GP San Jose – Go team, episode two

Welcome to part two of my three part discussion of the team sealed format at competitive REL. In the first section, I talked about how players will be seated, and what happens if they screw that up. In the next post, I will talk about my takeaways from a recent competitive REL team sealed event. In this post, I will be discussing team communication and deck construction. So, without further ado:

Section 8.3, Team Communication Rules:

Teammates may communicate with each other at any time,unless they leave the play area. If they leave the play area, they may not return until the end of the match.

Pretty straight forward. Players can communicate with each other all they want during their matches. If they get up and leave, they can’t come back. So this means no bathroom breaks, right? Right! Remind your players to bring some empties, just in case.

Wait, hold on, that sounds incredibly wrong. We want players to have access to bathrooms if they’re needed during a match. So why is section 8.3 telling us differently?

It’s not. If a player must use the bathroom during their match, we are going to allow them to do so. “But Louis,” you’re saying, “that’s not what the document says!” You are correct. In fact, nowhere in any document are the words “bathroom,” “restroom,” “lavatory,” or “biohazard cleanup at Table 7.” We don’t write documents to include every possibility. We write documents to exclude the things we absolutely don’t want. By forbidding re-entry, we are eliminating most opportunities for the game to become skewed by outside factors.

What behavior are we trying to prevent by forbidding re-entry into the play area? We are trying to prevent information and strategy contamination. We don’t want a teammate to leave and come back with information they didn’t have before, and neither do we want them to return with strategies that were influenced by the outside world. Remember why we exist: to keep things fun and fair. It is not fun to refuse people access to the restroom. It is not fair to allow people to leave their seats, talk strategy with their friends, and have return to their match with new and brilliant ideas. So we must make exceptions for emergencies, but we must do so in a way that ensures fairness.

One suggestion I’ve heard is that when a player requests to use the restroom, instead of staying at their seat and watching their things, as we normally do, we have their teammates watch their gear and we escort them to the restroom and back. I’m not a huge fan of this proposal, as it means a judge has to hang out near the bathroom while waiting for the player, and is effectively removed from floor coverage for that period of time.  Additionally, this feels like we’re violating players’ privacy just a bit too much.

My recommendation, then? Treat bathroom requests like we always do. Allow them, and remind people not to speak to anyone about their match. Keep an eye on them heading to the bathroom, and see if they’re speaking to other people.

At some point, we have to trust our players that they will do the right thing. We can walk with them hand in hand to the bathroom, but once that stall door is closed, there’s no way for us to know they’re not looking at sideboard strategies on their cell phone, or texting their friends who are observing the match. At the end of the day, people who are determined to cheat will cheat. A verbal reminder to behave will keep most honest people honest in the period between leaving their seat and returning to it after using the bathroom.

I’m still up in the air on how to handle this, or if it’s even a big enough problem to worry about. I’d appreciate your input, if you have any, either in the comments below or via email or Facebook or smoke signal or what have you.

Let’s move on to our next topic, shall we? Yes, we shall. Section 8.6, Team Sealed Deck Tournaments:

All the rules for individual Limited tournaments (Section 7) apply to Team Sealed Deck tournaments except as follows.

Each team must receive the same product mix. For example, if one team receives twelve Return to Ravnica boosters, every team must receive twelve Return to Ravnica boosters.

The DCI recommends that eight boosters per team are used for two-person team tournaments, and twelve boosters per team for three-person team tournaments. For the recommended product mix for the current block, refer to Appendix D.

All cards must be assigned to a player’s deck or sideboard during deck construction and cannot be transferred to another player during that tournament. (Players do not share main deck or sideboard cards.) Players may exchange cards in their pool between rounds in Regular REL tournaments that do not use decklists, but only between matches.

Let’s break this down a bit. Please note that while I won’t be examining MTR Section 7, it is an important resource to be familiar with. Section 7, Limited Tournament Rules, is where we are told how to run limited tournaments, both draft and sealed. I would highly encourage you to re-familiarize yourself with it. Without further ado:

Each team must receive the same product mix. For example, if one team receives twelve Return to Ravnica boosters, every team must receive twelve Return to Ravnica boosters.

This makes sense. Everyone gets the same product.

The DCI recommends that eight boosters per team are used for two-person team tournaments, and twelve boosters per team for three-person team tournaments. For the recommended product mix for the current block, refer to Appendix D.

Twelve boosters per team. Sweet. And before you go looking for Ice Age block team mixes, please note that Appendix D only goes back to Innistrad block. For older mixes, check older MTRs.

All cards must be assigned to a player’s deck or sideboard during deck construction and cannot be transferred to another player during that tournament. (Players do not share main deck or sideboard cards.) Players may exchange cards in their pool between rounds in Regular REL tournaments that do not use decklists, but only between matches.

Okay, here’s the good stuff. Everything opened winds up assigned to one of the players, and is listed on their deck registration sheet. Only that particular player has access to that particular card for the duration of the tournament. Let’s illustrate this!

Remember Team Awesomesauce? Andy, Bob, and Chuck are registering their decks and their pool. Andy is rocking a blue/black concoction with his team’s three Blustersqualls in his sideboard. Bob is playing a three color Jund deck, and Chuck is playing a Simic-less green/blue mill deck.

Chuck just lost his first game, because he’s playing a terrible deck. He really needs to slow down his opponent’s lightning-fast Rakdos deck, and so he pulls out his deck box to look through his sideboard. Not seeing the Blustersqualls he knows they opened,  the icy tendrils of fear reach down his chest and grip his heart.

“Andy,” Chuck nervously asks across the table, “do you have those Blustersqualls? I could really use them right now.”

“Sorry, scrub, can’t give them to you. I registered them, so they’re mine. Also, thanks for telling our opponents that I have Blustersqualls in my sideboard.” Andy’s terse response foreshadows their imminent loss, as the opponents play around the tricky blue instant and crush Andy and Team Awesomesauce into the dirt. Thanks, Chuck.

That’s about all I have to say on the topic of deck construction. For my thoughts after a recent Team Sealed event I participated in, click here!

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