Las Vegas, Nevada | Modern
Time: Thursday August 22th – Sunday August 25th
Modern - Players: 1851 Winner: Simon Nielsen
Sealed - Players: 1420 Winner: Allen Wu

Thursday – Last chance Trails


Sleight of Opt
A player called me over, and let me know that they cast Opt, but instead of scrying and then drawing, they looked at the top two, put one on the bottom and one into their hand, effectively resolving a Sleight of Hand. I thought about it for a moment. In legacy players playing Preordain, Ponder and Brainstorm interchangeably or mushed together in some strange way happens with some amount of regularity, so I've thought about those cases before, however I hadn't thought about the same problems coming up in modern! I considered ruling HCE, we'd reveal the hand and let the opponent choose which card was in the Sleight of Hand set of two, and then grab the card on the bottom, randomize them and put them on top then resolve Opt. But that doesn't really offset the advantage of knowing both cards. I thought about GRV, and doing virtually the same thing, but instead of letting the opponent choose the card for the set, we'd choose it randomly. However both of these fixes seem lengthy and disruptive and neither of them really do anything to mitigate the advantage already gained by the player. I eventually ruled GPE-GRV, on the grounds that the player thought he had cast a different spell, and issued no fix, which felt kind of bad. After discussing it later, I think this probably fits more accurately under HCE but also elicits no fix there either.

Brand Recognition
A spectator walked up to me and said “Judge, that phoenix player is using teal DragonShields, which are semi-transparent, and he's playing Thing in the Ice.” I sighed and walked over to the match, the players were just getting ready to shuffle up for game three of the finals of an LCT. I asked the phoenix player if I could look at his deck. I spent a fair amount of time examining the sleeves, and determined that if I looked very carefully, I'd be able to see the card on the top, however with the glare from lighting and at the distance a deck normally sits, I found it was virtually impossible to see through them. I recall issuing a GL in a very similar situation a few events back and getting overturned, the HJ had mentioned that “Knowing the brand of sleeves and using that to determine that they are semi-transparent feels like a bit of a gotcha”. I had been a little unsettled by it at the time, but in this scenario I decided to do the same thing, deviate and downgrade. I didn't think that the player was realistically able to see through the sleeves without excessive effort, and therefore didn't merit a GL to offset advantage. I let the player know that they had 10 minutes to change out the sleeves, and that while it was hard to see through them, I could and would like them changed before the next match.

The player wasn't terribly excited about changing the sleeves and appealed. I was the HJ of the event, however the TL at the beginning of the day had let us know we could “uphold ourselves” if we needed to, but that we could also go to any L3 or him if we wanted to give the player a second opinion. I always feel it is fair to give players a second opinion even if you are the HJ, and so I fetched an L3. The L3 mentioned to me that the correct ruling was a game loss, I laughed and replied, “I know I deviated, however if you want to overturn me and give this player a game loss, it would be pretty funny,” the L3 thought about it, but ended up landing in the same camp as me, where he felt like it was a bit of a “gotcha”. He let the player know that we were already giving him a break, and could he just change his sleeves. I let the player know how close he had come to appealing himself into a game loss, which I think made him realize how much more preferable changing his sleeves really was.

Friday – Main Event – Slips


Fetch for Hogaak?
AP cracked a fetchland, set his hand down and set aside a Watery Grave face down, thought about it, looked through the deck some more, then decided he did indeed want the Watery Grave, he turned the land face up and presented his deck. NAP said it looked like a card went into AP's hand from the library during the fetch profess. I did a card count and determined that this is not what happened. NAP then said it might be possible for AP to have put a card into his hand and to have played the Watery Grave from his hand. I felt this was a valid concern, but didn't think it was what had happened, I looked at the players hand and didn't see anything completely game breaking, the player was already fairly far ahead, and was set up nicely to cast a turn 2 Hogaak from his graveyard, therefore I felt the incentive to cheat was fairly low here.

Slow and Aggressive Behavior
AP calls me over and mentions that NAP is playing really slowly, and that while things in the game aren't changing very much, NAP is spending a long time thinking at the end of each turn. NAP is on the durdly Arcum's Astrolabe/Urza deck that's a spiritual successor to KCI & eggs. NAP says that while things don't look complex he has a lot of decision trees, he mentions the multiple tutors and different lines of play that can be explored with just the cards on board. NAP then mentions that AP is being a little aggressive and is rushing him. Time was running down in the round and NAP had taken game one of the match, so stalling until the clock ran out was something I thought about. Unfortunately things like slow play and USC-minor can't really be given simply based on a player's testimony, and really need to be observed directly. I let the players know what policy had to say about both things and that I'd be watching the remainder of the match for both behaviors. I sat down and a nearby spectator and friend of NAPs pulls me aside and testifies that AP is being awful. I listened to him, and mentioned again, that without watching the match there was not much I could do. I returned to the match to see that NAP had won. It was a little dissatisfying as I didn't really get to do what I had been called over to do, but both players seemed calmer by the end of it all.

A Helpful Fix
In our team meeting a judge let us know about an interesting call, he began by saying, “This isn't the exact situation but the core of the call is much simpler if I explain it in terms of Splinter Twin.” AP has Splinter Twin in his hand, and NAP knows this due to a previous Inquisition of Kozilek, at the end of the turn, AP plays Deceiver Exarch. Then AP takes his turn, draws a card, and NAP says, “Hold on, I wanted to do something during the upkeep. I'm ok with backing up by putting a random card on the top of the library,” NAP can't realistically do anything to stop the Splinter Twin combo, but he does have a Surgical Extraction in his hand that he could use to for the opponent to shuffle their library. We weren't really sure what to do in this situation, telling the player “No you can't do anything” or “no you've missed your window” is no good, but allowing Splinter Twin to be put back on top by “backing up” is also no good.

Saturday – Main Event – Team Lead Papers


Placing Pairings
Pairings letter ranges are typically printed in “A-D” format, and one of my team members let me know that this implicitly encourages players to look for the next letters (E,F.. etc.) to the right, therefore when posting letter ranges, it would be better to put A-D on your furthest left pairings board. I thought this was a really interesting way to cut down on the number of players asking where their board was.

Assassinate a Spellbomb
This was a kind of interesting interaction, AP cast Assassin's Trophy, on a Nihil Spellbomb, and NAP wanted to know if he could use the land acquired from Assassin's Trophy to pay for the triggered ability. I let him know that, strangely enough, yes, he could do that. Assassin's Trophy would fully resolve (allowing NAP to grab a land) before we put the Nihil Spellbomb trigger on the stack, and upon resolution of the trigger he'd have the option to pay for the ability. AP was, understandably, less excited about this interaction.

An Infinite Problem
I walked up to a call where it was the Thopter Foundry & Sword of the Meek mirror. There were 15+ permanents on both sides of the board, and very few cards left in each players library. They let me know that they called a judge about five minutes ago because they both had infinite life combos and infinite damage combos and wanted to know what happened. The judge had walked away and they were concerned he had forgotten about them, I looked around and noticed both HJs and two other L3s in a small cluster by a pillar, I pointed to the pillar and asked if the judge they had talked to was one of those ones. They agreed that he was in the cluster and I let the players know that it was an important judge cluster and it was very likely the judge they had called was confirming the ruling on infinite loops with the other important judges and to just sit tight. The ruling in the end was that AP chooses a number of iterations to do his combo, and then NAP chooses a number of iterations and once those numbers are locked in, no one can go infinite any more. In this scenario, effectively, NAP wins.

Unsettling Triggers
I got a call about how many times Unsettled Mariner would trigger off of a Searing Blaze. I initially ruled once, then thought about it and realized that was probably not correct, I had to, rather sheepishly, return to the table at a later time and admit to the players I had told them incorrect information. Luckily I don't think it had impacted the game too heavily but it's still a dangerous mistake to make on Day 2 of a GP.

Drawing from the Sideboard
NAP called me over and mentioned that at the end of his turn he had asked AP how many cards were in his hand, and AP had answered 4. Then AP untapped, drew, played a land, and cast Ulamog, Ceaseless Hunger, while the exile triggers were being put on the stack NAP noticed that AP still had a lot of cards in his hand and again asked how many there were. AP said “4” again. This immediately struck me as incredibly weird. I asked AP how this could've happened, he said that the cards had probably stuck together during his draw step. I wasn't incredibly convinced, since most players catch drawing an additional card immediately, as the cards in your hand are usually pretty memorable and when it goes up by two players tend to notice pretty quickly. I went and grabbed a HJ to start and investigation. The other cards in AP's hand it were a land, two Expedition Maps and an Oblivion Stone, his opponent was on Hogaak, had a Hogaak, two Vengevines, two Bloodghasts and a Faithless Looting in the graveyard, as well as a Satyr Wayfinder in play, AP tron player was at 12 and the NAP player was at 14. When the players were separated, I asked if they were live for cash, and they both agreed they were, I also asked who was going to win, AP said that it was looking pretty grim before he drew Ulamog, and that if NAP drew a land it would be pretty bad for him because then he'd bring back both bloodghasts and cast a Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis. and NAP said similarly, that he was in a pretty good position but now that Ulamog had been cast he was more concerned. The HJ then discovered that the player had been keeping their hand close to their SB, which was on top of their deckbox and to their left. After counting the SB it was discovered that it was 14 cards, aP didn't have a good explanation for why he had boarded an extra card in without removing one, and by the end we were both fairly certain that AP had not drawn two cards from his library, but had instead drawn a card from his SB and one from his library.

This is Why it's Called Team Lead in Training
I was also taking my TLTP this event, and it uhm... I wouldn't say it was the worst I've been but it was definitely very unimpressive. I was worried about my communication, since talking with other judges is a real weakness for me. focused really hard on talking to my teammates and interfacing with the HJ. Unfortunately this meant the actual tasks for the day kind of fell apart in a few places, I completely forgot about feature match slips, and while I knew standings were supposed to go up in round 14 and 15. I completely forgot until one of my team members reminded me a few moments before they were supposed to be posted, which resulted in some issues with players not knowing when pairings were posted and arriving late to their seats. The HJ decided to give theses players the time extension and no warning because it was our fault that the issue had occurred in the first place. Overall it was frustrating to fail at the things I'm usually a little stronger at, but it was a good learning experience and hopefully I'll do better next time.

...In Conclusion
I was surprisingly a little disappointed by MF Vegas this year, while I don't like working events that are as on fire as last year's Vegas, I was hoping this year would be a little more hectic. It wasn't, however and ran fairly smoothly, I wasn't bored on Saturday, but there could've been a little more to do. I still really enjoyed the sheer scale of the event as well as all the new things they rolled out for Vegas, including the Championship events, the premier draft events and the super exciting Command Zone area.