Oakland, California
Time: Friday March 31st – Sunday April 2nd 2023
20k: 387 Players


Friday – LCQ Floor Judge

Theoretically Speaking, You’re a Jerk
One of my favourite parts about judge gatherings are the theoretical policy situations that get bounced around. I’m not always up for a theoretical, but some of them are quite interesting, and it’s neat to see who wants to stick with policy even though it’s doing something wild. For instance, take this one, AP is on dredge and knows that they auto-win game one of the matchup against NAP. They propose to NAP that they concede and just go straight to G2. NAP agrees and begins sideboarding when AP says that they can’t SB since they didn’t actually play any magic. Policy isn’t incredibly clear on this, it says that if a game loss is issued before the match begins, that no sideboarding is allowed. The CR says that sidebording is only for in-between games, so this implies that SBing in this situation would be okay. Additionally the MTR later says “The player may use these cards in their main deck during all games after the first one in a match.” Personally I’d allow sideboarding because it seems like AP is trying a gross angle shot.

Last Chance for Sudden Death
I actually haven’t been on LCQs in a while, so I had to refresh myself on the rules for Sudden Death, the big thing that I almost screwed up was the fact that we only institute the “higher life total wins” thing if both players have won a game, otherwise, we just end the match like we normally would if only one player has won a game (with that player winning the match).

A List in Need is a List Indeed
By far the most frequent question I encountered on Friday was “judge my MTGMelee decklist isn’t working properly!” I’ve unfortunately never interacted with MTGMelee from a player perspective (something I hope to rectify in the future) so I didn’t have a lot of great tips for this. However I did stick around while the SK helped the players sort out their problems so I would be able to better assist players with similar questions in the future.
First MTGMelee does have an FAQ of sorts but it’s pretty vague on the correct formatting of decklists. From what I could intuit, it will reject decklists if there’s too much white space before the words “main deck” or before the actual list of cards begins. Additionally using the correct formatting for the MDFCs is also pretty important. Luckily, even if you’re using the “quick submission” thing where you try to paste the whole decklist in, it’s not too difficult to add the last few cards that might not have been the correct format into the list using the card search function.

Big Cards, Bigger Problems
Ahh, oversized cards, one of the crowning centerpieces of Prize Walls the world over, perfect for building a giant card deck with. Or are they? I actually recently noticed that the Canadian events oversized cards are about 2/3 the size of the American ones. This weekend I asked one of the more seasoned judges on staff what was up with that and was informed that there wasn’t actually a worldwide standard for oversize cards, what happens is that WotC sends the printable files to each TO individually and those TOs get them printed at whatever size they see fit. This is obviously the worst, and I hereby petition for a worldwide standard for oversized cards. During the CFBE era the cards were 92cm x 66cm and I think that should be the golden standard.

Confusion in the Ranks!
In a strange twist of fate, if NAP controls Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines and AP plays Batterskull, the Germ token won’t be created!

Saturday – Pioneer 20k Breaks, Paper, Pairings & Floor Lead

Broken Breaks
it’s really easy to look at leadership and think “wow, I could definitely do better than that” but the truth of the matter is, we all make mistakes sometimes. My only major job for Saturday was to organize breaks for the teams on the main event. The plan was to have teams go on break in Rounds 3, 4 and 5, with deck checks being skipped, if floor coverage was too thin. However I’m not sure what happened but I must’ve communicated this weirdly because at the end of round 2 both the deck checks team and the EOR team attempted to go on break at the same time. Luckily deck checks was willing to take round 4, but that could’ve been a major catastrophe if it hadn’t been caught right before the leads were about to release their people!

Delegate, or Degenerate?
One of my biggest weaknesses when starting out as a lead was learning to delegate so I’d be available for higher tier issues. In many ways I still think this is a bit of an issue. Something that’s helped me a lot in recent times, is making it a bit of a game. I delegate all the tasks away and if I don’t have any tasks that means I’ve succeeded. It’s a bit weird, but fundamentally I like taking judge calls more than posting pairings or doing EOR anyways, so it’s not the worst game ever. This event I had some very new members of the team, I delegated one of my more experienced team members to mentor one of the newer judges. Usually this is something I’d take on myself, but I decided this time to try passing it off. I noticed during the first round that not much mentoring was happening and checked back in, the delegated mentor mentioned some social issues that might be causing problems, and I asked if they’d like to not have this task. They thought for a moment but let me know they wanted to try one more time. It seemed to work after that time, which was awesome!

Paper Woes
One of my responsibilities was taking care of all the pieces of paper for the main event. The HJ suggested “Match loss slips” which I don’t usually use. I asked them why the floor judges shouldn’t just drop the no shows themselves, an the HJ mentioned that it was incredibly easy to “fat-finger” the wrong person out of the event, and that the error rate went down sharply if we just used match loss slips.

Swift Difficulties
AP controlled an activated Creeping Tar Pit and NAP cast a Swift Reconfiguration targeting it. AP wanted to know what would happen if they activated the Creeping Tar Pit again the next turn. First Swift Reconfiguration doesn’t fall off because it changes Creeping Tar Pit to a vehicle, so we’re good there. It ceases to be a land, but since it’s not getting its mana abilities from subtypes that won’t affect much really. When AP activates it again, it will continue to be a vehicle with crew 5, but will also be a creature. The line “it’s still a land” doesn’t change it back into a land, it actually means “it’s still whatever it was before, this ability doesn’t change its type.” meaning that in this case, it’s still an artifact – vehicle. (205.1b)

Breach in Policy
AP was on Underworld Breach combo and on their turn, began escaping cards from their graveyard even though they had no Breach in play! Halfway through the combo, something weird happened and a Breach appeared on the battlefield. The player was on a win and in for day two and this was game one. Breach wasn’t particularly favoured post-board, but it also wasn’t an auto-lose. The HJ investigated and determined that this was a pretty obvious and low-value cheat, per-meditated cheats are often more subtle and hard to catch. Randomly pretending there’s a breach in play is something that should be fairly obvious to an astute opponent (disregarding the fact that this opponent was in fact, not astute in the slightest). Since this was not cheating, it was a GRV and the options were to backup or not, the HJ authorized a backup and the table ended up with a 27 minute time extension!

Sunday – Unified Deck Checks Lead

Checks in Turmoil
Deck checks are currently in a weird place. On one hand, with the advent of MTGMelee decklist sorting is a thing of the past. This is great,and means that I can actually do a check during round one of an event. However the flip side of this is that because the logistical strain on the deck check team has been significantly lightened, we are expected to do more checks than ever before, and because the average comp REL event is much smaller than it was before the pandemic, unified checks is something that we’re seeing more of at events, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. I think a deck check team for an 80 person event is a little much, but if you have, say, two 80 person events, dedicating two judges to checking those events seems much more reasonable. The issue is that it’s not just doing deck checks, you need someone to coordinate and decide which events to check when, and develop a strategy to maximize the number of checks that are done, meaning that your two person team grows to three people. And finally, this only works at all when the events that you are checking are staggered by a half hour, meaning by the time you’re done your start of round and midround check on one event, you can probably hit a start of round, or midround on the other and ping-pong back and forth like that. Unfortunately, MXP wasn’t set up like this, the two events I was supposed to check both started on the hour, one at 9 and the next at 10. Because I had a team of four people for this event, I realized that things would be more efficient if I simply assigned two people to one event and two to the other, effectively dissolving the unified checks team.

The Event Snuck Up on Me!
Another schedule-related monkey wrench was the fact that our first event started at 9 which was also the same time we were supposed to come onto shift. Which meant either we’d skip a round one check or we’d hit the ground running. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t notice this issue until Saturday night. I really should’ve caught on that this was an issue way earlier. I’m ambitious and decided to hit the ground running, but in retrospect I think it would’ve been better to just skip the R1 check in favor of a less chaotic start to the morning and a clear team meeting as well as a plan for the day and breaks, all of which happened after the R1 checks, but I do think this kind of set a negative tone for the whole day. The next complication was the fact that at around noon I was told I would also be doing deck checks for the RCQ that was starting up. I was as little annoyed since before the event I had confirmed that I’d only be doing checks for two events. However the RCQ was on the public schedule, so it’s not like it actually snuck up on me. Luckily, it was launching on the half hour, so it would fit nicely into the unified checks flow. I brought the team back together and told them that we would no longer be functioning as two separate checks teams, but would be attempting unified checks once again. However after one check on the RCQ and a break, I realized that I really hadn’t done that many checks on the 20k and I was unlikely to get all of top 8 unless I did a lot in the third to final round, since the top players would potentially be drawing in for the final two rounds, preventing me from performing a deck check. So for a little while I redirected all resources to the 20k. Overall, I think this all must’ve felt incredibly hectic from a floor judge perspective, and it’s certainly something I’d like to do better in the future.

Cracks in the Veneer
I was not feeling great on Sunday, I knew things felt messy and didn’t see a clear path forward. I was concerned I wasn’t going to meet the goal of getting top 8 checked, and was beginning to feel my anxiety rising. I got back from my break slightly late and rushed over to the 20k to get a beginning of round targeted check on one of the top 8 hopefuls. I missed the target and turned to my team member and asked him where the next person on my list was sitting. My team member stared back at me blankly and said he didn’t know. I snapped at him “can you find out?!” irritably, since I’d forgotten my phone in the break room. He panicked a little and fumbled with his phone, but as he let me know later, he was both blindsided by the request, slightly nervous, and also navigating MTGMelee is not a particularly quick experience at the best of times. By the time my FJ found the player, he was already a few turns into game one. Dejected, we walked back to the deck check area, at which point I realized that it was not right of me to snap at my FJ. The reasons that things were rough were basically all my fault, and even if they weren’t, it’s never good for a team lead to snap at one of their direct reports. Luckily the FJ didn’t take it harshly and forgave me, but I still think that was my biggest mistake in the day.

Fake-Finder
One of the things that I find enjoyable is counterfeit identification, I’m not particularly skilled or experienced at it, but it’s very rewarding to correctly identify a counterfeit card, and I’d like to build on this skillset. When I asked to be put on deck checks, it was specifically to look for counterfeits. It was day 2 of the 20k and we were checking our single undefeated player, during the check I noticed that AP’s Wrenn and Sixs looked kinda off, so I pulled one out of the sleeve, the back was lighter in color and was kinda blurry. I pulled a few other cards out of sleeves to see, but none of them looked real to me. I was concerned I was going nuts, so I grabbed a bulk common and lo and behold while not all of AP’s cards were the same kind of fake, many of them were in fact really weird looking when compared to the real thing. I took a Wrenn and Six to a nearby vendor who confirmed it was fake. In addition there were a few other “varieties” of fake cards, the most egregious being a glossy, pixelated blood-stained mire. I pulled the HJ into the call and after a few rounds of questions we both felt like it was more likely the player knowingly played with the fakes than not.
Dqing a player from an event is never easy, and I’m not going to lie, it kinda hurts each time I do it, since I’m here because I like the players, not because I want to make them sad, but at the same time, no one wants to play in an event where players aren’t following the rules, and this is the job I signed on for, the good and the bad, and I’m going to try to do my best.

Phantom Pain
AP controls Phantom Nishoba and NAP blocks with four creatures, how many counters are removed? I paused when I got this ruling, I knew combat damage was all dealt at once, but I also knew that when you attacked with a bunch of creatures with lifelink, those would all be counted as separate life-gain events. I began floundering around in the CR but couldn’t find anything succinct. A fellow judge let me know that four counters would be removed. This sounded reasonable so I made the ruling and moved on with my day. However I still felt uneasy so I reached out to one of my more rules-savvy judge contacts, who told me that only one counter would be removed. I felt really awful about it and let the players know right away, the controller of the Nishoba let me know that it had been kind of game deciding, though he wasn’t too upset about it. I gave him some prize tix to make up for the mistake, but it was a sharp reminder to be more careful in the future.

I Demand Kefka!
ODEs are another thing that seem to be a bit of a pain point for new TOs. Luckily MXP had some buzzers for us to use, but the rest of it was being run pretty analogue, paper brackets were being drawn out and players were calling judges once their matches were done to receive prize tix. This is a little messy to be sure, and near the end of the day judges were prizing out all the matches at the beginning of each “round” and making a note on the paper bracket to try to keep track of who had and hadn’t received prize tix.

...In Conclusion
Overall this event was a better event for me than the previous two events. I definitely felt like I was more on the ball and did more to benefit the event. I had a great time working for Laughing Dragon, and I’ve gotta say, out of all the new TOs this one has sure hit the ground running! The number of players was healthy, and things were so organized it felt more like their 10th event than their first. Also a small shout out to their artistic director, the custom playmats they got for the event were gorgeous and if I didn’t already have way too many playmats, I would’ve probably grabbed one for myself!