Toronto, Canada
Time: Friday November 24th – Sunday November 26th 2023


Friday – LCQ Lead

My Lead is So Sick
I was field promoted to LCQ lead a day before the event began, because the person that was supposed to be doing it got Covid. We decided to use a spin-off of the system I used at RC Edmonton where LCQs were essentially glorified ODEs. We capped at 16 and used paper brackets, we didn’t have specified round end times, and would allow players to play their opponents as soon as they were ready. The players were told to call a judge as soon as they were eliminated in order to collect their prizes.

I recall having a few issues in Edmonton, initially the judges weren’t signing off consistently on the brackets so it was unclear when prizes were given out. I remedied this by giving clear instructions the morning of. The other issue was that it was hard to tell how many events were out and where they were. Two things were implemented to fix this, first, the brackets were posted to the pairings boards, this both allowed judges to be aware of what was going on, and mitigated the probability that brackets would go missing. Finally, a judge from the deck check team suggested we write the round one table numbers on the brackets so we could easily tell where in the room each event was, this turned out really useful. Another thing I ran back was naming the LCQs after the military alphabet. Since Canada always gets less than 26 LCQs, this works just fine, and greatly increases player’s ability to remember which LCQ they’re in.

The Perfect Crime
This section has been amended to prevent players from getting ideas. So while I can't explicitly tell you what the player actually did here, just know that the player was not subtle and that it was very clearly tournament fraud. Like not "oh this might be tournament fraud if I squint a bit" like, it was just, tournament fraud.

One of the judges working registration called me up and said “AP came up and wanted to [commit tournament fraud]”. I gave the registration judge a look and was like “uh-” and before I finished he said “two of the higher-ups at Face to Face (hereby referred to as Jon and Bob) said it was ok”. I shrugged and was like “okay, if you’ve already argued with them I guess that’s fine”. I knew the guys at Face to Face weren’t fans of tournament fraud and assumed that any argument I would make had already been made. I shrugged and went back over to the LCQ area where I was told the player would meet me to [commit tournament fraud]. As I was waiting Bob came over to talk to me about how LCQs were going. As this conversation was happening the player came up and [committed tournament fraud]. Bob looked suspiciously from me to the player and said “what the heck is this?” I was immediately knocked off balance and said “I was told you had okay’d this?” Bob looked somewhat shocked and said “uhhh what?!” I repeated myself "the judge at registration said you and Jon approved this" Bob groaned and took off towards registration.

Later on I cycled back around to figure out what had happened. While John had approved the uh, [tournament fraud], apparently, he hadn’t really understood what registration was asking. Then when Bob was asked, it was couched with “John said this was okay”. Now John was sort of Bob’s boss, so Bob hadn’t really been listening great and was like “okay well if John said it was okay...”. apparently John and Bob had a talk later on and both confirmed that this most certainly wasn’t ok. My problem here was that when the registration person had told me this I should’ve probably just bounced it off Bob again to be sure, even if I thought Bob had already been asked, since the day wasn’t particularly busy or anything.

Saturday – Floor Judge

Bound To Be Saga Problems
AP contols an Urza’s Saga and NAP casts Tishana’s Tidebinder countering the triggered ability that results after the first lore counter is put on it. There won’t be any subsequent effects from this because Urza’s Saga isn’t an artifact, creature or planeswalker. However if it was a creature, it would lose all its abilities and die because it would still be a Saga with more lore counters on it than chapter abilities. (714.4)

Bind the Eldrazi
AP casts Ulamog, Ceaseless Hunger and NAP uses Tishana’s Tidebinder to counter the triggered ability. Will Ulamog have abilities when it resolves? yes. Tishana’s Tidebinder specifically states that it will only block the abilities of a “creature”. Which means that it won’t apply to creature spells on the stack. (110.4)

Tidebinder, Layer Physician
AP uses Tishana’s Tidebinder to counter Yawgmoth, Thran Phsyician's activated ability. NAP controls Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, after Tishana’s Tidebinder resolves they exile another Yawgmoth, Thran Physician from their graveyard, putting a +1/+1 counter on the still-living Yawgmoth. What happens? The Yawgmoth on the battlefield will not gain all the abilities granted by the Cauldron. Both things apply in the adding and removing abilities layer. However even though the Cauldron was not previously actually granting any abilities, the continuous effect that grants abilities “Creatures you control with +1/+1 counters on them have all activated abilities of all creature cards exiled with Agatha’s Soul Cauldron.” was still technically active, and has an older timestamp than Tishana’s Tidebinder. (613.7, 613.1f)

Fish Fight
AP casts Tishana’s Tidebinder on NAP’s Tishana’s Tidebinder then afterwards NAP plays aLord of Atlantis. What happens? Because Tishana’s Tidebinder removes abilities in the same layer that Lord adds them it’s determined by Timestamp order. So NAP’s Tidebinder will gain islandwalk and +1/+1. If however, the Lord of Atlantis had been on the battlefield before AP’s Tidebinder, then it would lose all its abilities. (613.7, 613.1f)

Not the Tide-Themed Merfolk You Were Expecting
AP controls Tide Shaper, which currently has one damage marked on it and is making NAP’s Boseiju, Who Endures into an Island. If NAP plays Blood Moon what happens? Both type-changing effects apply in layer four, neither is dependant on the other, so you’ll simply apply them in timestamp order. (613.1d). Then because NAP no longer controls an Island, Tide Shaper will die.

Cave-Faring Primeval Titan
AP controls Spelunking and uses Primeval Titan to get a Forest, what happens? The first thing to understand about this interaction is that the last part of Primeval Titan's ability (the part that causes the land to enter the battlefield tapped) isn't a replacement effect, it's just a part of its triggered ability. (notably it doesn't fit the definition of a replacement effect in 614.1d) So what happens when you get a Forest is you create an event that is "get a Forest, put it into play tapped" at which point the game checks for replacement effects, and finds our friend Spelunking! Which says "nope, let's make than an Untapped forest." Now, if we get something like, I dunno, Boros Garrison, things get a little weirder. We still have the same event "get a Boros Garrison, put it into play tapped" but when the game checks for replacement effects, it finds two! Both Spelunking and Boros Garrison's own "I ETB tapped" ability. In this instance, the controller of the affected object (usually AP) chooses the order those replacement effects apply in. So it could either enter tapped or untapped. (616.1)

Lucky Breaks
AP controls a Gemstone Caverns with a luck counter on it, can NAP cast Break the Ice targeting the Caverns? No. The game only cares about what the ability would produce if it resolved right now. (106.7)

Silence Sounds a lot like a GRV
AP draws a card for their turn, grabs Chromatic Star from the third chapter ability of Urza’s Saga, casts Ancient Stirrings, getting Ulamog, Ceasless Hunger. They cast it, exiling NAP’s Heliod, God of the Sun and Walking Ballista. Then after it resolves and NAP gains a life off Soul Warden. It's at this point that NAP recalls that they sacrificed their Ranger-Captain of Eos during AP’s upkeep. I paused for a moment, and considered a backup. It actually seemed somewhat reasonable. I issued a GRV to both players and rewound everything, which was fairly straightforward until I got to the Ancient Stirrings. Obviously we return the Ulamog to the Stirrings pile, but do we randomize that pile and put it on top of AP’s library? No! We just shuffle everything back in. There’s no reason AP should know any of those cards and since we know exactly which card AP got, there’s no risk of shuffling a random card from AP’s hand into their library.

Salty Degen
AP is playing Amulet Titan and NAP is playing Scam. This is a bad matchup for AP. NAP does scam things in game one and wrecks AP. At the end of the game he says something like “maybe if you were better you’d have won”. Game two Scam gets an early Blood Moon which seals the game for them. In an adjacent match an Amulet Titan player is going off against Burn and the Scam players says something to the effect of “if you were better at the game, you’d be doing that”. As well as a few other comments that all basically amount to “skill issue”. Overall none of this is.... horrible but it IS kinda mean and unpleasant. I found out when the Amulet Titan player came over to talk to me, mentioning that this had happened and how it was unpleasant. I contemplated USC-minor and went to speak to the player. As expected the player didn’t realize that this kind of trash talking was probably not okay against a total stranger. They were remorseful and offered to apologize to the other player. Afterwards the HJ came off break and I told them about the situation. They asked me “if this player does this again, is it a problem?” I nodded and agreed it would be. Then they said “well I think if that’s the case, then it should’ve been USC-minor!”

Enter Oblivion
AP casts Oblivion from Consign//Oblivion from their hand, NAP casts Quick Study and then cycles a card before both players notice the issue. This wasn’t my call, but excluding fetchlands or anything like that, I’m not entirely opposed to the backup here. The other interesting part of this, is if you don’t back up, you also wouldn't exile Consign//Oblivion (702.127a)! Which means more Oblivions for AP! I’m super not a fan of this. What the judge on the call did was not rewind, but exile the card from the graveyard. I... think the backup here is just better.

Sunday – RC Floor Judge

Counter-Confusion
NAP called me over and let me know that one of AP’s cards was counterfeit. I took a look, and indeed it was! I looped the HJ in immediately since I knew there would likely be an investigation and a bunch of other stuff would need to happen, potentially a game loss for DLP(if the player couldn't find replacements). The HJ asked a bunch of questions while I figured out what was and wasn’t counterfeit. I grabbed the players deck while searching for counterfeits and NAP immediately mentioned that maybe he should step away while I searched since it was possible he could gain info on AP’s hand if he saw some of the counterfeits come out of the deck. Oops... yeah that was dumb on my part. So I walked away with some of AP’s stuff. Me and the HJ miscommunicated in that I thought he was going to bother me as soon as he was done answering questions, and he thought I was going to tag him as soon as I was done finding counterfeits. So both of us just spun our wheels a bit before he approached me. At the end, we determined the player had 7 counterfeit cards, four Cavalier of Thorns, two Boseiju, Who Endures and one The Chain Veil. The HJ then went to confer with the AJ about the investigation, I asked the HJ whether I could let the player start finding replacements and if I should tell them what the potential outcomes would be, but the HJ told me to sit tight.

After a few more moments he gave me leave to talk to AP. I let AP know that it would be a game loss if he couldn’t replace the cards, and a warning if he could. AP immediately said he wouldn’t be buying Boseijus so I shrugged and scooped up both player’s boards to clean up the game state a bit. The HJ asked me to “help AP” which I agreed to do, however I wasn't entirely sure how to help AP buy cards, and instead noted that no one was there watching both players stuff, and figured it would be better if I just stayed with the stuff. Then the player came back and let us all know that they’d found some Boseijus to borrow. uh. Oops. I guess I shouldn’t have cleaned up their stuff. I issued the game loss, which in retrospect, shouldn’t have been a game loss.

Overall, this call was a mess. I was slightly blindsided because I’d never really dealt with counterfeits in the middle of a game before, and in the process of bringing in the HJ I think a bunch of small communication errors happened which resulted in a bunch of lost time. The biggest issue was cleaning up the player’s games before we had confirmed which cards were being replaced and which weren’t. I think the second biggest issue wasn’t telling the player that it was either a game loss (DLP) or a warning (DP) depending on whether they could find the cards, or a DQ if the judges thought they were cheating. And giving the player that time while the judges were conferring to look for replacements/call friends etc.

Cut to the Appeal
Both players present, AP accidentally reveals some cards from their library due to some fumbling. NAP takes their deck back and changes their sideboarding decisions. AP calls a judge and after much ado, there ends up being no infraction. Then NAP doesn’t cut AP’s deck after presentation, and AP calls a judge and appeals, saying that NAP has to shuffle his deck by policy. The first judge call is actually really interesting. Regardless of whether there’s a warning or not, there isn’t really a fix that can be applied.

Unfortunate Bodily Functions
AP called me to go to the bathroom, I sat down and offered to watch his stuff, as we had sufficient staff to do that. I began idly flipping through his deck to see what he was playing and noticed that he was playing DFCs in semi-transparent sleeves. It felt... really lame to game loss them after I’d been called over to watch for a bathroom break, but, well it also felt lame to let them keep playing with semi-transparent sleeves. I roped the HJ in on it and he agreed on the game loss. We informed the player. I got pulled into another call as the HJ was explaining the game loss and so I took care of that. Then when I returned I heard something like “so there’s no game loss because another judge told you those sleeves were okay, and just change them after the match.” I kinda, freaked out for a moment. Imagine how awkward it would be for the opponent if they had to play against someone who was just told they had semi-transparent sleeves. Awkward. I had a feeling this was done to save time. I ran to my bag, grabbed the DFC tokens I always carry on me and brought them back. The HJ liked the idea and had the player swap out the cards now. I think, personally, even considering the time, it would’ve been better to have the player resleeve before playing any more magic. I also found the judge that approved the sleeves and spoke to them later on.

The Eye of the Tyrant
AP activates Hive of the Eye Tyrant and NAP says “in the beginning of combat, Go for the Throat”. AP says “hold on, I had some more stuff I wanted to do in my precombat main phase”. I personally, would probably rewind the kill spell, NAP is at a little bit of a disadvantage, but they shouldn’t have been so speedy. The judge on the call decided to not back up and rule that we were in the precombat main phase and that’s when NAP had cast their spell.

Old Fox, New Tricks
Recently I have been somewhat low on the use of Purple Fox for events, since most events just don’t really need it. Anything under 100 players makes using it feel like a gratuitous waste of time. However, one piece of functionality that I discovered this past weekend that I do really like was the fact that it shows you a players penalty history whenever you enter a penalty in for them. One person had a previous deck problem warning on Day 1, which I found interesting and brought to the HJ for investigative purposes. We ended up doing very little digging, and nothing came of it, but I was still grateful that the information was there.

...In Conclusion
I had a really good time at RC Toronto. I think there’s something to be said for not being in leadership roles all the time. Saturday was a blast. I didn’t have to do any tasks, I just got to answer judge calls and mentor a judgeling, it was great! I think while I do still want to shoot for advancement, I think being in leadership roles at every event is just a lot. I think I function best when I’m on a team in a support role. I’m good at picking up the pieces but not building the house.