LOGISTICS:

The venue is a small store in Brooklyn, once players are seated it can difficult to move around, and things get congested when pairings are up. 4 draft pods running were running concurrently, so the store was nearly at max capacity. The morning standard event ran late, leading to a bit of juggling to clean up the space, and we got the event fired 10 minutes later than planned. We chose to have players hand in decklists when they arrived, and seat players directly for R1 rather than have a separate player meeting. Opening announcements were difficult—I had some brief notes prepared, but I had a hard time controlling the room and being heard. I rushed through the key points and got the event going rather than fighting the crowd. Table numbers, two sets of pairings, and announcements to push in chairs kept things going smoothly. Announcements were made with 20 and 10 minutes remaining in the round.

PAPER:

This was very straightforward—match slips, two bulletin boards for pairings. End of round time was printed very largely on the pairings sheet a few minutes after the start of the round. The biggest challenge was getting the match slips out early. I was swooping on tables for deck checks, and didn’t plan to get someone else to hand out slips at the start of the round. When there was a flurry of calls at the start of the round, the notepad came out to keep track of infractions and time extensions.

DECK CHECKS:

This was where things were roughest in the event, and was an eye-opener for me. While most of the lists came in & were verified early, there were some last-minute entrants, so we sorted and verified the rest of the lists rather than checking. The plan was for me to swoop and bring decks to the front of the shop, where Trevor would perform the check, while I then hand out slips and handle calls on the floor. This ended up not working. Trevor was incredibly busy managing customers at the front of the shop, and keeping the drafts going. It caught me off-guard, and it ended up with Trevor pulling lists while I swooped tables, then performed the check. If things were slow enough, Trevor checked the second deck. Time extensions were inconsistent, some being quick, and the longest of the day was 14 minutes. Mid-round checks were inconsistent. No checks were done in the last round. We managed to fully check 5 decks through the length of the event, so met the target and then some. I very likely put much more attention on this whole process than I needed to for this size of event—but I can’t shake the feeling that it could’ve been better.

Rulings:

The store has a very experienced player-base, and most of the rulings and questions were straightforward. Some of the interesting ones:

-L@EC at start of the game: Player A is on the play, and after resolving mulligans he pulls the top card off of the deck, realizes what he did, and calls a judge. The card never touched the hand but was seen, so ruled it as L@EC rather than improper drawing at start of game. Randomized the library and moved on.

–Electrolyze and Young Pyromancer missed trigger: Player A casts Electrolyze targeting a Spellskite and Player B. Player B does a bunch of stuff in response. There’s a disagreement on ifEelectrolyze has resolved yet, and if the Pyromancer trigger has happened—player B has notated a life total change, player A has not. After a bit of talking, it ends up player A has drawn a card off of the Electrolyze. I ruled the trigger has been missed, and give player B the choice of if he’d like it to be put on the stack, which he declines.

-59 Card Deck list. Player A turned in a 59 card deck list—he scratched out 2 Electrolyze and wrote 1 instead. Checked the deck, and it was indeed 2. After talking with the player, it was a mistake; he wrote out the list by memory and couldn’t remember the content of his deck. His opponent didn’t want the game loss issued, and wanted to appeal. I checked with Trevor and looked up the downgrade policy in the IPG and agreed that this wasn’t eligible for a downgrade. The list was corrected to reflect the deck played

–Aether Vial and poor communication: This was the trickiest of the day. Player A Vapor Snag a Spellskite to hand, Player B activates the vial by tapping it and saying “stack?” and player A goes “OK” and player B then immediately puts the spellskyte onto the battlefield. Player A then calls me over, saying that he wanted to respond to the vial activation.

I was nearby, and while not watching the game, I could tell it was a reasonably quick sequence from the announcement of the vial to the Spellskite ending up in play, but not overly rushed. What made it weird was throughout the game, Player B would announce the Vial by saying “stack,” then go in the tank for a while before putting creatures in play. I talked to both players away from the match, and verified intentions, and got the feeling that player B wasn’t trying to sneak something by his opponent. Player A may have legitimately miss-communicated, or forgotten and quickly realized had a way to respond. I ruled that the Aether Vial had resolved, and the Spellskite was in play, then reminded them to please communicate clearly & play carefully. 4 minute time extension for the discussions. I may have taken too long on this, but I had a feeling that I should dig deeper rather than making a quick ruling. I had a good chat with the Aether Vial player later between rounds.

STATS:

R1: 5:40PM Start, last slip in at 6:24

R2: 6:25 pairings up, 6:29 round start

R3: 7:37 start, last slip in at 8:15

R4: 8:16 pairings, 8:18 start, 9:06 last slip

R5: 9:10 start, end before 10PM

TL;DR:

Overall, players were satisfied, things ran pretty much on time, and the TO was happy. It would’ve been an even smoother event if I managed my expectations and resources better. Having a better plan for deck checks, and planning and delegating the match slip distribution from the start would help. I also need to work on making better announcements, and always improving on making rulings that leave players happy.

Thanks for reading, please send any feedback, tips, and tricks to use for future events here!