05/01 Luxembourg - PTQ Dragon's Maze (San Diego) - Modern

Kyofu a écrit:la 3eme game oui c est le mage

Teun Zijp a écrit:This year, on my birthday, I went to Luxembourg City and head judged a PTQ there. This is the story of how that happened.

1. Before
So there's a PTQ in Luxembourg City. We're all still wondering if this has ever happened before, maybe somewhere in the Dark Ages, but it's safe to say it hasn't happened in the 10 years before this, and I also don't expect this to be a weekly occurrence. For Nigel Rowledge, proprietor of Twiddle's Keep in Luxembourg, this would be his first event that would be bigger than a Prerelease.

As soon as I heard that there'd be a PTQ in Luxembourg, I sent Nigel an email, saying I'd be interested in the HJ position. I love the country/city and I'm in the city at least once a year. It's a nice medieval atmosphere, very compact and very village-like but with the good food and great views.

As I hadn't worked with Nigel before, I took some time beforehand to speak things through on the phone and via email. Nigel had already contacted Niels Viaene and Emilien Wild to work at the event as well. That left one spot for a German-speaking judge, and Martin Köhler was happy to book a 6 AM train to get there. A dream team if I may say so. Most HJ/TO stuff was quickly dealt with, but still, I wasn't sure what to expect.

As is my standard for PTQ events, I wrote a detailed pre-event briefing to the other judges, where I also assigned tasks for the entire day. I like doing this; it allows me to be detailed in advance, but then I don't need to micromanage during the day itself, leaving the floor judges to do well at what they prepared for.

2. The morning
At 09:50, I left our hotel to go to the Luxembourg train station and pick up Martin, whose train was on time, but I suppose this is normal outside of the Netherlands. We then drove the short distance to Hesperange, a suburb of the city. We parked the car at what looked like some communal building, with the fire brigade attached. What we saw was amazing and I'll show an image of the event during round 1:

Table numbers, tables, chairs, microphone, a scorekeeping desk, enough space for deck checks, catering and one big hall. What more can you wish for? Nigel found an amazing place and I'm told Steve Hatto, who should also be on this forum (Hi Steve!) has pulled some strings to be able to use it.

Unfortunately, at this time some issues appeared with the location of the venue. For starters, this event was first announced to take place at the restaurant in Luxembourg City where the Prereleases are also held. The location was later changed, but apparently this change did not reach every player, as we were receiving phone calls about this. And then, apparently, there was another location with the same address in the next village, about 3km away, which showed up when entering the address into Apple Maps and some other navigational systems. So there were two incorrect places to go to, and none other than Emilien actually went to both places, so we know a lot of players must have gone there as well. We received more and more phone calls, Nigel sent out a car to inform/pick up players at the incorrect locations (about 10 cars full of players in total) and we decided to postpone the start of the event by 15 minutes.

Incredibly enough, when we started at 11:15, I think everybody that wanted to play was able to play – we didn't give out game losses for Tardiness (in round 1) and we didn't have anyone arrive after that, although it is of course possible that some players are still looking and/or went home disappointed.

Round 1 started at 11:29 with 104 players, which is a delay of course, but it wasn't really felt like a big one, and it was a purposeful one. Because of the lack of players at 10:45, and Emilien, we didn't do the Voluntary Player Briefing , where players would get a short intro into the recent policy changes and the opportunity to do questions, which was somewhat regrettable. (I still advise everybody to do this at their PTQ level events!)

3. Rulings

And now, some rulings from around the day.

Deck Issues
Q: One player was playing an Event Deck! So the decklist handed in was simply the insert, with their name scribbled on it. The deck was the Infect Event Deck with Glistener Elves and the such. He managed to win at least one game against an unhappy Kiki-Twin player. There was some misfortune when an opponent discovered some Preordains in the deck.
A: Preordain is banned. We applied the default fix of removing the cards and replacing them with basic lands, and then asking the TO for some customer service to be applied (like, say, a free draft). There was some discussion afterwards, because there is a precedent of players being allowed to play with banned cards as long as they stick with the exact list of the Event Deck, but because I didn't like that rule anyway I certainly didn't want to create policy for it on the spot.

Missed Trigger Happiness
Q: A player attacks with Glistener Elf and has a Noble Hierarch in play. He then casts Groundswell, and then says “You take six”. Did the player miss the trigger?
A: The floor judge ruled that the player did not miss the trigger. They did not forget and they did demonstrate awareness of the trigger. The ruling was appealed, and I upheld the ruling, but this was a close one for me. Game actions took place and all. In the end, on this event, we took a “Did he really forget?” approach to resolving most missed trigger rulings while the discussion about this policy rages on.

Q: A player cast Sleight of Hand, with a fully charged Pyromancer Ascension on the battlefield. He resolved the Sleight of Hand and then proceeded to resolve another one. The opponent said he didn't explicitly announce the Pyromancer copy, but the player said he did.
A: There was some semi-investigation going on, because the stories didn't match. In the end, I couldn't DQ anyone for lying to me, and we ruled that since the player demonstrated awareness etc, two copies of the spell would resolve.

Q: A player didn't draw for his turn.
A: That's not a Missed Trigger anymore – that's a GRV. We “back up” and the player draws their card.

Q: A player cast Bloodbraid Elf, then looked at his opponent to see if it would resolve.
A: The floor judge ruled that the cascade trigger was missed. I would have ruled this the other way, but the ruling was not appealed.

Q: A player cast Emrakul. Then he says “Now I'll take my extra turn”.
A: We ruled that the player did not miss his trigger.

Other Errors
Q: A player got his Spellskite unsummoned a couple of turns ago. Now, it is not in their hand. Also, the graveyard was shuffled into the library last turn because of an Ulamog. The player explained to the judge that they believed the Spellskite was put into the graveyard and was then shuffled back in. The player wanted to have the Spellskite back in his hand.
A: Obviously not. The story is a guess at what happened and took place several turns ago. We won't do anything here.

Q: When resolving Manamorphose, a player moves one of his dice up, then goes to draw a card but before he does so, he moves the dice back down and another dice up. The opponent says that the player made a choice and should not be able to change.
A: Emilien ruled that the player could change it, because the player simply moved the incorrect dice. The ruling was appealed. I easily upheld the ruling, but for a broader reason, which is that we have not moved to the next instruction in resolving the spell, and the player did not get any new information. I'm fine with changing then, and I can compare this to fetching a land and putting it onto the battlefield, then picking it back up and finding another land – I am OK with this as long as they haven't started shuffling.

Q: At the beginning of round 2, several players were still outside for a smoke.
A: During the pre-event player announcements, I explicitly said that players should be in the room when the 50 minutes for the round were over, to make sure they avoid penalties. As such, even though we didn't announce outside, we gave out Game Losses for this.

Q: At three minutes left in the round, two players finished their second game. One player figured he coulnt win in the rest of the time and suggested a draw. The other pkayer didnt want to, so the first player asked me to cinfirm that he has three minutes to complete shuffling. I said, if you take longer were not happy, but you dontt have three minutes. Then he took a while. At that point i asked if he was ready to shuffle. He again said he had three minutes.
A: I said that if he was done shuffling, he needed to present the deck. Some staring ensued and he presented. I then left to call time, and afterwards Niels explained the stalling rules to the player, who was shocked by his own misinterpretation of the rules.

Q: Player A has three tapped lands and Relic of Progenitus. He then takes the turn; untaps, then rewinds his untap and taps Relic to exile a card.
A: The judge rules that the player could not activate it eot anymore, as he started to untap. So we move back to the upkeep step.
Q: At this point, player B says that player A obviously did this in his upkeep! So the lands should remain tapped!
A: We're irked and want to give out a warning for unsporting conduct, but we don't do that for this. Afterwards, we have a chat with the player.

Q: Semifinals. One player is playing Eggs. Somewhere in this turn, he uses a Spellbomb to kill a Tidehollow Sculler, which returns his Second Sunrise, but the Tidehollow Sculler isnt returned to play when the Sunrise resolves. I notice, but the player has already resolved some draw a card triggers.
A: I cannot know which cards were in his hand at the time the Sunrise resolved, so I use the fix of letting cards move zones and put the Sculler ability on the stack right now. This is also a Warning for both players.

Discussions
At some point during the day, I had a long conversation with Niels about the missed trigger rules, their implementation and their philosophy and I encourage everybody to do that as well. Our consensus was that applying policy in a very strict way does not match other explanations like Toby's blog here http://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2012/12/14/out-of-order-sequencing-and-triggers/ and we should all continue to share our ideas and experiences.

Emilien was also testing me at some point. He was teasing me about answering rules questions as the Head Judge, thus not giving the players opportunity to appeal. However, I still feel this: if there are two judges on a deck check, so there is only me and one floor judge left, I will gladly answer rulings. Yes, this means they cannot appeal; but that's only important in a small portion of rulings and I'll take care of any mess, and in all other situations we'll speed up. What is true about this is that I could have volunteered to help with deck checks instead. But also, apparently I do not feel as strongly about this as Emilien does, and I guess the truth is in the middle.

4. Wrapup
Although we started late, we then made up for that by having an amazing turnaround time. Our rounds had an average of less than an hour. The top 8 took a bit longer but still, we were finished by 21:30, a good score for a 104-player event I think.

I'd like to thank Emilien, Niels and Martin for traveling to Luxembourg to have this event be a success, and for their wisdom and experience to make it go as smooth as it did. I especially would like to thank Nigel who has delivered a fantastic venue with good materials, setting the stage for a good event like this. And also, thank you Nigel for treating us judges as part of the organization of this tournament and compensating us well, in your own words “Well, you did work a day for it” but during the day I once more realized that not all TOs feel this way.

See you again in Luxembourg, or so I hope!

spokone a écrit:Je n'ai jamais vu de spell vert dans les 3 games contre lui

spokone a écrit:Ce que j'ai vu de son deck : [...] Flinthoof Boar !

spokone a écrit:déso, c'est le manque de nicotine

C'est en effet la seule carte verte que j'ai vue