SCG Atlanta
Atlanta, Georgia
Time: Friday April 12th – Sunday April 14th 2024


Friday – Trials & ReCQ Lead

If At First You Don’t Succeed, Trial, Trial Again
This was my first time doing Trials & ReCQ lead for SCG. On Friday I was responsible for two Events, the Trial and the ReCQ, and had two judges on my team. On Saturday I was responsible for the same two events, but had no judges on my team and on Sunday I was a mono-person team with only one event. I reached out to SCG in advance to find out what the structure and prizing of the events was and found that helpful. This was the pre-event correspondence I sent out.

The Trial was a five round swiss event with players getting 100 tix each round they won, and 5-0 players getting byes in whatever the next day’s “main event” was, which is why there was no trial on Sunday.

The ReCQ is a single elimination event that grants an invite to the Regional Championship for any players that go 5-0. The new thing that’s interesting about RCQs at large events is that instead of having the traditional RCQ foil gamut (participation promos, top 8 promos and first place promos) they’ve instead gotten a special “Destination event” promo that is granted to anyone that wins an invite to the RC at a destination event, and this appears to be a foil version of the participation promo for RCQs. This is a big improvement, dealing with promos at large event RCQs was always a bit of a pain, and this simplifies things significantly, and also makes trials at large events exciting and different for players.

The next interesting thing about the ReCQ is that prizes were given out each round and it was a different number of tix each round, which was... a bit of a pain but there being so little for me to manage it wasn’t a big deal. The bigger issue with this is that when we got to round 5 there wasn’t anything the players were allowed to negotiate with (other than the promo), as players aren’t allowed to use prizes already awarded to them prior in the event to negotiate, so they just had to play for the invite.

Saturday – Trials & ReCQ Lead

All Stickers Go to Heaven
If AP controls Sticker Goblin and NAP uses Teferi, Hero of Dominaria’s -3 loyalty ability to put it into AP’s library, where does the sticker go? The CR gives us very little guidance on this, it mentions that stickers aren’t retained when the object goes into a hidden zone, but doesn’t actually tell us where the stickers go. (CR 123.5) After speaking with a few judges on the event about the question, one of them finally directed me to the Unfinity release notes where it mentions that stickers that are removed from objects go back to the sticker sheet. This is notably, relevant since that means future Sticker Goblin’s can re-use that sticker potentially.

Counter Criminal
AP casts Swift Silence on NAP’s spell, has AP committed a crime? No! A Crime is only committed if something is targeted, and in this instance, while countering NAP’s spell is certainly scandalous, it isn’t in fact a crime. (CR 700.13)

All’s Well that Communicates Well
This is a theoretical question that came up, AP asks NAP how many cards are in their library and NAP says “ten”, AP then casts Glimpse the Unthinkable, and as NAP is counting the cards to mill face down in front of them, they realize there are actually 12 cards in their library. AP then says they wouldn’t have cast Glimpse the Unthinkable if there were more than 10 cards in NAP’s library and calls for a judge. I think this is squarely in Communication Policy Violation territory, with a warning for NAP, and we can easily back this up since NAP didn’t flip any of the cards into their graveyard. If they had started flipping cards into their GY it’s a little more awkward of a backup, but I think I’d still do it, it would just feel worse.

Perplexing Triggers
In a four player game of Commander, AP casts Etali, Primal Conqueror. NAP1 controls a Perplexing Chimera, they choose not to use Chimera’s trigger on Etali itself, however Etali triggers, and casts four spells, the actual scenario was more complex, but for illustrative purposes, assume Etali exiles Lightning Bolt, Shock, Ancestral Recall and Time Walk. Four Perplexing Chimera triggers will go onto the stack, and AP can trade the chimera for lightning bolt, change the targets, then when the second trigger resolves, AP still controls the trigger, even if they don’t control the Chimera, and they are able to exchange the Chimera for the shock as well, and change the targets, even though they don’t own or control the shock or the chimera!

Clever Bluff or....?
Turns end in the single elimination ReCQ and AP claims that it’s sudden death and they should win because they have the higher life total. I mention it’s not sudden death to preclude any confusion. AP mentions this was a joke and that they never meant for NAP to take them seriously. I found this a little suspicious, but neither player was undefeated, which meant they were only playing for the 100 prize tickets, and 100 prize tickets roughly equates to $10 which is pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things.

Zoning Laws
NAP cast Prismatic Ending on AP’s Skyclave Apparition and AP put it into their graveyard. Notably AP controlled Emeria, the Sky Ruin and five other plains, meaning they could easily recur Skyclave Apparition if it was in their graveyard. I investigated a little bit but not only had AP not selected Skyclave during their upkeep for the Emeria trigger, but they also had an additional Skyclave Apparition in their hand. This was enough for me to discount cheating, I issued the double GRV and moved on.

Caged in a Loop
This was another theoretical question that came up on the floor. If AP controls Life and Limb and casts Ensoul Artifact on their Caged Sun which is naming Green. If AP then taps it for mana the game instantly becomes a draw as Caged Sun’s triggered ability is a mana ability and resolves immediately. This example came up because I was unaware that triggered mana abilities had a slightly different set of requirements than activated mana abilities. For example, something like Radha, Heir to Keld’s attack trigger wasn’t actually a mana ability! (CR 605.1b, 605.1a)

Sword and Sorcery
NAP controls a Storm Crow equipped with Sword of Wealth and Power. AP casts Ill-Timed Explosion and discards a card with mana value 4, what happens? Storm Crow survives. While the reflexive trigger is dealing the damage and not the sorcery itself, the source of the triggered ability was still a sorcery. (CR 702.16b) It certainly feels odd in this situation, but if you think about a similar situation like activating Cunning Sparkmage, it’s almost intuitive that it can’t target Beloved Chaplain.

Reversal of Fortunes
AP casts Narset’s Reversal on NAP’s Bring to Light, which had three colors of mana spent on it. What mana value can they search for? Zero, no colors of mana were spent to cast AP’s copy of Bring to Light, in fact it wasn’t even cast. Using Narset’s Reversal is similarly unexciting on Memory Deluge. (CR 707.10)

Sunday – ReCQ Lead

FAB-ulous Checks
On Sunday my shift started four hours before my event, and there wasn’t really anything I was formally assigned to be doing, so I decided to help out a little on any part of the event that seemed understaffed. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the event seemed pretty sufficiently staffed, so instead I decided to wander over to the FAB area and see if I could learn a little over there and see what it was like to be on an event that I knew very little about.

As it turns out, it’s more difficult than I thought it would be, watching games and having no idea what any of the cards are, or what is happening in the game itself is incredibly boring and stressful. I decided maybe I’d just try to do a deck check instead, how hard could it be, right? Very hard. I walked in for the typical swoop and asked for the player’s deck, they countered by asking if I wanted their hero and this other deck, and also they pointed to some cards in their deckbox and asked if I needed those too???? I just took all the decks and kept them separate. It turns out FAB has a bunch of different deck-adjacent piles and we need to check them all.

The next issue is that I had no idea how to sort the cards. Ok so there are different colored stripes and I can sort them by those. Got it. Not knowing any of the artwork or card names proved to be a bigger hindrance than I initially thought it was. To top it off the player’s handwriting was miserable, and not knowing card names seemed to compound with this to make the entire deck check process incredibly challenging for me. Then we got to the part where the player had made mistakes. Some cards were missing from various decks or weren’t registered. Turns out some of that is legal and some of it isn’t. What a colossal mess! I’m glad I did it, since it gave me some insight into how much background knowledge is actually required to do a deck check on a totally different game, and it also gave me a big helping of humility and some insight into how much work I’d actually need to do to be serviceable on the floor of a FAB event. I think for now I’ll stick to Magic.

...In Conclusion
Overall I had a good time at SCG Atlanta, even though I felt more like a glorified side events judge. On Saturday and Sunday I liked being a one-person team that sort of worked in parallel to side events. I’ve been on a lot of big teams lately and I kind of miss the single-person RCQ style event. I got to watch some magic, hang out with players and generally have a good time. Working an SCG event is always such a professional-feeling experience and I’m looking forward to their events in the future, in particular I really hope I get a spot on their upcoming RC staff.