The Program Coordinators Blog has put out an update as to who has submitted applications and their answers to a few questions.  To see who has applied, their accomplishments, and what their views are of the future of the program, follow this link.

Wave 15 has opened for Exemplar Recommendations.

This blog post discusses the recent changes and the data they have from their implementation.

Regional coordinators:

Are you interested in being a Regional Coordinator?  Are you a Level 3 or very strong Level 2? If you had any interest on how to process is going and to see if your region is available for application, the requirements for approval, and who has applies at this point follow the link.  (Note: the application cut-off has at the point of publication closed.)

Judge Articles and Blog Posts from August 2018

The Feature for this month-

if you missed it in the opening announcement: USA Northwest: The Northwest Passage!

1. Program Coordinator Blog: Program Coordinator Travel Diary – Issue #4, Program Coordinator Q&A August 2018
2. Judge cast:JudgeCast #206 – Commander 2018 Mechanics, JudgeCast #207 – Policy Discussables, JudgeCast #208 – Getting Loopy with Toby Elliott
3. JudgeApps Help and Updates: JudgeApps Updates – July 2018
4. Travel Guides: GP Orlando, GP Stockholm 2018
5. Regional Blogs:
   New articles in: German Speaking Countries
   Judging in the North!
   Jueces Hispanoamericanos
   Iberia
   Canadian Judge Family
   Regional Blog for USA – Southwest!
   USA Great Lakes Judges
   Europe – East regional blog
   Juízes de Magic Brasil
   The Judges of Southeast Asia
   BeNeLux
   USA – Southeast Regional Blog

More judge blogs can be found at the Judge Blog Portal.

In case you would like to discuss an article, visit our Judge forum. Don’t forget to regularly check our Judge blog

Do you need a quick rules or policy answer? Ask a Magic Judge!

Program coordinator Q&A – Special Feature!!

Our feature for this month in Community, the program coordinators held a Q&A through e-mail. If you missed out posting a question in the forums, you can at least still read their responses HERE to some of the questions.

Judge Anniversaries

Congratulations to all of the judges who celebrated an anniversary in August 2018, including Todd Bussey, Abel Jose Maria Flores Najera, Haitao Jia, and Riccardo Tessitori!

Congratulations to all of our Judge of the Week — August 2018

268:Theodoros Millidonis, L2 from Nicosia, Cyprus

269:Exemplar Wave 13, Part 1

270:Joel Bantiles, L3 from Taytay, Rizal, Philippines

271:Exemplar Wave 13, Part 2

272:Meg Baum, L3 from Detroit, Michigan

Welcome to the Fold:

A big welcome to the following judges who worked their first GP in August 2018!

GP Brussels

GP Orlando

GP Los Angeles

GP Providence

GP Prague

GP Richmond

 

Questions asked in the Month of July and an [O]fficial answer, just for you!

[expand title=”1. A player casts Soulflayer, exiling a Knight of Malice from his graveyard to pay for Delve costs. When the Soulflayer enters the battlefield, will it have Hexproof?”]

A: It will have Hexproof from White! It won’t have “general” Hexproof unless it exiles something with “general” Hexproof.

Approved by Callum Milne

Cards: Soulflayer; Knight of Malice[/expand]

[expand title=”2.  A player controls a Gisela, the Broken Blade, that is currently a copy of Hanweir Garrison, and a Bruna, the Fading Light, that is currently a copy of Hanweir Battlements. This player activates Hanweir of Battlements’ Meld ability. What happens?”]

A: This player’s opponent will face the tremendous power of Brisela, Voice of Nightmares! When this player exiles both Hanweir Garrison and Hanweir Battlements, the game checks if they make a melded pair. Since they are no longer on the battlefield, they become Bruna and Gisela again, two cards that make a melded pair, so they return to the battlefield melded as Brisela!

Approved by Nathan Long

Cards: Gisela, the Broken Blade; Bruna, the Fading Light; Hanweir Garrison; Hanweir Battlements[/expand]

[expand title=”3. A player activates the 0 ability of Tezzeret, Artifice Master and mistakenly picks up two cards, although they control less than three artifacts. These cards never touch the rest of their hand. What’s the infraction – L@EC or HCE?”]

A: This is treated as a GPE – Hidden Card Error. “It is HCE when a player creates a set, with the intention of creating a set, but the set ends up with too many cards in it. Notice that there is no need to draw cards, the infraction is not called Drawing Extra Cards for a very good reason. Tezzeret, Artifice Master’s second ability reads: Draw a card. If you control three or more artifacts, draw two cards instead. The player was instructed to make a set of 1 card, then add that set to their hand. Instead, they put 2 cards in the set they wanted to add to the hand. So, this is HCE, we reveal the 2 cards from this set, opponent chooses 1 to draw and 1 to be shuffled away.”

Approved by Scott Marshall

Cards: Tezzeret, Artifice Master[/expand]

[expand title=”4. In a multiplayer game, the player under whose control Xantcha, Sleeper Agent entered the battlefield leaves the game. What happens to Xantcha?”]

A. If Xantcha, Sleeper Agent is entering the battlefield, the player who’s putting it onto the battlefield must choose to give control of it to one of their opponents using its control-changing effect. When that opponent leaves the game, the control-change effect giving them control of Xantcha ends. When that happens, Xantcha returns to the control of its previous controller: the player who was making the choice of who to give it away to. That’s usually going to be Xantcha’s owner.

If Xantcha, Sleeper Agent is entering the battlefield, the player who’s putting it onto the battlefield must choose to give control of it to one of their opponents using its control-changing effect. When that opponent leaves the game, the control-change effect giving them control of Xantcha ends. When that happens, Xantcha returns to the control of its previous controller: the player who was making the choice of who to give it away to. That’s usually going to be Xantcha’s owner.

Approved by Callum Milne

Cards: Xantcha, Sleeper Agent[/expand]

[expand title=”5. AP casts Polymorphous Rush, paying the Strive cost to target three of her creatures – a Grizzly Bear, and two Ornithopters. When it resolves, she chooses NAP’s Carnage Tyrant to copy. After all that, AP casts Fated Infatuation, and targets her Grizzly Bear, which is now a copy of Nick’s Carnage Tyrant. On NAP’s turn, what is that token creature? A copy of Carnage Tyrant, still? Or is it a copy of that Grizzly Bear?”]

A: “AP’s Fated Infatuation token is and will always be a Carnage Tyrant…barring intervention from the players, of course. (AP could, after all, cast another Rush and turn it into something else temporarily, or Nick could cast Mirrorweave, or they could do any of a million other things to change it.)

When you copy something that’s been turned into a copy of something else, you’re not separately copying both the original card and the effect that’s turning it into a copy of something else. What you’re copying is only the copiable values of that card. Those values happen to have already been modified by the other copy effect, so the values you receive are the modified ones.

Once Polymorphous Rush’s effect wears off during the cleanup step, there’s no longer anything saying that the Grizzly Bears is a Tyrant, so it’s not one anymore, but the Fated Infatuation token is still a Tyrant, because those are the values it copied–the fact that it’d look different if you copied the same permanent with something else now doesn’t matter.

This is explicitly laid out in the rules for copying objects:

706.2b Once an object has been copied, changing the copiable values of the original object won’t cause the copy to change”

Approved by Callum Milne

Cards: Polymorphous Rush; Carnage Tyrant; Fated Infatuation[/expand]

New Judge Booth content

Thanks to the work of some tireless contributors, we now have new content for M19 and Dominaria available on the Judge Booth!

Judge Program Organizational Chart

It has been over half a year since the latest official publishing of the Judge Program Organizational Chart and now there is a new updated version. You can read all about it here.

Translated Rules

The Magic Comprehensive Rules document has been updated. The last version, for August 10th 2018, can be found on Wizards’ website and on DCIRules.org. Since this is the update that goes with Commander 2018, there is no Update Bulletin. Surely there will be some comments with the Guilds of Ravnica update!

“I always look for ways to turn chores into fun challenges. One of the most fun things I can think of is playing draft. So why not draft the team tasks every round? For the Feature Matches Team at GP Prague, we had 4 distinct tasks to perform each round, 5 judges in the team, and this all added up to this nice little game. What I appreciated most is how taking the break-token was handled in the most fair, democratic and caring way possible!”