Dallas Fort-Worth, Texas | Theros Beyond Death Limited
Time: Friday April 8th 2022 – Sunday April 10th 2022
Main Event Players: 900 Winner: Travis Brown

Friday - Modern Trial HJ


Breaking Breaks
So, my call time was 11:30, we had a short introduction and team meeting, then I was sent over to check player vaccination cards and negative test results and ensure that the name on said tests and cards was the same as the name on their ID and also to ensure that the test was within 72 hours of Friday. This was a bit overwhelming since I wasn’t familiar with most of the US IDs or vaccination cards, and finding all the relevant information on the negative test sheet was a pain. But it was okay. Then after about 20 minutes of this I was told to go on my full round break. I was like “What? I’ve been here for less than half an hour (well maybe more than that because I arrived early)” and was told that because judges would be relevant later in the day, the breaks needed to start ASAP. As someone who has organized sides schedules, I respect the fact that some schedules are hard to work with, but this I think borders into the “mistake” realm. I spoke with the sides lead afterwards and mentioned that perhaps having the half round breaks first would’ve been better.

Into the Fire
I was told before my break to ensure I was around for 2:30 because I’d be head judging the second Modern Trial! Yay! Previously I’d been assigned to floating but because of schedule reorganization I got shuffled over to HJ a trial, which I prefer, so I was excited. I decided to check in a little beforehand since I noticed the first trial was quite large. When I returned from break I was immediately assigned a few tasks on the first trial and also took several judge calls. It was apparent that the player to judge ratio was kind of high. I didn’t get the opportunity to check in with my two FJs until 2pm. With everything running through melee and no paper slips I was a little disoriented as to how we would be addressing normal tournament operations, I was told that some decklists were online, but some were not, so we’d need to collect those, I was told that EOR would be run through Discord, which I didn’t have access to, unfortunately (After realizing how important this would be for the weekend, I downloaded Discord on my phone and sorted out wifi for the following two days). Oh, and also that my event was 180 players. This was... a lot, but I figured it would be fine, my team seemed experienced. I had one of my FJs collect the lists and leave to verify the lists while the other two of us stuck around and took calls. After about 10 minutes, I noticed that my FJ was still missing, which isn’t unreasonable, but I kinda needed them doing, not lists, so Isent my other FJ to go retrieve him. Then they were both gone and I was alone. For about 10 minutes it was total chaos as judge calls stacked up. To compound this, all infraction entry was digital which I also didn’t have access to at the time. Overall, this was a mistake on my part, I think a 1:60 judge to player ratio is already pretty bad, sending one of my judges away at the beginning of the round to do a clerical task was an oversight, instead I should’ve kept them there until the event had shown it wasn’t going to be on fire. Additionally I think when I realized I needed my third judge, I either shouldn’t have sent my second judge away to fetch him, or I should’ve stressed the need for expediency.

Just Blame it on the Software
Right now event running software is in an awkward place, while we still have WER and WLTR at our disposal, the lack of DCI numbers makes player entry frustrating. Currently Eventlink lacks the ability to manually pair players nor does it have the ability to add players mid-event without issuing either match losses or game losses. Instead of working around this, SCG decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and went with MTGMelee instead, which has its own host of problems. While MTGMelee can take infractions digitally, that feature is relatively new and untested, and SCG decided to handle infractions through a google form instead, since it’s something they’ve got experience with. I guess there’s a “new technology” learning budget that they didn’t want to exceed. Also End of Round, which was revolutionized by Purple Fox has now been sent back further than the stone age since there aren’t time extensions on match slips anymore so the EOR sweep won’t let us know which remaining matches have extensions. We could’ve done what we did at the F2F which was leave slips on the tables with the extensions, however the issue with this is that since they’re not match slips, so the players have no reason not to lose them and it’s also somewhat likely the judge on the call will forget to put one down. Instead we were reporting extensions in Discord, which meant that at the end of the round someone would have to go through the Discord and cross reference with the “remaining matches” list from the SK and see what remaining matches still had time extensions. Then they’d need to visually verify that the players at those matches hadn’t simply gotten up and walked away without reporting. I think a big problem was that only one player would need to report, so if both players thought the other person did so, no one would report, this resulted in a lot more matches being out/abandoned than normal, making a more traditional EOR (print out the matches remaining) unrealistic, since at time in the round there were still hundreds of matches out.
Finally, over all of this were wifi and internet issues. Which was partially why we still had paper pairings, so that players without phone service, or with bad phone service wouldn’t be left out in the cold.
Needless to say EOR was a mess basically all weekend and working the event was frustrating at best since to simply function I needed to be constantly juggling no less than three windows on my phone, not counting whatever judging app I wanted to use as well as a separate tab for the CR since both the current judging apps don’t display the CR properly.

It’s Not MPE
Both players mulliganed, AP then played a Scalding Tarn and Dragon’s Rage Channeler and as he went to fetch he noticed that NAP hadn’t yet finished putting a card on the bottom of his library. AP then looked back at his hand and realized that he hadn’t put a card on the bottom of his library yet either and called a judge on himself! The judge on the call ruled HCE have NAP take a card from AP’s hand and put it on the bottom of his library. This call is interesting for many reasons. Everyone I spoke to about it agreed it’s definitely not MPE. However, there are a few questions, first, should we do a simple backup before the HCE and put the Channeler and Scalding Tarn back in the hand? Most judges agreed that this made an already punitive feeling fix even more punitive, so we probably shouldn’t do that. Also, should we have NAP finish his mulligan before executing the HCE or not? I think yes, since again, no need to make this fix more harsh than it already is. Alternative fixes proposed were filing this under GRV as a partial fix (if a player forgot to put cards into their library they do so now) which certainly feels like a better fix but also invalidates the line in MPE that specifically mentions that this should be HCE. Another judge mentioned that you could just get AP to put a card on the bottom now since there really isn’t any advantage to be gained here and call it egregious out of order sequencing.

Saturday - Modern 30k “Floorgistics” 900 players


Judges Can Tilt Too!
Early on in the day a more senior judge shadowed me on a card counting call. I get nervous when being shadowed because, well I don’t want to make a mistake in front of my superiors! Additionally, this particular judge has shadowed me in the past on other calls I’ve screwed up. I also get very nervous about card counting, it’s not a particularly strong skill for me, and while I understand how to do them, I also find my execution a little sloppy. These two stresses collided and I kind of melted, and ended up handing over a somewhat simple call. It felt stupid and knocked me off kilter. This kind of thing has happened in the past and I know that being on “judge tilt” can and will most certainly cascade into more poor rulings. One poor ruling will not wreck an event, but 10 from the same judge will not only make an event worse, but will be really bad for that judge. I decided to take a moment off the floor to recenter myself and ensure that I wouldn’t let “judge tilt” ruin the rest of my day. I’m glad I did so since I managed to execute many successful rulings afterwards (including a different card count a few hours later!)

Colossal Uncertainty
I got called over to a table where AP said “I cast Cultivator Colossus with my Cavern of Souls” NAP didn’t respond. Then AP said, “trigger?” NAP continued to not respond, and AP played a land and drew a card at which point NAP told them to wait and that they wanted to do something. I asked them what the something was and they mentioned that they wanted to steal AP’s Amulet of Vigor with their Archmages Charm. I think this is an important question to ask since sometimes what NAP wants to do won’t affect anything or the sequencing doesn’t actually matter, in which case you can resolve the call easily without taking a bunch of extra wasted time. This unfortunately, did matter, so I thought about it, and felt like NAP was given reasonable time to respond, but also didn’t say anything to all his opponent to move forward, so it could go either way. I ruled in NAP’s favor allowing them to cast Archmages Charm, but offered the appeal. The HJ overturned, explaining that perhaps if NAP had said something after the land play but before the card draw we could’ve let them but at this point, their moment had passed. I was fine with this since in my opinion it was a 50/50 ruling anyways.

Confining Cards
AP controlled Solitary Confinement and missed their discard trigger, then they picked up a card for the turn and realized that they shouldn't be doing that. The judge on the call ruled MT-Warning, since the trigger is detrimental, and then applied the LEC fix for the “half-drawn” card but didn’t apply the warning since both infractions were related to the same root cause (AP forgot about solitary confinement).

Regular REL still has Policy Documents for a Reason
I’ve been on a small crusade recently to get people to actually read and apply the JAR. And uh, I might’ve done a bad thing in a Regular REL event at SCG Dallas. AP missed their own Chalice of the Void trigger on their own Lotus Petal, which they then used to cast Thoughtcast and draw two cards. The JAR has us (rather uselessly) put the trigger on the stack now, which as usual, doesn’t work properly with Chalice of the Void. I felt like this was stupid and had the player rewind up to the point of Lotus Petal being on the stack and have it get countered by Chalice of the Void. I probably should not have done this.

Changing it up
SCG decided to change up our familiar tournament structure for SCG Dallas, instead of our usual cut to top 8, we did a cut to top 12, with the top four swiss finishers getting byes after the cut. This had the interesting result of encouraging the top tables to actually play it out instead of drawing in. I kinda like that since if you want coverage to be exciting, you want the best players to be on coverage!

“Judge My Whole Deck is a Problem”
AP presented the wrong deck, it was ruled as a deck problem - warning, no cards were revealed (though I think technically policy says they should be?) they should now present the correct deck. I’m okay with this, since it’s an easy enough mistake to make, and revealing all the cards feels odd.

Channel Your Inner Judge
AP Channelled Boseiju, Who Endures on NAP’s Sacred Foundry, as AP was searching they asked NAP whether they could get another Sacred Foundry, NAP didn’t respond but a player in an adjacent match said “yeah”. We pondered whether this might be Outside Assistance, but ultimately decided against it, since if a judge had been asked they would’ve given the same answer.

No Good, Two-Faced Cards
If AP controls Courser of Kruphix and reveals a modal DFC on top of their library, they can play it as a land (so long as one of its sides is a land). This is exciting!

Sunday – Modern 10k “Timekeepers” 300 players & 9 rounds


The Benefit of Having Shadow
We were incredibly overstaffed for the Modern 10k on Sunday, with 10+ judges for 300 players I figured today would be a good day for shadowing and mentoring. AP casts Violent Outburst and cascades into Crashing Footfalls and then keeps cascading for two more cards by accident. The judge on the call decide it's LEC and explains that they're going to shuffle the seen cards into the library. I mention to the judge to ask the players if there were any previous known cards, The judge nods and asks the players, who point to a previous Violent Outburst and mention a previous Cascade of about 5 cards. The judge on the call then tells the players to shuffle the extra seen cards into the whole library. I say "except the bottom four cards of the library, right?" The judge on the call looks at me weirdly and says that since cascade puts them on the bottom in a random order, we don’t need to preserve their location, since they’re random. This uh, is not... totally a correct assessment, but having interrupted this call twice already I didn’t want to keep butting in, plus I felt like this might take 2-4 minutes to explain to the judge on the call and adding that time onto the tournament for the very minimal value of a slightly better LEC fix (that probably wouldn’t be terribly relevant anyways) was not an appropriate value tradeoff, so I allowed the mistake to happen. Afterwards I spoke with the judge on the call so that we wouldn’t bump into this issue again. I felt a little bad about allowing a mistake to happen, and asked the HJ and AJ how they felt about the interaction, they both agreed that it was alright that I had stepped back when I did.

Shady Islands
I shadowed a call on a nearby Regular REL match where AP played Mystic Sanctuary. The judge on the call let the player know that we'd be replacing it with a basic land, the player was like, "Oh okay cool I guess, this one doesn't come into play tapped!" The judge on the call said nothing and took off to find an island. I let the players know that we'd actually be shuffling the card back into their library and they wouldn't be re-drawing, (as it says in the JAR) and they were a little sad. I gave them a playful jab, and said “well I mean, you’re playing a banned card, the penalty could certainly be worse”, they laughed and were like "Okay, losing the card is fine," At which point the judge on the call returned and I realized that they might not know the correct policy fix, since they hadn’t corrected the player’s assumption earlier. I pulled the aside and let them know. Though I felt dumb for kind of eating the call while they were gone. They seemed dubious as to whether I was correct, so I brought up the JAR and was like, “let me know if I’m reading it wrong, because sometimes I do a dumb.”

What’s a Delayed Trigger?
I shadowed a call where AP had forgotten to draw a card from Mishra’s Bauble. NAP said it would be fine if AP just drew now, since it wasn’t a big deal or anything, but that they just wanted to make sure things were done properly. The judge on the call told the players that since drawing a card was part of resolving the bauble’s ability, it couldn’t be missed, so AP would just be drawing it now. I was a little confused, but reasoned that since we’d just be asking NAP whether they wanted to put the trigger on the stack now, which they had already said they would, that the fix from the player perspective was the same. I pulled the judge aside afterwards and talked to them about delayed triggers and got the entire situation cleared up. Upon reflection, the players now have been told the wrong thing about Mishra’s Bauble and might have issues in the future if the call comes up, I probably should’ve have cleared things up with the players at the time.

Pact of Shadows
I shadowed a judge on a call about Pact of Negation. NAP was very insistent that they thought it should be a game loss, and the judge on the call kept telling them that it was not and explaining missed trigger policy. I could tell things were escalating since the player didn’t feel as if they were being heard, and kept repeating themselves and the judge on the call kept talking over them. I stepped in and let the player know that they were correct, and previous policy had ruled this as a game loss, but that it had changed. I’ve found that players like to be right, and if you tell them they were right in the past this tends to ameliorate them. The player calmed down a bit, but was still a little upset that their opponent wasn’t losing the game. The call concluded and I pulled the judge aside and apologized for interrupting their call and asked if there was anything I should’ve done differently. They were kind of annoyed and accepted the apology but seemed upset. I wanted to talk to them about the “talking over the player” thing and give some feedback on their social interaction, but after trying to engage with them twice afterwards, I got the impression they didn’t want to hear it at that time (I heard that they were having a rather meh day in general) and I let it go. I spoke to their TL and let them know about the interaction and that I felt like that judge maybe could use some emotional support since they were kind of in the dumps.

Emry, Lurker of the Fine Details
I go over to a table and AP says "I started casting Emry, Lurker of the Loch off my Underworld Breach and then realized I wanted to cast this Mishra’s Bauble from my graveyard beforehand, to reduce the cost. Okay, so this was a reversing decisions call, I asked a few more questions to figure out what happened and how far into casting this Emry we were, AP says that they tapped their land, exiled three cards and had put Emry onto the table. Knowing that reversing decisions can sometimes be contentious, I asked the opponent what their perception of events was, they said “well that’s basically it, they tapped their land, exiled their cards, put Emry over here and then I said ‘hey, doesn’t that cost one more mana?’” Oh. Okay. So this isn’t reversing decisions, this is a GRV. This is why it’s important to ask both players what happened before making a final decision. Anyways, so I began to explain that this was an infraction and that since it seemed like AP had finished casting Emry we wouldn’t be rewinding, instead we’d be issuing a warning and then.... rewinding. Oops. Luckily, AP seemed abashed at their mistake and didn’t seem to notice mine so much, they said “I’m fine with just paying the extra mana” I thought for a moment, shrugged and said this was fine, since effectively what was happening was AP deciding to recast Emry for the correct mana. I flagged the HJ on the interaction since it was odd how AP’s initial story guided me away from a GRV.

You Can Count on State-Based Actions
AP controls a Strangleroot Geist with one +1/+1 counter on it, NAP deals a damage to the Geist, AP then uses Yawgmoth, Thran Physician’s ability to put a -1/-1 counter on it. It dies, however the last known information of that object is derived from before any of the SBAs occurred, which uh, is when it had counters on it. It’s a weird but frequent interaction in the Yawgmoth deck.

Regular Appeals
On my way to my event, some players playing in a Mystery Booster sealed event called me over to their game. AP was playing a Mind Control on NAP’s Acidic Slime. AP asked if the Slime would have summoning sickness when he gained control of it. I said it would, and he looked at me incredulously and mentioned that it hadn’t had summoning sickness on his opponents side of the field. I had to stop for a moment since, like, I really hadn’t expected any pushback on this call. I let him know that summoning sickness simply asked if whoever was currently controlling the creature had controlled it since the beginning of their most recent turn. The player just, couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t think of a better way to explain it (their opponent had already brought up that this is why most “Act of Treason” effects grant haste) so I bewilderingly offered a second opinion (appeal is a weird term for a side event) the player said he’d like that, so I grabbed a nearby judge (it was hard to tell who was in charge of what, but I didn’t think it super mattered) and told them what was going on. They were kind of as bewildered as me but upheld while I brought up the CR on summoning sickness as a last-ditch effort.

In Conclusion...
While working Face to Face Edmonton was fun, this really felt like the Big Events of the Before Times. I really enjoyed working on the floor of a GP-style event, even if our software was a little janky and things weren’t as smooth as they have been in the past. Something I really focused on for Saturday and Sunday, since we were more sufficiently staffed than Friday, was shadowing, since there seems to be a huge gap in judge experience now, there are the experienced judges from before the pandemic, and judges that certified during the pandemic and don’t have much experience, and not much in between. Also, I am coming to the realization that I may often have more experience than the judges on my team, and should be allowing them to take calls instead of myself. One of the struggles with this is that while it is hard to receive feedback sometimes, it’s also really hard to give feedback. It’s also really hard to figure out the right way to help less experienced judges through calls they might be executing uh... sub optimally, in a polite and kind way. I didn’t before realize how much I have to learn in this regard, so it was a bit of an eye opener. Historically, I’ve been less experienced than those around me (or at least felt less experienced) and so I didn’t do much shadowing.