Shredder trigger. This was a win and in for top 8 and according to NAP, AP had been very technically precise all game and hadn’t missed any previous triggers. Things weren’t looking so good for AP, but I wanted to ask them some more questions before removing them from the event. AP told me that they were playing pretty quick and had just completely spaced on the trigger, they also mentioned that they had a legal line of play in their hand, wherein they cast a Consider as their second spell for the turn, and then before that resolved, cast March of Otherworldly Light on Sheoldred, which would prevent Sheoldred’s triggered ability from going on the stack. I felt that if this was a savage cheat, AP would’ve spent some time looking for a legal line of play before cheating, also, I discovered that AP was already queued for Saturday, so the only real benefit to winning here was a handful of prize tix, which while nothing is still a much smaller incentive than scrambling for an invite. With these new pieces of information I was still pretty 50/50, I asked my FJ where they were at now, and they shook their head and said, “I don’t think I want to DQ this player”.

Saturday – RC Appeals Judge
Players: 168 | Winner: William LaHay


The Most Boring DQ
Halfway through round one I heard we had already DQ’d a player. AP had double-faced cards in semi-transparent sleeves. The judge asked whether they had noticed, and they mentioned that they had, but were going to fix it after the match, since they didn’t want to be a nuisance by calling a judge and disrupting the event. They mentioned that they were trying really hard not to gain advantage from it. Like, I can see a universe where this player is being completely genuine, but at the same time, I like, can’t let this person stay in the event.

All I Want for Christmas is a Warning
I took an appeal where AP had missed their Crawling Chorus trigger. Both players had 100% agreed that AP had missed it. The FJ made the ruling that AP wouldn’t get a warning but that NAP would have the option to put the trigger on the stack now, and AP had appealed. When I got to the table AP was trying to convince me that Crawling Chorus could sometimes be considered a detrimental trigger or something bizarre. I stopped them and was like “okay before we talk about whether this is or isn’t detrimental, let me tell you how MT policy works, for beneficial triggers, NAP chooses to put the trigger on the stack and nothing else happens. For detrimental triggers, AP gets a warning and NAP chooses whether to put the trigger onto the stack.” AP then paused for a moment and I turned and asked them “so what it sounds like you’re telling me right now is that you want a warning, is that correct?” AP laughed sheepishly and said “uh, no I think we’re good now.”

Insufficient Game Actions
AP shuffled their library, presented and then after NAP shuffled put their library back down to begin drawing their opening hand and then flipped a card over, revealing it to both players. The FJ wanted to rule LEC warning, I didn’t really feel like this merited a warning, as this was strictly downside for AP, especially since the match hadn’t even begun yet. I simply had the players fix it and didn’t issue a warning. Though I do agree that the FJs ruling is technically correct, it feels incredibly stupid to issue it in this scenario.

Paragon of Confusing Rules
AP controls Serra Paragon and wants to cast Steel Seraph for its prototype cost from their graveyard, can they do it? Yes, because Serra Paragon checks the mana value of the spell on the stack and because prototype actually changes the mana value and isn’t an alternative cost, this works!

Dennick, Pious Problem
Dennick, Pious Apparition is the other problem card in the format right now. The triggered ability is one of those “graveyard from anywhere” abilities, which means it checks after the event, not before. Notably, if Dennick dies at the same time as another creature, there won’t be any investigating. Whereas with something like a Blood Artist, it would trigger. The other weird thing going on is that if a Reflection of Kiki-Jiki (or any other saga creature) dies, it doesn’t trigger, because the reflection isn’t a creature card in the graveyard.

It’s a Good Day/Night to Double GRV
Day/Night is a terrible paper mechanic. I recall a long time ago reading one of the design articles for OG Innistrad and it mentioned that the design team had tried a “day/night” mechanic, but that it was too much work to keep track of, and I was like “yeah that sounds stupid, glad that didn’t see print.”
....
Anyways, what we were doing this weekend for day/night issues was double GRV, backup or don’t. It’s... not elegant but worked well enough. I think there’s a valid argument for CPV, which would allow a backup to whatever play was made based on incorrect Day/Night info or no backup and just fix the board state now if no decisions were made.

Rules Artifact
AP casts Dress Down, and after that resolves, they cast Phyrexian Metamorph, AP can’t choose to copy any creatures and that the Metamorph will just die, but what if AP wants to copy a noncreature artifact? They still can’t do that, because the game is going to look ahead to see what replacement effects will apply to Metamorph while it’s on the battlefield, and that is none, since DD strips them all.

Judge, My Hand Morphed into 2/2s
AP controlled a morph creature and accidentally dropped some of the cards from their hand onto the battlefield face down, making it ambiguous which face down card was the morph creature. In most cases its not hard to figure out by card placement which is the morph (it’ll be the one on the bottom of the pile) but in the event that we can’t, this is technically HCE, which puts us into some bizarre territory, for instance a world where the opponent looks at all the cards and chooses one to be the morph creature. This is obviously terrible, because it can result in a morphed instant for no reason. I think perhaps letting the opponent look at all the cards and choose from among the cards with morph which is the “morphed creature” is a serviceable ruling. However this is aggressively a corner case.

Sunday – RC Appeals Judge


A Capricious Ruling
I had a call where AP cast Capricious Hellraiser, they were dead on board and needed to hit The Elder Dragon War to wipe NAP’s two infect creatures off the board. They had four cards in their graveyard, so they only had a 25% chance to miss. They shuffled the cards in their GY up and placed them face down on the table, NAP slid one forward and indicated the three remaining and said “these are the ones you get”. AP flipped them and sure enough, the Elder Dragon War had been the odd one out. AP then called a judge and said that perhaps the opponent had been able to identify which one was the DFC because maybe they had semi-transparent sleeves. They also mentioned it was weird because NAP had only chosen one card instead of three like they had previously. However on the previous castings of Hellkite, but the pool of applicable cards was much larger, and furthermore, AP hadn’t had an issue with the selection process until discovering that the selection had ended up poorly for them.

I figured what was actually going on here was that AP had missed on their Hellraiser and wanted a reroll. I don’t like the idea of “argue with the judge to see if I can get a reroll” and proposed that this might be a potential DQ. The other HJ looked at me like I was crazy and said “for what?” and I was like “uhhh, lying to a judge? They don’t actually believe there’s an issue, they just want a reroll.” the other judge shrugged and agreed that that was kinda valid, but also felt like this wasn’t really, enough. I bounced the scenario off another judge and got a similar response, and decided that it was more likely that I was just being a little overly aggressive and let it go.

Something to Delve Into
AP controls two Delver of Secrets. During their upkeep they look at the top card of their library, don’t reveal it and immediately draw it, doing nothing to complete the other trigger. NAP said that they wanted to cast a Cut Down after the triggers both resolved but before AP drew their card for the turn. They didn’t want to mention earlier that they had “effects” in the upkeep or whatever, because they wanted to get around possible counterspells and also allow AP to cast a consider after the first Delver trigger (which would leave them tapped out). This call actually ended up being quite divisive. The FJ wanted to rule HCE, revealing the hand to the opponent and setting the card to be drawn aside, instead of shuffling it in. I felt this was harsh for someone who wasn’t playing particularly fast and had no indication they should slow down or anything. I gave the more “regular REL(ish)” answer of set a random card aside and let NAP cast their thing. I also heard some folks end up in the GRV camp, which has the same fix as me, but carries a warning for AP not giving NAP priority before moving phases, which feels... weird. There were also some judges in the camp of “NAP has missed their chance, too bad so sad”.

New Tricks for Old Dogs
While I’m not really an “old dog”, I think I can safely say at this point I’ve worked a lot of events. Which is why it’s always such a treat to learn new things. Just this weekend I was shown the “drop method” of checking decks. You drop the deck on the table and if it slides at a certain point, if it does, you might have a warped foil. Obviously it’s not the only or best way, but another tool in the box is never a bad thing!

...In Conclusion
Vancouver was a great event! I got to think about a lot of interesting policy calls and have some great discussion with people. However, I also feel like I coasted a little on this entire event. I knew my HJ and team were strong and didn’t pick up as many dropped balls as I could’ve. I also didn’t spend a lot of time mentoring judges, I spent a lot more time in policy discussions with my peers, which isn’t terrible but I think other things got sacrificed for this. Finally I didn’t spend a lot of time watching Magic. If, by the end of an event, I still don’t really know the format’s decks and how they play, I think I clearly haven’t spent enough time watching Magic.