Calgary, Canada
Saturday April 11th, 2026 - Sunday April 12th, 2026


Saturday – Sides Lead


So, the Game of the Main Event Changed
This show was a bit weird, I was initially hired to be HJ of the main event, but then due to some odd company communication shenanigans, the main event ended up being a Lorcana event! I'm not comfortable being HJ of a game I barely know anything about, but unfortunately this revelation only came after I'd booked my flights. The organizer offered to reimburse me for flights, but also mentioned there would be a large Magic RCQ and ODEs, and they'd be happy to have me run those instead. I felt this was fine, though this was markedly less exciting of a role. Luckily the role ended up being a little adjacent to this as well, and what I actually ended up doing was assisting with registration and learning Carde.io, the Lorcana tournament software. I sent out this team email with breaks and responsibilities.

It's not Called Lor-Can't-A
Because the I knew the largest event in the room was going to be Lorcana, I wanted to be somewhat prepared if there were any judge calls. I played a few games at home and got a handle on the basic rules of the game. Since it's very similar to Magic, it wasn't hard to pick up. I only ended up answering a handful of calls on the event over the weekend, and many I double checked just in case, but I did get them all correct.

A Software for Every Game
Some astute folks might notice that Carde.io that it looks remarkably similar to SpiceRack. From what I have heard it's built on the same framework. This is good news in some ways and bad news in others. It's fairly user-friendly, but still has a lot of kinks that need working out. The biggest issue with it that I encountered was that it often throws up an error message, even when there is no actual error. This causes a lot of unnecessary double checking and stress. Luckily the biggest software issues of the day actually had nothing to do with Carde.io. Face to Face's registration system is very good in many ways, except one. If players buy two event tickets (one for them and one for a friend in the same event), their system doesn't require them to enter the registration information for the second player. This means that at the start of the day anyone that bought more than one event ticket needs to report to registration and manually input the email and name of their +1. There were a very large number of players that did this, and compounded with the fact that Carde.io just isn't that quick when registering players, meant the event's start time got a bit delayed.

RCQ Woes
When we started the RCQ, the table numbers weren't in the system correctly, registration still seemed a bit slammed from the Lorcana event, so instead of bothering them for a re-pair, I just told the players to manually add 113 to their table number. It was a small enough number of players that after everyone was seated, I went around and confirmed that everyone was playing the correct opponent. However as the RCQ progressed I quickly realized that while I was slated as the HJ of the event, I wasn't going to be able to spend as much time with the RCQ as I wanted while also managing the other judges and events, so I passed off the event to one of my FJs.

As a note, before top 8 it's always good practice to double check the prizing for the event, as well as the split for top 8 and top 4. Sometimes it's even necessary to prompt your TO by asking whether there are any unsplittable prizes not listed on the website. I've often been bamboozled by doing the prize split vote and then finding out later that there is a trophy or playmat or something that I wasn't aware of.

Hidden Sideboard Tech
During a deck check AP had a bunch of printouts of tokens in front of flipped around Magic cards. The deck was red/black and most of the backwards cards were off-color cards, which weren't a problem, however, there was one Feisty Spikeling which could conceivably be played. Technically it's considered an extra sideboard card, and should be a game loss, but after bouncing it off the HJ we simply told the player not to do it again.

Sunday – Sides Lead


RCQ 2: Electric Boogaloo
Once again the day started off with a bang, the RCQ again had the incorrect table numbers, despite my best efforts. Our scorekeeper was once again a little overburdened with registration, so while my fixed seats were put in properly, the table numbers weren't. Notably Melee has a very hand backfill feature, so you can enter the ending table number. This time we had players add 84 to their number and manually moved the players that ended up at the same table as the fixed seats. We once again checked to ensure everyone was playing the correct opponent. And I mentally reminded myself that in the future I need to double check that my starting table number is actually input correctly before sending the pairings out.

You're Not My Pal, Friend
We had an incident where two commander players didn't want to play together. This is not uncommon in a game as political as commander, and for ODEs it's no big deal to ensure that players aren't in the same pod together. However in a more competitive event, like cEDH this isn't really an accommodation we can make. What we can do for the player, is station a judge at the table if we are made aware, and ensure that all players treat each other with respect.

Two-Headed Judgment
AP casts Council's Judgment in 2HG. What order does voting happen in? The player that cast Council's Judgement will vote first, then their partner, then whichever player the non-active team chooses (if they can't agree the rightmost player chooses who votes first), then their partner. (CR 701.38a, CR805.6)

...In Conclusion
At events where Magic isn't the main thing, I think this is a role I'd do again, it was kind of interesting to interface more with registration and high-level issues, and as we move more into a multi-game world this might be somewhere I find myself belonging. Overall I was a little disappointed in my performance, the table numbers being wrong on the RCQ twice was really quite silly and should never have happened, and I also made a ton of other low-level mistakes that could've been easily avoided. I think a lot of what goes into being a great leader is not only doing your own job correctly, but also double checking that others are doing theirs correctly, and supporting where necessary. At the end of the day while everyone might have different jobs the leader is ultimately responsible for anything that goes wrong.