Santa Clara, California
Friday April 18th, 2025 - Sunday April 20th, 2025


An Odd Structure Indeed
On Friday I was slated to be on the Invitational, which is a culmination of the MXP event series, offering a slot to anyone that has previously won an MXP event. The event structure itself was pretty novel. As soon as any player got four match wins, they'd advance to top 8. However more than 8 players would be able to get four match wins, so the earlier you got your fourth win, the higher your seed would be in top 8. If there was only one slot left in top 8, or multiple people achieved their fourth win in the same round, those players would then play off for the top 8 slot. The reason for this was to avoid a bunch of intentional draws in the final few rounds, and more importantly, some awkward pair-downs and potential negotiation when a player that was locked for top 8 was against someone on their win-and-in.

A Trigger-Knot
NAP is at 6 life. AP casts Thought-Knot Seer and points to their two Glaring Fleshrakers, and says "triggers". NAP says "go to four". AP says, "No you're at zero, I ping you six times". NAP says "wait, in that case I want to respond after the two damage". This is interesting because I believe in reality what happened here is that NAP didn't understand that there would be Scion tokens. However, what they did was allow the first scion token to be created and take two damage from triggers. Then when AP attempted to shortcut through the next wave of triggers, NAP is requested to respond, with a Scion token trigger and a Thought-Knot on the stack. (MTR 4.2)

Mind the Narset
AP cracked a Mind Stone and drew a card. NAP then mentioned their Narset, Parter of Veils. I ruled Looking at Extra Cards, since the card hadn't entered AP's hand yet. I shuffled the looked-at card into AP's library and then attempted to rewind the activation of Mind Stone before another judge looked at me like I was insane, which, to their credit, I was. Activating Mind Stone is legal, and there's no reason to rewind this. I think I was considering double GRV and a backup was bouncing around in my head because a Narset was involved, but because the card wasn't actually "drawn" it didn't fall into that category. I apologized to the players and correctly ruled LEC with no odd associated backup. (IPG 2.2, IPG 2.5)

Blooming Decision Trees
AP cast Goblin Charbelcher, and NAP said "Okay, my turn?" at the same time AP sort of said "Wait I think I don't want to cast Charbelcher". Notably NAP had a Karn, the Great Creator on the battlefield and AP had a Lotus Bloom on the battlefield that they may have forgotten they couldn't use to activate Charbelcher. NAP saying "my turn" could be considered an indication that AP couldn't do anything and thus reminding AP of their Karn. However, AP also mentioned that they hadn't yet played a land for the turn, which indicates NAP saying "my turn" was simply overzealous and didn't convey any information. This one was a little sketchy, since it was difficult to determine whether AP mentioned the take back after NAP had spoken or at the same time. I ruled reversing decisions and allowed AP the take back. I think upon reflection this was probably incorrect and I should've simply disallowed it, since there was definitely a possibility that AP gained information. (MTR 4.8)

A Responsible Regent
Anita casts Palace Jailer and becomes the monarch. Then Nancy deals damage to Anita and becomes the Monarch. Then later, Anita deals damage to Nancy again but both players miss the Monarch trigger. What is the fix? It's a detrimental trigger for Nancy but since Nancy doesn't own the card responsible for the existence of the triggered ability, they won't get a warning. Anita can choose to put the trigger onto the stack now. (IPG 2.1) However, if Anita misses the trigger to give the monarchy to Nancy that would come with a warning. The next part of this is even more interesting: if Nancy later plays their own Palace Jailer, takes damage from Anita, and misses the trigger, it suddenly becomes a warning for Nancy! (Anita and Nancy were used to increase clarity instead of AP and NAP)

Born to Study, Forced to Fight
AP controls Loran of The Third Path. NAP Goads it. AP forgets about it and just says "pass turn". NAP points out that Loran should have to attack. Can AP choose to tap Loran to draw a card instead of having to attack? No, this is a game rule violation - warning and we'd rewind to declare attackers and have AP declare attackers immediately, since this is the first moment something went wrong in the game. (IPG 2.5)

Saturday - MXP 20k HJ

Cast-Terminating Cliche
AP cracks a fetch in their opponent's end step, then misses drawing a card for their draw step. Afterwards they cast Ponder (choosing shuffle/draw), resolve it, then call a judge. The infraction is Game Rule Violation - Warning and the remedy is to have AP draw a card now. If that card is Terminus, can AP cast it for its miracle cost? Yes, if AP had performed the draw at the appropriate time, they'd have been able to cast it for its miracle cost, so they can cast it for miracle now! (IPG 2.5, CR702.94a)

Fully-Dressed Kaito
AP controls Dress Down and NAP casts Kaito, Bane of Nightmares, what are its characteristics? I feel like this call comes up like, every event or two, I learn it, feel like I understand it, then forget for the next event. Kaito is a 3/4 creature but has hexproof, the reason it still has hexproof is because the ability started applying in an earlier layer and so it'll keep applying even after the ability is later removed by Dress Down. (CR 613.6) Another thing to note here is that it only has hexproof because Kaito entered after Dress Down, meaning its effect has a later timestamp. While we disregard any potential dependencies, we still take timestamps into account for the effects in each individual layer. (CR 613.7) So if Dress Down enters after Kaito, it will no longer have hexproof.

Yes, You Can Punt Oracle Text
AP called me over and asked for oracle text on a card they were currently holding, I said out loud "oh that's Sword of the Meek" to which AP responded, "Uh my opponent didn't know that" and it was at that point that I noticed the Mishra's Bauble in AP's graveyard. I felt pretty dumb, apologized, and had the players shuffle the card away and re-do the bauble trigger. This isn't amazing because it means that AP gets to see another random card from NAP's library, but giving NAP information about whether or not to fetch is pretty gross. Notably this is a deviation and I only did it because the issue in the game was caused by judge (my) error. If you find yourself in a similar situation where you accidentally broke something, and you're not the HJ, please get a HJ. (IPG 1)

A Round in Review
The EOR strategy for this event was somewhat contentious, I knew I didn't have a lot of judges and have frequently heard complaints from the "clipboard person" that they never seem to have enough judges come to them for assignment at other events. Which effectively just leaves one judge standing around doing nothing at the front of the room. I felt like with my staff size I couldn't afford to have wasted efficiency. I knew I wanted judges continuously sweeping for ghosts and after time was called, ensuring that all matches were aware of that. I figured two EOR judges would be able to handle this, and with an EOR team of three, this meant that meant the task wouldn't suffer during break rounds. To ensure tables got sat at all, I wanted the rest of the judges to self-assign to matches with extensions. Spice Rack has a very useful self assign tool (I mean, so does MTGMelee). This meant I could easily see which judges were on all my extensions, and so could the rest of the staff. This strategy runs the risk of not everyone being completely familiar with best practices (more experienced judges on longer extensions) but at the same time, it's not like it's particularly difficult to send a judge over to replace someone and also reassign that person if need be.

Rended Dreams
AP came up to me after a match to tell me about something weird that had happened to them during their match. NAP controlled an Ashiok, Dream Render and had activated Field of Ruin on AP's land. When AP picked up their library to search, NAP said "you can't search" and pointed to their Ashiok. NAP shrugged, and asked AP if they could shuffle, NAP said they could, but again mentioned that they couldn't search. AP shuffled, and at the end of the match, NAP asked AP why they didn't search, since Ashiok would only prevent search effects generated by AP's abilities, not ones generated by NAP. AP found this bizarre and brought it to me. After speaking NAP they clarified that they'd actually been saying "you can search" to AP, and were confused when AP chose not to.

An Orb to Remember
AP controlled a Trinisphere and cast Sowing Mycospawn with kicker, at which point and NAP asked a judge how much it would cost them to cast Consign to Memory and counter both the triggered ability and the spell itself. The floor judge answered that Trinisphere would cause Consign to cost 3 and then if AP wanted to Replicate once, they'd have to pay {1} on top of that. AP only had three mana, so they chose to counter the triggered ability but not the creature itself. Later the judge realized this was incorrect and that Replicate was an additional cost that was added into the spell's cost before Trinisphere checked to ensure the spell cost three. (CR 702.56, 601.2b) Therefore countering both would only cost three. I asked AP and NAP what had happened since then, AP had passed the turn, NAP had drawn, untapped and passed back, at which point AP had attacked and passed back to NAP. Rewinding would be a little awkward due to some draw steps and fetchlands. Due to this falling under "significant and exceptional" since it was a judge error, I asked both players what the game would look like if AP had simply cast Consign to Memory countering both, and both players agreed that AP would be at three more life, and Sowing Mycospawn would be in the graveyard, but nothing else would be different. I asked both players if doing these two things would make their game feel fixed, they both agreed and so that's what we did.

A Brain of Stone and Eyes of Glass
AP controls NAP due to Emrakul, the Promised End and activated NAP's Stone Brain on AP's library, naming a card that isn't in there. Is NAP able to look through AP's library? Yes. AP is controlling NAP, which means that NAP is still taking all the actions, merely at AP's behest. (CR 721.5, 721.4)

List Rack
AP came up to the stage in round four or five mentioning that they thought their decklist in the software was incorrect. They said they'd attempted to submit a change the night beforehand, but they just noticed it hadn't gone through. I asked the player "How did you notice your decklist was incorrect?" since it's a weird thing for a player to be checking in the middle of an event unprompted. They told me that they'd been on coverage in an earlier round, and when they went to check out their feature match, they noticed the decklist displayed was incorrect. I felt that without other evidence, a game loss wasn't reasonable, and allowed the change. This same issue came up multiple times during the event, and I think the in the future I'd like the HJ announcements to include an instruction for each player to open Spice Rack/MTGMelee/Topdeck/etc. and verify their list is both submitted and correct, and that all lists in the software would be considered final after that point.

Sunday - MXP 20k HJ

A Stack to Remember
AP controls Writhing Chrysalis and cast Sowing Mycospawn by tapping four lands and sacrificing two Eldrazi Spawn tokens. NAP then responded by casting Galvanic Discharge targeting the Writhing Chrysalis. AP wanted to know if they could be considered to have shortcutted sacrificing the spawn before casting the spell. The MTR states that if AP adds a group of objects to the stack without explicitly retaining priority, they are allowing each to resolve before adding the next. (MTR 4.2) This is notably not what AP did, however. Sacrificing a Spawn token is activating a mana ability, which isn't adding an object to the stack. (CR 605.3b, 109.1) Therefore this shortcut doesn't apply, and I ruled that AP had sacrificed the spawn as part of casting Sowing Mycospawn, and that the Writhing Chrysalis triggers, as well as the Mycospawn were all on the stack now, and NAP had the opportunity to respond.

...In Conclusion
I was worried this event might be small based on the poor attendance of MXP Houston. I did all my prep hoping it would be large, and luckily I was rewarded when it was a little over 200 players. While not a huge event, 200 is a healthy size and meant me and my judges wouldn't be bored all day. Overall I enjoyed this event more than my past few events. I'm not totally sure why, it might be because all the calls were interesting, it might be because I felt really supported by my team, and was really happy with their performance. I think something I might've been forgetting is that judging is something that people do because it's enjoyable. While doing a good job and running a smooth tournament is important, it's not the only thing, and at the end of the day, happy judges are going to run a better event than unhappy ones, and it might be worthwhile sometimes to take a bit of a step back and make sure that you're still having a good time.