Gatineau, Quebec
Time: Friday February 9th – Sunday February 11th 2024


Friday – LCQ Floor Judge

A Subtle Solution
AP drew a card during their draw step, but NAP wanted to cast Ice on AP’s land in their upkeep. AP put the card they drew back, then responded to Ice by casting Solitude, NAP then cast Subtlety on Solitude, which gave AP the choice to put it onto the top or the bottom of their library, which meant that them knowing the next card down might impact their decision of where to put their Solitude. I think this is one of those very interesting situations where it’s highly likely neither player actually “did anything wrong”. Maybe AP could’ve given NAP a bit more time to act in their upkeep, or maybe NAP could’ve been a little quicker in expressing their intention to cast a spell before AP drew a card. If I was called at this point, I think what I’d do is randomize the card AP put on top (assuming it wasn’t totally unambiguous that was the card they drew) and leave it at that. Effectively I’m applying a GRV fix with no penalty for “communicating poorly”. It’s certainly not my favourite solution to problems like this, but it feels the most appropriate.

Walking Around Policy
AP cast Arcbound Ravager for zero thinking it was Walking Ballista, they let it die and exiled it under Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, and only noticed when they went to activate the Soul Cauldron. This one is neat, because if they have a Walking Ballista in their hand, there’s an argument for just swapping the two cards now. An important thing to factor in here is whether NAP also thought it was a Walking Ballista and responded (or not) based on that misunderstanding, if they did, then your swap is basically perfect. However if NAP perhaps, didn’t counter it because it was a Ravager and only noticed afterwards that it wasn’t, then I think you have to do a full GRV rewind. Another interesting angle is if they paid {2} for it, but announced Walking Ballista. I’m disinclined to lock them into casting Ravager unless the game has progressed significantly, and could probably call this GRV – you put the wrong physical card on the table. There might be an argument for misrepresenting free information (claiming this is a Ballista but it’s actually a Ravager) but a CPV backup fix is only valid up until the point where NAP acted on the incorrect information.

Which-Member?
AP attacks with two 4/4 Rhinos tokens, NAP casts Dismember targeting one, marking down that they've taken four. AP then says, “take 4?” AP says “yeah”, marks down that they take four on their lifepad and then casts another Dismember from their hand, targeting the other Rhino token. NAP then says they believe AP agreeing to take 4 was an admission of being past damage, whereas AP mentions that they were thinking about the four life they were going to pay for the other Dismember, and meant to do that before damage. I ruled that they had cast the second Dismember before damage. It seemed like AP was trying to sneak some damage through by capitalizing on NAP’s weird communication.

Murky Communication
AP controlled a Murktide Regent with five counters on it. NAP was at 14 but AP thought they were at 12. AP attacked, and cracked their Relic of Progenitus to exile their graveyard and put four more counters on Murktide and said “swing for lethal”. NAP had no cards in hand and nothing they could do, they mentioned, confused, that they were at 13 life, not 12. AP then mentioned he could’ve just cast unholy heat before combat and exiled that with the relic to kill NAP. I asked whether NAP had been announcing life total changes regarding their Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, which was the source of the discrepancy, NAP said they had but AP hadn't heard them. The Sheoldred had only been on the battlefield for one turn, so there was no precedent for communication regarding its triggers. I ended up rewinding and issuing no infraction (this seems like the theme of the weekend). I would’ve been more hesitant to do so if NAP actually had a hand or open mana. Willy nilly rewinds without any associated infraction have the potential to cause major issues. I think there is a good argument for no backup here for the Murktide player, and in most similar situations that will be the correct ruling.

Abilities Abound!
AP controls Puresteel Paladin, and Colossus Hammer enters the battlefield. NAP casts Tishana’s Tidebinder to counter the ability that allows AP to draw a card. If AP controls two other artifacts, will the Hammer have Equip {0}? No. While this question feels unintuitive, it works the same as any other creature that has a continuous effect that applies in the ability layer (Aggressive Mammoth, for example) The existence of the ability that grants an alternative equip cost wouldn’t exist if we applied Tidebinder first, so its dependant on Tidebinder’s ability, and therefore Tidebinder will be applied first. (CR 613.8a)

Saturday – Pairings Team Lead

Cursed Rulings
NAP controls Cursed Totem. AP controls Agatha’s Soul Cauldron which has currently exiled Grist, the Hunger Tide. If they have a Young Wolf with a +1/+1 counter on it, can they activate its +1 loyalty ability? No. While Young Wolf has the ability, Cursed Totem will prevent it from being activated, as it’s considered an activated ability of a creature now that Young Wolf has it. (CR602.1)

Aetherial Counters
AP controls an Aether Vial with two counters on it and activates the ability. Before it resolves, NAP casts Radstorm, choosing to proliferate the Vial once. Can AP put a Storm Crow onto the battlefield? No. Aether Vial’s ability checks how many counters are on it upon resolution, which in this case would be three. (CR608.2h)

6/10 Would Use This Fix In Lieu of Other Options
AP accidentally flipped the top two cards of their library while drawing a card. When they were asked if the library had any cards in known locations, they said they had some amount of cards on the bottom from a previous Cascade, but they weren’t sure how many. The FJ wanted to just disregard the previous cascade cards, as the exact count couldn’t be determined, and randomize the extra card into the library. I mentioned that if the players feel it was approximately 10 cards on the bottom, we should set those aside and then randomize the extra card into the rest of the library. While sometimes we can’t ascertain the exact amount of cards in known locations, getting “close enough” is also fine.

Violent Inburst
AP cascaded off Violent Outburst but then accidentally shuffled it into the Cascade pile and put it on the bottom of their library. I issued a GRV for AP, and did a “rewind”, which consisted of flipping through the bottom cards until we found the Violent Outburst and removed it. Notably, the library wasn’t shuffled afterwards. There was some debate about who should get a warning here, I think it’s whoever first integrated the Violent Outburst into the cascade pile. The Cascade pile was kind of, on top of the Outburst, so if NAP just grabbed the whole pile to randomize then it’s NAP’s fault. But if AP shuffled the Outburst in and presented to NAP, then it’s AP’s fault.

No Crow For You!
AP casts Unburial Rites targeting a Storm Crow in their graveyard. NAP casts Commandeer but doesn’t have anything in their own graveyard. AP won’t be able to get Storm Crow back, Unburial Rites targets a creature in your graveyard, and as NAP didn’t change the target, when it goes to resolve, it can’t. (CR115.7d, CR608.2b)

Crash of Triggered Abilities
AP has a Crashing Footfalls that is currently in exile with one time counter on it. NAP wants to cast Tishana’s Tidebinder on it to prevent it from being cast. NAP isn’t entirely sure how the interaction works, having only a vague idea that they can use Tidebinder to stop Crashing Footfalls. I asked them a few different questions to poke at the issue, but most judges (let alone players) don’t understand that Suspend is actually a bundle of triggers duct-taped together. During AP’s upkeep, a trigger to remove a time counter goes on the stack. When it resolves, if the time counter removed was the last one, another trigger occurs, which is the one that causes AP to cast the spell. (CR702.62a) Theoretically, NAP could Tidebinder the trigger that allows AP to cast the spell, or counter the trigger that removes a time counter, merely delaying Crashing Footfalls for a turn. Unlike with other “player doesn’t quite understand the game” scenarios, this one has a little more wiggle room for judge support. If the player says anything like “I want to counter Rhinos” or “I want it to be in exile with no time counters on it” I think I’m fine ruling they countered the second trigger and not the first.

Calibrated Plays
AP casts Calibrated Blast and reveals Storm Crow. When does AP declare targets for Calibrated Blast? Will NAP be able to use Tishana’s Tidebinder to prevent the target from taking 2 after knowing what is being targeted? Yes. During the resolution of Calibrated Blast, a trigger is created, and that’s what actually does the damage. The target, therefore, is chosen after Calibrated Blast resolves, after the card has been revealed, and when the reflexive trigger goes onto the stack. (CR603.12)

Rage-Inducing Tidebinders
NAP casts Tishana’s Tidebinder, to counter the untap trigger from Amulet of Vigor. Afterwards AP casts Worldsoul’s Rage with X=2 targeting Tishana’s Tidebinder. If they put two Forests onto the battlefield with Worldsoul’s Rage, what happens? They will enter the battlefield tapped, but as Amulet of Vigor currently has no abilities, no triggers will go onto the stack. Then SBAs will be checked and Tidebinder will die. (CR704.5g, CR704.3)

The Dreadful Zone
AP controls Insidious Roots and casts Mosswood Dreadknight as an adventure from their graveyard. Will Insidious Roots trigger?
AP casts Reanimate Targeting Grist, the Hunger Tide in their graveyard, will Insidious Roots trigger?
AP casts Reanimate targeting Willow Geist in their graveyard, will it acknowledge itself leaving the graveyard and get a +1/+1 counter?

The answer to all these questions stems from the same section in the CR. Zone-change triggers, such as the ones that involve when cards leave graveyards look back in time to see what the object and game state looked like before the event occurred. In this case, Mosswood Dreadknight and Grist, the Hunger Tide were creature cards before they moved, and will count for Insidious Roots. Willow Geist, however was in the graveyard before the event happened, we check the game-state before the zone change to see if any abilities would trigger, and its ability won’t trigger while it’s in the graveyard. (CR603.10a)

Warped Tour
During a deck check AP was found to have foils that were varying degrees of warped. About 50 of their 75 were marked, but not all in the same way. This is one of the more awkward Marked Cards warnings because issuing it will most certainly means the player will just drop from the event, as finding replacements would likely be far too costly, and replacing cards with basic lands would result in them effectively not having a deck. The player argued, and insisted they could bend their nonfoil cards to be homogeneous with their foils.

There were multiple issues with the execution of the call, firstly there were like four judges in the back room, myself, the deck check lead, a FJ, the HJ of the event and the TO (who is also a judge). The HJ was one of the less experienced judges of the assembled party and I think a few of us (myself included) wanted to support them in this contentious situation, but ended up just adding to the general confusion. The only judges present should’ve been the HJ and the deck check judge who had found the issue, everyone else should’ve just left. It’s much more likely that a player will become stand-offish in front of a large crowd as opposed to a smaller one. Next, the issue itself wasn’t clearly explained, all the foils in the deck weren’t bent in the exact same way, which resulted in multiple “sets” of identifiable cards with varying levels of bentness. After some arguing, the HJ told the player they had 10 minutes to effectively fix their deck, which the player used to bend their nonfoil cards. Which, because of the aforementioned reason, wasn’t sufficient, as there was still a bunch of variance in bends of the cards. Overall, while I think the player would’ve been upset regardless, the communication and execution of the call could’ve been a lot clearer.

Sunday – Testing and Community Management I didn’t really have much of a job on Sunday, other than interviewing and testing aspiring judgelings. I think if I end up with this position in the future, I’d like to do a few things differently. First, before the event I released a google form to see who wanted to test, and where they were at with their checklists and letters of recommendation. I think this worked out well since it gave me a good amount of time to reach out to individuals and help them get things in order. Unfortunately I didn’t get a good number of the letters of recommendation until shortly before the event, and while I probably had time to go through them before I did the interviews, I ended up going through them almost directly before each interview, which meant I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare questions and candidate-specific material to go over with each judge.
Many of the candidates had trouble with rules and policy and a large portion of the interview was spent exploring this. This would’ve been greatly improved if I wasn’t just making up policy questions on the fly. Another issue that arose from this, was the fact that a few of my interviews ran long due to the fact that I didn't have a well-defined plan going in. I made a testing schedule allotting each applicant an hour for the interview, however this ended up falling apart pretty quickly. While I touched base with each team lead before the day of, I didn’t give them the finalized schedule with times until the morning of the testing day. In addition to this, the event was slightly understaffed and it wasn’t super viable to take people off of main, especially during break rounds, which was primarily when I wanted testing to happen. I wanted to avoid taking people before their scheduled breaks because there was no assurance they’d return in time (the test is untimed and I didn’t want to tell them something like “you need to finish your test and be back on shift in two hours!”), which meant taking them after their break but not during other’s breaks.

What this all ended up resulting in was me doing deck checks for the first half of the day and then doing interviews after the main event moved into top 8, which I could’ve done if I’d just been assigned to a team on the main event in the first place.

...In Conclusion
While I did enjoy interviewing and training people I also found it very draining, by the end of the day on Sunday I just didn’t want to talk to anyone about anything. This was a kind of weird feeling, since I’m not often in positions where I have to do so much nonstop social and mental work. I think for future interviews I want to be much more prepared. As for the event itself, I had a great time, I got to have a lot of good policy discussions with different judges and do a ton of mentoring. I'm looking forward to working my next Canadian event!