Denver, Colorado
Friday April 11th, 2025 - Sunday April 13th, 2025


Friday - Comp REL Floor Judge

Arbitrated Costs
AP controls Teval, Arbiter of Virtue, and casts Storm Crow. They want to sacrifice Teval to Phyrexian Alter for {U}, and delve one card from their graveyard to cast Storm Crow, can they? If so, will Teval's ability trigger? No, delve is processed during the cost payment portion of casting a spell, but mana abilities are activated before that point. (CR 601.2g, 601.2h) Finally even if casting the spell in this way was legal, Teval's ability wouldn't trigger because a spell is only considered "cast" once it's been fully paid for. (CR 601.2i)

Skim the Details
AP casts Skimming Strike and shuffles it into their library, then draws a card, which happens to be the Skimming Strike they just shuffled in erroneously. This is a Game Rule Violation, but there isn't a great fix for this, so I think by policy we leave it alone. (IPG 2.5) It's not Hidden Card Error because Skimming Strike wasn't hidden to NAP both before, and after the error.

If we were unconcerned about policy and wanted to simply derive the best fix for this specific situation, we have some options. If AP only has one copy of Skimming Strike in their library, we can take the card, set it aside, have AP draw a different card. Once again I want to reiterate that this isn't a fix prescribed by policy and is simply a thought experiment.

Victorious Strategy
AP attacks with Voice of Victory, and creates two tokens, then sacrifices one to Goblin Bombardment to kill NAP's 2/1 cat token, which causes their Ajani, Nacatl Pariah to flip. Can AP have their remaining mobilize token attack the planeswalker? No. When the mobilize tokens are put onto the battlefield, AP chooses what they're attacking, and at that point Ajani was a creature. Now AP could accomplish what they want by attacking with Voice of Victory, then sacrificing it to Goblin Bombardment before its trigger resolves to flip the Ajani. (CR 508.4)

Going Loopy
AP and NAP both only have a single card in their decks, and it's Riling Dawnbreaker. Each turn they draw and cast Signaling Roar to avoid losing the game. This is considered a loop, and if both players choose to continue the loop indefinitely, the game is a draw. (MTR 4.4)

Craft the Perfect Cost
AP casts Songcrafter Mage choosing to target Flame Javelin. If they tap Songcrafter Mage, can they pay {1}{R} to cast Flame Javelin from their graveyard? Yes. During the announcement of the spell AP chooses whether they're paying {2} or {R} for each hybrid mana symbol. If they choose {2} for two of the symbols, then the total cost of the spell is "tap an untapped creature you control and pay {4}{R}". (CR 601.2b) When the creature is chosen for Harmonize, it reduces the total cost of the spell, by X where X is the power of the tapped creature. (CR 702.180a) Which in this case, is three, causing the remainder of the cost to be {1}{R}.

Saturday - End of Round Floor Judge

See No Evil
Someone has to deal with matches where neither player shows up. In the past this was dealt with by collecting the abandoned match slip, unfortunately however, the current era doesn't afford us this option. Additionally judges can't simply drop the players themselves, if they aren't put into MTGMelee, which SCG has elected to do for a lot of their major events. What we ended up doing was going around at the beginning of the round and dropping off a no show slip to each table that was missing one or both players, then at 10 minutes into the round collecting them all and turning them into the scorekeeper. There were a few times where slips didn't get input into the system, which made end of round more complex. For the next round I marked double no-shows off with a +99 time extension, so that at the end of the round, if any of the slips went missing, we would have a clear reminder of what was going on at that table. Notably this also delineates the double no shows from the ghosts, which were being marked with a +50 time extension. The +50 was to eliminate issues where the incorrect table was marked as a ghost, and the time extension subsequently lost due to it being marked +99.

Oh the Lands We'll See
AP attacks with Travelling Botanist, looks at their top card and fails to reveal it before putting it into their hand. This is hidden card error, the correct fix is to have AP reveal their hand to NAP, and have NAP select a card to put on top of AP's library. Afterwards AP will reveal it and put it into their hand if it's a land. (IPG 2.3) Notably NAP isn't required to select a land, and if they don't AP won't be putting the card into their hand.

A Fake Card for a Fake Ruling
As AP was handing in their decklist they asked me to check whether their basic lands were going to be okay for the event. The lands they'd brought turned out to be okay, but the foils they'd opened weren't. Luckily, since the cards were literally opened "damaged" the head judge is allowed to issue proxies. (MTR 3.4) I let AP know they should have the real card visible whenever it was visible to the opponent or in a public zone.

Illegal Channel
AP tapped all their lands and said "I cast Channelled Dragonfire twice to kill NAP's Twinmaw Stormbrood". Unfortunately AP only had two red sources, not the three required for Channelled Dragonfire. Notably AP was at 3 life and was dead if the Stormbrood wasn't killed. I checked AP's hand and noted that they had a Sagu Pummeller, which would productively block the Stormbrood. NAP had no cards in hand, and so I decided this probably wasn't cheating. This is definitely a game rule violation, and we either backup or don't. (IPG 2.5) The complication is whether we back up both castings or just one. It's very unclear which red sources were tapped for the initial spell, and which were tapped for the second casting of Channelled Dragonfire. The shortcut rules tell us that if an illegal shortcut is proposed, we back up to the point of the error. (MTR 4.2) Therefore the correct fix is to rewind the second casting of the spell, but not the initial cast. I ended up rewinding both spells, but upon reflection probably should've just rewound one, letting AP choose which red source was tapped for the spell, since it wasn't particularly relevant.

Sunday - Oversized Sealed Floor Judge

Bigger than Regular Sealed
What is an "oversized sealed event", No it's not a sealed event where all the packs are comprised of oversized cards (that would be cool, though). It's actually a six round semi-competitive event where anyone that goes 6-0 gets an oversized card off the prize wall. It's a little weird because while they don't want us to issue warnings, they also want us to use Comp REL fixes, to take decklists and to do some amount of deck checks.

Slayer of the Skies
AP casts Elspeth, Storm Slayer, then Sage of the Skies. Will they get two copies? No, because the second Sage of the Skies is created as a on the stack, not created as a token on the battlefield. (CR 111.13)

Bear Witness
NAP controls Coalition Honor Guard and AP casts Ideas unbound, splicing two copies of Psychic Puppetry onto it. Will AP have to target Coalition Honor Guard twice? No. Splice adds the text of the spliced card to the spell (CR 601.2b)

Keeper of Triggers
AP cast Jeskai Shrinekeeper and misses the counter from Dragonstorm Globe, then attacks, deals damage and casts a creature in their postcombat main phase, at which point both players notice that AP both missed putting a counter on the Shrinekeeper as well as their trigger to draw a card and gain a life. The correct ruling here is game rule violation with the option to backup or not. (IPG 2.5) If we do perform the backup, AP can then remember their trigger, which certainly feels a little odd all around.

Ephemeral Zone
AP casts Ephemerate and puts it into their graveyard instead of exile. Then on their next upkeep they attempt to cast it, at which point NAP calls for a judge. (CR 702.88) This is a game rule violation with a partial fix option of just putting the object in the correct zone now. If we assume it's AP's upkeep with the Rebound trigger on the stack, we can move the Ephemerate, and as Rebound resolves, it will be cast.

Kotis, the Omenkeeper
AP attacks with Kotis, the Fangkeeper and exiles Dirgur Island Dragon, can AP cast Skimming Strike? Yes, Kotis' ability evaluates the spell as its being cast to see if it's legal, not when it's first exiled. (CR 720.3a, CR 720.3) Notably this means that AP would not be able to cast Dirgur Island Dragon.

A Selfish Decree
AP makes a token copy of Zurgo, Thunder's Decree with Mardu Siegebreaker, will it be sacrificed at the beginning of AP's end step? No, Zurgo is a warrior so its ability will apply to itself.

...In Conclusion
I felt a low-level anxiety throughout the event, and Friday was a bit of a struggle for me. It was a slow day, which tends to be a bad combination when I'm already on edge-I wasn't at my best. Saturday went better; there was more to do, which helped me focus. I spent most of the day answering judge calls, and just helping players, which was nice. Like any large event, I also saw a good number of things go sideways (I also had a good number of things that I did go sideways), and it got me thinking about how different leaders handle mistakes. I recall reading a book about this a long time ago called "Extreme Ownership". It's an easy read, and its core message has stuck with me: when you're in charge, you're responsible for your team. If something goes wrong, your first instinct should be to ask yourself what you could've done differently.

I think that mindset is valuable. For one, it helps avoid the tendency to "punch down" or blame the people beneath you. Of course, sometimes someone on your team just makes a mess, and maybe nothing you could have done would've prevented it. But often, responsibility is shared.

I also believe that attitudes like this filter down. When leaders take responsibility and look inward instead of pointing fingers, it sets a tone for everyone else. If everyone makes a habit of asking, "What could I have done better?" When things go off the rails, then I think we all get a little better over time.