Reproduced with permission from the Tournament Reports Forum.

Introduction

I was a Floor Judge on the Papers team for the SCG Standard Open on Saturday. On Sunday I was a Team Lead for the first time, on the Papers team for the Legacy Open. This report will be on the Legacy Open, but I will begin with some background from Saturday.

Background

I spent as much time as possible on Saturday speaking to Maria Zuyeva (who began the day as my Team Lead) and Abe Corson (who took over when Maria had to leave), as well as Brogan King (whom I had been paired with for the day) about what Team Leading the Papers team entailed, to be certain I was prepared.

The point I heard the most was the importance of delegation; a Team Lead should only be doing a task themselves if there is no other option, as they need to be available to continue delegating, observing, and handling any situations that arise. Other important things were thinking ahead, making sure that my Floor Judges know what they are doing at least ten minutes beforehand, assigning specific roles, and making the team have fun and feel like a team. From my own analysis and the feedback I received, I did a good job of all of these things except the last, which I will need to work on particularly.

The Legacy Open Head Judge and three Team Leads were present on Saturday, so the Head Judge Mikhail Chernov decided to reduce the amount of work to be done early Sunday morning by having a Team Lead pre-meeting on Saturday. This worked out very well, as it gave us a bulk of the information we needed, and gave us time to think it over before Sunday morning.

Legacy Open:

Overview

My team was originally slated to consist of Maria Zuyeva, Brogan King, and Kush Singhal, all of whom were part of the Papers team for the Standard Open. Maria was unable to return to the event Sunday, so Alexei Gousev was placed on the team instead. I paired Brogan and Kush together, so that Alexei would be available to consult on Team Lead matters (as Mikhail suggested).

As the Papers team, we were primarily responsible for putting up and taking down pairings and standings, passing out match slips, and coordinating with the coverage team to give them their match slips. I assigned Kush to pass out pairings to be posted, Brogan to be first back from posting pairings to help with match slips, Alexei to take down pairings near the end of round, and I took care of beginning to cut match slips so that I could be near the stage while the pairings were being posted.

Mikhail originally wanted all appeals and backups to go through him; this proved to make things difficult, so after a few rounds he changed it to any L3 judges. Adena (Floor and Sides Team Lead) and I agreed that halfway through the day Kush would switch to Head Judging a larger side event. The three teams for the day agreed upon having one member of each team on break each round, and only one Team Lead gone at a time. The break schedule for my team went like this:

Full Round Breaks:
Round 2: Ilan
Round 3: Kush
Round 4: Alexei
Round 5: Brogan

Half Round Breaks:
Round 5: Kush
Round 6: Ilan
Round 7: Alexei
Round 8: Brogan

There were no breaks Round 1 or Round 9, and Kush needed to take his half-round break in Round 5 so that he could begin Head Judging the side event in Round 6.

Event

In Round 1 it was necessary for Alexei and me to post the pairings, while Brogan and Kush helped pass out tokens and collect decklists. Mikhail wanted the pairings for Round 1 to be posted by the time he finished his opening announcements, but as the last call for missing players had not concluded, this was not possible. I did my best to keep track of the times for pairings postings, beginning of round, and last slip in, which went like this (numbers in parentheses are turnover times):

Round——-Pairings——-Beginning——-Last Slip
1————-9:17——–9:20(0:03)——–10:28 (1:08)
2——-10:30 (0:02)—-10:33 (0:03)——-1:29 (0:56)
3——-11:32 (0:03)—————————–12:30
4——-12:32 (0:02)—-12:35 (0:03)——-1:35 (1:00)
5——————————1:40—————-2:40 (1:00)
6——————————2:45—————-3:43 (0:58)
7———3:45 (0:02)—-3:49 (0:04)——–4:50 (1:01)
8———4:53 (0:03)—-4:57 (0:04)————–
9————–6:00——-6:05 (0:05)————–

Our average total round turnover time was 65 minutes, which is decent for an event of this size; we had a fairly consistent 3 minutes between the last slip and pairings being up, and another 3 minutes between pairings and the round beginning. During Round 4 I had Kush cover End of Round Procedure, which gave him an opportunity to learn that role.

Interesting Judge Calls

Round 2: The players explained that Player A had cast Vendilion Clique on the previous turn, and Player B had placed a card on the bottom of their library but forgotten to draw. I knew I was forgetting the proper way to handle it, so I asked the players to wait while I consulted Alexei, who reminded me of the partial fix for forgetting to draw cards. This turned out to be the rare case of a double GRV.

Round 4: I was called over between games one and two. One of the players had found a card stuck on the inside edge of their deckbox that was supposed to have been in the main board for the first game. I knew immediately that I was in under my head, and asked the players to hold on while I consulted Eric Levine. He explained that because the game was over and no violation was currently occurring, the players were to continue without any penalty. I cautioned them to be more careful in the future.

Round 5: This time I was called by a spectator who had asked the players to pause. He first confirmed with me that he was supposed to say something about a match that was not his, before explaining that Player A was attempting to gain life with Metalworker and Staff of Domination (revealing 3 artifacts) while Player B had a Sulfuric Vortex on the field. I concluded that since he had declared his intent to activate the Staff a specific number of times but had yet to note any change in life, the decision to activate the Staff was set and he simply would not gain the life. I continued to observe after explaining this to the players; as Player A still had some trillions of mana he proceeded to draw dozens of cards until he had an answer to Sulfuric Vortex, then continue his combo as planned.

Discussions with Team

I spent a significant amount of time throughout both days speaking to Brogan about various topics, and made a point to meet with each of my team members and the team as a whole near the end of the Legacy Open on Sunday.

Kush and I discussed end of round procedure, mainly how it is important to be assertive about sending judges out on tasks such as sweeping for slips, finding a table, or going to a specific table. It is important to realize that even if one does not have a list of tables, one can always send judges to do the other two things. We also discussed the balance between keeping the entire floor covered and conversing with other judges throughout the day, which he leans one way towards and I lean the other. We both also want to work on looking and sounding confident when giving rulings to players.

Brogan and I talked about our mutual interest in educating judges on the importance of diversity and being respectful to all people. She told me about a group in Europe that is working on creating a better environment of equality for sexuality. We agreed that the group has the right idea, but is too far away to be helpful in North America and more limited in scope that we want to be. She and I are beginning discussions with a number of other judges about starting a project here. The most pressing issue is creating an internally diverse group to handle diversity issues.

Alexei and Brogan both reiterated how important it is to make a team feel like a team, which I will definitely take into consideration for the next time I team lead.

Please share your comments and feedback here!