As James Elliot will probably tell you, it’s a great feeling to catch the scumbags, the real dirty cheaters. It can be one of the hardest things to do as a judge, but when you do it, you get this feeling that you’ve really helped protect the idea of a good and fun event. Unfortunately, most of the penalties we give are to good, honest folk, the kind you really want to sit across from during a match, and they’re out there getting penalized for a simple mistake or misunderstanding. These penalties are just as necessary to keep the integrity and fairness of an event, but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy handing them out.
So in an effort to save both players and judges from heartache, here are some of the most common and easily avoidable penalties:
1. Illegal Decklist:
A friend of mine was playing his UW Control deck in a Standard side event at Pro Tour: Hollywood last year. The deck ran both Akroma, Angel of Wrath; and Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. He recorded these on his decklist, but rather than the full names, he wrote them down as just Akroma, and Teferi.
There are no cards out there named ‘Akroma’ or ‘Teferi.’
His deck was unable to produce a single Red mana, so it was pretty safe to say that there was no chance of confusion as to which Akroma he was using.
But what about the Teferi? Teferi’s Moat was also in the format, fit the colors, and it would have been very advantageous to be swapping between Moats and Mages depending on what you were playing against. Due to the undeniable chance for advantage, a game loss was given.
The lesson:
Take your time and be careful with your decklists. Too many times I’ve seen players show up an hour early, and not start writing down their decklist until there was 10 minutes left to hand them in. Make sure that all your cards are recorded correctly. There is no such thing as Goyf, BoP, or Wrath. If possible, write out your decklist the night before, go over it a few times, then have your friend go over it a few times. You will rarely catch your mistakes after just one glance.
2. Deck/Decklist Mismatch:
BC Champs, 2008 was the first competitive REL event for which I had been the head judge, and the day went amazingly well, mostly due to great work by the TO, my supporting judge staff, and by very happy players.
About halfway through the day, there was a dark spot. My brother called me over to his match, about halfway through game 1, and told me he had forgotten to de-sideboard after his last match, so I had to give a game loss to my own flesh and blood.
You see why these kinds of penalties aren’t so fun?
The lesson:
I’ve heard people complain that they think it’s unfair that you get the same amount of time to finish shuffling (3 minutes) for game 2 and 3 as you do for game 1, despite the fact that you have to sideboard in that time as well. Instead of viewing it like that, try and think of it as you getting 3 minutes to shuffle and present for game 1, even though you don’t have to sideboard.
Use your 3 minutes wisely. Go through your deck to make sure you returned that creature that you stole with Confiscate, make sure that your main deck and sideboard are the right size, and make sure that your side and main have all the cards they’re supposed to have. Having Circle of Protection: Red against Burn first game is great, but not so much if it’s not supposed to be there.
3. Unsporting Conduct: Minor/Major/Aggressive Behavior:
At a prerelease some time last year, someone there threw a full deck box at his friend and hit him in the head. The guy that got nailed in the head was alright, but the deck chucker was still tossed from the event site.
But why exactly? His friend didn’t even care.
What if he had missed his friend and hit some tournament newcomer? They may never come back to another event, they might blame the tournament organizer, or they just might fight fire with fire and throw a punch.
Unsporting penalties are there to make sure everyone at the event feels safe and comfortable, which may mean things like being nicer to your friends than you normally would be, and not throwing stuff at them even if they wouldn’t care.
The lesson:
We know you’re at an event to have fun, but be tame about it. Leave your screaming, swearing, table pounding, and dirty jokes at home no matter how inoffensive you feel they are. In other words, act like your mother is looking over your shoulder.
4. Missed Trigger:
Missed triggers are a strange penalty, since if you do actually miss a trigger it’s usually in your best interest to call a judge over and have it straightened out. Be careful, though; if you made the mistake of missing your Dark Confidant, or removing a suspend counter from your Ancestral Vision, there is a good chance you might do it again, and those missed triggers warnings can build up to a game loss pretty quickly.
The lesson:
When the cycle of Pacts came out in Future Sight, we gained the ability to put markers on top of our library to help us remember things, particularly things that happen during our upkeep. Despite this, I think at least half of missed trigger penalties happen during a person’s upkeep. Pay attention and use a marker on top of your library, or you might find that the Pacts aren’t the only trigger you can miss that will make you lose a game.
5. Marked Cards:
During the final round of Day 1 of Grand Prix: Vancouver, we noticed a player in the top tables that had a very foil deck. Almost everything in there was foil, and those foils must not have been well stored, because they weren’t exactly nice and flat like a good Magic card should be. The scary issue here was that if it were determined that this guy was using marked cards, then he would have to replace the marked cards with non-marked equivalents, and I hear buying an entire Extended deck doesn’t come cheap.
Earlier in the day I had also given a warning to a guy who was using two different kinds of very similar looking Black sleeves. Fortunately for this guy, the sleeving was totally random so he didn’t get punished very harshly, but when I sleeve a deck, I usually do all the non-lands then all the lands, and had this guy done the same, he probably would have ended up with a marking violation.
Lessons learned:
Foils in Magic are always tricky. They may not be the most common causation of marked cards, but they are the most controversial. Wizards prints these cards, allows them to be used in tournaments, and yet they can get you in trouble. The simplest solution would be to not use foils, but even I like making my deck look as nice as possible, and for some people that’s just unreasonable. Store your foils in a compact space; if they’ve got nowhere to move, they can’t bend. If your foils do bend at all, don’t use them, as you are just asking for trouble.
As for your sleeves, make sure to check them closely for markings right after you finish sleeving your deck, and when you’re done that, ask a judge what they think of them (remember, even if a judge says your sleeves are okay, they might change during the day and become unusable. Just because a judge gives you a green light, doesn’t mean the light won’t turn red). Before you buy sleeves, try and make sure that they fit the standards of whoever is running the event in which you’re playing.
6. Deck/Decklist Mismatch (again!):
People seem to put everything in their deck boxes. Prerelease and release foils, cards they’ve traded for that day, random cards that got cut from their decks at the last minute, and even Limited decks from a previous pool… the one deck box seems to bear the burden of holding everything, which it really shouldn’t be doing.
If you’re being deck-checked, the judge will take your deck, sideboard, and deck box. Everything in the deck box will be considered part of your sideboard unless it’s clearly not usable in the format. Having a gigantic sideboard can result in some pretty nasty penalties, so this is best to avoid this.
Lesson learned:
Bring a second box with you to every event to keep your excess stuff. There should be nothing in your main deck box other than your deck, your sideboard, and maybe some tokens. Everything else could be a liability, and no one would be very happy about getting a game loss just because they didn’t put their stuff in a separate box.
Bonus Section:
At the end of my last article, I requested that people email me, or post ideas for things they would like to see me write about, and someone sent me an email asking me to explain why it’s such a big deal for two people to randomly determine the winner of a match if time has expired. I didn’t feel like I could make an entire article out of this topic, but I didn’t want it to go unanswered either. Let’s take a look at why the penalty guide says it’s not allowed
“Using a random method to determine a winner compromises the integrity of the tournament.”
Hmm. That doesn’t seem all that informative for the curious minds out there.
Magic is intended to be a game of skill between two or more people. There is certainly a large luck aspect, but the skill is what is really pushed on players, and Wizards and the DCI really don’t want it any other way. By randomly determining a winner, you are disrupting not only the integrity of the event, but also the integrity of the game itself. When one player offers to concede to another when time is up in the round, that is a friendly gesture and a personal choice, but when two players agree to randomly determine the winner, you’re turning Magic into something it’s not. Some people may disagree with this seemingly arbitrary stance, but to the creators of the game and to the officials of the game, we want to keep Magic as it is intended to be.
I encourage you to discuss the philosophies behind random determination in the forums.
I’ve already received a few suggestions for article ideas via email, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in more. I’m already quite familiar with the penalty guidelines, so I want to know what you as players are interested in, and what you feel is important for the Magic public to be informed about.
Until next time, stay out of the penalty box.
Max K