Playing at Competitive REL – A Beginner's Guide

You've been playing at FNM's for a couple of months now, and you're starting to notice that you're winning more often than not. The same at your local shop's Tuesday standard.

You like your deck – no, actually, you love your deck. You built it yourself, and maybe it's not exactly a netdeck, but it has a solid game plan and you know how to pilot it against all the major decks in the format.

You're wondering if you should maybe take your game to the next level. You hear some guys at your shop talking about travel plans. You saunter over to them and ask them what they're talking about.

“Oh, dude, you didn't know? This weekend is the Grand Prix.”

“The Grand Prix?” you ask. You've heard some of the guys talk about how they went to Boston a few months ago, but you've never been to one. “What's that?”

“It's a huge tournament – usually more than a thousand people – over two days. There's one this weekend in Atlantic City! A bunch of us from the shop are going down there.”

“Wow, awesome.”

“One more thing – it's a competitive tournament, a little bit different from an FNM.”

“Oh?”

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It can be a little intimidating stepping into your first Competitive REL tournament. In fact, it can be downright terrifying. My first was a side event at Pro Tour Philadelphia (back when they were open to the public.) It was a big tournament for an iPad, and I got a game loss in my first game. Unfortunately, at the time, I had no idea that there was any difference between my local FNM and a tournament for $15,000. I assumed we were just playing Magic, and that was that.

The reality is a little different, and as a player who hates seeing people get screwed because they weren't aware of the difference, I'm going to be going into some detail about some of the things that you can expect at a Competitive event.

First off, what is Competitive REL? Because of the high prizes associated with them, some tournaments are run at a stricter level of rules enforcement than others. Notable events are the first day of a Grand Prix, TCGPlayer Max Events, Grand Prix Trials, Pro Tour Qualifiers, and Star City Games Opens, Invitational Qualifiers, and Invitationals

At these tournaments, there is some measure of high prizes at stake. It could be playmats, invites to other tournaments, byes, or large cash prizes. Regardless, because of the prizes being offered, the tournament is to be held in as skill-testing an environment as possible. That's where we hit the first major difference between Regular REL and Competitive REL.

During Regular REL tournaments, like FNM, the emphasis is on educating players. At Competitive REL, the emphasis is on an individual's play skill.

That might seem like a minor thing, but it really has a whole lot of implications. The most obvious way that you can see it is that at a Competitive REL tournament, there will be a judge who can hand out the penalties found in the Infraction Procedure Guide (or IPG, for short.) That's the document that all judges (and players, if they so choose) have access to, which tells about all the things that you can be penalized for at a Competitive tournament.

Some of these things are fairly simple. The IPG has a whole boatload of ways of saying simple things like “Don't Cheat”. Luckily, you're a good person, and you're not going to cheat. We don't have to worry about the vast majority of that section because it doesn't apply to you as long as you are being open and honest while playing.

That brings us to the first major rule that I'm going to give you if you've never played at Competitive REL. It's the first rule because I honestly believe that it is the most important.

Do not lie to the judge.

The judge does not exist to punish you. He exists to make sure that the game is being played by the rules, and to ensure an even playing field, and to make sure that everyone at the tournament is comfortable.

Sometimes, the judge will punish someone. That could very well mean anything from a verbal Caution (which means literally nothing as far as you playing the game goes) to a Disqualification (which is very bad.) For the record, receiving multiple instances of the same penalty does eventually lead to an upgrade in penalty to a more severe one. That said, lying to a tournament official is a one-way street to a disqualification. Period. End of Story. Just don't do it.

The IPG lists out a full treatment of everything you can get punished for. This is a good thing, because it means that judges can't just capriciously punish for anything, only things covered by the existing document. They can't 'go rogue' and just make things up. Please keep in mind that at larger events, you ALWAYS have the right to appeal a decision to the Head Judge of the tournament if you believe that your ruling was incorrect. For the majority of players in the majority of situations, none of that is important. In all my time playing competitively, I believe that I've received only a handful of warnings (and one game loss, as you'll see below).

How do you avoid such penalties? It's actually pretty simple. Play according to the rules, and be clear, open, and obvious about what you're doing. Below, I'm going to list what I consider to be the 5 most commonly given out errors and penalties, and how to avoid them:

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1) Tournament Error: Deck/Decklist Error

This one is the top of the list, and it isn't even close. In Round 2 of GP Boston-Worcester last year, over 100 of these were given out at the start of Round 4. This penalty refers to something fairly broad – there's a problem with your deck, or your decklist.

At Competitive REL, you will be responsible for filling out (either before the tournament begins for Constructed, or during deck constuction for a Limited Event) a deck list. Be very careful with this list, because as far as the tournament officials are concerned, that's what you're playing. In order to curb cheating and provide some measure of security for the integrity of the tournament, judges will be checking decks throughout the tournament. As long as what's in your deck matches what's on the sheet, there's likely to be no problem whatsoever. However, there's always a few things that can go wrong. Here's some of the common ways to earn yourself a Deck/Decklist Error:

-You made a last minute change to your deck, and forgot to update your decklist.

-You forgot to de-sideboard your deck after your last round

-You had a bunch of cards that aren't in your deck or sideboard in the same box as your deck and sideboard.

-You don't have at least 60 cards (or 40 for limited) in your main deck, and in Constructed tournaments, you have a number other than 0 or 15 in your sideboard.

-You are playing cards that aren't legal in the format that you are playing.

There are other ways to earn them, but those are what I'd consider the most common. The penalty for Deck/Decklist Error is usually a Game Loss – a steep penalty because the potential for abuse is so high. Be careful with this one, and when the judge tells everyone to take one last look over their decklists, I implore you to actually do it. Judges hate giving this one out, because it's usually so easily avoided.

My first infraction ever was a Deck/Decklist Problem. I didn't fill one out because I didn't know it was required. Whoops. By the time I was informed of this, round 1 was already well underway, and my opponent was happy to be cruising onto game 2.

2) Game Rule Violation

A Game Rule Violation is a general catchall category for an issue that takes place during the game, but doesn't fall into any of the other categories. Generally, it means that you did something that you shouldn't have done. At the moment, the most common one of these that comes to mind is putting a creature into the graveyard after it's been killed by a Pillar of Flame. There isn't much to say about this one except that you should make sure that you are doing your best to adhere to the text on cards.

3) Missed Trigger

Everyone take a deep breath, because I know that you've heard tons about this one. You've heard things about lapsing and nonlapsing triggers. You've heard tons about people getting disqualified for ignoring triggers, and abilities that don't happen when they should.

Relax. Take a deep breath. This one isn't that tricky.

First off, some info, and the largest change between Regular and Competitive REL. At Competitive REL, you are required to demonstrate awareness of each one of your triggers. If you (or your opponent) do not, then the trigger is considered missed, and a judge should be called.

Full stop.

When a judge is called, a couple of things will happen. First, the judge will establish if the trigger was actually missed. A trigger is considered missed if the player who's trigger it was has taken an action after the trigger would have resolved without indicating that they were aware of the trigger. Second, the judge will ask the opponent of the player if they would like to place the ability on the stack. (The answer will generally be no. Do I want my opponent to gain 2 life and a 2/2 wolf token – no, no I do not.) As far as the game goes, that's the end of it.

Then, based on if the ability is detrimental to the player, they may get a warning, but that's not generally something that players will need to worry about.

The penalty for a missed trigger is usually nothing, but is occasionally a Warning, however, you likely won't get your trigger unless it hurts you in some way. Failing to activate a trigger deliberately and pretending you missed it, by the way, is cheating, so don't do that.

If you have any more questions about missed triggers, I strongly suggest you read Level 5 Judge Toby Elliot's Blog on the Topic. It can be found HERE. There is additional commentary HERE as well.

4) Looking At Extra Cards

This one is actually remarkably common. Have you ever been shuffling your opponent's deck and accidentally spilled it all over the table? You looked at some extra cards. Ever try to draw a card and the top one flipped over onto the table? Looking at extra cards.

It generally takes place whenever someone looks at (but doesn't draw!) extra cards.

To avoid this one, just simply be deliberate with your actions. Be sure you've only picked up one card. Shuffle gently (but thoroughly!) with your opponent's deck. Doing this is a Warning.

5) Drawing Extra Cards

On the other hand, if instead of just looking at extra cards, you actually draw extra cards into your hand (indicated by the cards making contact with the rest of your hand) we've entered into a different penalty altogether. Drawing Extra Cards is one of the most extreme infractions that can be committed, because of how much potential for abuse there is, and how little an opponent could potentially do to stop it. Worse, because there's no easy fix, drawing extra cards is almost always a Game Loss.

There are some exceptions that you could look up, but those are extreme corner cases, and it's best to just simply be extra careful any time that you're drawing cards – this goes for drawing for turn, drawing dozens of cards in a single turn off a Glimpse of Nature, or casting a Sphinx's Revelation for a whole bunch. Count the cards before putting them into your hand, and we won't have an issue.

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There are a number of other infractions that can be given out for a variety of things, the vast majority won't actually apply in almost any situation. If you want to take a look at the entire list, the entire IPG is available for your perusal HERE.

I'd also like to point to a pair of articles that Jackie Lee, a notable professional player, has written on the topic of Competitive REL and Judges – Here and Here. They are both well-written, well-informed articles that I recommend to anyone looking to break into the competitive scene.

I want to take a couple of paragraphs at the end of this article to ease some concerns as well. If you're looking into starting at a Competitive tournament, you should consider the judge an ally. We exist to help you at all times, and make sure that the tournament is a fun experience for all. If someone at the venue, even another player or tournament official, is giving you a problem, please, speak to a judge about it. Likewise, if you are unsure of an interaction, or you think something has gone wrong in your game, call a judge. They will be more than happy to help you sort it out.

If, at any point, in any tournament, you ever need the assistance of a Judge, just raise your hand high (some of us have trouble seeing through all the spell-slinging, so clearer is better), and yell loudly “Judge!” One of us black-shirted folks will be by shortly to sort things out.

With that, may all your spells resolve, and good luck at any future events you take part in.

Defending Against Cheating

This past weekend featured the first World Magic Cup, and the presentation was great. If you missed the coverage, I’d wholeheartedly encourage you to head over to the Wizards twitch.tv page (www.twitch.tv/magicprotour) and check out a couple of the matches. It’s a great tournament, with strong coverage segments, and the usual great casting team from Wizards.

That said, since the tournament ended, there have been some allegations thrown around. Some people, analyzing the video, think that a member of the Puerto Rican team cheated in the finals (and who knows how many other matches off-camera).  The video in question can be found here: Was Jorge Iraman Trying To Stack His Deck at the World Magic Cup?

Now, I’m positive that the DCI is investigating this at the moment – that is, after all, their job. So I’m not here to pass judgment or blame or even say if I think he actually did cheat or not. But one thing that this event does highlight is that players need to be careful. At competitive events with cash (or plane flights, or trophies) on the line, people will cheat, and we need to be prepared for it.

Today, we’re going to go into a couple of different ways that someone can try to cheat you, and some easy remedies for it. Note that I’m specifically talking about ‘things that will get him disqualified if a judge is watching.” This is not meant to address someone trying to Jedi-Mind-Trick you into using Esper Charm on yourself. Slimy play is an entirely different thing from cheating.

The methods that a cheater will use vary greatly. Go watch a few magicians (the ‘real’ kind, not the ones playing MtG – the guys who make stuff disappear, or manage to pull a royal flush out of a falling deck of cards [Source: Reddit, thanks /u/SlimGrim]) and you’ll see that their acts are likely very different. Same goes with MtG cheaters – the ways that they can cheat are as numerous as the stars, and there’s absolutely no way that you can be trained to identify and stop all of them.

A quick aside here on what you should do if you notice someone cheating. Immediately raise your hand and call for a judge. Ask to speak to him away from your opponent. The judge is trained in being able to investigate these situations. He will make inquiries into the situation and, if unsure, discuss things with the head judge (if the event is large enough to merit multiple judges). They will come to a conclusion and everyone can abide by it – one way or another. It is not your job to execute a punishment. It is not your job to determine guilt. Your job, as a player, is merely to bring the matter to the attention of a judge if you believe that something suspicious is going on.

Good, now that we’ve covered that, the first major ways that people are going to cheat happen before the game even starts. Our cheater sits down at the end of the last round and carefully stacks his deck to be perfectly spell-spell-land-spell-spell-land all the way through. This devious player is now guaranteed two or three lands in his opening hand, with a third land on the way quickly if he doesn’t have it. Of course, we all know that he has to shuffle before he actually presents, so he makes a great show of cutting the deck a few times in front of you before passing it over. You cut the deck and begin play. He doesn’t mulligan, because his deck is still stacked.

However did that happen?

This is called mana weaving, and it’s one of the oldest cheats in the book. By mana weaving, you make your spell-land density uniform across your deck. This is not randomized. It is important to know the difference between a completely randomized set and something that it uniformly distributed. In this case, they’ll even look similar to the naked eye. The couple of cuts that have gone into the deck will make minor inconsistencies in the perfect weave, but the vast majority of the deck will still be prearranged.

Similar things can happen with a variety of other cheats. Subtly moving a card to the bottom of the deck, then manipulating your shuffle to bring it to the top is not only possible, but extremely easy. Doing the same so that the card ends up in the middle of the deck, slightly off-kilter to encourage you to cut directly to the card, is also possible. It’s even possible to do this while nominally rifle shuffling the deck. There are dozens of variations on these cheats, but they all boil down to the same thing – deck stacking.

How can we stop things like this? Simple, actually. The number one defense against deck stacking, mana weaving, and any kind of nonsense is twofold, and actually required by the rules of Competitive REL tournaments.

He must present his deck to you to shuffle. You, as a cheating-conscious player, should pick up his deck and shuffle it. I don’t mean cut it. I mean shuffle. You are well within your rights to randomize the deck however you find sufficient as long as you don’t damage the cards. (I’d like to take an aside here and remind you to be gentle with your opponent’s deck. We’d like to think that our cards are important to us, and could even be worth a fair bit of cash. No reason to cause damage here. Just be a little gentle with them.)

Cheaters practice at what they do. There’s a good chance that you won’t notice it if they shuffle in a slightly shady manner. However, but shuffling the deck thoroughly – every time, even after he just searches the bottom five cards for a land off his T1 Evolving Wilds – will prevent any kind of weaving or searching or ordering of his deck.

Realize that – you can completely blunt an angle of cheating by playing fairly! That’s awesome.

Some other methods of cheating are a little more insidious and require us to actually pay attention to things. Periodically keep track of the opponent’s number of cards in hand – ask him if need be, and write the information down on your life pad. If it seems like he has more than he should, look back and make sure. If he has drawn an extra card at some point, call a judge – that’s a game loss for a good reason. For all you know, he could’ve subtly moved a Batterskull back to his hand after you Cliqued it away.

There’s one more kind of cheating that I’ve heard about – but admittedly never experienced myself. It’s most endemic at small store FNM’s, especially involving players that don’t necessarily have the best grasp of the rules, or if there’s no official judge present. It usually involves one player bullying the others into accepting ‘his ruling’. Often this player is just lying because he thinks he can get away with it and win the tournament as a result, but sometimes it’s accidental. As always, your best weapon is simply knowledge – know the game you are playing. I’m not saying that you need to be Judge-level-knowledgeable (though that certainly helps) but if you have a smart phone, there are plenty of apps that let you look up a rule if there’s a dispute. (I’d like to publically call out MTGJudge from the iTunes App Store on this one, because it is a *spectacular* resource that also provides a card lookup.) Don’t be afraid to bring the question to an outside party. Remember – your opponent has a vested interest in you losing! Don’t trust that his ruling is correct.

In conclusion, know your rules, and be willing to look them up if you’re uncertain. Shuffle your opponent’s deck. Make sure that you are clear in your declarations and actions during the game, and you’ll find that a healthy amount of cheating just isn’t possible against you anymore.

Personally, that’s worth the extra thirty seconds of shuffling to me. I bet the Taiwanese national team feels the same way, and are extremely happy that they didn’t just leave that Etched Champion on the top.

Also, congratulations to the Taiwanese team. They played some great magic throughout the weekend and provided quite a bit of quality entertainment for me and my friends. I’m already looking forward to the next segment of the year – complete with 2 GP’s, a couple of Star City Games events, and countless other opportunities for me personally– not to mention judging and some other projects I’m working on.

It’s a good time for Magic, cheaters or not. Let’s make the best of it.

Till Next Time,
Andrew

[Editor's Note: It has been brought to my attention that Mike Flores has written a few articles on this topic as well. Please find links to them if you'd like some additional reading:
The Miser's Guide To Savage Cheats
How To Cheat

Thanks to /u/0rangeSoda on Reddit for the tip! Enjoy!]

Connecticon Convention Report - Top 8 in a StarCity Elite IQ

It was a long, mostly successful weekend.

I left work at noon on Friday, thinking to beat rush hour traffic. Unfortunately, that worked about as well as the George Washington Bridge’s Toll Plaza, and we arrived just after 10pm. Admittedly, we did get a late start due to some unavoidable circumstances regarding members of our party who weren’t necessarily ready to travel at the correct time, but traffic and dinner played a big part of it. We played Apples to Apples for the evening and Pop and I strategized for the next day.

Connecticon is a massive, multi-genre convention. If you’ve never gone, I strongly encourage you to give it a try. There’s literally something for everyone there. In previous years, I’ve spent the weekend roleplaying, attending panels on webcomics, buying magnificent art at bargain-basement prices, and playing Magic. This year, I will admit, my attention was a little bit more focused.

There were Star City Invitational Qualifiers firing off, two per day – all of Super Level or higher. Over the weekend, fourteen invitations would be given out – six for legacy, four for sealed, and four for standard. Nevertheless, Pop and I were leery about entering the Sealed Elite Qualifier. With a $40 price tag, it was certainly the most expensive event of the weekend, and neither of us wanted to get stuck with a subpar pool. I suggested that we swing by early in the day and make the decision to enter the tournament or not based on the number of people entering.

We arrived at 9:45, with only fifteen minutes left to enter. At that point, there were 35 people on the list. Cash prizes went down to the Top 16, and that seemed very reasonable, so we both entered. Unfortunately for our math, the numbers ballooned up to 65 in the last ten minutes, and so we were left with a (barely) seven round slog to the Top 8.

I opened a fairly lackluster pool, and was glad to pass it away, but unfortunately, Pop opened what some would conservatively call the Best Pool Ever. Featuring both a Liliana and an Ajani, the pool also had such all-stars as a pair of Serra Angels, double Murder and Pacifism, and enough exalted triggers to make Elves laugh at Titans.

Needless to say, he passed that away and got a pile of cardboard that could have been competitive if we were playing Homelands. Sadly, we weren’t. He went 0-1 drop on the spot.

I, on the other hand, received a pretty solid pool. It was a bit light on playables, but some creative choices ended up with a BW Exalted deck that splashed an Evolving Wilds and a single Island for Harbor Bandit. This choice ended up being the difference between winning a match and losing it in roughly half my matches.

Let me be clear about this – if you are using a member of the Kird Ape cycle, and you have any fixing in your deck, add one of the extra color. I promise you that you will not regret it.

I’m sitting there, building my pool, when I notice one judge stalking me. I look over at his nametag, and realize it seems familiar. I fish out my phone and start looking up a name on Reddit. It took me a good 45 seconds, but I eventually look up.

“Hello there Wingman.”
“Was wondering when you’d figure it out.”

Wingman2011, as many of you redditors know him, served as a judge for the weekend, and did a spectacular job. I have to give him some credit for being the primary announcer for the Fill-And-Fire events all day on Saturday, and managing to keep them amusing even the thirtieth time we all heard “Random So-And-So, your Draft is ready to fire. They would all LOVE to start playing, and we would LOVE to take your money. Please report to the desk immediately.” Also, ladies, he has an awesome radio voice, which had been described as both stand-up comedian and radio host.

Back to the sealed, most of the games eventually came down to one of my creatures being unblockable – either via flying, Harbor Bandit, or Tormented Soul. Add in a few exalted triggers, and it represents a very real clock that cleaved through opponents. Others were won because Vampire Nighthawk is incredible at racing. Others fell because Mark of the Vampire is an underrated card. +2/+2 and lifelink is a playable aura in Limited if you watch carefully and play it around instant removal. Often, a single swing would be more than enough to turn the tide.

Since again, I find limited summaries boring (and they often boil down to ‘and then I had it and he didn’t’) I’ll spare the details. I won my first four, lost the fifth, and then won round six to be able to draw into the Top 8 draft.

The Top 8 draft was one of the most harrowing Magic experiences that I’ve gone through so far. I’ve never done a competitive REL draft before, and I’m a little ashamed to know that I earned a warning for Improper Draft Procedure for looking at a pack of cards early. Then again, half the table got warnings for similar things, so I suppose that we were all fairly new to Top 8 drafts. I built what I thought was an awesome UW Skies deck – always a popular archetype in limited. Unfortunately for me, Big Green Stompy is also a good limited archetype, and Spiders beat birds in this set. Sentinel Spider, specifically, deserves some credit for being a huge road block for everything and their cousin. It’s a non-flying Serra Angel, but in Green, and at common. Seems pretty solid.

 I lose in the Top 8, collecting another SCG Top 8 pin (That makes three!), my first SCG IQ Playmat, and $100. I opted to receive the money in convention prize tickets, which allowed me to buy a pair of Scrublands for my legacy deck. While I was doing that, Pop had been doing some Fill-And-Fire Sealed events, and won one for a Convention-exclusive playmat – and enough tickets over the course of the day to buy a Karakas at an absurdly low price. Good for him.

We durdled around for the evening, playing one last Fill-And-Fire Sealed. (I lost in the finals in game 3 to Switcheroo on my 10/10 Slumbering Dragon. Mind control effects suck, but still good for some tickets.) Bed followed shortly thereafter, and on the morning, we were back at it.

The Standard Super IQ on Sunday went less well for me. I played my normal Tokens build with some minor sideboard tweaks for the Wolf Run matchup. I met Naya Aggro in game one, packing the newly released Thragtusk. I don’t want to say that I told you so, but that card is absurd. It throttled me in game one with a pair of Restoration Angels attached that I was never able to dig out from under. Game two came down to him miracling a Bonfire for 2 and killing more tokens than I’d like to admit. Neither match was close.

I won round two against RW Humans, which seems like a bad matchup unless you draw multiple Champions of the Parish like I did.  Sometimes you’re lucky, I suppose. Unfortunately, I was not, and I lost the third round to Delver after he blind flipped a lot of things and ran me over without much protest. He at least complimented that I blanked his Vapor Snags all game by playing around them.

Pop continued to play in the event and went on to Top 8 before losing his match. Still won a playmat and $50 cash.

While he did that, I entered the final Standard Fill-And-Fire  event of the weekend. Not wanting to go out on a 1-2 drop, I 3-0 the event and take home the prize of 32 tickets and a playmat. Two of the matches were pretty lackluster affairs – against Mill and a subpar version of Tokens that never got off the ground. The third match was against an extremely competent UW Delver player who put me down a game early, and took an advantage in the second. A well-timed Midnight Haunting put me back in the game, and I managed to crawl back before taking the game – and then the third in decisive fashion.

I cash in my tickets for my last Marsh Flats, my last Ethersworn Canonist, and three packs of AVR – one of which contained a Cavern of Souls. My luck was strong with this one. I’ve only got about 20 cards to go for my Legacy deck, and we’re making slow but steady progress on that front. I’ve resolved to not spend too much money on the deck from here on our, which means all the card acquisitions will have to be via prize support or trades. This is going to make it a little difficult, but I imagine that we can probably get there over time.

I caught up with Wingman once more before I left, and we made sure to get a picture for you guys. I’m the handsome one in green. He’s the handsome one in Judge Black.

Wingman2011 and Myself, Rocking the Con

Overall, the weekend went extremely well for me. I received prizes from 3 of the 4 events I entered, though admittedly not the events that I would have expected if you had asked me at the start of the weekend. We ended things up with a trip to Texas Roadhouse and then singing Linkin Park all the way back to Philadelphia.

This coming weekend will be spent in DC, so I won't likely get to play much Magic. There's an outside chance I might finally set up my Magic Online account though - and try out the new Beta Client (which I hear is sweet). The Magic Judge Open is coming up, and I'd like to have at least some familiarity with the system by that time. This Thursday, we'll talk about what I'm unhappy with in Tokens, and what deck I'll be testing out in Standard next week!

Have any suggestions for an article for me to write? I'm always accepting suggestions. Feel free to leave comments, message me on Twitter (@ajrula) or reddit (andrewrula). I also accept email suggestions - andrewrula at gmail.com.

Until Thursday, Happy Spellslinging!
-Andrew

M13 Prerelease, or "How I Became A Level 1 Judge"

Last weekend, like the vast majority of you, I attended the M13 prerelease. My shop of choice this go-around was All-Stars Collectables, which always manages to put on a good show.

This weekend was a little different from previous ones however, since I’d be donning the mantle of judge for Sunday’s tournament. I’ve been working with our local Level 2 judge – Mike Noss – to get me up to snuff, and while he is a cruel, evil man who deliberately tries to slip you up at every opportunity, he’s also one of the most knowledgeable judges that I have met in my life, and prepared me well. I asked him about working towards becoming a Judge during the Dark Ascension prerelease, and since then, we've been working on and off with practice exams and other quizzes. Playing in high-level events has also helped a bit. Finally, I felt like I was ready (and Mike agreed, thankfully.)

We arranged for me to play in the Saturday Sealed event, and judge on Sunday under a Level 1 named Dave. I’d planned on giving a tournament report here, but frankly, limited match reports are boring as all hell, and my pool was terrible in both of the events that I played. I was only half joking when I told people that Sunpetal Grove was the best of the 12 rares. I battled to a 2-3 record in the first event, and a 2-2 in the second, which was an extremely disappointing finish, but was about where I’d expect given the shallow nature of my sealed pool. Heebs managed to win a side event, which was good for a stack of packs.

It may have been that I should have been more ambitious with my mana, and gone into a third color for better card quality, but two just seems so much more stable. I suppose that’s an argument for another day though.

I woke up bright and early Sunday morning, making it to the venue by 8am since the event was scheduled to start at 10. George, our TO, wanted help setting up the community room that we were playing in. Dealer Booths needed to be set up, as well as the store’s own table. Table numbers needed to be placed, and ice fetched from the local store. Many players don’t realize how much organization goes into having a well run tournament, but George made the whole thing seem like old hat. The one hiccup being that the Mall didn’t open until 10am – and neither would the air conditioning, leaving the tournament venue sweltering.

One of the dealers joked that we should buy a crate of deodorant and give it out as Door Prizes. I thought that was pretty amusing.

The event started a couple of minutes after ten. There was some question about starting a few minutes late, since some players who had pre-paid weren’t there yet, but they all got phone calls or showed up. With all our ducks in a row, we started things off for the 31 player, 5 round event.

Mike was playing in the event, and ended up winning the whole thing with the most insane BW Sealed pool that I’ve seen in a long time. He spent his free time between matches drilling me with rules questions.

Dave gave me a few decks to practice deck-check, and while my speed is a little slow, Mike assures me that will come with more practice. The deck in question being Vintage Oath of Druids probably didn’t help at all. It has even more 1-off copies than most vintage decks. Still, it is something to work on in the future.

Since it was a prerelease, the majority of the judge calls were simple, ordinary things. “Is Prey Upon combat damage?”, “Does Fight take Deathtouch and Lifelink into account?”, “Does Exalted stack if a creature has it more than once?”, “If I kill the source of an ability after it’s already triggered, does it still happen?”, “What if I kill one of the creatures being exchanged with a Switcheroo?”

Pretty benign stuff for the most part. The most complex call of the day involved a misplaced card. A player raised his hand and called for a judge. I meandered over and asked what was wrong – since neither player appeared to have drawn any cards or anything yet.

“So, there’s a pacifism here, and I’m pretty sure it belongs to my friend over there. We played here last round, and it’s in one of his sleeves.”

He gestured to a player a few tables away, so I walked over and asked him to count out his deck. When he came up with 39 cards, I told him to be more careful in the future, asked if any cards in the deck were known, and when they told me no, I shuffled the card in.

His opponent asked me if it should be a Game Loss for improper deck, and I informed him that it would be at Competitive REL, but Prereleases are run at Regular, where there is no Game Loss penalty.

And that’s all for the interesting judge calls. I tested during the first round of Top 8, after Mike and George wrestled with the printer for a while. I managed to get every question but one of them (which I waffled on for ages before ultimately picking the not-correct one.) The test wasn’t especially difficult – certainly about on par with the easy practice exams. I'd discuss some of the more interesting questions on there, but we're not allowed to talk about the content of the tests. I'd encourage anyone to go and practice some of them on the DCI Judge Center.

And just like that, I’m a Level 1 judge – or more accurately, a Level 0 who has passed his evaluation and is currently waiting to be accepted in the system. Still, in the last 48 hours, I feel like a giant vault of information has come flooding out of the woodwork. I’ve been added to facebook groups and mailing lists. I have phone numbers for local shops and arrangements to judge an event already. I’m reading the MTGJudge twitter account, and I find it very interesting to read the articles that they’re posting. I find myself flipping through the Comprehensive Rules on my iPhone (There’s an app called MTGJudge that ALL Magic players should download immediately. It’s incredible, and also includes Oracle Text for every card, plus all the rules documentation.)

For those of you who are just starting out in Magic, or perhaps think that you need a more firm grasp of the rules, I’d encourage you to run over to the DCI Judge Center – http://judge.wizards.com – and take a few of the practice exams. They’ll expose you to rules and interactions that you hadn’t thought about before, and it will improve both your mechanical play and ability to leverage the rules to your advantage in-game. If you legitimately think that you have a great grasp of the rules, check out the hard practice exam.

This weekend, it felt like I took a big step towards the future. I don’t know where I’ll be in five years, but I can certainly tell you that I’ll still be playing Magic and judging tournaments on a regular basis.

On Thursday, we’re going to brew something using M13 cards, and update a few decks that I have built at the moment, to account for the new additions to Standard. This coming weekend, I will be at Connecticon, and will happily be playing Magic a healthy (unhealthy?) amount of the time there. If you’d like to meet up, grab a bite to eat, or even just sling a few spells, let me know.

Always topdeck like a champion.

-Andrew