Seattle, Washington | Sealed
Time: Thursday June 20 – Sunday June 23
Players: 2000 Winner: Matt Sikkink Johnson

Friday – Scheduled Sides


A Burgundy on Every Side
Ajani wanted his opponent to change her dirty sleeves, he said he'd noticed the heavy wear on the sleeves about half way through the first game, but didn't want to be disruptive, so he'd called a judge in between games 1 and 2. The judge on the call obliged and got Nissa to change her sleeves, however during the process the judge noticed that Nissa had double sleeved foil lands, while the rest of her cards were single sleeved and not foil. (which makes sense as this was limited). The judge on the call decided to investigate for cheating, and after no cheating was determined, he decided not to issue a GL for marked cards, as it was in between games. He consulted with one of the burgundies about his ruling and got a thumbs up from them. However when he delivered the ruling to the table, Ajani immediately appealed, likely hoping for the GL. The judge couldn't get ahold of the burgundy they had just spoken to, so instead he got a different appeals judge, and unfortunately that judge wanted to overturn the ruling, the judge on the call mentioned that he'd gotten approval for a different ruling from another burgundy. This caused the second burgundy to ponder his decision, grab the first burgundy and they both went to talk to the HJ. After much Debate the HJ decided to overturn the ruling and deliver the GL on the basis that if we got this call during the game (which we only failed to because Ajani was being polite) this would've been the ruling, and it was cleat that Nissa could've gained advantage from this. Something I noticed was that this would be pretty advantageous for Ajani if he'd won the first game, for example, he noticed the issue, but decided to wait until after the game to see if he could GL his opponent for the match win.

Casual Calling
One of the new things I really liked about MagicFest Seattle was the addition of a casual play area, I'm often unseating players deep in a casual commander game or player jamming modern to place my events, and I usually just have to give them my best guess of where they can play and not be unseated. At MF Seattle I could just redirect them to the casual play area, which made them less upset about being moved! Something that was suggested by other judges is that it might be useful to have a “learn to play” booth run by a judge stationed there. It also might be nice to have a judge there to take random EDH calls, one of which I ended up taking while running my adjacent Sealed Double Up event. A player walked up to me and asked how Aminatou, the Fateshifter's ultimate would work in a game of emperor, and which permanents would go where. I let her know that everyone's stuff would move to the player in the designated direction, even if that person was on their team. She also asked me what would happen if a member on a team was targeted with Emrakul, the Promised End's Mindslaver ability, I let her know that the Emrakul player would only control the targeted player, and that the entire team would get an extra turn.

What Even Are Activated Abilities?
I was watching a match where AP had Collector Ouphe and the NAP had Altar of Dementia, NAP attempted to block and sacrifice a creature to Altar of Dementia during combat, I stopped them and mentioned that the altar couldn't be activated, at which point AP helpfully mentioned that Altar's ability wasn't an activated ability because a previous round opponent had told her so. I informed the player of the correct ruling, and then felt a little suspicious that perhaps NAP had known it was an activated ability. I thought about it but decided that the cheat didn't seem that advantageous, AP had attacked with Collector Ouphe this turn, so NAP simply blocked and killed it. Next turn he cast a large creature and fully milled his opponent. NAP mentioned he might've activated the altar once earlier, on a smaller creature. Both of these, if they were cheats, were fairly low benefit considering the board state and NAPs other lines.

I Guess You Were Just Playing For Fun
In my modern event I had two players that were seated in the wrong spots, it was only 5 minutes into the round, so I had them switch seats (they only realized their error when the match slips were handed out). Unfortunately one of the opponents was like “Well I already won game 1, so now what happens?” I unfortunately had to explain to him that the game he won didn't mean anything and that he would have to play an entire set against his new opponent.

Localized Problems
I had a local known cheater in my Sealed Double Up, it made me pretty nervous since I'm not great at dealing with cheaters, I informed my FJs of the kind of cheating that might happen (drawing extra cards or pool manipulation) and had the player lightly watched during build and R1, unfortunately we were a little too short on staff during the subsequent rounds to keep someone lightly posted around the suspicious player. I wasn't sure if this was entirely the correct thing to do, one one hand, player history is valuable, if you have an unrepentant cheater on your hands, I think it's important to watch them to protect the integrity of the event. On the other hand, we shouldn't let a players checkered past haunt them forever.

Return Your Opponents Creature to Your Hand
A player called a judge over to the table and said “Judge, my opponent just cast one of my cards from his hand.” The judge, understandably, was puzzled as to how this had happened and the player expanded. “My opponent has Fallen Shinobi in play, he cast one of my creatures off it's ability, then he attacked me with the creature, used ninjutsu and accidentally returned my creature to his hand, we're both playing the same sleeves so neither of us noticed until now!” The fix here is to rewind the cast and simply move the card to the opponent's hand.

Other Judge Strikes Again
NAP controls Plague Engineer naming humans, AP plays Watcher for Tomorrow and asks if he can get his card, the judge on the call answered that both the ETB and ETG triggers hit the stack at the same time so the player can organize them in the way that they choose. NAP then mentioned that another judge had ruled it differently in the previous round. The judge on the call shrugged and let him know this was definitely the correct ruling, and offered an appeal. The player appealed and the judge was upheld. Afterwards the judge investigated whether someone else on the event had given the incorrect ruling, but found that no one claimed to have taken that kind of a call. I mentioned that “A judge said it works this way” is a good way for a player to intimidate their opponent into believing them and not calling a judge to verify for themselves.

Saturday – Scheduled Sides


Just a Regular CPV
I had a situation in a regular REL event where AP tapped 8 mana for Magmatic Sinkhole on a Rhox Veteran, NAP responded by playing Umezawa's Charm giving it +2/+2, afterwards AP said “Well I have 2 mana left over afterwards, so I want to cast this Defile. I wasn't entirely sure what to do so I ruled backup to the point of the floating mana and announce which colors are floating. I don't want players to be able to tap out and trick their opponents into thinking they have no other responses. In this situation while it kind of felt bad for AP, both players revealed a card from their hand, so there was a bit of an information parity here.

Commander Confusion
The commander event is always run a little differently, and personally I don't really care how it's run as long as everyone is on the same page. Often the scorekeeper solution is to make a dummy event in WER and print regular pairings. Players sit down and every set of two “matches” is a pod. I like this solution because it's really easy to input winners (the “match” with the winner in it is input as having the appropriate winner, and all other matches are input as draws, this means we can get WER to randomize winner pods for R2) it's also nice because this way players don't have to worry about where to sit down and you also don't need to re-do table numbers. However when I got to the area a member of kickstart had renumbered it so that each number represented 4 chairs, I asked him if this had been correlated with the SK, he seemed uncertain and asked. When he returned, he told me to renumber the area normally, so I did. Unfortunately when pairings came out, they had 4 people assigned to each table number, we fixed the table numbers while the players were standing there, but it was a pretty silly miscommunication. They've also changed how commander events work again, now it's just 50 tix for everyone and nothing in the pot. However if the players want to put something into the pot they can agree to do that since it's just a casual event. I'm not sure how I feel about this. But I feel like the lack of incentive for winning may lead to a more positive commander experience over all.

What is the Difference Between Chandra and Jace?
I got called over to the table where a player had been using Chandra, Fire Atistan's +1 to put cards into his hand instead of into exile, and had been doing it that way for the past few turns. The player was on 6 mana and had only one card in his hand at the time the error was called, it was the card he had “drawn” for Chandra this turn, the backup itself was simple, simply exile the card now and don't fix any of the previous errors. I was a little concerned about cheating here, since it's something I should be more on the look out for, however after discussing with another judge, the cheat here seemed low value, since it looked like the player had been playing his cards off Chandra each turn anyways.

Surgical is Not a Verb
AP cast Surgical Extraction by saying “Surgical Stinkweed Imp,” in response to a draw spell. AP searched the library and exiled the other three copies of Stinkweed Imp but forgot to exile the one in the graveyard, NAP then resolved his draw spell and dredged at which point a judge was called. The judge on the call thought due to what the player said as well as the timing of the spell, it was pretty clear that AP's intent was to exile the Stinkweed Imp in the graveyard. I am inclined to agree with this ruling, I like when players don't feel like they are being penalized for IRL “misclicks” however I do think there's an argument on the other side that this resolution of Surgical Extraction is legal and if a player makes a strategical error in resolving their spell it's on them.

Sunday – Main Event – Slips & Draft Caller


Tobi, Caller of Drafts
MF Seattle was my second time draft calling, it was a lot less nerve wracking this time, I also got a little better at giving players enough time to count the cards before they passed them. I also made some modifications to my draft script to include an instruction telling the players to shuffle before passing. I felt like this time whenever there was an action the players needed to take that wasn't timed (like counting out the cards in between picks) I made sure to look around the room and see if there were any players that were still moving, and I waited until most of the movement had died down before I moved on. I think to be a successful draft caller you have to be able to feel the cadence of the draft to ensure you're not racing ahead of the players.

Players Are Entitled to Warnings
I was sitting on a match and heard some players discussing a judge ruling behind me, apparently one of the players had played a CMC 3 creature for 2 mana, and the judge on the call didn't issue a warning. He was complaining to his friends about how he thought he should've gotten a penalty, and how if he was allowed to make this mistake with no repercussions, he was going to make it 'all day long'. It's an interesting thing to think about, I know I worry about giving players warnings sometimes because it might make them upset, so it was really interesting to know that not giving a warning could also make them upset! Players like playing in events that they feel are fair, and when they receive a ruling that they feel incentivises or allows cheating it makes them doubt the tournament integrity. Many players would rather take a warning and know that their tournament is being run safely than dodge the warning but know that others may be abusing the system to cheat.

“Can I Have This Resolve the Way I Want?”
A player had Gluttonous Slug and Rank Officer, the player wanted to know if Gluttonous Slug could get a counter from both Rank Officer and the zombie he makes. This can happen if the player puts Rank Officer's ability on the stack after Gluttonous Slug's evolve trigger, however I feel like it's not really okay to explicitly say that to the player, otherwise we start moving into OA territory. If a player asks me “how do I resolve my triggers for maximum effect?” I can't very well tell them that. I tried to walk the player through the triggers, letting him know that both the evolve and make a zombie trigger would hit the stack simultaneously and that he could order them how he wanted, and that evolve checks for greater power on trigger and on resolution. I've had a few of these calls lately, where I feel as if I'm dancing around the answer, I want to give good customer service, but I also don't want to play the game for players.

WotC Printing Error, or Cheating?
There was a pack in Day 2 that had two of the same common in it, a player called me over to the table and asked me about it. I thought about how this could be cheating, if someone drafted a bad common and then changed their mind and switched it out this was possible, however it would have to be the previous pick they were switching, since on Day 2 all the picks are in a single face down pile, and if a player went rummaging through them for the right card to switch in, that would surely draw attention. At the time to avoid unhinging the draft I told the player it was probably a factory error and to continue drafting, I didn't see a good investigation path and felt like it wasn't likely to be cheating. I discussed the situation with another judge afterwards because it was worrying me, but he also agreed that even if it was cheating, the scope of it was so narrow and it was also virtually impossible to catch unless every player could give a firm account of whether the second copy of the card was in the pack or not (which with players is not easy information to recall).

Within or Without Policy
There was as call on day 2 where a player wasn't laying out their cards when the pass was called for, the player they were passing to complained that this made it more difficult for him to count the cards (typically players lay out the cards in easily countable chunks, such as 3-5-5 etc. for the next person in sequence). I let the player know that he should lay out the cards, simply to make things run more smoothly, the player was a little resistant, and claimed he had in fact been counting the cards, I still let him know I'd like him to lay out the cards. This isn't a specific tournament requirement, however, and it felt really weird to tell a player to do something just because another player wanted him to do it that way.

Disallow the Spectators
On Day 2 of the GP I had a player ask me if I could tell the spectators to stop watching his match. He mentioned this was because one of the other players was in his draft pod and was a potential opponent. I was a little uncomfortable with this ruling, but told the spectators to leave. I know if a player asks me to have spectators in general leave, I just acquiesce, no questions asked, if a player asks to not have a specific spectator watch, I usually do the same thing (though I've not had this come up before now) but a player asking to not have a future opponent watch feels really unusual. After having run so many PPTQs where I would let players who had finished their matches early know which match contained their next round opponent, and encourage them to watch the match if they wanted. I discussed this with a few other judges and the general consensus from them was similar, asking spectators to leave is not a huge detriment to a tournament, however the rules somewhat change during top 8 and unless the player has a particularly good reason to not want a spectator present.

Stamps Are More Powerful Than Decklists
There was a player who registered no pool on their deck registration sheet at this event, when they were deck checked the team found that they had all their stamped cards in their box, which in any other event would be unregistered cards in the box, and would merit a Game Loss. However instead of issuing a GL the HJ decided that the existence of stamped cards effectively counted as a decklist. He likened it to a similar experience a few events back where a player lost a card in their day 2 pool, the HJ then had ruled that we could not replace it, since players registered their own pools on day 2 and it would be very easy to cheat good cards into the pool in this way. Once again in this situation the physical cards override the decklist. I'm a little wary of this because on day 2 it's very easy to scoop up stamped cards, though getting a card with the correct stamp and subbing something else out in it's place is a lot of work for most players, so I think the potential for abuse here is pretty low.

...In Conclusion
I really enjoyed MF Seattle, Saturday was chaotic and reminded me of a miniature Vegas, it was fun to be in the middle of a really busy event again, also there were a lot of new people at this one, partially due to both size and the fact that Seattle is one of the few West Coast events. I really enjoyed draft calling and felt much more confident this time, and I feel like I have a strong script that I can rely on in the future if I am needed for such a position. I'm looking forward to Dallas and all the challenges team leading will bring!