Last week was more of the usual. Ingrid and I went to judge a Midwestern tournament. Once again, the event smashed all previous attendance records. Once again, I had a lot of fun, did lots of judge stuff, and didn’t get enough time to play real Magic. I did get to play some MTGO, though, once I got back.
Beforehand
I did not get to play paper Magic this week. I did get to play a ton of MTGO. I was pretty close to going infinite in the Masters Edition II drafts and 8 man sealed Swiss queues. I would be infinite if I was selling rares, but I am trying to get two playsets of everything — one for me and one for Ingrid.
For the first time in a long time, I know enough about a format to be able to write a serious, tech-laden article. However, by the time you read this, the NIX TIX queues will be gone, and the sealed Swiss probably as well. For TIX drafts may be available, but the odds are that the demand will fall badly.
In other words, I’m going to concentrate on the StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Open.
For us, the drive to Indianapolis usually takes about six hours. The first hour or so, we are on back roads heading from the farming community where we live to the interstate. The next hour and a half is interstate, followed by an hour or two of mobile parking on the Chicago freeways (which are not free.) Then a couple hours of Indiana countryside and we are there.
This drive was a bit longer. We had to stop every 80 miles and add another quart of cheap oil. After 180,000 miles, my old car was dying, but we had to take it on one more trip. We got there, and got it back home, and now it is no longer my problem.
The hotel was actually pretty nice — although it was a half hour from the venue. The venue was available, but hotel rooms were at a premium. It’s March Madness, and Indianapolis was one of the host cities last weekend. Hotel rooms downtown were pretty much unavailable.
On the downside, with the venue far away and some judges not yet arrived, we had some trouble finding any other judges. Eventually, we got half a dozen together and headed out to a local mall for dinner. Good company, fair food. After dinner we held a training session / debate on the finer points of checking decks. It started as a seminar, but most of us are pretty experienced at this sort of thing. We did end up with a debate on which method of laying out a deck was fastest. When sorting a deck, is it faster to sort by name, by color lands/spells /creatures or some other method. Personally, I think sorting by converted mana cost is fastest — it’s what I do building draft decks, and it is quick.
The debate may seem pointless, but it isn’t. Deck checks take time — and that means time extension. If you can shave a minute off each deck check, that can shave a minute off each round. For most players, extra time minutes are usually just time spent waiting for the next round — and pretty boring minutes at that.
Eventually, Pete Hoefling sent us all off to bed. It was about midnight.
We were up again six hours later.
Set-up and Prep
We were driving down to the site with Gavin Duggan, the head judge. The drive was not exciting. It was 6:30am, the sun was just rising (in theory), and it was raining. We passed stoplights, found parking, and talked about random subjects. The only highlight was finding parking that was close enough to the venue to avoid getting too wet.
The venue was great. It was the same convention center where GenCon is held — but we only used one room. GenCon uses everything. We shared the venue with a Mary Kay cosmetics event and, apparently, a cheerleading contest for very young girls. I saw a lot of people wearing far too much makeup.
We arrived a touch before 7am. The first hour was spent in a brief judge meeting, then setting up the pipe and drape surrounding the judge room, setting up the feature match area (and stringing plastic chain to keep players out), putting out registration materials, signs and numbering tables.
The doors opened to the players about 8am. The crowd started growing. We had all guessed numbers beforehand, and the StarCity crew were closest. Nick Sabin guessed 420 — we ended up with 432. That required adding some extra chairs in the last section of tables.
It broke the previous SCG $5K attendance records.
Unfortunately, it also meant we were playing ten rounds of Swiss, then the Top 8. That makes for a long day.
Three Simple Ways to Make your Life Easier
I have a bit of advice for players. Three simple things that can save you a lot of grief and/or wasted time.
1) Register early.
We set up registration in advance, and were taking registrations as soon as the doors ended. Registration ran for a full two hours. Despite that, over half the players waited until the last few minutes of registration, then joined the line. The line was long. As time winds down, we have a judge directing traffic at the front of the line. Even so, you end up standing in line a long time, if you wait until the end. Register early, and the wait is miniscule. My recommendation for the fastest registration experience — arrive 5-10 minutes after registration is set to open, and register immediately. Odds are that you will be done in a couple minutes at most. (Except at prereleases — those lines are just long at any time.)
When you do go to register, have you DCI number and money ready. Most TOs use small slips with name, DCI number and address or email address. Some use a numeric keypad linked to the registration computer. If it is paper, fill out the small slip in advance, and have your money ready. It makes the process a lot faster for everyone.
2) Program your DCI number into your cell.
If you do not remember your DCI number, the staff can usually look it up. However, that takes time and effort — and standing in front of the scorekeeper’s table while you figure out which Ben Johnson is you is probably not your best possible use of time. Still, if you don’t know, we’ll look it up. We will also tell you what it is, and if you enter it into your cell, then you can skip the wait the next time.
Just don’t press call when you look it up.
3) Print out your decklist the night before.
The second most common game-loss penalty at any event is due to decklist errors. These are 100% avoidable. For a Constructed event like a $5K, you can prepare your decklist in advance. Personally, I like to do my decklist in Excel, and have it total the columns. Then I count it manually. I have almost never seen anyone make Top 8 at a PTQ or large event like a $5K when they start out round 2 with a game loss for a decklist error. Still, about 5% of players at a Constructed event screw up their decklists — they forget a card, or they forget to register lands, or their sideboard.
Worst of all are players who spend almost the entire pretournament registration time playing with friends, then try to rush through their decklists in five minutes. Sometimes these players cut it too short, and get a tardiness penalty for not having their decklist done on time, then another game loss because, when they finally do turn it in, it is screwed up.
Stupid.
I said that we give the second-most game losses for decklist errors. The most common penalty, at most events, is tardiness. Being tardy gets you a game loss — a match loss if you are ten or more minutes late to the table. It is almost always totally avoidable, if you pay attention. For some reason, it is also, along with slow play, the penalty that players are most likely to argue about. I don’t know why. It is pretty easy to tell whether or not a player is in his/her seat when the round starts, or when the time clock shows 3 or 10 minutes elapsed. What’s to argue about? “But judge, I was right over there!” Sure, but all that matters is whether you were right here, in your seat.
The Three Most Common Questions
At the event — at any event — I get asked certain questions over and over again. The answers are almost always the same. They are also pretty pointless to ask.
“Judge, could you check my sleeves?”
We are looking for excessive wear, or distinguishing marks. Both wear and marks are a problem — if we can distinguish cards by sleeve marking, that’s a penalty. Obv.
First of all, having a judge check the sleeves does not immunize you from the penalty in any way. As pretty much any judge will tell you, even if we find the sleeves to be flawless, if you scuff or bend them when you shuffle up for your first match, you could still get a penalty.
More importantly, I have only once had players ask me about brand new, pristine sleeves. In general, players bring up worn sleeves. Even the players can tell the sleeves are worn — if they could not, they would not ask us. More importantly, their opponents will be able to see the wear, and if the opponent has any concerns that the wear might mark the cards, they should call a judge to check for patterns.
When a judge checks your sleeves for a pattern in the markings, you will get one of two likely answers. 1) No pattern, but the sleeves are worn and need to be replaced, or 2) a problem, with a penalty ranging from a warning to a DQ. For every answer except DQ, you will be replacing the sleeves. So don’t ask — just invest a couple of bucks in new sleeves before each big event. It is the cheapest insurance you can get.
“Will we have a lunch break?”
Another common question — and the answer is almost always no. Large tournaments are generally long, and most venues have food. Players can usually find time between the end of their match and the end of the round to grab something. About the only exceptions are kids tournaments (e.g. the old Magic Scholarship Tournaments), or tournaments at locations without food of any kind. However, adding a lunch break usually adds an hour to a very long day.
The answer does vary by TO, but not all that much.
“How many rounds?”
If a player asks this question of a floor judge before registration is closed, the answer probably won’t be accurate. Generally, if I am on the floor, I have little idea of how many players are already registered, and I certainly won’t know how many will have registered once registration closes. I can often make a guess, but that’s about it.
Once the tournament has started, I can answer that question. So can the players, if they paid attention to the head judge’s introduction. The number of players and number of rounds are a standard part of every head judge’s opening speech. I’m glad to answer the question, but asking it does tend to mark you as one of those annoying idiots that keeps talking while the head judge is speaking.
Just saying.
Playing Shepherd
As judges, we do a lot of work to try to keep the tournament on track. With a large event like this, we take extra effort.
On Saturday, I was assigned to be the shepherd — to keep the herd on the tournament at the end of the round. I was in charge of posting pairings at the start of the round, and of getting judges to matches as time wound down.
We kept a clipboard on the main stage to record time extensions. During the round, whenever a judge gave players extra time (because of a ruling or deck check), they recorded the table number and time granted on the clipboard. At about 5 minutes left in the round, I checked each of those tables to see which matches were still progressing. As we got closer, I assigned a judge to each match, to keep track of the time extension and call time when the extension expired.
Once all of those matches were covered, and the scorekeeper had a chance, he gave me a list of all tables for which we had not yet received results. I assigned judges to each table (or pair of tables if they were close.) The judges went to the tables and, basically, watched for slow play. During match time, if you are playing slowly, you are keeping your opponent waiting. During extra turns, you are keeping the whole tournament waiting. We try to avoid that.
Even with a lot of effort to keep rounds turning over quickly, we ended up averaging over 60 minutes a round. That’s not really good, but we twice hit the trifecta. The trifecta is:
1) A match gets a time extension, uses up that extension and goes to extra turns
2) The match has a complex issue, which involves assessing a penalty and/or judge intervention to sort it out, and…
3) The ruling is appealed, and the head judge has to sort it out.
Worst case — the penalty involves a DQ, since DQ investigations always require extra time. We had that happen at least twice. I know one involved a DQ.
Despite that, we finished the Swiss rounds reasonably early, and we finished the Top 8 by midnight. That was our deadline — the conference center required that we finish play by midnight, and get packed up and out of the building by 1am. We did that — we had all the pipe and drape down, the computers, printers and cables packed up and the stuff hauled out to the van by just before one.
A seventeen hour shift— almost all of it on your feet — is a long day.
Random Rulings
My most common ruling was that Hellkite Elemental could trample over a Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender. I was asked that at least half a dozen times. Yes, it can.
Another note — if you are playing a Red or Black deck, and an opponent kills your creature with a White instant, make sure you know whether it was a Path to Exile or a Celestial Purge. I had to hand out a couple warnings for looking at extra cards when a player started looking for a land after his creature was hit by Celestial Purge. The art is similar, but the cards are different. Be careful.
I was asked what happened when you kill a Mistbind Clique with the Champion trigger on the stack a couple times. One of those rulings happened after Patrick Chapin walked his opponent into a brutal misplay. As soon as the opponent called me and asked his question, I could see what had probably happened. I spent some time making sure both players were in complete agreement on what had been said. It was this.
Opponent players Mistbind Clique
PC: “With the champion trigger on the stack, kill Mistbind Clique.”
Opp: “Okay.” Mistbind goes to the graveyard.
PC: “Do you want to champion a Faerie?”
Opponent: “Yes.” He removes Bitterblossom from the game.
PC does not tap his lands. Opponent calls a judge.
Normally, Mistbind Clique has two triggered abilities: champion a faerie, and when you champion, tap opponent’s lands. When Mistbind comes into play, the first — the champion ability – triggered. In response, Patrick killed the Clique. That does not remove the trigger from the stack, but it does remove the Clique from play. Next, the champion trigger resolved. The opponent still had the option of championing a fae, or sacrificing the Mistbind. Choosing the second option does nothing, since the Clique is already dead. The opponent chose to remove the Bitterblossom.
All well and good. Not a smart play, but it is a valid choice for the ability.
Next the opponent wanted to tap all of Patrick Chapin lands. However, that triggered ability exists only while the Clique is in play. It was not, when the ability would have triggered, so nothing happened.
I had to explain this interaction a couple times during the day. In Patrick Chapin case, it was just a bit more complex, because Patrick had, basically, Jedi Mind Tricked his opponent into throwing the game through a misplay.
Note that this all happened while the players were in contention for the Top 8 at a big money event, run at Competitive Rules Enforcement and 32k. This isn’t something I would recommend at FNM, but the play was perfectly legal.
I had another ruling that I might have made differently at FNM. A player had his Reveillark killed with Path to Exile. He returned two creatures from the graveyard to play, then started to search for a land. That’s the wrong order. In this case, one of those creatures was a Tidehollow Sculler — and he had also resolved the “look at your opponent’s hand and remove a card in it” ability. At this level of play, I could not rewind the game, or remove the knowledge of what the opponent had in hand, so I did not allow him to get the land.
I also had to explain to a couple players why killing a Tidehollow Sculler with the ability on the stack was not always a good idea. Removing the source of the ability does not remove the ability. Instead, the remove a card ability stays on the stack. The Sculler dies, which puts the return the removed card onto the stack on top of the remove a card ability. The return resolves first, and does nothing. Then the remove a card ability resolves, leaving the card RFG for the rest of the game.
Dinner
The food court at the venue closed down at 5pm. We were stuck until midnight, or later. Since many of us had driven down together, many of us were stuck for the duration. The head judge tried an innovative approach to dinner. Usually, if we were going to work through suppertime, the HJ sends someone out on a fast food run. Instead, Gavin chose one car full of judges to let go early, and let the other judges go out for a more leisurely meal stretched over most of rounds 9 and 10. A half dozen of us got to eat together and talk, but we had to help with Top 8 and clean up. The rest got to leave early.
It worked really well. It was good times — and I still felt that way at 1am, while hauling boxes of cards, supplies, and printers through the convention center and out into the rain.
PRJ
“one million words” on MTGO