October 15, 2016 | Calgary, AB Canada
162 Players
5 Judges

I was a floor judge for this event.  The event included side events as well as the main event.  I wanted to report on a few interesting things that came up in the event.

At the start of the event a player called me over to check his opponent’s sleeves.  They were highly worn.  It is unlikely that the player was cheating in any way but due to the wear of the sleeves it would have been possible so I had the player re-sleeve, issued a time extension to cover the time taken to do so and issued a tournament error marked cards warning to the player.

On Resolving Valakut Triggers

There was an interaction involving Scapeshift, Valakut, The Molten Pinnacle and land destruction.  The active player cast Scapeshift, leaving a single copy of Valakut, The Molten Pinnacle as his only permanent.  He fetched two more copies of Valakut, The Molten Pinnacle and 6 mountains, one of which was a non-basic, off of Scapeshift.  With the damage triggers on the stack his opponent destroyed the non-basic mountain.  The ruling was that the non-active player would take 9 damage because the triggers for the destroyed land would still resolve normally (there were still 5 *other* mountains in play) but the triggers for the other 5 mountains would not as to them there were only 4 *other* mountains still in play.

Grafdigger’s Cage and Nahiri’s Ultimate
I had to tell another play that though it was completely legal to ultimate his Nahiri, The Harbinger with Grafdigger’s Cage in play, he unfortunately could not put Emrakul, the Aeons Torn into play.  I did not remind him that he could put an artifact into play if he had one as that would be outside assistance.

IPG Issues
I had my first instance of implementing the new remedy for a self-called Mulligan Procedure Error.  The player had drawn seven cards rather than six on the mulligan.  The new procedure allows the player who self-called the choice of either taking another mulligan or allowing his opponent to choose a card for him to shuffle back into his library.  He, of course, was not happy with either choice.  I like the new remedy because there is at least a choice, even if neither choice is desirable.

I had an incident where, when cutting the opponent’s deck, the player left a singular card on the table (dexterity error?) from the bottom of the deck.  The player to whom the deck belonged noticed the card after placing his seven cards face down on the table.  He’d not yet looked at them so I had them shuffle the deck again with the missing card, cut again, and re-draw.  I did not issue any penalties on this.  Had play actually started I would have issued warnings to both players.

The final incident of note was a player fumbling his opponent’s deck while shuffling it.  This revealed several cards from the deck as well as had some fall to the floor.  The player, to whom the deck belonged had concerns that, because some cards had fallen to the floor, that it was possible that not all of the cards had been recovered.  In order to ensure the integrity of the deck I had the player perform a stack shuffle/count and then reshuffle the deck.  I, of course, issued looking at extra cards warning to the player who had fumbled the deck.

Logisitcal Concerns
The TO, Face2Face Games, had only 1 payment card point of sale device.  This made it very awkward for them to running their merchandise booth while we were simultaneously trying to take payment for registration.  TOs and Head Judges need to be aware that if only one card reader is available then it would be best to arrange the venue in such a way that everything that requires payment is in the same area.  Unfortunately for our event I could not figure out a way to lay it out so that registration/side event registration and the vendors could all be near enough for this not to be completely awkward.