Phoenixville, Philidelphia
Time: Saturday April 5th – Sunday April 6th 2024
Players:180 (ish)


Friday & Saturday – Not Checks Lead

A First Time for Everything
This was my first cEDH event actually working on the floor. While I briefly brushed against the cEDH event at the House of Cards Winter Classic, that was only about 30 players and I also wasn't at all in charge of it. I was really excited to work this event because cEDH seems to be growing in popularity and as a circuit judge, it seems like a skillset I should have in my repertoire.

The first thing I noticed when I entered the venue was that it was incredibly cramped, the room would've been comfortable at around 140 players and we had 40 more than that. Additionally, players didn't drop in the way you would expect them to at a normal tournament, a single match win is so impactful that it's often worth it to stay in even if you're 0-2! I think in the future, both the judge station and coverage should be moved either into the hall, or into adjacent rooms to free up more space in the main room.

Even More New Software
I was the "not checks" team lead, which, before the event, I thought really only meant paper pairings lead, however I was surprised to discover that we were also using match slips! The match slips are different from traditional match slips (you can take a look at one here) and it was a little confusing to figure out where to put time extensions. Eventually we coalesced on above the information in the middle. The software used is Command Tower.

The paper pairings were organized alphabetically by last name, but didn't display the last name first! This makes them, honestly, incredibly hard to use. There was also a massive issue pairing and printing standings for the last round, this I was told, was partially due to the fixed seating being out of range and partially due to some weird, since-fixed software bug. Otherwise though the software was pretty great, and to add to that, just earlier today I asked if the pairings could display the last name first (and some other relevant tournament info) and the developer changed the display literally within five minutes of me asking!

Awkward Beginnings
The morning of, I heard that some banners needed to be set up before the start of the event and offered my services to help. However the banners were harder to set up than previously assumed, and I was trapped in the activity longer than I initially expected. This meant that not only did I not do a team meeting at the beginning of the day, but I failed to delegate pairings and slips to anyone, nor did I inquire about how the SK wanted me to locate and drop no show'd players. Luckily for me, my team was very on top of things and ended up doing slips and pairings without too much guidance from me.

Wheel of Fortune
The event was entirely sold out and had a lottery waitlist. I was curious about a lottery waitlist and was told about the complications associated with first come, first serve waitlists. If you reach out to the first person on the waitlist and they take too long to get back to you it no longer becomes feasible to reach out to the second person on the waitlist. Instead people would walk up the day of and put their names into a jug and then once no shows were determined, names would be drawn out of the jug.

No Show To See Here, Folks
No shows are something I want to talk about here, because it's not something I thought about initially. Usually you just write down the name of the present player, but when there are three players that's less feasible. At first I was writing down the number of the missing seat but what's actually better is just the name of the missing player, since the players at the table will usually be able to tell you that fairly easily. Because Commander is multiplayer, no shows are really awkward, the current policy is the remaining players wait five minutes and at that point the absent player is dropped, and the remaining players play, this is currently the best practice if two people no show as well, though if the judge has the bandwidth and there are other pods with missing players manually pairing them would likely be preferable. Because no shows are so awkward and dramatically change the dynamic of the pod, we want to avoid them if possible, which means a mandatory player meeting before round one. Ugh.

The other awkward pod-related thing is byes, currently there's no official policy for byes, and some folks say to have byes awarded if there is a 3-pod or smaller. This feels really weird since we have two players play in the event of no shows. I feel like there should just be a blanket rule of "3+ players and you play, 2 or less and you get a bye". Or something.

Logistic Whiplash
The rounds were 80 minutes long and at time in the round active player finishes their turn and no additional turns are awarded. The 80 minute rounds also contributed to some interesting break distribution, a judge could leave and return from a break before the round turned. This meant I could post pairings, go on break and still be back for End of Round. As someone who finds making break schedules super frustrating at times, I absolutely loved this!

Deck checks were another interesting animal, an entire pods decks were taken, but only two were checked (though if you had a team of four judges you could check all four). On average the check would take about 20 minutes, which is a long time but like, you gotta remember these are singleton decks. Another thing to consider is that mid-round checks simply don't exist, it's start of round or bust, and the elegance of the swoop is also a bit compromised since it's not normal that all four player present their decks simultaneously to their opponents. That being said, I've always felt there were limited returns on "surprising" the players. The actual issue here is that policy only really authorizes us to give warnings if players have presented (otherwise, logically, they could still be modifying their deck) I'd say to get around this, a player giving their deck to a judge counts as "presentation" and if they start doing weird things as the judge asks, that just becomes part of the investigation that should be triggered. Another small sidenote, because of the lack of sideboards in the format, not only do wishes not function, but other cards in the deckbox are just completely disregarded for deck check purposes. I'm not a huge fan of this, but I can understand with the more casual feel of the format why this decision was made.

Another odd policy was the complete free reign on proxies. Players were allowed to play and bring as many proxies as they wanted! This was super weird, but honestly, the event was a sold out show, so maybe there's something to be said for lowering the barrier to entry?

Policy Schmolicy
The thing I really got to dig into was cEDH policy, it's one thing to read the documents and another to work with and enforce them all day. In the morning team meeting I got a bit of a rude awakening when I went to confidently explain HCE policy and was staunchly corrected by a member of my team. If AP commits an HCE, the player with the turn that immediately precedes theirs performs the regular comp REL "thoughtsieze" fix. That player can talk about cards in the player's hand, they aren't allowed to reveal them. The idea behind this is to have the player that is least impacted by being able to remove a card from AP's hand make the decision. This is a little complicated when explained, but easier to understand with an example. If AP has an extra card, and the player right after them does a thoughtsieze fix, then they can immediately, potentially, clear the way for their combo, much to the chagrin of the third and fourth players who had perhaps made decisions based on AP holding the fort with a force or whatever.

The next thing that came up a bunch was missed trigger, if any opponent wants the trigger on the stack, it just goes on the stack. In actuality, it ends up with triggers being slightly more permissive, but realistically, it makes sense, since otherwise the players could just verbally remind AP of their triggers pre-emptively and end up with effectively the same policy. By far the most common call was "players communicated poorly with each other" which is also the most complicated call and the one that policy offers the least guidance on under any structure. More often than not it was just a bit of talking with the players and usually doing some kind of rewind to get them all on the same page.

A Colorful Issue
I had a situation where AP had activated Chromatic Orrery three times tapping it for mana and then using that mana to pay for its second ability, drawing two cards each time. The current fix has us remove six cards from their hand. However, awkwardly, the player had played a bunch of cards off of the Orrery draws, one of which was a Time Spiral that was on the stack, which meant that executing the fix did absolutely nothing. This is also similar to the HCE issue I had at the House of Cards Winter Classic, wherein a player drew extra cards off Atraxa which then kickstarted their combo, and catapulted them into a deeply incorrect game state. I think this kind of situation is more likely to come up in a format like cEDH since combo is a major archetype and combos in cEDH usually involve drawing a lot of cards. I mentioned in my last report that perhaps there should be a carve-out for "super corrupted game", that gives the progenitor of that broken game a turn skip that applies immediately.

Attractive Solutions
An interesting situation that arose that also applies to non-cEDH. AP is playing with an attraction deck but has lost an attraction. What is the correct penalty and fix if they can't find a replacement? Decklist problem, game loss (or a turn skip in cEDH)? It's not technically their main deck, but assuming it counts as such, how do we modify the decklist? We can't allow them to play with nine attractions, and putting a basic land in is really dumb and makes no sense. Another option proposed was to proxy the attraction, this was obviously fine for this cEDH event, but in a real event would it still be okay? WotC currently allows sticker proxies, but doesn't allow anything else, notably Dungeons (though colloquially TOs allow proxy dungeons). I think the most technically correct reading of rules and policy have you just remove the attraction deck all together, and their attraction cards don't do anything.

The End is Nigh
AP controls Birgi, God of Storytelling and casts Necropotence, after it resolves AP activates it. Can they use their floating mana to cast the cards they get off Necropotence at the end of their turn? Yes.

The effect that prevents mana from emptying from mana pools doesn't expire until the cleanup step (CR 514.2) How about if they have floating mana and discard Fiery Temper? Also yes, while the continuous effect that prevents mana from emptying expires before the trigger from the discard goes on the stack, we also don't change phases between then, so the mana will still be there!

A Disagreeable Agent
If NAP controls Opposition Agent and AP casts Finale of Devastation but only chooses to search their graveyard, what happens? NAP won't have be able to control them, because they're not searching a library, however if they choose to search both zones, NAP will have control of AP and will be able to search AP's graveyard.

...In Conclusion
The event was a big learning experience for me, the 80 minute rounds were probably the most jarring, I'm very attuned to 50 minute rounds so the extra thirty minutes just got me every time. The biggest surprise however, was the sportsmanship of the players, on average they were less salty and more amicable than the average tournament grinder. This really shouldn't be surprising, since the average magic player is pretty good-spirited, but I think a lot of the online discourse around cEDH paints these players in such a negative light, as if they're all aggressive, salty, try-hards, but that wasn't at all the case! They were just good natured players! I had a great time working the event and interacting with the players and am looking forward to the next time I get to be on a cEDH event!