Cincinnati, Ohio
Time: Friday January 5th – Sunday January 7th 2024


Friday – LCQ Floor Judge

The Land of the LCQ
The LCQ setup was interesting, we were only responsible for three events, which were estimated to be around 60 players. We had four people on the team including the Lead. One person was on prize tix and promo distribution, one person on EOR, one person on checks and one person on paper. The big issue that arose from this setup is that this required basically everyone on LCQs to be aware of every round end time. The other issue with this was that no one in particular was actually responsible for round turnover, so the lead did it. Which meant that when two events needed to be turned at the same time it got a bit hectic. Also no one was assigned to clocks, which was a bit of an issue. I think personally things just seem to run better when you have a dedicated HJ for an each event. That person understands that they need to keep track of the rounds and turnover. When you try to give people tasks instead of events, I find a lot more stuff ends up getting forgotten about. The only time I think you need to be giving people tasks over events is when you have more events than people, or when you have some kind of unified checks thing going on. I think if I were to organize trials I would’ve had a HJ for each event, and had a person on unified checks. The single HJ means that no one would ever be flipping multiple rounds at once, the HJ could grab prize tix at the same time they were grabbing pairings, and could start their own clock after starting the round. Overall it seems like a cleaner system.

All Types and No Abilities Makes Mutavault a Dull Land
AP activates Mutavault’s ability and it resolves. Then for some reason AP activates it again, but before it resolves, NAP casts Tishana’s Tidebinder to counter it. Mutavault will retain all creature types until end of turn, but will lose all other abilities. After the end of the turn, Mutavault will lose all creature types but will continue to be affected by Tishana’s Tidebinder and will no longer tap for mana. (613.1d, 613.1f)

Justice for Crow!
AP attacks with Colossal Dreadmaw, NAP blocks with Storm Crow. Before damage NAP kills Colossal Dreadmaw. Can AP cast Arrows of Justice on Storm Crow? Yes, Storm Crow is considered a blocking creature until the combat step ends or its explicitly removed from combat, even if it isn’t blocking anything anymore. (509.1g)

Roiling Ruling
NAP controls Roiling Vortex and AP casts Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar for its alternate casting cost. Will Roiling Vortex trigger? No. NAP still spent mana to cast Asmo, even if it was spent on an alternative casting cost. (118.9)

New Tech, Who Dis?
I had originally planned to use Purple Fox for EOR for the main event. Or rather, I had planned to support my team lead on Purple Fox. What actually happened was my lead got sick so I got field promoted. On Friday when I was noodling around in MTGMelee I noticed that the gear icon for adding penalties etc had moved to the far left (cool). But there was also a brand-spanking-new time extension field! Huzzah! I excitedly went to the HJ and let them know I'd like to test out this feature first on trials, then on the 20k. The HJ was understandably hesitant but I let them know that if it exploded on trials, we wouldn't need to use it on Saturday. The use of only MTGMelee meant that we only needed to do a "ghost walk" at about 10 minutes left in the round. Any ghosts were reported as having "0" minute time extensions, which communicated information quickly. At 5 minutes left in the round other judges would start reporting to us and we'd send them to tables. The use of only Melee also meant that I didn't have to constantly bother the SK for purple fox pushes, nor did I have to tab between two different windows. The entire EOR process felt smoother than it has in years and I'm incredibly excited to keep using this system.

Saturday – EOR Team Lead

And Now, We Act
Reocurring feedback I keep getting is that I appear to constantly suffer from a lack of preparation. This is a result of two things, my somewhat whimsical attitude towards everything, and a lack of preparation. I decided for this event I'd do something different than usual: instead of not preparing adequately, I would prepare adequately. Once I found out I would be team leading, I thought about what I was going to do and communicated with the HJs about it. Then I threw it all in the garbage on Friday when I discovered a new system and we did that instead. The most important thing though, is that I thought about what I wanted to do for EOR in advance. Something I've found helpful is grabbing another team member or HJ and just saying my plan out loud into their face. Usually, this allows me to work through any kinks and gives the other person the opportunity to point out any obvious flaws. I also prepared some notes for the team briefing on Saturday morning, and overall I feel like it went really well.

Judges Have Trample
I was watching a newer judge on a call, AP was holding two cards near the top of their library and said, "judge I drew two cards for my turn instead of one". The judge on the call looked a little startled and turned to me "HCE?". I paused since, we needed to ask some questions to ascertain that first. I moved closer, guessing that the judge wanted me to take over. A few quick questions later and I wrapped up the call (it ended up being LEC) and then spoke to the newer judge. They had, in fact wanted me to take over, however it would've been better for me to ask "would you like me to take this?" before stepping in. After I apologized, we went over the nuances of the call and correct ruling, and later on in the day, that same judge got another LEC and ruled correctly all on their own!

A Group of Judges is Called a Panel
A big issue I've been noticing lately is that judges are starting to clump up more than is necessary. I have a saying:

0 judges on a call is bad
1 judge is good
2 is great, because you have someone to double check and shadow
3+ is way too many
Of course sometimes there are circumstances like appeals where two judges have already been involved, but most of the time the only reason there are three judges on the call is because someone is bored and wants to be where the interesting call is. To the player it's going to start feeling like all of the judge staff is closing in on them. If you notice you're the third person to a call and you haven't been involved already, make an active effort to not be on that call.

Bitty Bits
In addition to recording time extensions into MTGMelee we were also using time extension slips (just in case the software exploded and also because players are used to them). One round I noticed a post-it note with a time extension on it on top of a table number. Now, obviously on top of a table number is kinda awkward, because it covers the number. But it did get me thinking that sticking them below the table numbers might not be a terrible idea? They'd certainly be less likely to go missing there.

Protect The Sanctity of the Answer
AP controls Sanctifier en-Vec and NAP controls a Dauthi Voidwalker. If AP's Grief dies, where will it go? AP chooses, since there are two replacement effects applying to the same event, and AP is the owner of the affected object. However that's not what I did, I answered this initially, but then one of the player pointed out the "not on the battlefield clause" which I read, misinterpreted and changed my answer. Then I felt weird and asked the players to wait while I went and checked with someone else. It was... kind of a mess and I'm not really sure what happened. (616.1)

Inside Every Judge There Are Two Wolves
I sometimes say I have a logistics brain and a rules & policy brain, and both of them can't operate at the same time. While EOR ran pretty smoothly and the tournament progressed without major hiccups I did punt a whole bunch of rules questions.

First AP asked me whether Vesuva could copy an Island while NAP controlled a Blood Moon. I shrugged and said that yes, it would be an island. The second the player did it the opponent looked at me like I was an idiot. And this was appropriate because my answer was idiotic. I fixed it but AP was pretty annoyed, which is reasonable.

Another player asked me whether Strict Proctor would stop Living Weapon on Batterskull. I said that living weapon was a replacement effect so no, but asked the player to wait while I quickly double checked in the CR. Of course it's a trigger. What was I thinking!

Luckily I managed to catch myself at the 11th hour on all these, but it does make me concerned for how many incorrect rulings I might've made where I didn't catch myself.

Soul of the Call
AP controls 3x Hardened Scales, and casts Hangarback Walker with X=2. It entered with five +1/+1 counters and then AP activated Agatha's Soul Cauldron to put an additional +1/+1 counter on it, moving the die to eight. Then AP sacrificed it and put eight Thopter tokens into play, and passed the turn. NAP untapped when AP realized that they'd missed a +1/+1 counter from one of the Hardened Scales. NAP argued that this might be missed trigger, however, while Soul Cauldron is a reflexive trigger, if it was in fact missed here, Hangarback Walker wouldn't have gotten any counters from Soul Cauldron. I rewound and put the additional counter on the Walker.

A Life Bound by the Tide
AP controls Soul Warden. Can NAP cast Tishana's Tidebinder and prevent AP from gaining life? Yes, as soon as Tidebinder enters the battlefield, AP's Soul Warden trigger will go on the stack, then NAP's Tidebinder trigger will go on the stack, allowing NAP to target AP's ability.

We Have The Power!
Something else I learned this weekend is that judges have the ability to edit player's decklists by going to their player card and clicking on the decklist. However, if you put extra line breaks in, it causes MTGMelee to return a hard error message about how the decklist doesn't have the correct amount of cards.

The Void Stares Back
AP and NAP both controlled a Dauthi Voidwalker which were both dying in combat to each other. however NAP's Voidwalker had been cast from AP's library because of a Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. This took me a while to sort through, and the question was who could cast what. I had to read Voidwalker carefully, but what happens here is both Voidwalkers go into exile with void counters on them, and then the only one that can cast those Voidwalkers would be NAP because Voidwalker only allows you to cast spells your opponents own in exile with void counters on them.

Temporal Tomfoolery
A FJ gave table five a 5 minute time extension, instead of 2 minute one. At the end of the round, the HJ was sitting on the match, and called time at 5 minutes after time in the round. AP notices that the clock is three minutes past two, and mentions that time should've been called a while ago. The judge shrugs and says it's time in the round now. AP says if time had been called properly the game would be a draw, but now they're going to lose. The HJ spoke to both players separately to see what would've likely happened if time had been called properly. They also considered breaking the match and giving a double match win, or a win to NAP and a draw to AP. In the end, after a bit of a lengthy investigation the HJ decided that it was simply time in the round now, and no nonsense was going to happen here. This one is a little weird because I can't easily say this is the player's mistake. If the HJ is sitting on your table, as a player I would pretty comfortably believe that they're going to call time and not feel responsible for keeping track of it myself. I think exploring some options for breaking the match is somewhat reasonable here, however, I do think the philosophy of time in the round is that while we'd like games to come to their natural conclusion, logistically that's not always feasible. It seems like here the game managed to come to the natural conclusion, and I'm not inclined to walk that back because of some goof-ups with tournament logistics.

Sunday – Deck Checks (I was the whole team)

Synapse Connectivity Issues
I was in charge of doing deck checks, it was just me on the team so I made an arrangement with the 5k that was running concurrently, to steal one of their newer L1s to help out with checks. My checks on average were still a little slow, I think with the lack of RCQs I don't get practice on deck checks as regularly as I used to, and my sorting might be lagging a little bit behind.

Marked for Replacement
In the last round of swiss I noticed a Teferi, time Raveler that was notably marked, it was the final few turns of G3, and the Teferi wasn't going back in the library at all. I elected to allow the players to finish, and then check for marked cards. It was indeed marked and I let the player know I'd like them to change it out before top 8. It would've been a warning had I called it during the game but I elected to not interrupt the game. It wasn't going to impact the game further, since it was staying on the battlefield. The counter-argument to this is that if it was a GL or a DQ I'm not delivering justice to their final round opponent by intervening in a game that had already been compromised by marked cards.

SCG's Super Secret Tech
the HJ elected to put top 12 at the end of the room far away from the stage, to avoid a bunch of background noise from teardown. This was a great idea. I also want to once again mention SCG's unique way of avoiding a bunch of draws in the last rounds, instead of cutting to top 8 they cut to top 12 but give 1-4 byes to incentivise going for the higher seed instead of drawing in.

...In Conclusion
Overall I felt pretty good about SCG Cincinnati. I did a good job on EOR, I was clear about my expectations with my HJ and the other judges on the event, and explained them during the team meeting. I spearheaded a solid counterfeit DQ and provided a lot of feedback to my fellow judges. I did a bit of a 180 on all the things I screwed up at SCG Pittsburgh. The unfortunate thing is that my actual judge calls were a lot messier than usual, with a lot of more uncertainty and near misses. I'm not super thrilled about this and am trying to figure out how to reconcile it.