San Diego, California
Time: Friday April 7th – Sunday April 9th 2023

Friday – LCQ Deck Check Lead(?)

Drawing the Short Straw
Something that came up in a discussion before the event was “what if we just decided on who went first for the players.” for example, announcing that all the players facing the speaker are going first this round. It completely circumvents the need for the players to randomly determine who’s going first with a time-wasting die roll or whatever. The arguments against this are that players often determine who’s on the draw before the timer even starts, and if they aren’t on the draw there’s a high probability that they’ll get mad at the judge for being biased or something stupid. I think rolling a die gives the players just enough of an impression of control that they don’t really complain about it that much. Whereas on digital platforms like arena and modo, players feel less in control since they don’t actually get to touch the die, and therefore feel like the system is rigged or whatever.

To Get into Top 8, You Just Need to Answer this Skill Testing Question...
If AP is in contention for top 8 and their friend, a spectator does the tiebreaker math for them and tells them whether to play or ID, is that outside assistance? The IPG says outside assistance is when a spectator gives play advice or private information to someone. Well it could be considered play advice, insofar as deciding whether or not to actually play is play advice. The other angle is to determine whether tiebreaker information and mathematical outcomes are private information, I would say they could technically be classified as private by default, since anything that isn’t classified as free, status or derived is automatically private. But that also feels like a cop-out, and a disgusting abstraction of what that section in the MTR is actually for. Looking at it from a less technical perspective, I think it’s okay. If the player sits down and does tiebreaker math, that might take a while, this might end up delaying my event, or I might have to hit them with a slow play warning. If one of their friends does the math for them, then my event isn’t slowed down, and the player is happy because the math has been done, and I don’t feel like tournament integrity has been undermined because magic tournaments aren’t supposed to be testing players abilities to do tiebreaker math.

Collusion Confusion
It’s both annoying and dangerous when all your top tables start talking to see who can draw in during the last few rounds of a swiss tournament. Sometimes to mitigate this, you can scramble the tables, meaning all the top tables won’t necessarily be beside each other. I think this is a super neat idea. The downsides are that players who want to watch the “cool” or “important” games are going to have a tough time finding them, since they won’t necessarily be at the top tables. But as long as your event has coverage or feature matches this isn’t a huge deal, because spectators can simply watch the designated “cool” matches.

Thirsty Discards
If AP casts Thirst for Discovery, can they discard a land and a non-land card? Yes. Once AP has decided not to “discard a basic land card” they can discard any two cards, even if one, or both of them are basic lands.

Draft Queen
I was supposed to be in charge of the top 8 drafts for all the limited LCQs. However as players signed up for LCQs, or rather, didn’t sign up for LCQs, the powers that be decided we should launch them at 16 instead of 32. this meant that if we wanted to run them as normal, we’d do one round of sealed and then 3 rounds of draft. Which is... stupid. So instead we ran them as four round sealed events, with an extra 3 packs going to anyone who won two rounds (which would be the amount of rounds you’d need to win in a 32 player event to make the draft portion).

Deck Check Duchess
Instead of running top 8 drafts, I was reassigned to deck checks. There were a few issues with this. there were about 5 events give or take going on that all required some kind of deck checks, these were both constructed and limited, which meant I had a cacophony of paper and digital decklists, and very little time to sort them. I didn’t have a dedicated FJ, so I would just grab a judge at random and see if they were busy. One deck check in particular was a bit silly because we grabbed the decks and I began scrolling through the events on mtgmelee to find the lists, however on mobile if your account is attached to too many events (which mine was because I was put onto every event over the course of the weekend) you are actually unable to scroll to the events on the bottom. This resulted in a really stupid 6 minutes of wasted time, wherein the other judge sorted the decks as I floundered with mtgmelee. Eventually I sent him to the front to fix melee and he came back with printed paper lists. We checked the decks and got them back with an 11 minute extension. Any longer and I think I would’ve just given the decks back unchecked. I later found out that even though I couldn’t scroll to it on the tournament menu, I WAS able to pull the events up if I searched for them.

Last Chance For Decklists
There’s always an argument as to what to do with players that don’t have their decklist ready in R1 of an LCQ. “I didn’t know it required decklists” is always a fairly reasonable argument considering that registration never seems to be able to organize a system to have all their people tell the players this piece of vital information. It’s also possible that in between hearing the information and actually signing up on melee the players just forget everything they were told. A GL in round one of an LCQ is pretty devastating, since it’s single elimination. What we’ve been doing fairly consistently is waiving the penalty and simply having the player fill out the decklist after the match if they win round one. Obviously there’s potential for abuse here, but realistically, the player is going to sit down, panic, talk to the judge, play their match and immediately write their list. They are unlikely to actually get any scouting done, and when you only have 16 players to keep an eye on, you’re unlikely to forget to collect the list at the end.

Saturday 10k Head Judge - 8 rounds - 180 players

Leadership Woes
I haven’t done a comp REL limited event in a bit, so this event was as much shaking off rust for me as it was for the others. Luckily my team was comprised of a few judges that used to be circuit semi-regulars, and still remembered most of the relevant logistics associated with limited events. I was very lucky I didn’t get burned for not explaining how to handle a decklist correction during registration (simply sign off on the error) or how to help organize players into registration triangles. The team also took note of no-shows during build without being asked either!

Marked Card’s Sting
AP was deck checked and their Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting was in had a bent corner, and was thus distinguishable from the other cards in their pool. The ruling was a game loss and the player appealed. It was a little odd that the Vraska was the only sleeve with noticeable damage, so this may very well have been malicious but I wasn’t sure how to investigate this. Reflecting on it now, perhaps swapping the Vraska with another card in the deck, not telling them, and observing the players behaviour afterwards would’ve been interesting. As it was, my main goal was to de-escalate the player and uphold the ruling, which I was successful in doing. As I’m taking more appeals I find I’m dealing with more irate players, and I think a technique that is often overlooked, is simply listening to the player. Oftentimes judges get defensive and try to explain and justify their ruling, but the player, as much as they say otherwise, isn’t super interested in justice, they’re just upset they’re getting hit penalized, and if you just listen and empathize they’ll usually calm down pretty quickly.

A Game Loss for MTGMelee
My philosophy on appeals is that if I can’t justify the ruling to the player, I should probably overturn. AP arrived two minutes late to their match. They were relying on the text messages from MTGMelee to tell them where their seat was, they showed me their text message history and they received the text message from MTGMelee at the same time that I had started the round. I guess the text went out a little late or something. I didn’t feel like I could really fault the player for this, like yes, they should probably be in the area when the previous round ends, but like, if the texts have been working all day, and they suddenly are just a little too slow, I didn’t feel like that was totally their fault. I ended up overturning the game loss but felt weird about it.

Reversing Appeal
AP went to declare attacks and attacked with an Ichor Synthesizer that had three oil counters on it. Then AP began to read Ichor Synthesizer and said “wait” at the same time NAP picked up one of their creatures to block. I ruled that AP figured out that their Synthesizer didn’t have the correct number of counters to be unblockable without the additional information from NAP and upheld the reversing decisions call.

A Treasured Ruling
AP used Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting -2 ability on NAP’s Annex Sentry. What happens if NAP later sacrifices the Annex Sentry? The continuous effect that is keeping whatever NAP exiled with it in the exile zone, expires and the card will come back!

A Revealed Card Error
AP cast Dune Mover and searched their library for a swamp, put it beside their library, then shuffled. They then forgot to put the swamp on top of their library and drew for the turn. I ruled that the swamp should just be put on top of the library now. The initial judge on the call wanted to rule HCE, but I pointed out that while HCE does allow a simple backup, it doesn’t allow any more than that, and if we ruled HCE the fix would be.... leave the swamp in some nebulous not-in-the-library zone? I felt like GRV was much more appropriate because then I could stretch the definition of the zone-change partial fix and put the swamp on top now. (I know the swamp was never technically supposed to change zones, but work with me here) Another option is a full backup, I can’t recall now how much had happened, but it’s possible it would’ve been unwieldy.

This Round the Prizes Are...
I’d say the number one issue with this event was the rapidly changing event and prize structure. About a week or two before my event, I was constructing my team email, so I checked the website to see what the prize structure was, lo and behold I found two different prize structures linked to my event, in different parts of the website. One was a totally flat structure that looked like it precluded having a top 8 (since everyone in top 8 got invites a flat prize structure that was the same for 1-8 would remove the need to have a top 8 entirely) and the other had different prizes for each place in top 8. What’s more is that one of the prize structures didn’t add up to 10k! One of them also said my tournament was swiss and then a cut to top 16 which would be single elimination. This was all bizarre, so I reached out to the TO to find out what the truth of my event was. They told me it would be swiss with no top 8, and that each player in top 8 would get the same prizes, an invite and a certain amount of dollars. I asked whether we could throw three packs into the prizes, since players might expect a top 8 draft. The TO said it was fine, so that’s what I told my team. In round 3 I was told that this wasn’t the case, and actually the top 8 draft would be run Sunday morning, and would prevent players from playing in the Standard 10k that day! I mentioned that I was already slated to be deck check lead on the 10k on Sunday and that it would be very hard to run a top 8 and do deck checks for an entirely different event at the same time. The TO thought about it for a bit and eventually assigned someone else to take care of the Sunday top 8.

Sunday 10k - Deck Check Lead – 271 players

Mulligan Woes
AP mulliganed to 6 but forgot to put a card on the bottom. I looked at their hand, and they mentioned that since this hand had two Otawaras, they had intended to put one on the bottom and had simply forgotten. I issued the HCE, and executed the appropriate fix.

Paragon of Suspicion
AP activated Elspeth Respendant and chose Serra Paragon from the cards. It was the only legal target in the Elspeth set and while AP wasn’t dead the next turn, over the course of two turns he would be dead if he didn’t drop a blocker this turn. AP’s hand was a bunch of planeswalkers that were largely unhelpful. Two turns later when a spectator pointed out the error, AP conceded to “avoid a complex backup” shortly after the judges began investigating. It was game 3. Speaking with AP didn’t yield significantly more information, and with the information presented, I felt like there were enough red flags for a DQ here.

Hoarder of Invites
Because the 10k was classified as a “destination event” people who already had an invite to the RC could still play in it. A player asked me if someone who already had and invite earned another one from this event, if the invite they effectively couldn’t earn would be passed down to the next player without an invite. The current policy is that it isn’t passed down. Instead that one player with the invite just obliterates an invite from the pool. Not sure how I feel about that policy, like I get it being logistically messy to organize otherwise, but also I think people shouldn’t just be able to randomly eat invites.

Announcing a Game Plan
AP controlled Wedding Announcement. At the end of their turn, they made a creature instead of drawing a card as the triggered ability resolved. NAP noticed the error and called for a judge. I spoke with both players. NAP was very convinced that making a creature was better in the current board state for AP, since AP was currently the beatdown. I spoke with AP who said that they’d way rather draw a card, since a 2/2 creature was objectively worse than everything else in their deck. AP was low on cards, so I felt like this wasn’t cheating, and that both players simply had different ideas of what was good in the current game state. The ruling was a GRV for resolving a trigger incorrectly, and we backed up.

...In Conclusion
This event was a lot of fun, I’m not sure what exactly I enjoyed about it, maybe the chaos, maybe simply being responsible for a large number of players. Maybe the venue simply having windows made it a good time for me. But overall I had a great time at Dreamhack San Diego and I’m so, so excited for Dreamhack Dallas. I got to do a lot of investigations at this event and really work on those skills. It’s a tough thing for me and I know I’m still very green at it, but I’m so honoured that I’m being given positions where I can grow and work on the things I’m a little weaker at.