Sacremento | Limited
Time: Friday July 20th – Sunday July 22
Limited | Players: 1253 Winner: Richard Liu

Friday – Last Chance Trials


Schedule Shenanigans
Friday was busy. I'm not really sure what if anything happened, but I was busy basically all day. We missed our team meeting because an event was launching and we needed to help distribute product, then we were FJ's for this event. Nearby I noticed a much larger 400 person event that seemed like it needed Fjs so I went over to help with that. Then my event launched, then another event launched that lacked a HJ. So I picked that up too. At which point I was keeping an eye on two events and planning to launch my third when my team lead came by and I casually asked if breaks were going to be a thing today. I was told that “yes we are supposed to get breaks” and “how have you not had a break yet?” I shrugged and was told to immediately go on break and not pass go. I felt like the schedule had somehow broken down and later while thinking about it, I noticed that the estimated R2 end time was 1 hour earlier than it should've been. My best guess is that the schedule hadn't accounted for the fact that LCT's were sealed, and because of this it was constantly short-changing judges an hour of time.

Critical Player Error: Failure to Maintain Composure
After break basically all my events were done and so I was floating around another LCT when the HJ came to me with a conundrum. A player was playing all double sleeved lands but single sleeved cards, the HJ proposed that maybe we should watch him shuffle to see if anything weird was going on, I mentioned that it might be a good idea to deck check him, all the events had slowed down, so we had the people available, and we could see if it was easy to pick out the lands. Also we had the benefit of actually completing the first deck check of the day.

The HJ agreed and swooped the decks. He spearheaded the investigation on the player with the weird lands while I checked the opponents deck. For the sake of deck checks. I then kept an eye on the HJ's event while he interviewed the player. I kept looking back over at the investigation, noticing at some point that another judge had becoming involved and that the player was looking more and more distressed. Eventually the HJ came back and let me know that the DQ was being processed. At this point the player was visibly sobbing. I felt extremely bad for the player and wanted to console him but at the same time, if he had been determined to be a cheater, softening the emotional distress of the punishment would defeat the purpose of the punishment. I wasn't too sure what to do so I left it alone. I also felt a third judge going in and getting in the way was not going to help anyways. After 5 or 10 minutes of the player being not happy and the HJ going back and checking in to see if the statement had been written, the HJ came over to me and asked if “as a customer service thing” I could talk to the player. He mentioned that the player expressed the desire to talk to a “different judge”. I felt a little relieved because I finally had a reason to try and make this player feel better about things.

I sat down and softly calmed the player down, I tried to be even and very transparent about the method and thought process of the judges here, letting him know that if a mistake had occurred we sincerely apologized. I spoke with him and encouraged him to write his statement, letting him know that it was his opportunity to present his case to the board that would examine his case. He visibly calmed down and seemed grateful for the compassion.

I felt a little guilty because I felt like I got to be the good cop in this scenerio which feels a little unfair to the judge who had to be the bad cop and process the DQ. I'm still not sure if we made the right decision in removing that player. After I had addressed the players concerns and he was quietly writing his statement the HJ asked me if I also wanted to submit a statement. I declined because I felt the bulk of my role in the “investigation” had been empathizing and and connecting with the player, which I felt would lend an immeasurable bias to anything I wrote regarding the incident, and would probably hinder the investigation process.

Saturday – Main Event Day 1 - Slips


Cutting Master
I've been on slips a few times and have a pretty good grasp of how it goes, it's not the most taxing task, so I knew I'd be in for a fairly easy day. A few of my team members, including the lead hadn't had the opportunity to use the laser paper cutter before. Which is arguably the most exciting thing in the world. So I got the teach them how to the cut the slips, unfortunately I ended up completely dominating the slip cutting activity every round, rather than letting everyone, especially the more inexperienced members of my team, have a go at it. There were frequent delays in getting the slips printed, and I was probably the quickest at getting the darn things cut.

Sorting Out Our Sorting Space
The other job of slips is sorting the slips. I like sorting things, and find it kind of cathartic, but since I already felt like the point person for cutting the slips I didn't try to intrude when someone else wanted to sort the slips.
At the end of round 1 I was pretty concerned when I came back after some end of round duties and saw that slips were everywhere! They were all over the cutting station, and were being sorted while new pairings were coming out, notably impeding pairings. I had a minor panic since this not only looked ridiculously unprofessional, but was also very inefficient. As pairings came out I let the team know I could take care of finishing up these slips, and would find us a better place to sort them, and that perhaps we should focus on this rounds slips for now.

I brought them into a table on the back and neatly set up a grid system, showing one of the other members on my team how it worked in the hopes that this, slightly more efficient and organized method, might be adopted.
Historically when I have worked a job, if a co-worker does something weird or wrong, I used to simply take care of the task myself instead of talking to them about it because in the past feedback has usually led to defensiveness or anger. But something I really like about the judge program is the constant need to improve that is felt by all it's members. When you provide feedback to people they actually like it and appreciate it. I spoke to the person in charge of slips, and let him know softly that I had a grid system we could maybe try, and that there was an empty table I requisitioned for our use.

Later in the day he thanked me, and let me know that he understood how hard it was for some people to give feedback to L3s. I hadn't known he was an L3 and might've thought twice before giving him feedback if I had known that, but I really appreciated that he did listen to what I had to say.

Overall I think I felt a little anxious on Saturday and was constantly worried I might be overstepping my bounds, I wasn't the team lead but felt concerned that the team lead hadn't delegated the tasks effectively or organized efficient methods to ensure all tasks were completed in a timely manner. In the end I feel like I might have insulted him a little and I should make it a point to apologize to him the next time I see him at an event.

Suspicious Blocking
I actually sat down near end of round to take a call in the lower tables, and saw the entire interaction happen. AP attacked with a Vigilant Baloth, NAP looked at her creatures, thought for a moment, and half-tapped a Suspicious Bookcase. It was a weird gesture that was a little ambiguous, AP said, “alright damage?” to which NAP said “sure, take 5”, AP expressed that he thought the baloth was being blocked but NAP expressed her intent not to block. Both player looked to me, I agreed that the motion had been ambiguous, but when the discrepancy became apperant NAP had attempted to clarify. I said I'd issue no penalty but allow AP to make some new decisions after blocks now that he understood what was happening clearly. He declined but didn't seem satisfied. I asked if he would like to appeal and he said yes. I fetched a red shirt and explained the situation, the appeals judge asked the players how blocking had been handled prior and it seemed that NAP had been visibly moving her creatures up into the red zone and pasting them to the creatures they were blocking. AP was unhappy with the ruling, but there wasn't much more to be done here. As he continued to try and push his case, it began to become more apparent to me that he was trying to push his opponent into a weird block rather than protect the integrity of the game. A turn later, due to the continued existence of the Suspicious Bookcase AP lost and loudly blamed it on the ruling. I wanted to placate the player but didn't see any way to do that and collected the match slip and left the table. The entire interaction was kind of unpleasant and I'm not sure if there was anything I could've done to improve either players experience.

Sunday – Main Day 2 – Floor/Features


Featured Paperwork
I'm still very inexperienced with limited Day 2, and don't watch a lot of coverage. So I thought it was strange that the featured draft pod had to register their pool, then give us the list to photocopy, and then finish registering their deck. When the lead asked us why they did this, I said I thought it was because perhaps during the down time the stream would display the pool and then viewers could try to build a deck out of it. It turns out that is not the reason this is done. Because the draft is being streamed it would be very easy for players in the feature pod to watch the stream in between rounds and get different amounts of information on their opponents depending on how long the stream spent on each one. To alleviate uneven advantage, and the beginning of each round the players in the feature pod would exchange pool lists so the other person could review what had been drafted. I didn't know this happened and thought it was really interesting!

...In Conclusion
Because of some personal issues I was feeling a little down this GP and I think it really impacted my performance. Nothing I was responsible for fell apart or got done horribly wrong, but I wasn't really giving 100%, and the players could certainly feel it. On Day 2 in particular I got appealed 3 times on basic rules calls, probably because I just wasn't exuding confidence. I wasn't as bubbly or friendly as usual and that is really sad. I think if you are doing a job, especially a passion-driven job like this one, you should really be giving it your all every time. I still feel really guilty about it, since I know there are a lot of other judges that would perhaps have been more capable of delivering a great player experience, but were turned down for the event. I tried very hard to ensure I was doing the best I could, but I felt it really just wasn't enough this time. In the coming weeks I'm going to work very hard to ensure I am always doing whatever I can to ensure that I represent, Magic and Channelfireball positively!