Elmhurst, Illinois
Time: Saturday February 17th – Sunday February 18th 2024


Saturday – Not Checks Floor Judge

Cracking the Encode
AP casts Hidden Strings and Ciphers it onto their currently animated Mutavault. If they animate and attack with Mutavault on their the next turn, will Cipher trigger? Yes. Cipher only cares that the card it’s being encoded onto is a creature as the ability is resolving, and doesn’t continue to check what its characteristics are after the ability has resolved. (CR702.99c)

Misleading Shadow
AP cast Torrential Gearhulk and chose to cast Opt from their Graveyard. NAP casts Narset’s Reversal targeting the Opt, where does the Opt end up? Back in AP’s hand, unlike flashback, which creates a replacement effect that exiles the card any time it would leave the stack, Torrential Gearhulk’s replacement effect only applies to spells that are going to the graveyard. I made the mistake in this call of assuming Gearhulk simply granted flashback and immediately looked up the rules for Flashback. Luckily I was only shadowing this call, and the judge who was actually taking it simply read the card and delivered the correct ruling, in lieu of my attempted interference.

Zone of Suspicion
NAP casts The Wandering Emperor and exiles NAP’s Amalia Benavides Aguirre. NAP puts it in their Graveyard, I reminded NAP to move it to exile and they did so. Because the deck plays Return to the Ranks, this is a slightly suspicious mistake, and felt it might merit some more digging. However, upon doing so I discovered that NAP had three other Amalias in their graveyard, which made this no longer suspicious at all.

A Storied Spell
AP controls Birgi, God of Storytelling and wants to cast Deadly Dispute, by sacrificing Birgi, will they get {R}? No, Birgi is sacrificed as part of paying for the spell, which is before the spell has been cast, which is the last step in the process for casting spells. (CR601.2i)

Reversal of Fortunes
AP casts Lightning Axe targeting NAP’s Storm Crow. Before it resolves, AP kills the Storm Crow. Afterwards NAP casts Narset’s Reversal targeting Lightning Axe, are they required to change the target of the copy to one of their own creatures? No, Narset’s Reversal creates a copy (including copying targets) and gives NAP the option to change those targets, but doesn’t require it, even if the current target is illegal.

A Sides Problem
AP player presented 15 cards in their sideboard, but had only registered 14 cards. It was round 2 and the HJ elected to give AP the option of either playing with a 14 card sideboard all day and taking a warning, or changing the decklist to 15 and getting a game loss. Currently policy is unclear whether this is the correct solution, and I certainly think that if this was deeper into the event I would be significantly less likely to give AP the option, and would simply give them a game loss for decklist problem.

Fabled Discards
AP forgot to put the second lore counter on their Fable of the Mirror Breaker. AP then cast Duress and took the final card from their opponent’s hand and went to combat. At which point the error was noticed. This was ruled GRV – no backup. I think if the Duress had missed no backup would be obviously correct. In this scenario I still think it’s correct, as AP could potentially not cast Duress if they think the card in NAP’s hand isn’t worth Duressing, and instead pitch it to draw a different card and move forward with knowledge of the NAP’s hand they shouldn’t have.

The Turns, in Turn, Caused the Tide to Turn
AP attacks with a Hall of the Storm Giants, among other creatures. After some deliberation NAP blocks and takes a bunch of damage, at which point AP remarks “you know I have another turn after this, right?” referring to an extra turn gained off Temporal Trespass. NAP then argues that AP has used all their extra turns already and this was their last one, as they’ve had three combat steps. AP may have mentioned at this point they had three extra turns but I can’t recall. There was a little more back and forth before AP eventually backed down and conceded that he didn’t have an extra turn after this one. I was watching the match, but hadn’t been there for long enough to know exactly how many turns AP had and the players seemed to have resolved it. Then AP proceeded to their postcombat main phase at which point a spectator tapped me on the shoulder. I figured it was about the extra turn dispute and stopped the match immediately while I went to talk to the spectator. The spectator said that AP did, in fact have an extra turn. I felt like this was incredibly suspicious as NAP was dead if AP had the turn. I escalated to the HJ, who, after speaking with the players determined that AP had cast and flashed back Galvanic Iteration a few turns ago, resulting in three total extra turns from Temporal Trespass. AP had done this before combat on his turn, and had attacked on that turn, which explained the three combat steps, but only two extra turns having passed. NAP conceded the game after learning that AP had an extra turn. I felt very uneasy about the entire thing since it seemed like NAP had potentially changed his story from “AP had three extra turns and has used them based on combat” to “AP only has two extra turns because he only cast Galvanic Iteration once on his turn”. Though I wasn’t sure enough of what I heard to push harder for a different resolution.

Exploring Solutions
NAP casts Temporary Lockdown exiling a few creatures on both sides of the battlefield, but failing to exile AP’s two Map tokens. AP goes to their turn, casts Fiend Artisan and activates one of their map tokens targeting it. They get a Godless Shrine from the top of their library, pay two to shock it in and casts Amalia Benavides Aguirre, passing the turn afterwards. NAP casts a second Temporary Lockdown at which point both players notice the remaining map token and realize something has gone wrong. The judge on the call ruled GRV – no backup. A rewind would entail backing up the second Temporary Lockdown, which might cause AP to avoid playing Amalia or Fiend Artisan, which would be pretty bad. Rewinding through the Map activation isn’t a huge deal, since the map won’t exist so it’s not like AP gets a reroll on it. Another solution, and arguably the best solution is to rule GRV – partial zone change fix on the map tokens now, as Lockdown does fall under “required zone-change being missed”. However, it wasn’t ruled that way because the remaining map token was getting exiled immediately anyways.

Sunday – Deck Checks Floor Judge

Legendary Encounters
AP controls an Azami, Lady of Scrolls enchanted by Witness Protection. If NAP casts another Witness Protection on AP’s Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, what happens? AP will have to choose one to keep and put the other in the graveyard as a state-based action. (CR704.5j) Witness Protection changes the name of both creatures to “Legitimate Businessperson”, but doesn’t remove the “Legendary” supertype.

Sideboard Scramble
After checking the main deck me and my deck check partner reached the sideboards at about the same time, and both, almost simultaneously, commented on how the sleeves were different on the sideboard than the player's main decks. We looked at each other and realized that we’d somehow switched the sideboards, though I wasn’t entirely sure how, as I could’ve sworn the box beside me was where I initially grabbed the deck I was checking from. We traded sideboards, but I was unsure about the token/divider piles. We finished checking the decks and I put each deck and sideboard into what I hoped was the right box, but kept the tokens separate. When I returned to the players I said “good news, neither of you made any mistakes, however the bad news is that we made a mistake” I held up a box and said “inside this box is a deck in pink sleeves, whose is it?” AP looked up and said “my deck was in pink sleeves, but that’s not my box” I apologized and handed the box to AP, and gave the other to NAP. I then held up one token pile but only showed the divider, as to not reveal any information about which tokens were being played and asked which player owned it. I think I mostly got through this without destroying anything, however a good point brought up by a colleague was that revealing the existence of tokens at all could reveal information about the deck.

It’s Just a Phase, Mom!
AP controls a Tishana’s Tidebinder that previously countered the equip ability of a Colossus Hammer and casts Deep-Cavern Bat. After it resolves, but before its enter-the-battlefield ability resolves, NAP casts March of Swirling Mist, choosing to phase out both creatures. What happens? Deep-Cavern Bat’s trigger will resolve and still exile a card from NAP’s hand, which will return if NAP ever removes the bat. This is because Deep-Cavern Bat never actually leaves the battlefield, it’s just treated as though it doesn’t exist. (CR702.26d) Tishana’s Tidebinder, however, does stop affecting Colossus Hammer, and when it returns it won’t start affecting it again. This is because while Deep-Cavern Bat is checking for a specific event (leaving the battlefield) to occur (which never happened), Tidebinder is just asking whether it’s still on the battlefield (which it’s not considered to be). (CR702.26f)

A Replacement Copy
AP casts Phyrexian Metamorph, before it resolves NAP casts Dress Down, if AP wants to copy Sol Ring, can they? No, when figuring out what replacement effects apply to the object, the game takes into consideration what the object would look like on the battlefield, in this case, because Phyrexian Metamorph is a creature spell on the stack, on the battlefield, it would be a 0/0 creature with no abilities (it hasn’t died from SBAs yet, though). (CR614.12)

Craggy Call
AP plays Rootbound Crag on turn one, casts Raging Goblin and attacks NAP. Then realizes that they meant to play Copperline Gorge instead. If AP has as Copperline Gorge I think it’s fine in this scenario to say they “played” Copperline Gorge, but put the wrong physical object onto the table. If they don’t have a Gorge in hand, I think there are reasonable arguments to backing up to when the land entered, and also backing up the entire land drop. I think backing up to the land entering the battlefield (and causing it to enter tapped) is the harsher, but more correct ruling, otherwise this becomes an incredibly low-risk cheat for players, and accruing a few warnings for this kind of thing doesn’t really counterbalance all the times they get away with it, or just fix it with the opponent without judge intervention. Whereas the risk of not getting a turn 1 play and having a tapped land is a much harsher lesson.

Plain Old Rules
AP activates Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor, revealing Plains and Ossification, can they choose to play the plains before casting Ossification? Yes, AP can choose to complete the actions in any order they choose, as playing a land doesn’t use the stack, AP can choose to play the Plains and then put Ossification onto the stack. (CR608.2f)

...In Conclusion
I had a good time at NRG Chicagoland, just being a floor judge allowed me to work on my technical skills a lot more. I spent a lot of time on Sunday trying to improve my deck check speed. Historically I organized the deck by color, which would necessitate a secondary sort within color. Recently a colleague told me that doing a "fine sort" of all cards in the deck would be faster, so I've been trying that. On Saturday I spent a while doing mentoring with the judges around me, and shadowing a lot of calls. I think there were a few things that I certainly could’ve done better, and by the end of the week I was starting to come down with some kind of illness (which I was unaware of until the Monday afterwards). Which caused me to operate somewhat sub-optimally on Sunday. Even so, I really enjoy the NRG series, the overall atmosphere and energy of the event is so unique and positive, I’m really excited to work another one in the future!