I am Elli Eirini Osmantzikidou, an L1 from Thessaloniki , Greece.
The following is a report about my first PPTQ, which I unexpectedly Head-Judged.

Let’s start with some info about the event. The event was PPTQ Dublin, modern format which was organised by Efantasy.gr, a store in Thessaloniki, Greece on September 11 , 2016. It was held at the store so the place was quite familiar to me, as I have judged there in the past. The total attendance was 16 players so we ended having 5 rounds and top4. The judge team consisted of me, acting as a floor judge and Alexander Papageorgiou, an L2 as the Head Judge. The scorekeeping was done by the TO. Also the the interesting thing is that because we didn’t have any match slips, we took down the pairings and wrote the results there, so a lot of players just came to me and said their match results. It was often embarrassing because I had to ask them for their names to avoid making any mistakes with their result!

So that morning I woke up and went to the store area around 10.30 pm. The TO arrived and opened the store just minutes after my arrival. I asked him if he needed any help with opening the store and he told me that I could go upstairs and prepare the area, open the lights and fix the chairs/tables a bit. Around 11 o’clock, Alex also came. We had a brief conversation about expected attendance, rounds and some questions I had about the IPG. Then suddenly as we are talking he says to me: “Ok, you are gonna head-judge this event”. I have a big problem with anxiety and I had made a huge progress that day by trying not to panic by thinking that I have done this before and everything is going to be ok. But after Alex told me this i started panicking. After a few minutes, I managed to calm down and talk with Alex about what I should make as a starting announcement (what I should include and what I shouldn’t).

In the end, it looked a bit like this:
• Introducing myself and Alex
• Announcing the event, the participants and the rounds,
• Reminding the players about what cards they area allowed to have in their deckbox, giving them 5 minutes to check this and get their decklists ready as we were going to collect them after that.

So at 12 o’clock, all 16 participants had sat down and were waiting my announcement. I started talking and when I was about to say about the allowed cards in the binder, I made a pause that felt huge (even though Alex told me it only lasted a couple of seconds). It was quite unprofessional on my part. Nevertheless I tried my hardest and I fixed it by quick thinking about the list I had made on my mind beforehand.. After my announcement, Alex made a mini announcement of his own about the following “PPTQ season” and how it may affect Thessaloniki not having an L2, as he is going abroad. Finally he said there is a surprise waiting for all of us later in this event!

So round one starts and the only question I got was if a player can look at his sideboard while playing.[MTR 3.15] Some players almost got a penalty for not being at their seats the first 5 minutes of the round, but luckily for them after 4 minutes they returned to the store area, ready to play. In Greece, we have the unofficial rule that if you are late 5 minutes into the round, you get a Game Loss and if you are late 10 you get a Match Loss.

Round 2. One player asks me if he Electrolyzes one Sakura-Tribe Elder and his opponent, if the spell will “fizzle” or not.[COMP 608.2B] The huge surprise Alex talked about is that mid-round of this round, he brought like 3 kilos of cheese pie and sweet pie and treated all of us as part of his farewell. This lighten up a bit the mood and a lot of players where like “Yes, these are the advantages of playing a Burn/Dredge deck.”.

Round 3. So one player asked me this round if Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle’s colour is red so he can use Burrenton Forge-Tender to prevent the damage. The answer was no since the lands are colorless.[Comp 202.1/202.2] We also missed an opportunity for a deck check as we had a miscommunication. I asked Alex if he could take the decks while I was searching the lists. I got carried away and sat on the table even after finding the list, making it obvious that we are going to have a deck check. Alex had to answer some calls and later it simply slipped his mind. So we decided to make deckchecks in the two following rounds

Round 4-5. We ended up deckchecking the same guy twice. The only interesting thing that happened was when a player, player C, during round 5, came and told us if it is possible for a table to not learn the results of his match because if player A conceded the match to player B then they could both of them go to top4 and he couldn’t. The score is 1-1. Before starting the third game, player A says to player B, even if I win this game I am going since I am already secured for top4. (They are both competitive players who know each other for a long time.) So player A wins and gives the score to us as 1-2. They both went to top4.

Top 4 was conducted in a friendly manner. Most of the players knew each other and sometimes they were making jokes and we all laughed. Thankfully, we hadn’t any events like outside assistance or any decklist errors. Just at some point Alex decided to search for a decklist to make sure it had 1 Nahiri, the Harbinger in the mainboard.

In conclusion, I feel that my first time head judging event was a success. We didn’t have to give any big penalties and the environment was friendly and I gained experience from head judging.

A few tips if you are going to head judge for the first time:
• Prepare your announcements beforehand.
• Head Judging isn’t really different from Floor Judging at all, just stay cool and you can manage it.

Relevant rules:

CR 608.2B “If the spell or ability specifies targets, it checks whether the targets are still legal. A target that’s no longer in the zone it was in when it was targeted is illegal. Other changes to the game state may cause a target to no longer be legal; for example, its characteristics may have changed or an effect may have changed the text of the spell. If the source of an ability has left the zone it was in, its last known information is used during this process. The spell or ability is countered if all its targets, for every instance of the word “target,” are now illegal.”

CR 202.1b/202.2-b
202.1bSome objects have no mana cost. This normally includes all land cards, any other cards that have no mana symbols where their mana cost would appear, tokens (unless the effect that creates them specifies otherwise), and nontraditional Magic cards. Having no mana cost represents an unpayable cost (see rule 117.6). Note that lands are played without paying any costs (see rule 305, “Lands”).
202.2. An object is the color or colors of the mana symbols in its mana cost, regardless of the color of its frame.
202.2b Objects with no colored mana symbols in their mana costs are colorless.

MTR 3.15 “During a game, players may look at their own sideboard, keeping it clearly distinguishable from other cards at all times.”