Vancouver, BC
Time: Saturday January 4th - Sunday January 5th, 2025


Saturday - Team Trios HJ


A First (or Second) Time for Everything
People that don't work or live in Canada might not realize what a herculean feat running a Canadian Tour is. Canada has a similar area to the entirety of the US, but has a fraction of the population. This means that event attendance, especially in the interior provinces is spotty at best, with the judge population being even more questionable. This means that anything less than a 3-day RC weekend is a bit of a nightmare to staff. Right after the pandemic, Face to Face tried out some two-day events (as opposed to its normal one-day events), but they were unfortunately very unprofitable. Fast forward a few years and the Face to Face tour is doing great, and they want to try their hand at two-day shows again, Vancouver being their first one. I was pretty excited because a multi-day event that I can drive to is a rarity, and more the more days it is the more justifiable the long drive and other travel expenses are. However, the two-day-ness wasn't even the most exciting thing about this event. The most exciting thing was the new judge initiative from Face to Face. Every judge gets a plaque when they work their first event, and for each event they work in a new province they get a small circular sticker for their plaque (In the image you can see that I have two, one for Vancouver and one for Saskatoon, since I took the photo after Saskatoon). This has made some judges unreasonably excited to work in horribly remote locations.

The Look Ahead
Preparation for this event definitely was a little awkward, not only was it the first weekend after the holidays, but this was also following a harrowing month for my actual job, which involved a lot of creative workarounds for the national postal strike that decided to happen over Christmas. Also I went to a week-long new years party. At least one of these reasons is a semi-valid excuse for why my team email was a little lighter on content than normal (notably the break schedule didn't suffer horribly for my procrastination). Notably, I didn't bother sending the entire email to every judge, I sent emails to each team of judges, so that people would both know what they were doing, but also who they'd be working with. I got it out the Monday before the event, which I think is quickly becoming my personal deadline for events of this size. Any later and people get concerned and start asking where the event communication is. Any earlier and people forget what they read in the email, or it gets buried in their inbox and isn't easily accessible on the day of. I think for larger, or more quirky events, the email should probably go out two weeks beforehand.

Trouble Comes in Threes
I was HJ of the headlining Team trios event (modern, pioneer, standard). Being someone that frequently judges in both the US and Canada some of the small differences between organizers catch me off-guard. One such issue is that because Face to Face doesn't allow registration directly through MTGMelee, all decklists (except at the Regional Championship) are on paper. This, obviously sucks, but charging players extra Melee fees is worse. I should've foreseen this issue and brought a stapler, since collecting three pieces of paper can easily become separated from each other in the decklist stack. To combat this, I got the players to write the name of their team captain on their decklists just in case any triads of lists got separated from each other. The team captain being the player that was registered in MTGMelee, since Melee treats trios events like 1v1 events still, and so only one player is registered. Another thing that I needed to prepare for was how I would tell the players where to sit (ie. the modern player near the vendor booths, the pioneer player in the middle and the standard player closest to the stage), the issue is that I had this announcement slated as part of the opening announcements, which I planned to say after the players were seated for round 1. Oops. Luckily I didn't forget any of the other important stuff, like how it cuts to top 4, and that players shouldn't really be getting up while matches are in progress. I also mentioned that matches are reported 1-0 to prevent the third player from continuing to play after the other two teammates have already lost and are waiting to go to Chipotle or whatever. Luckily my scorekeeper set up the event properly, so players wouldn't be able to report as a best of three even if they wanted to.

Trios Tournaments Rule
If match A, for instance has concluded but the other two draw, what happens? The team that had the winning match wins the entire round.

What happens when one teammate doesn't show up for the start of the round? That player has 10 minutes to show up or the entire team gets dropped. If they don't show up but the team is sure they will, they can ask to have their team not get dropped (just like in a 1v1 event).

Ancient Mystics
AP controls Mystic Forge and casts Ancient Stirrings, will they have to reveal the sixth card in their library to NAP? No, Ancient Stirrings allows AP to look at the top five cards of their library, but they're still in the library, so the top card hasn't changed.

Bloody Dryads
AP controls Dryad Arbor and NAP casts Blood Moon, what does Dryad Arbor look like? Dryad Arbor is a 1/1 Mountain creature that's also green and taps for {R}. In the type layer Blood Moon trashes the "Forest" subtype and all associated abilities and grants "Mountain". (CR 613.1d) It notably doesn't remove "creature" as a type, and also doesn't change its color.

An Abhorrent Interaction
AP controls Abhorrent Oculus, can they manifest dread if NAP controls Grafdigger's Cage? No, while AP is resolving Manifest Dread they will look at the top two cards of their library, they'll put one into their graveyard and turn one face down into a 2/2 creature. Because its still in the library at this point, it can't be put onto the battlefield due to Grafdigger's Cage, then AP will put any cards they didn't manifest into their graveyard, in this case, both of the cards they looked at. (CR 701.60a) Notably by only reading the CR this isn't totally clear, luckily we have a twitter post from Jess Dunks which clarifies the interaction.

Talented Triggers
AP casts Sleight of Hand, which triggers Artist's Talent, they draw a card and discard a card. Then they cast another Sleight of Hand and resolve the Artist's Talent trigger from that spell, then they resolve Sleight of Hand and realize they never resolved their first Sleight of Hand. So the easy part of this is a GRV warning for AP and Failure to Maintain Game State for NAP. (IPG 2.5) If we choose to back up we have to take a card at random from AP's hand and the bottom card of their library and put them both on top, then put the second Sleight of Hand back into AP's hand. Then return the card they discarded to Artist's Talent from their graveyard to their hand, and put a random card from their hand back on top of their library. Then they would proceed to resolving the original Sleight of Hand correctly. This all honestly doesn't feel that bad, and I think the backup is correct here.

Sunday - Sides Lead


Star War
The big main event on Sunday was a "Star Wars: Unlimited Planetary Qualifier". Which is uh, not something I know anything about. I recall walking by unified checks and overhearing that someone had an extra base in their deckbox. What is a base? Is having an extra one a problem? Heck if I know. Covering the Star Wars judge while he was on break was also miserable. I was asked whether exhausted cards were readied before or after a player could play a resource on their turn in the regroup phase. Wat. I spoke to the TO who used CTRL+F on the term "regroup phase" in the Star Wars CR and I showed that to the player and asked "does this answer your question?" Luckily, it did. Whew, I made it. The next hurdle was issuing a "looking at extra cards warning" and being blindsided when the player asked me how many points it was. Uhm… points? Apparently the Star Wars infraction system relies on a points system, more severe infractions give you more points, and if you get enough points, you're disqualified. It's interesting, I don't hate it but haven't interacted with it enough to have an opinion. Finally there's a "Star Wars MTR" I didn't interact with this at all, because I was told everything I needed from it by word-of-mouth. That being that rounds are 55 minutes long, and at time in the round players finish the current phase and have three additional phases.

One Piece of Lorcana
Something that used to be more evident when I was in grade 8 with a Code Geass wallet and a tiny keychain Renji hanging off my bag was my allegiance to the cult of anime. That being said while I did watch about 80 episodes of One Piece, I was never able to get into it enough to merit watching the subsequent 900. Anyways, this is all to say that unlike some Magic judges, I'm not allergic to anime. So I had no anxieties of that nature while overseeing the One Piece and Lorcana events while the guy that we hired to do those events was on break. I did, however, have crippling anxiety about not knowing any of the game rules and hoping to god there were no judge calls. While I have played both games, I'd like more than one or two clumsy games under my belt before adjudicating disputes between players. In a tournament setting. Luckily there were no judge calls. The One Piece event zipped along at a breakneck pace with its 30 minute rounds while the Lorcana event went at a regular Magic pace with its 50 minute rounds.

Ticket Tragedy
There was a mix up with the Lorcana and One Piece event prize distribution. For the first two rounds 250tix were dropped at each match for the winner. This is the prize structure for regular side events, but not for the Lorcana and One Piece events, which were only supposed to award tickets to players that were 3-2 or better at the end of the event. The decision by the TO was to leave tix with anyone that had already received them (which would mean that 1-4 players would get tix they shouldn't have gotten) and to have players go up to the stage at the end of the event to receive the "rest of their tix".

For Raptors!
AP casts Amped Raptor and reveals Forth Eorlingas! Can they pay X energy? No, Amped Raptor is an alternative cost that allows AP to pay energy equal to its mana value and cast it. (CR 118.9) When determining its mana value, X is considered 0 and thus the mana value is 2, limiting the amount of energy AP can spend to 2. (CR 202.3e)

The Call that Never Ends
AP attacks with two Monastery Swiftspears. NAP asks if AP has anything before blockers, AP shakes his head. NAP then declares Stormchaser Siren as a blocker. AP casts two burn spells on NAP. AP then casts Cut Down on one of the Monastery Swiftspears, and it appears to be the one that the Stormchaser Siren was blocking, though NAP says they wanted to Cut Down the unblocked Swiftspear. This call was a bit of a mess. I saw another judge taking a long time on it, and floated over to see if I could help. Both players were quite animated and kept talking over each other and not actually getting the point, seeming very fixated on whether blockers were locked in or not. After a few minutes of nothing happening I took the other judge aside and asked if they'd like me to take the call for them. I didn't want to snipe their call, but it looked like the players were being a little overwhelming. The other judge said something that I interpreted as "no, don't take the call" but apparently they actually said "yes take the call". I then communicated that if the judge had a ruling in mind they should issue it. I think. We went back. The players went in circles for a while longer and no headway was made. Eventually I pulled the other judge aside again and expressed that the call needed to be over and a decision made asap. They asked if I could take it, and at that point I did. I wrapped up the call and let NAP reversing decisions his Cut Down, since nothing had happened since the spell was cast. In the end the call took an insane 20 minutes and I'm not sure why. I think the initial miscommunication with the call pass-off was definitely a factor. But also I think I should've been less concerned about trampling the other judge, and at a specified cutoff time, should've just done so. This was far and away the biggest punt of the event and I definitely could've handled this better.

...In Conclusion
I feel like my performance at Vancouver was fine. Maybe fine-minus. I wish I'd prepared all the other card game documents in advance so I wasn't so anxious about covering breaks. I also think the colossal blunder with the long Swiftspear call was kind of a mess. A number of small QOL things on the team trios could've also been done better. Overall I had a good time at the event, but definitely felt like it was a pretty mediocre performance in many ways. I've been feeling a little stuck lately, I've iterated on a lot of the feedback I got last year, but recently I haven't had a ton of opportunities to work closely with judges that are more experienced than me. While doing stuff in Canada is certainly helpful, without being able to work larger events with judges more experienced than me I'm having trouble shoring up the things I'm weak at and getting real feedback.