Columbus, Ohio
Time: Friday September 1st – Sunday September 3rd 2023


Friday – Last Chance Trials

The Draw of Unintuitive Answers
I was discussing policy with a mentee and they brought up an interesting scenario. NAP casts Isolation at Orthanc on AP’s creature. Then AP draws for the turn and realizes it’s a Pacifism from their previous opponent’s deck! Normally we’d remove the pacifism and have AP re-draw a card, however the IPG mentions that AP should draw a card from the random portion of their deck, so they would draw any card except the creature that was tucked! This makes sense, because AP wouldn’t have been drawing their creature this turn no matter what, and just because they had a random Pacifism in their deck, that shouldn’t change. So we just leave the tucked card alone and have AP draw the next card down instead (or realistically, any card in the library as long as AP doesn’t know what it is).

Modern 8-Mine
AP has drawn and played an Urza’s Mine this game, then discovers while searching with Sylvan Scrying that their deck has no Urza’s Towers and instead 8 Urza’s Mines! Apparently they were borrowing the deck from a friend and their friend had mistakenly told them that the deck “just needed four mines”. So AP had put four in, unfortunately because AP had already played an Urza’s Mine this game, the Deck Problem was upgraded to a game loss, because the deck composition was janked up.

“It’s Com REL - light!”
Last Chance Trials continue to be in a weird place, they’re kinda comp REL but also kinda aren’t? In many of the recent events I’ve worked decklists have felt like more of a suggestion, with many events waiving any penalties for not having one for round one. We also rarely issue any game losses for players arriving late either, usually citing the poor microphone acoustics or general disorganization. While I am a fan of waiving tardiness penalties, I think decklists should be more rigorously enforced, to me, it seems incredibly easy to cheat in last chance trials, and not get caught. Luckily at Columbus we had a deck check team so this one at least, felt a little better than most.

Dauthi Just Can’t get a Break
Replacement effects are complex and difficult to understand. Mostly the “affected object or player” part of it. In a case where NAP controls Dauthi Voidwalker and AP flashes back a spell with Snapcaster Mage, what happens to the spell? Obviously it goes to exile, but does it get a void counter or not? According to the game rules AP gets to decide, as the spell is their object.

Hidestsugu Consumes Itself
AP casts Hidetsugu Consumes All and immediately puts it in their graveyard after resolving the triggered ability, both players notice it two turns later. The interesting thing about this scenario is that the event can be interpreted in two different ways. The way I interpreted the event was that AP cast and resolved the Saga, as well as its first triggered ability, and then put it into the graveyard. While this is certainly a Game Rule Violation, it doesn’t fall under the stipulations for partial fixes, as the object wasn’t put into the wrong zone during a required zone change, or because a zone change was missed. So the only option under this interpretation is to rewind or not. An alternative school of thought thinks that instead of AP resolving Hidetsugu Consumes All and resolving the triggered ability, what actually happened was AP put the spell on the stack, resolved it as if it was a sorcery with the text of its first chapter ability, and then put it into the graveyard, which then would fall under the partial fix (AP put the saga into the graveyard instead of onto the battlefield, which is it going into the wrong zone during a zone change). Personally I think I kinda like the second interpretation so long as putting the Saga back onto the battlefield doesn’t horribly disrupt any of NAP’s plans.

Trample Doesn’t Work Like You Think They Do
AP attacks with Rhino token from Crashing Footfalls, NAP blocks with 3/3 and puts it in their graveyard. Afterwards a spectator mentions that one more damage should’ve been dealt. I pulled the spectator aside and explained the rules around Trample. The players didn’t seem that bothered, and I ended up not issuing Outside Assistance. I bounced it off a few judges later and upon reflection, really should’ve actually issued OA this time. The awkward part, was a few turns later AP channelled a Boseiju, Who Endures and forgot to tell NAP to get a land. I prompted NAP after it was clear it was forgotten and the spectator looked at me like “wait, how is what I said not ok, but what you said ok?” and I had to explain the nuances of policy afterwards.

Saturday – Modern 20K - Deck Check Lead – 375 Players

Altered Expectations
The new topic of contention is the alters policy, every HJ has a different line on it. I asked the 20k HJ and they said that if it was their choice, the alters policy would read “as long as the art doesn’t look like another card and the name and mana cost is visible, it’s HJ discretion.” Unfortunately, that’s not the current official policy, the current official policy is that the alter can’t significantly change the card art, and so that’s what the HJ wanted to go with.

Not How it Works After All
Wilds of Eldraine came out on Friday, and the cards were legal to play immediately. Which meant that Not Dead After All was being swapped in over Undying Malice/Feign Death. However this meant that the interaction between Not Dead After All and Reflection of Kiki-Jiki was ambushing judges on Saturday. Me and the two HJs ruled that the card would return as Fable of the Mirror Breaker, would be tapped, and the aura would be created but would die when SBAs were checked. However, I got concerned and contacted the rules person on staff and they let me know that actually, the Aura wouldn’t be created at all! Also to add insult to injury, this was even in the release notes. Yet another reason to read the release notes!

A Cry For Help
My day started off very strangely. After I had assigned all deck check tasks to my team members and was on my way to help collect decklists, a player came tearing across my field of vision saying “I need help” and crying. I immediately dropped what I was doing, thankful that all tasks had been delegated and the team was self-sufficient at this point. I sat her down immediately, and we spent a few minutes just getting her to a place where she could function and stop hyperventilating. I let her know she wouldn’t be getting a game loss (since I was aware of the situation). I discerned that she was missing a decklist and also was still in the process of building her deck, apparently a friend had bought her some cards to finish the list, but had, according to her “thrown them” at her as she walked in and took off. Her stuff was piled up by security. I got another judge to grab her stuff and we put her deck together, through much panicking. In the interest of time, I ended up writing out her decklist, while she was locating the last few cards in the disorganized pile. I realized things were taking quite a while (there were a few phonecalls to the friend to locate missing cards etc.) and let a FJ know to keep the opponent from leaving the table. I felt like if this took 11-12 minutes it would be fine. Unfortunately it ended up taking 18 minutes total. That was certainly not really okay or within the realm of reason. The mistake I made was telling the player that she wouldn’t be getting a game loss right at the beginning as a de-escalation tactic. I shouldn’t have said that, instead I should’ve just avoided the issue entirely, and only addressed it if it looked like we were going to go over time.

This Isn’t Yugioh
At the end of time in the round I sat down to a table and discovered that they hadn’t noticed that time was called. Or more accurately, what happened was that time was called, and NAP said “well in Yugioh we just keep playing until a judge comes, so lets do that.” AP shrugged and then after a turn mentioned that he thought it was turn 2, since he’d been keeping track since time was called. There was a bit of confusion when I first came to the table and I initially wanted to rule that it was time in the round now, and turns were starting now, since it sounded like neither player was aware of when time was called. I escalated to the HJ just in case, since NAP’s behaviour was certainly a little weird, but he discerned that NAP legitimately didn’t know what was going on. The end ruling was that they were on the turn that AP thought they were on.

A Deck With Any Other Number of Cards...
AP presented their deck with 62 cards in it, they had two SB cards that weren’t supposed to be there. Unfortunately we found this during a deck check, and while this is kind of strictly worse than having a deck of two few cards, the HJ ruled that 62 was invalid, as the registered list was 60 cards and we issued a game loss. In retrospect I don’t think this is correct, if we are interpreting “invalid” to mean “doesn’t match the decklist” then that means that any failure to desideboard would be a game loss. I assume invalid means, invalid to play a game of magic with (ie. Under 60 or 40 for limited). In which case this doesn’t fall under the upgrade. After some post-event discussion we got confirmation from Toby Elliott that this was in fact not an intended outcome, and this shouldn’t have been a game loss.

The Policy Fixes Nothing!
AP discovered they had sideboard cards in their deck during mulligans. A FJ came to verify with me that this wasn’t mulligan procedure error, I let them know that no, it was deck problem and we should execute the deck problem fix. I mused that if we did rule mulligan procedure error, what would happen is we would instruct the player to mulligan, but wouldn’t fix the sideboarding issue (because that’s not part of the additional remedy in mulligan procedure error) which would result in subsequent warnings until AP drew an opening hand with no sideboard cards in it. This is, obviously terrible.

Sunday – Scheduled Sides

2 Heads, 2 Issues
If AP casts Healing Salve and their partner controls Ajani’s Pridemate, will it get a counter? No! Life gain in two-headed giant is per player not per team. Another interesting question that came up is what happens if AP controls Phyrexian Unlife and their partner doesn’t. What happens here is that if the opponents attack AP and the team is below zero life, AP will take infect damage, however if the opponents attack AP’s partner, the creatures will simply deal normal damage and AP’s team will continue to not lose regardless of their life total.

...In Conclusion
I haven’t worked with SCG in a while and it was a really nice refresher, SCG is always incredibly professional and one of the most experienced TOs that I’ve had the pleasure of working with. I can always take solace in the fact that when I work an SCG show everything is going to go smoothly and even if things take an unexpected turn, the stage staff will handle it in a quick and calm manner. They’re also one of the few TOs that has the budget to staff enough judges to allow me to do mentoring and have developmental conversations with my colleagues, which I really appreciate.