PTQ – Fate Reforged @ Bob Card

Venue: Metro mall MRT Chatuchak
Date: November 2, 2014
Format – Sealed (Khans of Tarkir)
Registration – 8:30 – 9:45
Start time – 10:00
Players – 73
Rounds – 7 with a cut to top 8
Event details

My name is Pakhawadee Palungwachira but people usually call me “Miou” which I prefer. I knew that being the Head Judge in this first PTQ of my judging career, this is going to be a real challenge for me. I intended to do my best. This report focused mainly on my preparation. My English grammar is poor and this is the longest English essay I’ve ever written, so if you notice any errors in my report, please feel free to comment here.

About the tournament organizer of this event – we’ve known each other for a long time. I’ve known him as an owner of Magic: the Gathering shop since I was in Junior high school (about 10+ years ago). He is quite experienced in dealing with large tournaments and can also guide me in some areas I’m easily make mistakes. However, he decided to let me manage almost all the process of this event including the judge manager role.

As head judge, the first task is to estimate the number of attendance so I could plan and prepare an appropriate place and the number of floor judges.

My country’s player number data for the recent large events in 2014 are

WMCQ#1 143 players
WMCQ#2 141 players
WMCQ#3 123 players

This was the last PTQ in our country (the next would be PPTQs). Although there was no incentive as a door prize but the prizes overall is good enough to gather the players. The TO intended to promote his event one month ahead and gave some discount to the players who register early. This way, we knew roughly the number of attendance. The pre-registered players were about 60 then the players who would register on site maybe 10-30 more. So I estimated about two floor judges is needed to handle this event.

The problem I found in almost every big tournament is the fatigue of the judges from various causes. Big and long tournaments drain so much energy from the judges and I always wonder if I’m the head judge, how can I solve this problem. As the event started very early, some judges cannot have a good breakfast and this might be the cause of losing concentration in their tasks. I decided to solve this problem with “Goodie bags”. I got this idea from reading the tournament report by Mr. Michael Arrowsmith, L2 USA.

Thailand’s MTG tournaments never had this stuff before so this might be new for the judges and I have very little idea on how to prepare the things in this bag. Inside, there were a notebook, a pen, two energy bars and also a plenty of snacks that cannot fit into the bags.

Two nights before the event, I received a phone call from a Level 3 judge advising me that I should also have announcements in English because there would be many foreign players joining this event. Almost all of them were from Malaysia and Singapore. This made me a little bit nervous but I managed to prepare it in time.

I had L2 Tammavit Tasnavites (Art) running the deckcheck (for half the day) and L2 Jutamanee Chaiyakam (Pym) running paper and logistics. The judges gathered here were all the active level 2 judges in Thailand (yes, we have only three level 2 judges, including me). And I’m really appreciated the help from Level 1 judge, Suppakrit Chatchayanusorn (F), who was a volunteer.

I went to the venue early so I can do a little shopping at the vendors. The venue is an open area surrounded by shops inside a shopping centre. Other people can watch the events. Magic: The Gathering seems to be a weird board game from the Thai people’s perspective. Thai players are used to the spectators who watches them curiously while they are playing. However, I haven’t found any problem from the spectators. The one thing from the venue that made me feel a little bit awkward was my voice while I was announcing something. I was loud enough to attract non-MTG players’ attention and they stared at me for a few seconds.

The judge meeting time was 9:00 am. Some of the content during judge meeting I had already talked to them via instant messaging applications which served as our group chatroom. I distributed the goodie bags. Everyone had a notebook for notes and review material which I encouraged to write notes, then assigned the floor judges on various tasks. Most importantly, I also reminded the judges to help each other observe if there were any issues like Bribery or anything that alter the result of the game. I wanted to have this event to be as clean as possible.

The thing that is always the biggest problem for me is everything that involves technology or computers. Yes, I’m talking about WER. I haven’t encountered any serious bugs and many bugs I have faced were solved quickly. However, in a big tournament with many players, I am still afraid of what serious problems I might have to face with this program.

9:45 am was my first intended time to close the registration but there were some players in line. With the permission from the TO, I continued registering them. Some players didn’t come to the venue yet but their friend registered for them. They assure us that the players would come in a few minutes.

At 10:00 am, Player seating time! I did my head judge announcement, both in Thai and in English. There were 73 players. The problem was some players couldn’t hear me although I used a pocket microphone and walked through the whole announcement. The announcement included the morph issue and how the game isn’t considered ended if all the morphs in the battlefield aren’t revealed.

After an announcement, I instructed the players to open all their packs. My first intention was, after they opened all the packs, they have to separate all of their foils and rares from each pack and write the cards’ name on the back of the registration checklist papers. I made this process to avoid rares swapping. Some players didn’t hear this and continued to register as usual. I then let all players register as usual and let the player who sat beside them check for mistakes from the other player.

At 10:15 am, the last player arrived at the venue. The TO let him do the registration within the remaining time. I decided to give him a game loss for Tournament Error – Tardiness. I’m not sure about this deviation. But I had a discussion about this penalty beforehand with other level two judges. The bigger tournaments such as Grand Prix does not allow the player to do the registration if they arrived at the venue late. However, it depends on the TO whether he or she would permit the player to enter the tournament after the event has started.

At 10:20 am, There were six players who dropped from the tournament before the swapping process.
At 10:25 am, Swapping process.
At 10:30 am, Deck registration start.
At 11:10 am, Start of round one

My main role afterwards was scorekeeper. Some backups, rulings and other things that happened were:

Round 1,

– Some problem with WER happened which was a delayed printing problem. I found that if I order too many pages for printing at one time, the printer would be delayed. I solved this by printing the pairings first, then print the result slips (cutting machine) afterwards.

Round 2,

– Backup : NAP had an Anafenza, the Foremost on the battlefield for a few turns. Two turns ago, one of the AP’s creature (Ainok Tracker) died but both AP and his opponent forgot Anafenza‘s ability to exile that creature. Last turn, AP cast Treasure Cruise in his pre combat main phase by tapping 4 mana and exiling 4 cards from his graveyard including Ainok Tracker that should have been exiled. This turn, during the precombat main phase his opponent realized the error. They called a Judge at this time, and the floor judge called me for a backup.

Due to how this was already been more than a turn and the backup would affect the game state so I decided to leave the game state as it was. I was not sure if AP knew Anafenza’s ability and intended to put Ainok Tracker into graveyard on purpose but at the time he cast Treasure Cruise, he had plenty of lands so I thought this might not be his intention.

GPE – GRV was applied to both players.

Round 3,

– AP used Burn Away targeting NAP’s Ashcloud Phoenix. He asked whether the Phoenix went to graveyard then came back or would it move to the exile zone.

If you notice, the text of Burn Away contains a trigger ability, so the NAP’s Phoenix’s trigger would resolve first and let the Phoenix re-enter the battlefield due to APNAP order.

– One player who had a foil Wooded Foothills came to ask me if I could make a proxy for him because he didn’t want it to be damaged during play. I refused.

Round 4,

– AP use Kheru Spellsnatcher’s morph trigger targeting NAP’s morph spell. After the ability resolves that morph was Thousand Winds. The player asked:

1. Could he cast Thousand Winds as a morph ?
NO, because you were already casting the card using an alternative cost (by casting it without paying its mana cost), you couldn’t pay any other alternative costs for the card, including casting it face down using the morph ability.

2. When could he cast Thousand Winds?
Clearly written on the Kheru Spellsnatcher’s text, as long as that card remains exiled.

– Art received an emergency call from his family so he had to go home for a few hours. Leaving me with two other judges. After discussing with the other judges, we chose not to perform the next round’s deck check due to the lack of people. Floor coverage was more important and we had already fulfilled the amount of deck check’s requirement.

Round 5,

– Backup : AP used illegal mana to cast Chief of the Scale. It should be black and white mana but he used green and white mana. He realized this in his next turn when he just noticed that he didn’t have black mana. He already drew for his turn. My judgement was to leave the game state as it was.

AP was the person who called a judge so I thought that the possibility of his intention to cheat is low. And at first, he asked if he could just move Chief of the Scale out of the battlefield.

– AP asked for the oracle text of Jeering Instigator. At first, both players didn’t know its name and only explained me its ability. I also didn’t know its name too. My MTG Guide application wasn’t updated yet so I have to find the oracle text from the spoiler with a very slow internet connection speed. I shouldn’t have wasted 5 minutes for this.

Round 6,

– Backup : During the precombat main phase, AP used the morph trigger of an Icefeather Aven targeting one of the NAP’s morph creature in order to bounce it. NAP responded with Feat of Resistance targeting that creature and gave it protection from green with a +1/+1 counter. AP attacked with the Aven and a Snowhorn Rider. NAP use that morph to block the Rider then use Become Immense (a green spell) targeting the morph.

I considered this was an illegal action and reversed the entire action including the mana payment.

Round 7,

– Art was back and we had to say goodbye to our Level 1 , Suppakrit Chatchayanusorn

At 6:20 pm, Final standings
At 6:30 pm, Started Top 8 Draft

The top 8 draft featured random seatings at the draft table. Due to us having three foreign players in the draft table, I had to make the draft call in English which made me a little bit nervous.

Nothing too notable happened during the draft itself. This draft table had one new player who had never joined in a competitive draft. The TO gave him a brief lesson beforehand and this ended with a good result.

At 9:30 pm., the event ended, congrats to Mr. Theeradet, who won the event. He is Thai and I’m quite satisfied to see Thai people qualify for the PT.

Overall the event went well. I did not hear any serious complaints. The T.O. expected 100-120 players but although it turned out to be only 73 players, he’s still satisfied with the outcome. The event ended quite earlier than usual and I rejoiced to get some compliments from players about this.

Some problem I faced and intended to improve.

My voice during the announcement period wasn’t loud enough to let all the players follow my instructions.

I didn’t announce about the new policy about Unsporting conduct –Major, which is recently updated to the match loss penalty.

MTG Guide update : some delay in finding the oracle text of the new cards in Khans of Tarkir due to internet connection problem. I should have updated my application before any events.

PT invite, can it pass down ?

I haven’t thought about the case where the PTQ’s winner doesn’t want to join the Pro Tour. It happened in this tournament when both of the final runner-up players were not sure if they could go to the Pro Tour or not. They asked me if this position could be passed down? I didn’t have any idea about this and I was given an advice from the Lv 3 judge to look for the answer in the premier event policy document for the answer.

The invite cannot be passed down. However, I should have the knowledge about the event I run as I’m the head judge.

As I have told you above, the things I’ve always been afraid in every tournament is any problem related to the WER. In this tournament,it worked smoothly with except the printing delay. I tried to reduce the problem as much as I could by double checking the result slips for every details.

Thank you for your time. I hope you learned something from my experience, as I know I have learned a lot, especially in working with TO’s/stores in general, nice judges, and nice players.

Please feel free to comment and leave feedback here!