Friday November 21st,2025 – Sunday November 23rd, 2025
Calgary, Canada


Friday – LCQ Floor Judge


The System of the Day
LCQs are always a little different from organizer to organizer, and even from event to event for a single organizer. For this event, F2F decided to launch them at specific intervals, which meant that some LCQs might not be launching with the full 16 players. To avoid having someone get a bye in the last round, they had the scorekeepers "frontload" the byes. This means that a lot of byes are given out in the first round. To figure out how many byes to assign in the first round, we find the next next complete bracket. For example, if an LCQ has 13 players in round one, the next complete bracket is 16. Then we investigate how many players would be in round 2 in a "perfect" LCQ. Recall that LCQs are single elimination, so the number of players halves every round. In our example LCQ a perfect version of it would have 8 players in the second round. To accomplish having 8 players in the second round, 3 byes need to be awarded, which means that only 10 of the 13 players will play in the first round. This means there will be five winners of those matches, and then the three byes recipients, resulting in 8 players going into the second round.

Avenged Trigger
AP activated Ajani, Nacatl Avenger's 0 loyalty ability but didn't deal damage, then they called a judge. I almost ruled missed trigger but another judge reminded me that because this is a reflexive trigger, making the cat token counts as AP acknowledging the damage trigger. (IPG 2.1)That means this is actually a GRV, and we can either backup or not. (IPG 2.5)

Saturday – Main Event Breaks Team Lead


A Broken Beginning
Because we were the breaks team, we were scheduled to start an hour later than all the other teams. This isn't generally problematic, because it allows the breaks team to cover the other teams without having their own break be pushed back unreasonably late. The issue with this is the fact that the breaks team misses the team briefing, which might include important information from, say, EOR lead or product distribution lead. The other problem was that we arrived at the same time the event started, which meant that the initial plan to have us help distribute promos didn't work out, since the promos were already being distributed as we arrived for our shift.

To Fox or Not to Fox
Every large event is a little different these days. Bygone are the days of standardized procedures. For this event we opted to only use Melee for time extensions and didn't interface with Purple Fox. We also notably didn't have paper pairings, and instead just had a few judges available to help players lookup their seats on melee. This, remarkably, caused no issues that I saw. Finally, we had a blanket instruction to prevent judges from entering player's results, since it can be very problematic if they're entered incorrectly. To both provide good customer service and expedite match result entry, I would offer my phone to the players to input results, this way they were still entering their own results.

Insane Plays
AP was tapped out and attacked with Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd and after acknowledging the attack trigger, said "take two?". NAP made an ambiguous motion. AP interpreted it as a nod, but when AP went to mark down the life total, NAP said they wanted to block with their Sire of Insanity. I ruled that this was fine under reversing decisions since NAP hadn't gained any new information. (MTR 4.8)

Shifty Titan
AP makes their Shifting Woodlands a copy of Primeval Titan, then AP uses Mirrorpool to copy it, what does the copy look like? Copy effects become part of an objects copiable attributes, so Mirropool will copy the copy effect making Shifting Woodlands a Primeval Titan, so the Mirrorpool copy will be a Primeval Titan. (CR 707.2) Notably the duration of the copy effect won't be granted to the new copy, since that was a duration on the original resolving ability, and is not part of the object's copiable attributes.

Stilted Deck
In the middle of game 2 AP notices they only presented 59 cards while fetching, and calls a judge. AP gets a warning for Deck Problem, and the judge locates the maindeck cards in the sideboard, and randomly chooses which one is shuffled into the random portion of the library. NAP chooses whether this is done now or the next time a player gets priority. (IPG 3.5)

Quantum Draw
AP controls Quantum Riddler and has five cards in their hand. They casts Day's Undoing, how many cards do they draw? 8. Spells are resolved in the order the instructions are written. (CR 608.2c) First AP shuffles their hand into their library, then they go to draw a card, and Quantum Riddler's replacement effect will kick in, because AP currently has zero cards in their hand. (CR 614.1) Cards are drawn one at a time so AP will go to draw their first card, which will be replaced by drawing two cards. Afterwards they will draw their subsequent 6 cards. (CR 121.2)

Dressed to Fly
AP controls Psychic Frog and wants it to have flying but also wants to cast Dress Down this turn, how do they do this? Notably, a judge can't tell a player how to accomplish this during a game, that would be outside assistance. However, after the event they would be able to tell the player that they could activate Psychic Frog's ability, then cast Dress Down in response. That way Dress Down would resolve, and remove Frog's abilities, but then its ability would resolve and have a more recent timestamp, granting it flying. (CR 613.1f)

What Even is a Graf?
AP controls Abhorrent Oculus and NAP controls Grafdigger's Cage, what happens when the Oculus' manifest dread ability resolves? AP will look at both cards, and then cannot put one onto the battlefield. This is becsuse AP turns the card face down in the library, then puts it onto the battlefield. This means it would be a creature card entering from the library, which is prevented by Grafdigger's Cage. (CR 701.40a) Since AP can't put any cards onto the battlefield both will be put into the graveyard, since all cards that were looked at and not put onto the battlefield are put into the graveyard. (CR 701.62a)

Sunday – Main Event EOR Team Floor Judge


Summon Suspicion
AP failed to pay for their Summoner's Pact, and NAP pointed out the error. I felt this was a little weird and wanted to ask a few questions before issuing the warning for missed trigger, and asking NAP whether or not they wanted to put it onto the stack now. (IPG 2.1) AP had a hand of three lands, so if they intentionally missed the trigger, they were also gambling on drawing something to cast this turn with the mana they saved. That seemed a bit far-fetched. Additionally, their fully untapped UW opponent hadn't let any bombs resolve yet, which implied that they could still have countermagic in hand. Meaning a better time to try and jam threats would be when you can cast two spells in a turn, or when the UW player has tapped out for something.

Colors of the Cards
AP asked what color Avatar Roku was. Most double-faced cards include a color indicator but Avatar Roku doesn't have one. Notably double-faced cards only inherit the mana value of their front side, but not the mana cost. (CR 202.3b) This used to be relevant for devotion, but it's become more relevant with the advent of transforming double-faced cards without a color indicator (like Avatar Roku, for example). Because there is nothing granting him a color, he is colorless. (CR 105.2)

...In Conclusion
After doing a few very tiny RCQs it was nice to get back on the floor of a medium-sized event. I enjoy modern and had a good time just taking calls. Not being in a super stressful role was also kind of nice, and meant I got to focus on what I'm good at, which is answering player questions.