Vancouver, BC
Time: Saturday October 21st 2023
Role: Head Judge | Modern | Players: 102


Divide and Become Conquered
The morning of was a bit of a rude awakening when I realized that not only was the event spread across three rooms, but also that we’d also effectively sold out of everything. The main event was capped at 100, our RCQ and rebound event were also respectively capped at both 32 and 12, in addition to this apparently over 100 commander packages had also been sold. The previous Vancouver events had been rather poorly attended, with a main event of 89 and rather anemic sides. I had been expecting a somewhat quiet day. When organizing the staffing I’d intentionally scheduled a bunch of newer judges in to help develop the Vancouver judge community, since there are very few judges in the area that are RCQ ready.

Initially I’d had a judge assigned to take care of the regular REL side event starting at 2pm and flex into helping ODEs but I reassigned them immediately to ODEs and registration. The two smaller rooms were dedicated to commander and drafts only, while the main room had both the main, as well as the RCQ and Regular REL event. We ended up having 1-2 people on registration while the third person was a bit of a runner, placing drafts and managing room logistics. When it was quieter, a registration person would be dismissed to floor judge in the commander rooms and check in on the draft pods. There were 5 people on main (HJ, 2 on Checks & 2 on Not Checks) and one person on the RCQ.

Check Your (Registration) Privilege
Something weird Face to Face does is require players to check in after having paid online. They do this primarily to abolish round 1 no-shows (this means we no longer require a player meeting) also it’s to make sure people actually have access to their MTGMelee account and know what’s going on with finding pairings online. Some non-Canadians might find that last sentence a little weird, that’s because in America (and maybe Europe?) players typically register for events on the MTGMelee website, however in Canada, to avoid a bunch of extra conversion and fees Face to Face takes players payment directly through their website and then manually inputs the players into MTGMelee, thus necessitating the need for a check-in process. I personally think this is a little goofy, since at the start of every larger event there is a huge bottleneck before Round 1. I either think that having a player meeting or simply pre-registering players into melee that have already paid would be better. I’m willing to even skip a player meeting and deal with a few round 1 no-shows. I’ve discussed this with Face to Face, but their perspective is that round 1 no-shows cause tournament integrity issues (which I don’t disagree with) and therefore they’d rather just do the check in.

Splicing Strategies
AP splices Desperate Ritual onto another Desperate Ritual and NAP counters it with Test of Talents. Will NAP will be able to exile the card in AP’s hand? Yes. When AP chooses to Splice Desperate Ritual, they reveal the card from their hand and pay the splice cost. While oftentimes players will put the Ritual onto the battlefield to represent that it’s been spliced, it doesn’t ever actually leave AP’s hand, and can therefore be found with Test of Talents. However, a particularly savvy player would simply cast the second ritual in response to Test of Talents (that is, if they have the mana, of course).

You Can Lead a Man to Water...
AP came up to you and said “NAP is countering my spell with Force of Negation, can I use Commandeer to change the target of the Force of Negation to itself?”. Immediately I knew that the question the player had asked was not the question that they wanted the answer to. I told them that a spell on the stack was never a legal target for itself, so they wouldn’t be able to change the target of Force of Negation to itself. I then asked them if they had any other questions for me, since I was effectively buzzing with the desire to tell them that what they wanted to do was to change the target of Force of Negation to Commandeer. The player also knew that in this situation Commandeer could be used to “counter” the Force, but didn’t know exactly how to do that, or what to ask. They stared at the ceiling for a few moments, and then, defeated, said they didn’t have any more questions. While this didn’t feel great, I ultimately feel it was the correct call. Knowing how to use your Commandeer to counter Force is a skill testing part of the game, and as a judge I simply can’t offer that information.

I think this is fundamentally different than the similar question of “can I Spellskite [thing]” (when faced with a spell where changing the target will do nothing), but in that scenario a judge can easily circumvent a “gotcha” by simply asking the player what they are trying to do (I’m trying to change the target of [thing]). In this case the answer to the question “what are you trying to do” merely elicits something that looks a lot more like strategic advice (I want to use commandeer to counter Force of Negation, how do I do that) and is much closer to the question “Judge I’m playing a combo deck and have all my combo pieces on the board, I know I can win but I’m not sure how to sequence it” which we obviously can’t answer.

Agatha’s Spark Cauldron
Every time I think I’m out of Grist, the Hunger Tide questions, another one pops up. This week’s new rules hotness is brought to us by Agatha’s Soul Cauldron. You can indeed exile a Grist with the Soul Cauldron and grant its loyalty abilities to any creatures that happen to have +1/+1 counters on them. Bear in mind, however, that you are still only able to activate those loyalty abilities once per turn per permanent. (The exploit of being able to activate loyalty abilities any number of times was patched some time ago when Experiment Kraj was gaining loyalty abilities.)

Distorted Reality
AP controls a Distortion Strike that will rebound during their upkeep, as well as an Inkmoth Nexus, will they be able to target their Nexus with the spell? Yes, though I think many (myself included) will have a knee-jerk reaction of no. The reason this works is because in the upkeep Rebound will put a trigger on the stack that will either cast Distortion Strike when it resolves, or it won’t, and AP can respond to that trigger by activating the Inkmoth Nexus, thus having it be a creature for when they need to select targets for their spell later on.

Companionable Games 2 & 3
One of my FJs noticed that AP had a Kaheera, the Orphanguard in their sideboard but had registered an Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines in their mainboard. Obviously this means that AP can never use Kaheera as a companion in game 1. We thought this was a little suspicious so we investigated. The player immediately let us know that Kaheera was a companion that they boarded into, and professed that they’d never used it in game 1. We reached out to their previous round opponent and corroborated that this was indeed true.

Suspicious Scrying Subverted by Surveil
One of my FJs brought the following investigation to me. AP scryed a card to the top, and then took their turn and forgot to draw, cast Lightning Bolt, Surveil’d and binned the card with their Dragon's Rage Channeler, then called a judge. The FJ felt this was suspicious because they might be trying to avoid drawing that card to pump their DRC. I then asked the FJ “what have they done that indicates that we’re not still in their upkeep?”. The FJ paused for a second, and then said “uh, well nothing other than saying they forgot to draw”. I nodded and said “I appreciate you bringing this up, but to me it looks like everything that’s happened is legal, so even if the player thinks it’s not, well, they’re wrong!”

Free From Exile
NAP controls Rest in Peace and AP casts Free the Fae, will they get to grab an instant or sorcery from the exile zone? Yes. When Free the Fae asks AP to retrieve an instant or sorcery from the “milled” cards, it doesn’t care what zone they went to, as long as it was public, and will be able to track those cards.

...In Conclusion
This event presented a few interesting challenges, and I felt like while a lot of the staff was somewhat inexperienced in the roles they were performing, they really pulled through and made the event a huge success. Being bamboozled by a multi-room layout and above-average pre-registrations was disconcerting, but in the end it turned out okay. I always like judging in Vancouver, since it means I get to see the players that helped me on my path to L2. There were a lot of early PPTQs where I would forget something, or do something weird, and the players would softly course-correct me. I feel like while I never had a designated mentor through my judge career, (there are several judges that helped me along my path) I always had the Vancouver grinders, who I feel like had a critical role in helping me improve. Overall, I had a great time and am looking forward to my next event in Vancouver.