I’m back from GenCon. I watched a lot of Magic, and I have quite a pile of decklists. I also survived the Klingons, the fire, the flood, and a truck with no brakes. In short, a typical event.
The truck thing actually happened the day or so before we were headed to GenCon. I was coming home, doing somewhere between 30 and 40 mph, coming up to a stoplight. I stepped on the brake and the pedal went to the floor. The light was red, there were plenty of stopped cars ahead, so I pulled the emergency brake lever. The cable snapped. After some adrenalin-filled seconds filled with downshifting and driving over the curb and through the drainage ditch, I was parked on the frontage road.
For sale: 1991 Toyota Pickup. Excellent engine and drive train. Some body rust. Starts and runs well — practically unstoppable.
On the plus side, so far I don’t seem to have the post-event plague. Usually, after a big event, I end up with some cold or virus. At all big events, a number of sick and infectious players participate anyway. They radiate a small cloud of disease, and anyone exposed to that cloud may become ill. That includes their opponents and those seated near them. It also includes the judges — and since we judges move around a lot, we tend to walk through all the pestilence clouds. Getting sick afterwards is not uncommon. A number of judges were stricken after U.S. Nationals with some really vile plague, and I was dragging for a couple weeks after Pro Tour: Hollywood.
Actually, GenCon was great. It is just huge and endless. As always, there was infinitely more stuff to do that you can even conceive of doing. I can think of a hundred things I wanted to do, but didn’t have time for — and that’s without even consulting the events catalog.
If you can possibly go, go. It’s worth it.
The TO Meet and Greet
Wednesday evening, I attended a meet-and-greet session for tournament organizers, hosted by Wizards. The attendees were a mixed bag — some TOs, some WotC folks, and some judges. (Technically, all level two and higher judges are also TOs, so a contingent was present.)
I have been running some casual tournaments at a local store. This store tends to have a lot of casual players, with a mix of young kids, older adults, and some college students. The decks range from “what I own” to serious Vintage decks with power. My problem has been finding a format everyone can play, especially since many of the kids don’t have the money for Limited events.
My goal was to talk to other TOs to see if anyone knew of formats that could work with that wide a disparity of decks and archetypes. I actually got a number of good ideas for things to try out in the next couple months.
I was also curious to see if my fellow judges could come up with more / better ideas than the TOs. Nope — only one judge had any really good advice, and since that judge is also a TO, I had to count him with the TOs.
I also got to talk to several of the Wizards folks. The most interesting discussion came with the person working on revisions to the Wizards websites. Yes, Wizards knows that their websites are suboptimal – but several of us reinforced that point. Look for a change — and the change is being headed by people who came onboard after the debacle of the last website remake.
Train Noises, Tucked Elbows, and No Bathrooms
Thursday morning I was headed for the Trading Card Game hall at GenCon. This year we were a bit cramped. Indianapolis is remodeling and expanding the convention center, and rebuilding the football stadium that used to be attached to the venue. On the plus side, the venue really needed expansion, because GenCon is bursting at the seams. This year, however, the construction was in progress, and it had an impact on us.
The room we were in was only a portion of the area we used to have. The old hallways and rooms that we used in years past, as well as the restaurant and football field, were gone. For that matter, the back wall of the room we were in was gone. The opening was filled with a large framework covered with a giant tarp. The World of Warcraft folks had that end of the room, and they noticed that the sun heated that tarp quite nicely. They also noticed that trains ran past outside — and the noise could be heard throughout the room. At their end, it literally shook their stage.
The construction also severed the connections to water and sewer in the nearby parts of the venue — meaning no bathrooms, drinking fountains, or kitchens. All of these were available, but only if you walked back into the other part of the venue. We had to warn players that it was about a ten-minute walk, round trip, to the closest bathroom.
The other problem with the room was that it was smaller than in years past. We were cramped — all the trading card games were. Wizards had got all the space it could, but we still had to wedge four matches onto each eight foot table. That’s tight — and even with that amount of crowding, we often had every table filled. As events progressed, and players dropped, we often had to move and condense events to free up more room for the next event. In a few cases, like the Friday PTQ, we even had to split the tables for the players meeting and first couple rounds.
By next year, the expansion should be done, and we will have some elbow room back.
Legacy Prelim
I ran, or helped run, a half dozen different events and formats. My first event was an M10 Sealed event with some four dozen people. Nothing much to say about that. The next was a Legacy Preliminary event — the first prize was a two-round bye for the Legacy Championships later in the weekend. That was interesting. Check out the Top 8 decks.
Creatures (1)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (23)
Spells (34)
- 4 Brainstorm
- 2 Nevinyrral's Disk
- 3 Counterspell
- 3 Wrath of God
- 4 Force of Will
- 4 Swords to Plowshares
- 3 Standstill
- 3 Decree of Justice
- 3 Vindicate
- 3 Fact or Fiction
- 2 Engineered Explosives
Sideboard
This deck got an opponent to scoop with one of the coolest board control plays I have seen in a long time. The deck relies on getting Elspeth down and protecting it. This time the pilot resolved Elspeth’s ultimate ability with an untapped Nev’s Disk in play. Yes, that’s good. Nev’s disk destroys all artifacts, creatures and enchantments — and it does not require you to sacrifice the disk. An indestructible Nev’s Disk reads “1, tap: destroy opponent’s world.”
Creatures (13)
Lands (18)
Spells (29)
Creatures (20)
Lands (20)
Spells (19)
Sylvan Library! It has been a long time since I have seen Sylvan Library in play, outside of EDH and casual games.
Creatures (26)
- 2 Birds of Paradise
- 4 River Boa
- 3 Eternal Witness
- 2 Sower of Temptation
- 3 Kitchen Finks
- 2 Rafiq of the Many
- 3 Rhox War Monk
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 3 Qasali Pridemage
Lands (23)
Spells (11)
Sideboard
Harmonize? Interesting.
Creatures (21)
- 4 Nimble Mongoose
- 4 Tarmogoyf
- 3 Vendilion Clique
- 3 Rhox War Monk
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 1 Progenitus
- 2 Qasali Pridemage
Lands (20)
Spells (21)
Sideboard
Creatures (12)
Lands (18)
Spells (34)
- 2 Sensei's Divining Top
- 4 Brainstorm
- 4 Force of Will
- 2 Grindstone
- 4 Swords to Plowshares
- 3 Red Elemental Blast
- 4 Pyroblast
- 2 Engineered Explosives
- 1 Pithing Needle
- 3 Counterbalance
- 4 Ponder
- 1 Relic of Progenitus
Sideboard
Creatures (7)
Lands (18)
Spells (25)
- 2 Sensei's Divining Top
- 4 Brainstorm
- 4 Force of Will
- 2 Daze
- 3 Standstill
- 4 Stifle
- 2 Engineered Explosives
- 3 Spell Snare
- 1 Trickbind
Sideboard
Creatures (8)
Lands (18)
Spells (34)
- 4 Brainstorm
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 4 Force of Will
- 4 Daze
- 4
- 4 Stifle
- 1 Rushing River
- 4 Spell Snare
- 1 Wipe Away
- 4 Ponder
Sideboard
Warped Foils
I had one call midway through a round. A player noticed that some of his opponent’s cards were warped, and asked me to check for a pattern. The warping was because the cards were foils, and it was humid. The foils had a bend that other cards did not have. The player had a foil fetchland and one other card in his graveyard. I picked both up, held them together by the right edge and the left edges were about an eighth of an inch apart. (That’s 2-3 millimeters, for those of you using a rational system of measurement.) That’s a significant warp.
It is also a game loss for marked cards, pattern, because four of the seven or so foils are the same.
Foils bend towards their faces — they bend face down. If you have a stack of bent and unbent cards, there will be a small gap directly above the bent cards. When cutting a deck, peoples’ fingers are more likely to catch the gap, meaning that cuts with the bent cards on top are significantly more likely.
The player objected to the match loss, and appealed. The head judge upheld my ruling. It clearly was a case of marked cards with a pattern, and the penalty for that is a game loss. However, the player was upset, so I decided to explain it in a different way. I asked if I could show him the problem with his deck. I knew that, if I pushed gently on one side of the deck, a gap would form on the other side of the deck. Doing that was not obvious, but it meant I could cut to gap – a foil – every time.
I shuffled and cut his deck four times. I showed him the top card each time — and each time it was a Brainstorm. I just asked if drawing a Brainstorm every time he cut might be an advantage. End of discussion.
A quick explanation: I knew which foils were the most bent: the FNM Brainstorms. A few other foils were also bent badly, including some lands, but the odds favored cutting to the Brainstorms. And I got lucky to hit four times in a row.
I should add that I never thought that any of this was deliberate — and I certainly didn’t see him doing anything unusual when cutting. Maybe a quarter of his deck was foiled, and all of his foils were bent. It was humid. The Brainstorms, because they were FNM foils, with a thicker foil layer for extra shininess, just bent slightly more.
The moral of this story is not “don’t play foils.” Foils are cool. Just make sure that, if you do play foils, to be careful to flatten them out if they start to bend. Be extra careful with the early foils, like those from Urza’s Legacy. Those are thicker, and very prone to bending.
Shuffling Face up
I had another situation in the same event — a player shuffled his deck face up several times, then cut twice and presented his deck. He wasn’t trying to stack it — he was looking away, and his glasses were pretty thick. I don’t think he could have seen his deck clearly, since he would have to watch with his peripheral vision, and he would not have looking through the lenses of his glasses. However, face up is still bad. It is pretty much the same as not shuffling at all.
We were playing for a fair amount of money, and the event had a Competitive Rules Enforcement Level. That made insufficient randomization a game loss. The player appealed — and my ruling was upheld. He also complained that, since this was game three, the ruling was really a match loss. Not so — a game loss penalty really reads “if you lose even one game this match, you lose the match.” It doesn’t matter whether you lose before or after the penalty.
5Color Prismatic
One of the events I was scheduled to run on Saturday was described as “5Color Prismatic.” The TO had added it, while looking for some more fun, less common formats. I asked him if he had more description than just the title, but that was it. He said I was his expert on odd formats, so he was sure I could handle it.
Sure. I probably could, as soon as I figured out what it was.
You see, Prismatic is an online format with its own B&R list, and its own deck construction rules. It does not bother to ban cards like the P9 or Contract from Below, because they don’t exist on MTGO. 5Color is a paper format with its own B&R list, and its own rules for deck construction. Finally, Abe Sargent, Jeremy Bush and some others just revised 5Color a few weeks back, and this created a schism. Some people still argue that 5color follows the old deck construction rules, with the January B&R list.
In the end, I wrote up a sort of hybrid set of rules, under which decks had to legal under one of the above sets of rules, and with a few special adds (e.g. GenCon specifically bans playing for ante). It didn’t matter — we didn’t get any players for the event.
Mark Gottleib and Ken Nagle
A fair number of Wizards staffers were around all weekend. Mark Gottleib and Ken Nagle were around most evenings, watching Legacy, EDH and anything else being played. I got to sit with them for a bit, watching the last match in the round in a Legacy event. Mark was pleased to see Progenitus, which he had apparently championed at some point in development, beating down.
I took the opportunity to ask them whether the spoilers for the online Commander decks coming out later this month really did include Gifts Ungiven, and whether that signaled a change in the B&R list for Commander. (Right now, Gifts is banned.) That was really an unfair question, and I apologized as I asked it, but I was curious to see if I would get an answer.
Ken gave a very good explanation of the reasoning behind the B&R list. He also explained that their staff did not spend a lot of professional time on the B&R lists for the non-tournament / fan supported formats, like Commander. (Commander, after all, exists online because Lee Sharpe programmed in the rules for the format in his spare time.)
Mark added that the specifications for a digital product, like the Commander decks, are set many months in advance, to allow time to get all the digital design and coding done. (Sure, the cards already exist, but the Commander decks will probably have special expansion symbols, foils, etc.) Mark suggested that, if the card was indeed included, then it might have been added to the decks before it was put on the B&R list. Maybe.
I appreciated the answers. I especially appreciated how well they were able to answer a tricky question about an unreleased product (the Commander decks) and a sensitive topic (B&R lists) without revealing any confidential information. They gave me a complete answer, or as much of an answer as they could, in a very polite and friendly way and at the very end of what had to have been a long and tiring day. Nicely done.
Ingrid and I also spent some time rereading the new comp. rules on the drive down. We were impressed with the many little additions that explain certain facets clearly and concisely. These were things that judges knew, but it is great to see them stated clearly enough that even moderately new players will understand. A lot of good, hard work went into these rules. I wanted to complement Mark on that effort, but I missed my chance. Next time — or, if you read this — well done!
Cloud Kingdom Games
One of the annual rituals of GenCon, for me at least, has been earning a Riddle Master ribbon from Cloud Kingdom Games. Cloud Kingdom makes an assortment of games, but they also have a riddle posted at their booth. The riddles change every few hours. If you can guess the answer, then you win a ribbon that you can stick to your GenCon badge. I got one a couple years ago, and I have tried to win a ribbon every year since then. For the last four events, I was successful.
This year was harder. I was judging pretty much the entire time that the vendor hall was open, except for an hour of Thursday. Ingrid and I checked out the dealers on Thursday, and spent some time talking to people we knew at various booths. By the time I found Cloud Kingdom Games, I had under five minutes before we had to leave if we were to make our events. Ingrid got that riddle, I didn’t. I can’t remember the whole riddle, just fragments. The last line was “A place to store your ancient Greeks?” The answer was “attic” — that last line referred to the Greek city of “Attica.”
On Sunday, I had a short lunch break as a round was wrapping up, and I ran through the dealer room one more time. This time the riddle was:
An icy bunch.
Eats a light lunch.
A notable rag.
On boreal flag.
The first line had me sidetracked for a minute or so, but I got the riddle, and the ribbon, and got back to my event on time. (The answer is at the end.)
The Fire
About 7-8pm one evening, the fire alarms started going off. The judges all looked to the TO, and the TO looked at the closest security person. After a short call on that person’s walkie-talkie, the TO started giving instructions on evacuating the hall calmly. Great – it wasn’t a drill. We had to evacuate the complex.
I talked to one of the maintenance people later. Apparently, an oven had shorted out, and the fire department had come to save the day. We really were burning, albeit briefly.
The judges and the event staff were the last out the doors, and we basically held them. The word was that the judges were to be the first back inside, to watch over anything left inside. (One advantage of trading cards over, say, miniatures is that you can grab the cards and playmat and leave. That’s tougher when you have a lot of scenery spread out over the tables.)
When we got back, we held a brief discussion. The PTQ had just started the round, so they decided to restart all matches that had not already reported. My Legacy event had 14 minutes left in the round, so we decided to keep all completed games, but restart any incomplete games, and restart the clock at 30 minutes.
We discussed trying to recreate existing game states, but that is impossible. We could probably recreate life totals, and maybe get everyone to agree on the permanents in play, what was tapped, etc. — but how would you recreate hands and the state of the library? This was Legacy, after all — cards routinely get stacked on both the tops and bottoms of libraries. That is simply impossible.
Drafts are even tougher, but the players in one draft decided — on their own — to save their draft. Each player stacked their drafted cards, then the unopened pack, then the cards in their current pack, and held that pile in hand. Then they stayed together throughout the evacuation. When they came back, they sat down and continued drafting. Nicely done.
The only good things about the situation: it was late, most events were done, and the evacuation was short. And, of course, no one was hurt.
From the Vault: Exiled
Wizards released From the Vault: Exiled at GenCon. They had a limited number available — just 100 per day. To buy one, you had to get a special ticket. You could get tickets at the giant Serra Angel on the second floor. The tickets were given out at 9am.
Friday morning, the line started forming at 3:30am, and there were over 100 in line by 7am.
FtV: Exiled seems to be a hit.
The first prize in the Legacy Prelim events was a two-round bye for the Legacy Championship. Second prize was a sealed copy of FtV: Exiled. In round 6, a player came up to ask a question I had never heard before — how do you decide who can concede first? He had a good shot at Top 8, but he wanted FtV: Exiled much more than the byes. If his opponent felt the same, how would we decide who won? Would we make them play it out, with both players playing to lose?
Interesting question. It leads to all sort of messy situations. For example, suppose the player deliberately shuffles his or her sideboard into the deck and presents? It is an illegal deck — but if it is done deliberately, do you DG the player? Intentionally breaking the rules to gain an advantage is just as much cheating when you are trying to lose as when you are trying to win. Do you let players mulligan to zero, and miss land drops? Do judges have to judge bad plays versus stalling? It’s a mess.
The answer, obviously, is that if both players want the second place prize, reverse the prizes and let them play it out.
Magic at GenCon Championship
I was also head judge for the Magic at GenCon Championship — and event at which players were playing in a single elimination event for a framed, uncut sheet of FtV Exiled, which was signed by everyone at WotC R&D. It was a very sweet prize, and it had some interesting decklists, but I will save that for next time.
PRJ
“one million words” on MTGO
Riddle answer: Maple Leaf. The first line refers to the hockey team, which I didn’t know. The second — well, leaves have chlorophyll, so they “eat” sunlight. Third is a pun — Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag is a classic ragtime song — and songs are “note”able. The Canadian flag features a red maple leaf.