I’m on my way back from PT SD. I’m tired, but I want to hit some highlights before my flight boards. I’ll touch on the format, but concentrate on the events. I’ll write this like a tournament report, but since the format is dead as Elvis now, I won’t cover it much.
Tournament reports start with travel horror stories. In our case, we found out a day early that our flight was cancelled. Some arguing and hassles later, we had seats on an earlier flight. It meant getting up at 3am, but we got to CA around noon.
Our luggage arrived at the carousel over an hour after we did. That was true of all true of all the passengers. They now use continental drift to pull the luggage carts. It’s slow, but it saves on fossil fuels and creates fewer greenhouse gasses.
San Diego was about twenty degrees cooler than Madison, although the humidity was about the same.
We checked into the hotel and wandered around the harbor area, checking carefully for Magic content.
We didn’t find any. Nice harbor, though.
We also wandered through the Gaslight district, checking carefully for new tech. We found a seafood restaurant with amazing chow. Total cost for the meal: 17 drafts.
We arrived at the event a day early, and spent the day at the zoo. I have a strong interest in the strengths and weaknesses of Green, so I carefully examined all the creatures that represent Green archetypes. I found everything except the oozes. None of the creatures looked particularly threatening, and a simple Moat kept them all in check.
I’m not trying to restart the whole Blue/Green debate… I’m just saying
Another Zoo-related note: The first Revised booster I ever opened had a Birds of Paradise. So did one of the first boosters I ever opened online. I have always loved that card, so I really wanted to see a real, live bird of paradise. San Diego Zoo has a lot of birds, including one line of cages with exotics of that genus. The eighth cage had BoPs, but they had rotated behind the foliage and I couldn’t see any. The ninth cages had a sign saying “Animals Temporarily Removed from this Exhibit.” The tenth cage, however, had Birds of Paradise set off against a lovely black wall.
Sweet.
Late Thursday, the judges got together at the venue. Aaron Hammer was going to be calling the drafts at the PT, and needed practice. Since it is more realistic to do an actual draft, including passing packs, we got some free product for training purposes. Again, only because it is much more realistic to practice calling when multiple teams are passing packs, over two dozen judge sacrificed their evenings to help Aaron out.
It is also helpful to the caller to then build the decks and play a couple rounds.
Really.
Free drafts for the win!
My team drafted slivers – not that anyone can win with that strategy.
Heh.
Our team went 1-1. We had the first match in hand, and would have won on the next attack. We knew they had something, since they were nowhere near unhappy enough. They had Damnation. We had Cancel ready, but they had Dismal Failure. Worse yet, they not only had Korlash the next turn, but Draining Whelk for our Enslave.
The second match went much better. The final turn went like this.
Primary head: Should we toy with them some more, or just win?
Secondary head: Let’s just win.
Primary head: Okay, Molten Disaster with kicker for your life plus one.
Then, being judges, we spent less than a minute on a postmortem of the game, but twenty minutes discussing corner cases involving split second.
Dinner that night was at the venue. Wizards was throwing a party for the pros, and for everyone else there. They had a Mariachi band and a build-your-own taco bar. Cost for the meal: the same price as the practice draft to help Aaron practice.
Free drafts and dinner FTW!
Friday:
PT: San Diego was the first PT to use Two-Headed Giant as a format. The format had also had some teething problems – especially with DCI Reporter, the software used to enter, run, and record tournaments. Wizards was very concerned about possible problems, so they had recruited a very large and very experienced crew of judges. With enough judges, you can work through anything.
The downside of having so many judges is that only so many can work the main event at any one time. Friday, I was a floater. I ended up sticking names on badges, alphabetizing player forms, and double-checking that every player had signed and submitted a consent form.
Exciting stuff.
Back on the main floor, judges were not having a lot more fun. During the judge briefing, Wizards staff said, “You all know about the problems we have been having with DCIR? We have rewritten it to fix the problems.” Then they recited the three things you never want to hear about any software program:
From a Wizards staffer during the briefing:
“I have been testing it for nearly a week.”
Then the really bad news:
“And we have the developer on site.”
Then, as we were trying to pair round 2, the trifecta was complete:
“He’s trying to recompile it over the Internet.”
The glitch had been in the pairings – one particular rule had not been correctly implemented, and certain players wound up paired outside their draft pod. Once that was fixed, Reporter worked pretty much perfectly during the rest of the tournament.
Judging at side events was relatively uneventful. I had two minor messes, one involving a missed trigger (the player forgot to resolve the haunt) leading to a lot of confusion, and one with the players unable to reconcile life totals. Both took some discussion, but we got there. Most of the rest of the side events tournament was what pretty much what judging always is: confirming to players that cards work the way they think, pushing in chairs, and picking up trash.
Another part of judging side events – indeed of judging any part of a high level tournament – is helping and learning from other judges. Since we spend most of our time talking to each other (while looking in different directions to keep watch on the tournament), judges discuss special cases, difficult situations, any interesting rulings and that sort of thing. Lower level judges who are getting ready to take a level 1 or 2 test often ask for practice questions. Higher-level judges try to find some interesting questions to ask. In my case, I asked the following:
If I have Goblin War Drums in play, and attack with Nacatl War-Pride, what happens?
The short answer is that you can block Nacatl War Pride with two creatures. The two cards create both a blocking restriction and a requirement, and that interaction is described in Section 500 of the Comprehensive Rules. In short, when they conflict, you can use a blocking arrangement that satisfies the restriction, even if it violates the requirement.
If that question sounds familiar, but the answer does not, you have a good memory. I screwed that up last article. I used the example in my last article, and misremembered the wording on War-Pride. Cardinal rule: READ THE FRIKKEN CARD.
Common greeting this weekend: “Hey, Pete, good to see you! Did you get my email about Nacatl War-Pride? It doesn’t work the way you think.”
I turned that mistake into a learning experience. The only saving grace was that most of the lower level judges didn’t get the answer right immediately, either. (The one who did was guessing.)
Still, sux to screw up.
Friday I judged a couple drafts, a Standard tournament, and a sealed event. I finally left the venue almost 12 hours after I arrived, had a totally forgettable dinner, and crashed. The main event folks were still working when I left.
Saturday I was on main event. It was boring.
Two-Headed Giant is an interesting format to play, but a far simpler format to judge than we thought. It is a draft format, meaning that players draft, build, and play.
When judging a high level event, judges have three main functions. First, they are on hand to straighten out messes, and make sure pick orders are followed. Second, they are there to pick up wrappers and replace packs that have problems (e.g. 16 cards, or if someone opens pack 3 first.) Third, they have to watch for peeking and other cheating.
Since 2HG uses standard drafting, pick orders are not much of a problem. Rochester drafts, and especially team Rochester drafts, are where judges often have to step in to make sure the bounce happens, and in the right place, and so on. 2HG drafts are a breeze in this respect.
Picking up wrappers is the same everywhere. It’s what judges do.
Watching for peeking in 2HG drafts, however, is ridiculously easy. The players sit with their heads together, on their own sides of a square table. Anyone trying to peek at a neighbor’s picks would practically have to climb on their chair. That just leaves watching for card swaps and other fairly simple to spot problems, and those are rare.
The amount of judge work during deck construction is about the same as at any sealed event. Judges have to initial corrections on card lists, establish the land stations, answer any player questions, and collect the decklists. Once collected, the judges have to count each and every decklist, to make sure each team registers all ninety cards drafted, and the contents of each deck. Counting decklists is hell. It is slow, repetitive, and painstaking work. It’s like doing inventory, but without being able to walk around.
Actual round play is easier to judge than most other events. The main difference is that four players, not two, are watching every game. Players are also clearer about announcing effects, steps and so forth, because they are also telling their partners. This leads to far fewer mistakes, and a lot less confusion. The result: fewer judge calls.
Going into the last round on Saturday, I think we had issued something like 40 total penalties and had two appeals to the head judge. That is really low. At Worlds, we not only had far more penalties, but I remember one moment when we had three simultaneous appeals.
By far, the most common errors on the weekend were decklist errors. Teams did seven drafts over the weekend – eight if you count the Top 4 draft. That means teams filled out a lot of decklists, and a lot of decklists had errors.
The “sealed” product used at Pro Tours is not actually sealed in booster packs. All the packs are opened, checked, and the foils are removed. Then all the cards are stamped for identification, then banded together into boosters and labeled. Nick Fang‘ s favorite question on Saturday was “if you stamp a card every second, how long to stamp the product used this weekend?”
Here’s my answer:
We had 177 teams on Day 1. Each team (ignoring drops) drafted three times. That’s 531 drafts, using 3,186 boosters.
On Day 2, we were down to 34 teams. Ignoring drops and byes, that’s 102 more drafts, or another 612 boosters.
Day 3 we had sixteen teams in last Swiss draft, using another 96 boosters, plus another 24 boosters for the Top 4 draft.
That’s a total of 3,918 boosters worth of product used by the participants. At 15 cards per booster and one second per card, that totals 58,770 seconds, or about 16 and a third hours. And that does not count the time spent opening packs, counting cards, or removing foils.
I’m so glad I’m not doing that job.
Yes, there are some spares. Wizards (almost always) ships enough product for the maximum number of players that could attend, so some is left over. It is usually shared out among the Wizards staff, the coverage team, and the judges. Sunday night, it is not uncommon to see several drafts taking place back at the hotel.
I mentioned that we had two appeals. One of the rulings that got appealed was mine. I deck-checked a team, and saw that they were playing Tolaria West, but it was not listed as being in either deck. That’s an illegal decklist, legal main deck, and the penalty is a match point. It was the second shortest appeal I have ever had: “Is this in your deck?” “Yes.” “Is this box blank?” “Yes” “Upheld.”
The players were arguing that their decklist was correct. It wasn’t – it was 39 cards – but if it had been, then the infraction would have been a legal decklist, and an illegal main deck. The difference is in the penalty. A legal deck / illegal decklist is a match point penalty in 2HG. An illegal deck / legal decklist is a match loss.
(How it works: In Swiss rounds, you get three points for each match win, and one point for each draw. A match point penalty subtracts one point from your total.)
On first blush, the match loss looks worse. In some cases, however – for instance, if they realized they could not win the match in any case – then the match loss penalty might be better.
Match point penalties are a relatively new innovation. They exist mainly because 2HG, and other games (like Dreamblade) that are covered by the penalty guidelines, use single game matches. In a single game match, a game loss equals a match loss. A match point penalty provides a needed intermediate between a warning and a match loss.
Match point penalties have another big advantage, in my opinion: they don’t randomly help other teams. With game loss penalties, the team that committed the error is penalized, but the team that was randomly paired against them gets a free win. As a player, I have no problem with getting penalties when I screw up, or having other players get penalties when they screw up, but I do have a problem with opponents getting free game wins when they have done nothing to deserve them.
At Regionals, a dozen or so players got game losses for decklist errors at the start of round 2. That meant that a dozen opponents got to start round 2 with a free win, and their only “skill” in getting that bonus was to be randomly paired against the right person. Match point penalties for decklist errors would punish the guilty, but not give rewards or advantages to other players randomly.
Another benefit to match point penalties: it could make the decisions and standings at the end of Swiss rounds more complex, and that might result in fewer IDs. Maybe… you can argue the opposite as well.
Given that, will match point penalties move into other areas? I can’t answer that. It was certainly discussed among the judges this weekend. On the other hand, we discuss everything, and not all of the proposals will ever be acted on. For instance, I doubt we will be flogging players for bad handwriting, no matter how much of a pain it is for judges to decipher some names and DCI numbers.
Saturday night a bunch of judges went to a Brazilian steak house. Unlimited amounts of tasty meat is a good thing. The bill, for thirty-odd judges at a good restaurant – one where drinks cost $7.50 – is a staggering thing.
Sunday I was working the push tool – the application that feeds cards and content to accompany the live coverage of the Top 4 matches. I did this at Worlds, where a single game involving the White Martyr deck took hours. In San Diego, the entire draft, build, and both rounds took less time.
Basically, I got to lounge in a comfortable chair, watching the finals on a monitor, listening to BDP and Randy’s commentary on headsets, and click cards.
That ain’t workin’. This is how you do it. – Dire Straits.
Another advantage of sitting in a darkened corner of the control area, plugged into the audio feed from the booth – you get to overhear a lot of stuff that isn’t public knowledge. For instance, I now know the locations of the next few Pro Tours, and of World 2008. I know some of the tweaks that Wizards is considering in the 2HG format. I know some of the positive things pros said about the event. And I’m not telling. I like this job, and I want to keep it.
Sunday night the judge dinner was at Buca di Beppo, an Italian restaurant. Almost everyone made it – something in the neighborhood of 60 judges. The judge dinner is great – but it must be complete hell for the waiters. Everyone is talking to everyone, making the noise level extremely high. Worse yet, we keep changing seats and moving around, to get in a few last words with everyone before the great Diaspora the following day.
After Bucas, and after the knot of judges standing outside the hotel telling bad jokes broke up, a lot of drafting an Elder Dragon Highlander got played in the hotel lounge. As a perfect ending to the weekend, at some ridiculous time in the morning, my Starke of Rath EDH deck – a mainly casual deck built around Starke and Sizzle – blew out the whole table.
All in all a good time.
Next up – U.S. Nationals. Before that, however, check out Magic Game Day on July 14th. That will mark the release of Tenth Edition – and X looks pretty sweet. I drafted a lot of 9th Edition because I needed Wraths and the pain lands. I expect to draft Tenth because the drafts will be fun.
PRJ