Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #192 - Judging the Last Valencia PTQ

Last weekend I had a chance to head judge the very last (at least locally) Valencia PTQ. I’ve got the Top 8 decklists (for those of you planning on playing the format on MTGO, I guess), plus one “how the hell can that be in contention” deck, and the mystery of the phantom judge. It’s the dog days of Magic writing, with only a handful of Lowryn cards released. Could be worse — I could be writing about how the Lowryn basic land artwork will impact Legacy.

Prep for head judging a tournament starts a week or two ahead of time, with identifying the other judges, assigning roles, etc. The important prep is the last minute review of decks, interactions and expected problems, along with a final review of the rules, penalty guidelines, etc.

My tourney prep consisted of hauling water out of my basement.

Getting Wet

You may have heard of the flooding in the upper Midwest, and getting a foot of rain in 24 hours — and the fact that it has been raining for a week? Yeah, all that. The ground around here is absolutely saturated, and new foundations are leaking. My foundation is 130 years old. It is now leaking like a sieve.

No sump pump — I suck up the water with the shop vac, empty it into a pair of five gallon buckets, then haul them up the basement steps and outside. Somewhere around 130 trips Friday night, and another 100+ Saturday morning, early. Say nine gallons per trip, that’s a bit over 8.5 tons.

As a workout, that rocks. As prep for a tournament, not so much.

Yes, a pump would be easier. I got back from GenCon on day three of the local flooding. Any guesses how many pumps are available at local hardware stores or rental places? Yeah, about the same as the number of precons being played at PTQs.

A PreCon at the PTQ

Actually, one less. We had one player with a precon. He went 1-3 drop.

Being head judge means you mainly get weird questions. This player approached me a half hour before we were to start. He brought the wrong deck box — he had nothing but trade trash — but his girl friend was bringing a real deck. He wanted to know what he could do.

I told him he needed to have his deck list ready at the start of the round, when we collected them. If he didn’t have his deck, I would give him a game loss for tardy, and another ten minutes into the round if he still didn’t have his deck, but I would let him stay in the tourney.

He approached me three minutes before the tourney was to start. Apparently the girlfriend thing didn’t work out — another wrong deck. I offered to arrange a drop and refund, but he really wanted to play. I suggested a precon. The advantages was that it came with a decklist — he just wrote his name and DCI number on the package insert with a SharpieÂ™ and was good to go.

Relatively speaking — he still had a precon, after all.

DCI Numbers:

A note on DCI numbers. Most players knew their numbers and put them on the registration slips. That makes the scorekeeper’s job doable. What makes it hell is the players that show up without their numbers, and just write “look it up” on the slip. Yes, technically, it is possible to look it up. The DCI database has a ton of numbers — around half a million, IIRC (I’m too lazy to download and install it here.) Looking up Michael Brown is not trivial — especially if the name is entered as Mike J. Brown, and the address on record is still Cleveland.

We had about 30 players make up “look up” DCI numbers — and it delayed the start of the tournament by about 20 minutes.

Jeez, people, write your DCI number down and stick it in your wallet. Program it on your cellphone (DCI Number 577-265-1029 — it fits.) Tattoo it on your body — just in a place that the rest of us won’t mind seeing at the start of an event. Or just memorize it. Whatever — just do it. Looking it up sucks.

We had 156 players, which meant eight rounds of Swiss. We had a good crew of judges, and the round turnarounds were tight. We started at 10:30, and were in the final Swiss round by 7pm.

The untimed Top 8 was a lot slower, however. A lot of control on control, with many matches going to three games, tend to drag.

That’s life.

The Questions

At the start of round one, we had flurry of standard questions. Some examples:

“I Disintegrated his 0/1 Tarmogoyf for one, but he says it isn’t dead.”

The proper answer is “He’s correct.” or “When state based effects are checked, it is a 1/2 Tarmogoyf with one damage. It is not dead.” “Well, duh!” is not professional, tempting though it may be.

Another common one: “Can I sacrifice Seal of Primordium to destroy itself.”

Yes, you can. Technically, you announce the “destroy enchantment or artifact” ability, including the target (Seal itself). Then you pay costs (sacrificing the Seal.) The ability goes on the stack. When it resolves, the ability will be countered on resolution because its target is gone, but that is usually not really relevant. People were sacrificing Seals to pump Tarmogoyfs, so having the Seal in the graveyard was the only relevant factor.

Oh, yes, and then we had some of the old-timer questions, like “when another Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth comes into play, can I tap mine for mana before it dies?” No. You cannot tap it in response to your opponent playing his land, either. Playing a land is a special action that does not use the stack — but the “can I tap it before it dies” thing is Fifth Edition rules stuff. Yes, once upon a time, you could do that. Last century. Sixth Edition, and the 6E rules, appeared in April, 1999. That’s a long time ago.

I probably should add some Magic content. I’ll list the Top 8 decks at the end, but here’s one deck I was sort of rooting for — mainly because I wanted a good story. Obviously, had the Precon won, that would have been in the title, but I saw one deck sitting just on the bubble for round after round. It featured a pair of cars that I don’t usually play in draft.

Utopia Mycon…

… and…

Mycologist.

Here’s the decklist that must make Mark Rosewater smile:

Jon Hartling: Saprolings

Saprolings

John Hartling

Test deck on 09-02-2007

Time Spiral Block

Creatures (25)

Lands (24)

Spells (11)

Sideboard

I first noticed this deck at about table 12, in the early rounds. I had the usually “wow — bringing a knife to a machine-gun fight” reaction, but the deck stayed near the top tables.

WTF?

He was still in contention up to the end, and finished with a 5-3 record.

I figured he must have gotten lucky, and/or had bad opponents. Then I checked the standings. He had the best tiebreakers among all the 5-3s, including both excellent opponent match wins and game wins percentages. His opponents did not suck.

I repeat… WTF?

I’ll have to try that deck out online sometime. After all, the whole thing can’t cost more than 30 tickets — and 20 of those are the Horizon Canopies, which I have.

Bad Beats

I don’t have a bad beats story of my own (hauling water is a bad back story, not bad beats), but one player does. I’ll avoid naming him.

Just before the start of the round, the player comes up asking if anyone has found a card in a gold sleeve. He’s missing one. We check lost and found, check with the other judges — no soap. I can’t hold up the tournament, and he gets a game loss for being tardy, but gets back with a replacement. He wins game 2. His table is targeted for a random mid-round deck check – and the judges discover that he presented a 61-card deck. Guess we found the missing card…

The biggest advantage of MTGO may be that the cards never stick.

Mike Hron

Early afternoon, we checked out the GP: San Francisco standings. Mike Hron is a local, and he was in second. Woot! We considered posting this on the scrolling marquee — but the standings were from round 4. Considering that Mike (and most of the serious contenders) had three byes, being second after round 4 meant that he had won one whole match at that point. Posting that he finished Day 1 in 23rd place would have been more useful, but thankfully we were finished a long time before San Fran even finished Day 1.

The Phantom Judge

Sometimes I wonder about players. I had several players tell judges “some other judge ruled the other way earlier today.” It’s almost invariably untrue — or, at best, the players misunderstood a previous ruling. I have never understood what players expect to get out of that tactic.

The main judges on the floor were Jason and Jordan, both of whom are very solid on the rules.

We had one judge trainee – Nico – but Nico also knows enough to ask about anything that he is not sure about. He did ask, a couple times. Moreover, the experienced judges shadow trainees, and listen to their rulings. I think Nico made one mistake all day — and we caught that.

The other judge whose rules knowledge is not top-notch is Jim Hustad. Jim is like me — because of who he plays & judges with, he can be lazy. Besides, Jim was scorekeeping.

I should explain why I’m lazy, when it comes to the rules. I have always been surrounded by rules gurus. Pretty much every event I have judged at has had at least one, and frequently two, rules experts in attendance. With some effort, I can answer the Chains of Mephistopheles / Abundance / Howling Mine / Bottomless Pit questions, or I can just turn to someone who actually enjoys answering those questions.

Hey — an excuse to tell a favorite story.

Year ago, at a PTQ in Minnesota. I hear the people next to me arguing about the rules, and tell them to call a judge.

Them: You can’t trust local judges. They don’t know the rules. To get decent rulings, you need to go online.
Me: Where do you get decent rulings?
Them: Wizards boards or MTGNews (this was a while back.)
Me: So who do you trust — people like Natedawg, Atraverse3 and Kriz-Ritr?
Them: Yeah, them.
Me (pointing at the judges): That’s Natedawg, that’s Kriz-Ritr, and that’s Atravers3 — now call a judge.

Back in the day, those three had a sort of unspoken competition to see who could post the correct response first. I don’t see Nate all that much anymore, but I’m married to Atraverse3, and Chris Richter is judging nearly every major event around here.

Anyway, I had three different players tell either one of my judges or myself that “some other judge” had ruled differently. None of the players could identify the judge who ruled the other way. I guess we have a phantom.

In one appeal, the player said “I understand, but another judge ruled the other way earlier.” My response — “if so, you should have appealed that ruling. This time my judge made the correct ruling, and it stands.” Needless to say, we never did find the judge who ruled the other way, despite talking to every other judge working the event.

The (Almost) DQ

This is related to the above. One of my judges is called over.

Player: I want to sacrifice my Seal of Primordium. Do I have to have a target (for the Seal’s ability)?
Judge: You have to have a target.
Spectator: Judge, I think you’re wrong. Another judge said it didn’t have to have a target, since it could always target itself.

It is unprofessional to shoot the spectators — but that doesn’t mean that you cannot fantasize about it.

First of all, the judge’s answer was absolutely correct. As a judge, you answer the question that was asked — not the question the player should have asked. This player asked if you need to have a legal target to use Seal of Primordium’s ability. Yes, you do. The fact that Seal of Primordium is, when in play, a legal target for that ability is irrelevant to the answer.

Judges cannot, under any situation, offer strategic or tactical advice. Judges cannot tell the players the correct play — which is basically what the spectator did.

The judge did what he should have. He answered the question. He took the spectator aside and told him to STFU. He could not remove the advice from the player’s head, so he let the match continue. Then he came over to me to discuss DQing the spectator.

Yes, you can do that. If they are not part of the tournament, you get their DCI number, enroll them, then DQ them. If they don’t have a DCI number, you give them one, enroll them, and DQ them.

The question here was whether the spectator was guilty of cheating — outside assistance. Cheating — outside assistance applies when a player seeks information from outside the game, or when a player gives information to another player. The judge did not believe that the player was trying to inform the player of the play — just trying to “correct” the judge. I ruled that the player’s intent was not to provide assistance, so I would not DQ — but if the player did something like that again, it would have serious consequences.

Most Common Question Late Rounds

In the later rounds, the most common question was probably variants on “how do you use Imp’s Mischief to counter Pact of Negation?”

The answer to that question is “I can’t tell you how to play — what part of the rules don’t you understand?”

Generally, the player will ask one of the following:

1) “Can Imp’s Mischief counter Pact?” (answer: Imp’s Mischief does not counter anything. It changes targets.)

2) “Can Imp’s Mischief make Pact of Negation target itself?” (answer: no — spells cannot target themselves.)

3) “Can Imp’s Mischief make Pact of Negation target Imp’s Mischief?” (Ding! Ding! Ding! — we have a winner.) Yes, that works. Then I would stay around until the next upkeep because someone would invariably be unclear about whether Pact upkeep needed to be paid. It does not, because the Pact did not resolve. It was countered on resolution.

Just to walk it through (lord knows I had to do this often enough yesterday):

I cast Bogardan Hellkite.

In response, you can Pact of Negation, targeting BH.

In response, I cast Imp’s Mischief, targeting Pact.

We both pass. Imp’s Mischief starts to resolve. It changes the Pact’s target from BH to IM — and at this point IM is on the stack, so IM is a legal target. Finally, as a last step in resolving IM, IM is removed from the stack and placed in the graveyard.

Now Pact tries to resolve, but it’s only target (IM) is gone. It is countered. Since the Pact was not countered, none of its effects happen — not the counter target spell, and not the pay or die.

Judges Drifting Away

About round 5, I polled the judges as to who wanted to leave early, and who wanted to hang around to the end. Obviously, I was stuck to the end. Jim and Jason wanted to stay — they were going out afterwards. Jordan also volunteered to stay, since he had to handle a server migration once he left. Even Nico wanted to stay through to the end.

Then the first round started — and went on and on. It finally ended — and Nico got invited to join a draft. He left. Shortly thereafter Jason and Jim took off. Then even Jordan decided that server migration beat watching control on control. Finally, it was just me, watching the finals, while Chris worked on his laptop and hung out on IRC.

The many colored control decks played out about as expected. I didn’t have see a lot of innovation or learn much that I did not know, but a few things did stand out.

First of all, the multi-colored control decks really didn’t have much trouble with the Tarmogoyf decks. Tendrils does just what it has always done.

My other big observation was that Anthony Gianpetro’s sideboarded Shimian Specters were very good. They absolutely destroyed his opponents in several games in the top 4 and final matches. Actually, I really like Anthony’s deck, and may well play it online, when I get time.

That’s about it – I’ll leave you with the final results, and the decklists. Then I have to head back to the basement. It is raining again — hard.

PRJ

The Final Results:

1st – Anthony Gianpetro
2nd – Michael Bernat
3rd – Lucas Duchow
4th – Michael Bonin
5th – Jasper Johnsoon-Epstein
6th – Ryan Paprocki
7th – Dave Yetka
8th place – Brad Stryczek

Anthony Gianpetro

4 Coalition Relic
4 Damnation
4 Foresee
2 Strangling Soot
2 Slaughter Pact
3 Tendrils of Corruption
1 Aeon Chronicler
3 Bogardan Hellkite
3 Triskelavus
4 Stupor
3 Void