Tacoma, Washington
Time: Friday August 11th – Sunday August 13th 2023


Friday – Last Chance Trials

Another Chance to Fix LCQs
The world of today has a lot of variance in how LCQs are run and to be honest, I haven’t really been particularly thrilled with any of the systems. The sides lead for Tacoma ended up dropping out last minute and their replacement wasn’t really sure what the LCQ system was. I proposed a similar system to the one I used at RC Edmonton, where we give each 8 person LCQ their bracket and let them somewhat run their events. Rounds are untimed and people don’t have to wait for other matches to finish if their match is available which makes it feel more like a cross between a top 8 and an ODE draft. There is going to be the odd match that takes forever, but again, I think that is preferable than having to deal with round turnover on 20 different events in addition to judge calls, launching new events and space management, with the staff we had available to us this would’ve been unviable.

Players needed to register at the front (there was no online registration) then they would be told what LCQ number they were in and to wait by the red gathering point until a judge walked by and called their LCQ. This caused a lot of issues, since players are not well-known for their ability to sit in one place and wait. I’m not really sure why we didn’t give them ODE buzzers but I assume it was because of some organizational thing related to keeping ODE buzzers exclusive to ODEs, or something.

The other big issue with LCQs is that this weekend had a “no paper decklist” policy. Meaning that we would accept their decklist as it was on mtgmelee for the main event. But if they hadn’t registered for the main event, what then? We’d also accept a decklist on their mtgmelee profile so long as the submission timestamp was earlier than the start of the LCQ. This.. was also a mess. We weren’t doing any deck checks anyways since we didn’t really have enough people for that either, but the entire thing felt very janky, and I think the players could tell. In Edmonton we collected decklists for each LCQ, and had a unified checks team doing the odd deck check for random LCQs. I think the idea for this event was that we’d check a deck if it seemed suspicious, but out ability to do that was spotty at best, seeing that not every judge was telling players the same thing throughout. This is something I think should’ve been addressed by the LCQ lead, however I can’t be too critical since again, they were put in charge last minute.

Stacked Power
AP wanted to know the power of Tarmogoyf on the stack, I let them know that Tarmogoyf’s CDA functioned on the stack (so the value of star would be calculated the same as if it was on the battlefield) but was confused as to why they were asking. AP then showed me the Stern Scolding. This card is super interesting and as far as I know, one of the only cards that cares about a creature’s power on the stack!

Grist, of the Type Changing Ability
if AP casts Grist, the Hunger Tide and NAP casts Dress Down in response, what happens? Grist will enter the battlefield as a planeswalker and won’t be affected by Dress Down. When determining what replacement effects to apply, the game will look ahead to see what the permanent will look like on the battlefield. Grist will be a planeswalker on the battlefield, and therefore won’t lose its abilities or enter with 0 loyalty.

Logistical Puzzles
The more events I go to, the more I become cognizant of things like this. The ReCQ was put in the far back corner of the room, whereas the LCQs and other ODEs were in front. This meant that the two judges working the ReCQ were orphaned off in the middle of nowhere, this meant that the LCQ and ReCQ judges couldn’t help take calls in the others’ area. I heard later this was a TO decision, and was likely based on the fact that they wanted players by the vendors near the far end of the room, which does make sense. Happy vendors means events that can staff more judges in the future. If vendors weren’t a factor, however, I think putting events close together means that you more effectively use your judge resources.

One Ring, One Damage
AP controlled The One Ring with a burden counter on it during their upkeep, but forgot to take a damage. Then during the following upkeep they marked down taking two damage, and NAP mentioned the fact that they had previously forgotten the single damage. Current missed trigger policy says that this trigger was missed too long ago for us to do anything about it (prior to the current phase in the previous turn) so we just issue a warning and move on. However this actually spawned a very interesting thought experiment, if that clause wasn’t there, and if NAP chose to put the trigger on the stack now, would it resolve dealing two damage to AP (the current number of burden counters on The One Ring) or would it resolve and deal one damage (the number of burden counters that were on the Ring when the trigger should’ve resolved) the IPG says we can’t make choices for the trigger that involve objects that couldn't’ have been legal choices when the ability should’ve triggered, but that doesn’t address this One Ring situation. Personally I think I’d have it resolve and deal one damage, since dealing two damage feels very odd and not like the game would’ve gone if we’d simply resolved the trigger correctly the first time.

The Promised Turn
AP casts The One Ring and says nothing. On NAP’s turn they cast Emrakul, the Promised End and also say nothing. Then AP untaps and NAP says that they should control that turn. AP doesn’t have to demonstrate awareness of their One Ring trigger until it becomes relevant, but NAP doesn’t need to declare a target for Emrakul, the Promised End because of the MTR shortcut! I think, after chatting with some other judges, I’m inclined to rule with AP. NAP needs to communicate in some way that their trigger is resolving if they want to “Ring check” AP.

Saturday – 20k Deck check Lead – 328 players

The End of Dredge
AP has a Dauthi Voidwalker in their graveyard and NAP casts Living End. As Living End resolves, it puts Dauthi Voidwalker onto the battlefield, and therefore will be exiled with a void counter on it instead of going to NAP’s graveyard. AP can then cast it by sacrificing Dauthi Voidwalker, which will in turn, bring back the Voidwalker and re-exile Living End, giving AP total control over the Living end shenanigans. This is pretty tech.

Trigger the Apocalypse
If AP and NAP both have Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, and AP casts Ancestral Recall, what happens? Well both player’s Sheoldreds will trigger during the resolution of the spell, and before AP gets priority all of their triggers will be put on the stack, then all of NAP’s triggers will be put on the stack. So the stack will look like AP-AP-AP-NAP-NAP-NAP. The triggers won’t alternate AP/NAP/AP/NAP.

Total Fake-Out
While checking decks, I noticed that AP had four counterfeit Thoughtsiezes. We asked the player a few questions, but as Thoughtsieze was one of the cheaper cards in the deck, we decided it was probably an honest mistake. I was about to issue a game loss for deck problem under the idea that an insufficient number of cards were presented (56 cards, and four rectangular pieces of cardboard that look like cards), however the HJ decided that this should just be a warning instead (Only, of course if the player could find replacements, otherwise it turns into a Decklist problem – Game Loss). I could tell this was going to be a deeper argument about policy and determined that it wasn’t worth wasting player time on my disagreement with the HJ (the check+investigation+get replacements already clocked in around 25 minutes) I conceded to the HJ at the time but cycled back around to talk about it later. There were many different arguments for the warning, but the one that stuck with me the most was the fact that if the counterfeits weren’t caught, no in-game advantage would be accrued. AP would play games with a “60” card deck as far as anyone was concerned. Another interesting argument is that if we determine no cheating (which we must be doing if the player is still in the tournament) they’re already having kind of a crummy day, having to buy new cards and discovering that they were scammed, why also hit them with a game loss?

While I think both of these arguments are valid, I still think it should be a game loss for two major reasons that go beyond “well this is how I interpreted policy”. First counterfeit detection is very difficult, and so most of the time you are going to get away with it, if you’re doing it intentionally. Next, if you get caught and don’t get nailed for cheating, the worst that happens is you have to buy cards, which isn’t really a downside since that’s what you would’ve had to do anyways.

Go Straight to Exile, Do Not Pass Graveyard, Do Not Collect $200
If AP controls Leyline of the Void and Dauthi Voidwalker NAP will choose whether their cards are exiled with a void counter or just exiled. That’s because if two replacement effects are trying to modify the same event, the owner of the affected object chooses which order they apply in (and in this case, applying one means the other won’t do anything, as the card is no longer on a trajectory to the graveyard).

Giver of Doom
NAP activated Inkmoth Nexus and used Giver of Runes to grant it protection to allow it to block one of AP’s creatures and live. NAP then said they thought that NAP played Giver of Runes the previous turn, and wouldn’t be able to activate it. AP said they’d played it two turns ago, but AP pressed and NAP realized they had in fact played it the previous turn. NAP shrugged and said “well in that case, I lose” and began to pick up their cards. I found this highly suspicious and grabbed the HJ. Further investigation yielded that NAP could’ve won on their next turn if their infraction wasn’t noticed. If they made the block with Inkmoth having it die, they wouldn’t die this turn, and could potentially draw a Colossus Hammer and win the next turn. The fact that NAP conceded when they weren’t dead on board, and also made a “mistake” that literally determined the outcome of the game were both enough that I felt like this was probably cheating.

That’s No Moon
The other hot topic of the weekend was whether these Blood Moons in alter sleeves should be allowed. They weren’t significantly thicker, so they weren’t marked cards, but obviously we have other concerns here. The alters policy says you can’t cover up the mana cost and the name which, uh, well that has certainly happened here. I flagged the HJ on them but they thought the Blood Moons were fine. While I have been known to allow some controversial alters in the past, I think these ones are a little too much for me and I’d probably disallow them.

Sunday – Team Trios HJ – 98 teams (294 players)

Head Judge Musings
I’m never sure if I should care about the size of the event or the prestige of the event to determine how cool being a head judge of it is. Obviously, being a head judge of anything is still, quite cool, but sometimes I like to know the relative coolness of the job I’m doing in relation to other jobs I have done. This was one of the larger events I’ve head judged, but not the most prestigious. Regardless, it was still really cool and a great honor to get to run the event! I managed to miss relatively few things in my pre-event prep. Though on the day of I still needed to double check whether we were doing a top 8 or a top 4, and I also found out the day-of that we didn’t have any team trios coverage so we wouldn’t be doing open decklists for top 8. Something else I had to consider was how to get the players to sit in the right seats, no one had any wristbands or anything, so it was kind of just “everyone communicate good”. I instructed the pioneer players to sit nearest the vendor wall and the modern players to sit in the middle (the legacy players should be able to extrapolate from that). Realistically, I didn’t super care where people sat as long as they were playing the right opponent.

A Workaround for the Ages
MTGMelee doesn’t actually support team trios, so to actually run this event, our scorekeeper did a bit of a workaround. Only one player on each team would register for the event and that player would be the “team captain”, they would submit all three decklists for their team (Pioneer, Modern, Legacy), however the only way MTGMelee would allow submission of three different decklists is if you tell MTGMelee that different rounds in the event are different formats (because remember, it thinks this is a single player). I was told that the recommended configuration for this is the following:
Round 1 = [format 1]
Round 2-X = [format 2]
Top 8 = [format 3]


Stop the Ruling!
I took an appeal where AP created a token with Reflection of Kiki-Jiki and after it resolved, NAP cast Discontinuity. The floor judge ruled that the token would never go away because the beginning of the next end step was skipped. While that would be awesome for AP that unfortunately isn’t what happens. “anything scheduled for a skipped step or phase is done at the beginning of the next instance of that step or phase” or something like that. So the token would go away at the beginning of the next actual end step that occurred in the game.

Notification Conundrum
MTGMelee has a helpful feature where it will text you your pairings for each round.... until it doesn’t. I had a team show up four minutes late saying that they were waiting for the text and never got one. They showed me on their phone and this appeared to be true. The FJ ruled game loss (which is correct) I, however didn’t feel this was super fair. I think this is similar to the players waiting by the pairings board only to find out four minutes into the round that the judges changed the pairings to a different board and didn’t tell them. So I decided to not game loss the players.

Cast Spells Using Baby Steps
AP asked if they could both use Wall of Roots to produce mana (putting a fifth -0/-1 counter on it) and to convoke Chord of Calling. I ruled that they could because state-based actions wouldn’t be checked until after the spell was cast. NAP argued it didn’t work this way on MTGO, and I mentioned that this was one of the more classic bugs in the program, and while it didn’t work there, it sure was going to work here.

Echoes of Negligence
AP cast Echo of Eons and shuffled it into their library and drew a hand of 7 cards before realizing they should’ve exiled the Echo. I was asked this while in juggling appeals and told the FJ to just exile the Echo now and issue a GRV (as this would fit easily under the partial fix). The FJ came back and mentioned NAP appealed, I spoke to NAP and they mentioned that this disrupted the probability of drawing Echo. I nodded and said I hadn’t considered this, felt dumb and decided a full backup was fine, even if AP was getting a re-roll on their hand.

Steal The One Ring!
AP cast Commandeer on NAP’s The One Ring, what happens? AP won’t gain protection from everything because they didn’t cast it!

Last Known Rulings
AP activated The One Ring shortly after playing it, and NAP wanted to know if they could stop AP from drawing a card. I double checked with another judge and asked “if The One Ring is destroyed before its ability resolves, the game will use last known information to determine how many burden counters are on it, right?” the other judge said that it would, and that’s the ruling I gave to the players. Lo and behold, reading the card explains the card! I thought the burden counters were put on as a cost like a goof! They’re put on as part of the resolution so if there are no burden counters on it (which there weren’t) then AP wouldn’t draw any cards when the ability resolved if the Ring was gone! I went back to the players later and let them know the correct ruling, with my apologies. Luckily, however, the players both agreed this hadn’t made a huge difference in their game.

...In Conclusion
I had a great time at MXP Tacoma! I felt like Head Judging the trios event was sufficiently challenging and interesting for me. I also feel like I had enough time to do a little mentoring with my judges but not so much time that I was bored. I also got to do a few investigations, though most of them were quite short since I quickly ascertained that the cheats were mostly low value, but it still helped me develop my investigation skills. I really enjoy MXP as an employer and am looking forward to my next show with them!