NRG Chicagoland
Mundelein, Illinois
Time: Saturday June 24th – Sunday June 25th 2023
10k Players: 307 | Format: Modern | Winner: Matthew Hoey
5k Players: 209 | Format: Legacy | Winner: Wynne Thom

Modern 10k – Deck Check Lead

It's Always a Dull Moment When it's Slow Play
I went over to a table, where AP asked in front of NAP whether a judge could watch for slow play. They were deep into Game 1 and they only had 20 minutes left on the clock. I agreed and watched, AP was indeed rather slow. I issued a slow play warning. The player seemed newer to the deck and didn't seem to have all the lines quite thought out, and I got the impression they didn't quite realize how much time they were taking on each play. The player was understandably upset about the warning as he'd gotten a previous warning for something else. The HJ ended up taking an appeal but also couldn't sell the ruling to the player. Since the table was going to time a judge needed to sit on it, I suggested a judge that wasn't me, since the player was unhappy with me but the HJ said they'd rather I sit on it because I'd established a line for slow play and it would be unfair for the player if a different judge with a more restrictive line for slow play sat down and they got a game loss. I argued back that the issue with judges is not that we're too strict on slow play, but usually quite the opposite. I also mentioned that if I end up having to give another warning for SP the player may get the impression that "one particular judge is out to get me" rather than "I am playing slowly and multiple judges agree". However there's also the potential that the player goes "all the judges are out to get me" but that is less likely. In the end I felt that me watching the match was reasonable enough.

Get Hammered!
AP controls Sigarda's Aid and attacks, they say "before damage, I'd like to flash in this Colossus Hammer" NAP said "whoa I want to declare blockers." After a little talking to both players, we determined that AP had been a little too quick to slam a Hammer onto the board, and that NAP should get the opportunity to block. This is obviously awkward because now NAP knows about a hammer, but it's also unfair if NAP wanted to block anyways and AP randomly got 10+ damage in because they managed to zoom through combat.

The Value of a Token
AP called a judge and asked what the mana value of a token that was a copy of something was. I was shadowing the call, and the judge on the call consulted with me and I said it would be whatever the mana value of the original thing was, but if the token was a copy of a Transforming Double Faced Card things got weird. The judge transmitted this information to the player, but was brief about TDFCs since the judge on the call didn't think it would be relevant. I didn't want to step in too much, but I think this question in a vacuum is dangerous, and asking what the player was actually doing and why it mattered would've been helpful.
The player nodded and walked back to the table where I noticed that they had two Reflection of Kiki-Jikis and wanted to make copies of them during their opponent's ends step and attack for the win, but their opponent had an Engineered Explosives with zero counters on it. It took me a little while to figure out that the player had gotten the wrong answer to the question they asked, and by the time they untapped and went to attack on their turn was when the opponent turned to us, the judges to confirm the interaction. I let them know the correct answer, at which point AP was pretty annoyed. Because this was a judge error I looped the HJ in on the entire situation. He did a backup and things seemed alright for the most part, though I do think this reiterates the value of asking what specific interaction the player is doing when they ask you a weirdly vague question.

Authentically Fake
I am really working on being better at counterfeit identification. I think coming from an artist/printing adjacent background gives me a unique eye for it, and I do keep managing to bust counterfeits, so I think I'm doing something right. I was deck checking a Living End deck with some suspicious Force of Negations and Otawara, Soaring Cities. I took them to a buyer for verification, but they said they were real. I was a little disappointed, since I was fairly certain. I sat back down and completed the check, but couldn't shake the fact that they seemed fake. They failed one of the normal tests and had a number of other qualities that red-flagged them for me. I bounced them off the HJ who scowled and said "yeah, these are fake" he spoke with the buyers again and it appeared that the person I had talked to perhaps hadn't actually really looked into the counterfeits that well. The booth changed their tune and we launched the investigation into the player. The fact that the player was on a budget deck and their most expensive pieces were fake was suspicious, however they did have two real Force of Negations and were able to show us the TCGPlayer receipts for the Otawaras and Forces. After that we shrugged and figured it was more likely they were honest than not, we assessed the game loss and they opted to buy real copies of the cards and that was that.

A Good Time For Deck Checks
Since I might be on deck checks more often I figured I'd try to get a read on what a reasonable amount of time for a check is, when I get to do everything I want to do. I took note of how long each check took. Most of my time extensions were in the 9-12 minute range (after the +3 per the MTR) and for most decks I got the deck and sideboard checked, took a scan for marked cards, and also did a scan for counterfeits. I recognize that 12 is on the heavy side for a check with no errors, but I also feel like I am definitely checking for more things than others might. If time became an issue I could cut checking for marked cards or counterfeits or both and save 1-3 minutes of time. The only check that was outside of this range (if I recall correctly) was the 27 minute counterfeit investigation that also involved acquisition of new cards and arguing with the vendor booth.

Sunday – Legacy 5k Head Judge – 209 players

Rough Beginnings
So, the start to the day was rough, two minutes before the event was to start I asked for pairings. The scorekeeper pressed the "make pairings live" button and apparently this also dropped 50 players.
What.
It turns out that NRG had "waitlisting" enabled, since we were so close to cap. What this meant was that when the event was started, anyone that hadn't checked in would be dropped to allow waitlisted players into the event. The intent was to turn off waitlisting before the event was started, because we weren't requiring players to check in, but that didn't happen. I knew I couldn't help fix the problem, but stationed some judges to block for the scorekeepers and answer player questions so that the scorekeepers could fix the issue without being bothered. The stage team made short work of the mess and overall it only delayed us a little bit. I made my announcements but I think with all the chaos of the morning I ended up forgetting a bunch of things that people needed to remind me about mid-announcement. I was a little off-balance after that, but I knew that a Tobi that screwed up in the morning and was good for the rest of the day was better than a Tobi that screwed up and was mopey all day.

Library of Errors
AP triggered Sylvan Library and put all the cards into their hand. I think there are two reasonable fixes for this. One is to ask AP if they'd like to pay 8 life for the drawn cards, the other is to rule HCE, issue a warning and reveal the entire hand to NAP and have them select the three cards that were "drawn this turn".

Altered Cards, Altered Policy
AP came up to me with some Doomsdays that looked nothing like Doomsdays. After checking that they weren't "marked" in the deck, I had to determine whether I'd allow something that very much didn't look like Doomsday. The alter policy is very clear that we shouldn't be totally changing the artwork of a card. However in the modern era with every card having many different variations, I feel like recognizing cards by their art is a bit of a thing of the past. I also took into account that as a sorcery it would be on the stack for a short amount of time, unlike a land or a creature, which would stay on the battlefield for a while and might get mixed in with other cards and become mistaken for something else. I think these ones have a few factors working for them, the name and mana cost are not obscured (which can't be said for all of wotcs secret lairs) and the text box is clearly visible and in the predominant language of the area the tournament is in. After I made the ruling another judge countered by saying that it would be easy for the opponent to miss it during a Thoughtsieze and mistake it for a land. I agreed this could be problematic. But I still think that I prefer a looser alters policy than is currently defined in the rules.

Dumb 3Ball
in the event one of the judges made an incorrect ruling about how much a Dismember would cost under a Trinisphere (protip: it's not {1} and four life). When I returned to the table the players had done quite a bit since the Trinisphere thing. I spoke to the players about either rewinding or not, and the players both agreed their game was probably better without a cumbersome rewind. Afterwards I engaged many members of the staff in a few rousing rounds of Trinisphere questions.
Spell that costs {5}{G} with Convoke: AP can pay {G} and tap five creatures
Spell that costs {5}{U}{U} with Delve: AP can pay {U}{U} and exile five cards from their graveyard
Spell that costs {1}{R/2}: AP can pay {3} or {2}{R}

ThoughtBlast
AP called me over because they had drawn three cards off Thoughtcast. The cards were drawn as a clump and both players agreed the order hadn't changed. I began to talk them through an LEC ruling, then halfway through the ruling, I looked down and noticed a Trinisphere and two tapped Islands. I asked how much was paid for Thoughtcast, and the player said it only cost {U} because of all their artifacts. I explained how Trinisphere worked and then rewound the Thoughtcast by shuffling the three cards back into their library and having them untap their land, at which point I asked what the other island was tapped for. They said "well that was another Thoughtcast from earlier in the turn!" I groaned, I decided to leave this one alone and issued a GRV to both players. I think there's an argument to backing up through the first Thoughtcast, if we did we'd just take two random cards out of AP's hand and put them on top of AP's library, untap the island and return the Thoughtcast to hand. I'm honestly not sure why I didn't back up at the time, but I think if I were in that situation again I would. I think there's an argument for issuing LEC and GRV to the Thoughtcast player, but that feels a little odd since we're rewinding that Thoughtcast anyways. In the IPG it does give us a contingency for multiple infractions, stating that if a player made multiple errors with the same cause just issue the most severe penalty. In this instance I'm not sure that really applies since "forgetting Trinisphere" and "my cards stuck together" are two different causes.

Into The Aether
AP cast an Aether Spellbomb into their own Chalice of the Void on one and a judge noticed the error. They were given a warning and as nothing had happened since the Spellbomb, I ruled that it was still on the stack and could be countered, this is, of course a little wonky because if the Spellbomb is still on the stack could this really be considered a missed trigger? If I don't rule this way, we're in stupidland where missed trigger policy doesn't function properly.
Anyways. I took a look at the game state, AP had two Urza's Saga constructs, one of which they were going to attack with this turn, and their opponent had a Goblin token and a Goblin Lackey. The threat of Goblin Lackey hitting AP and putting Muxus, Goblin Grandee into play is real, however AP also had a construct to block with, so while Aether Spellbomb would've been nicer to have than not, it didn't seem like a super critical card to force through a Chalice intentionally.

Big Brain Plays
AP cast Brainstorm, but instead of putting two cards back on top of their library, they put them on the bottom instead. The two cards were Force of Wills, which were particularly bad in the current game. The FJ brought it to my attention, so I opened an investigation.... which closed almost immediately after they showed me the Marsh Flats they'd played for turn and said "yeah I didn't think about it too much since I'm shuffling those cards away anyways." So I issued the GRV and had them put the two cards back on top and that was that.

A List of Issues
AP was playing regular Forests but had registered Snow-Covered Forests. I didn't want to issue a game loss initially, but after speaking with another judge, they mentioned that since top 8 was open decklists, there could be a potential advantage to registering snow forests and having your opponent think that you were potentially playing some random snow kill spell. This seemed reasonable at the time, so I authorized a game loss, however after thinking about it further I realized that because it's open decklist the opponent would know whether AP had the kill spell or not, irrespective of the Snow lands! What had I been thinking! This was pretty dumb and I wish I hadn't issued that game loss.

A Doomed Hand
AP had resolved Doomsday and was figuring out their piles when they realized that their hand of one card had become mushed into their library! After discerning that this was the issue, I issued HCE and had the opponent pick out which card would be AP's hand.

Tax Evasion
I feel like almost every Legacy event I discover something new and exciting about Grist, the Hunger Tide. This event I learned that Thalia, Guardian of Thraben won't cause Grist to cost an additional {1}, because it's a creature on the stack, and that's awesome.

The Subtext of the IPG
AP submitted a decklist with Sunbaked Canyon but is actually playing a Plains. In round 5 of the event, the deck check team discovers that there's no Sunbaked Canyon but there is in fact, an extra Plains in the deck. By policy this is either a deck problem – warning, they need to get a Sunbaked Canyon, or a Decklist problem – game loss. What swings this ruling one way or the other is the text "what the player intended to play" if the player says "yes I wanted to play a Plains instead" it's pretty clear this is a Decklist Problem, otherwise it's a deck problem. However I think it's exploitable to effectively let the player choose whether they get to take a GL and change their list mid-event or pick up a warning and change their deck mid-event. I also think that the fact that the player has been playing with the deck for five rounds should have some bearing on this, since regardless of what they wanted to play that morning or the previous night, the 75 they have been playing is clearly good enough that they didn't notice the issue.
I think there is an argument to "offer" the player the choice of GL or warning if they bring the issue up to a judge, but if we find it that late in the event, I definitely lean more on the side of game loss.

Plague of Errors
AP forgot to put a Plague Engineer into their exile after it got Swords to Plowshares'd. Then later that game they cast Agadeem's Awakening to get it back against their Death and Taxes opponent. At the time I ruled no fix (as the GRV partial fix would've been disruptive) and issued the warning.
Later on in the day, as the stream came out, it was brought to my attention that AP had also put some other creatures into their graveyard when they should've gone to exile. I took them aside when this was discovered and asked them a few questions. They let me know that they were really here for the modern headliner and had decided to play legacy as an afterthought. They hadn't done any testing and seemed pretty cloudy on how the matchup vs D&T actually was. They also let me know that they didn't own most of their deck and were borrowing it. This seemed reasonable. I also got informed that they made several strategic errors on the stream as well. This all seemed to add up to a tale of general incompetence and not savage cheating. Nevertheless I opted to watch them more carefully in the top 4, and noted that while they did attempt to illegally go first after putting a Leyline of the Void into play for the second game of the match, they also missed a beneficial trigger later, and in my opinion made some questionable plays, so I think this player likely wasn't a savage cheater.

...In Conclusion
I had a good time at NRG Chicagoland, while the morning was rough, I think I bounced back well and managed to run a smooth event for the rest of the day. It was also nice to work closely with some judges that were more experienced than me. An increasing problem lately is that, the current landscape of judging being what it is, I find myself in leadership roles with a team that is often less experienced than me. This is frustrating because it means that I don't get to work closely with people that will be able to acutely identify my shortcomings. The past few months I've been granted some fantastic roles at events, but I think I am starting to burn out of being in such responsibility-laden roles, and will be happy to work a few events where the buck doesn't stop with me!