Chilliwack, BC

February 15, 2025

Lessons from the Past

This event was fun but had a few stumbling blocks last year. You can read about them in depth here. This year I wanted to start both the cEDH and main event earlier, as well as cut down the number of events offered. The previous year we launched 3 RCQs in one day, with the second one getting a middling amount of players and the final one of the day barely getting enough players to sanction. I succeeded in convincing the TO of… some of this stuff. I marketed to the TO that maybe instead of running 3 RCQs that will barely limp along, why don’t we just, run a casual 3-round event in the evening? And just one rebound RCQ? The TO decided to split the difference and run 3 RCQs in addition to a casual event. Uhm. Ok. On the flip side, I did win the war for having the two “main” events start earlier. The cEDH in particular had sorely needed this, as it had run until almost midnight the previous year.

Small Numbers

The turnout for this event was immensely disappointing. Our “main event”, which was offering a pretty deep prize pool and RC invites to top 8 only drew 14 players. After we began I mentally crossed both rebound RCQs, as well as the legacy 3-round, off the schedule. The weird thing here was that while the event would be five rounds with a cut to top 4, the payout was still to top 8, which means players who didn’t make the cut would get RC invites. Wild.

Scheduling Cuts

As predicted the Standard RCQ in the afternoon didn’t launch, and we had 3 somewhat mopey players waiting around for it. I had a lot of leftover promos from the main event, and after getting authorization from the TO, gave each standard player some promos for free and encouraged them to play each other round robin style. I did something similar with the two legacy players later in the evening.
After the main event cut to top four, there were a few players (6 actually) who hadn’t gotten their invites. Those players managed to wrangle up two other players to launch the 4-slot Modern RCQ that was scheduled for earlier in the day, but had failed to launch due to lack of attendance. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen an event that was more inviting than this one.

Small Scheduling

I organized the schedule to have each judge taking care of one event, and one judge as a float/deck check helper. If all events had launched I think this plan would’ve best utilized our judge resources, but as-is, the event only really needed one to two judges if that, so my plan wasn’t really stress tested at all.

Hand Palace

While this isn’t terribly interesting, I saw a player bounce Oboro, Palace in the Clouds to turn on Revolt for Fatal Push. This is kinda tech.

Escalation Ad Nauseum

it was 3pm, only 3/5 events had launched with the last few looking dead in the water. I was ready to settle in, watch my top 4, and put a rather uneventful, but easy day of judging behind me, when a rather flustered player stalked up to me and said they wanted to talk to me and potentially the TO. Closely trailing behind the player was the cEDH head judge. After much information gathering, below is roughly my understanding of the situation
The flustered player, let’s call him Nate, had cast Necrodominance, then drew a bunch of cards at the beginning of his end step. Afterwards he cast some kind of Borne Upon a Wind Effect and began storming off with artifacts and rituals. Then he cast Yawgmoth’s Will, and used it to re-cast a bunch of rituals from his graveyard, culminating in an Ad Nauseum. Nate is mid-Ad Nauseum when the other players notice that the draw engine he played was Necrodominance and not Necropotence, which means that all the cards he re-cast from his graveyard should have instead been exiled and thus uncastable. At this point a judge is called. The judge asks Nate what the issue is, and Nate continues flipping Ad Nauseum cards. The judge then asks Nate why he’s still flipping cards and Nate asks the judge “are you okay?” as he flips a few more cards. The judge asks him to stop taking game actions and Nate takes all the Ad Nauseum cards and puts them on top of his hand and squares the pile so it’s impossible to tell what was in his hand before the Ad Nauseum. The judge asks to speak to Nate away from the table and tries to ask Nate why he didn’t stop taking game actions when a judge was called. Nate is belligerent throughout the interaction, being difficult about answering direct questions, stating that he thinks the judge has an ego problem. Which is the point at which Nate escalated to myself and the TO.

When addressing myself and the TO Nate cut the HJ off a few times, and spoke over him. Realizing that the HJ being present wasn’t making things better, I asked the HJ to step away while the player spoke to us. The player blustered for a while, and I still had very little idea of what had actually happened at this point. I decided that standing in the hallway with the three of us wasn’t particularly productive, and sent the player back inside, saying that I’d like to talk to him one on one, while I spoke briefly to the HJ who gave me an account of what actually occurred. I told him to go back to the table sans Nate and investigate the technical side of the ruling (what game actions took place and how we could fix it, as well as any information gathering related to investigating Nate for cheating), while I spoke to Nate to see if I could get him to calm down. I agreed to issue a USC – minor to Nate, as both from my observations as well as from the HJs account it sounded like Nate was being very obstructive to this investigation.

I sat down with Nate who let me know that the other judge’s behavior was unacceptable, as well as saying that he felt the other judge had a mental illness. Nate told me that he wished the judges would stop wasting all this time and just tell him how we were going to fix the issue.

I began to get flashbacks of the problematic players at Calgary and TCGCon. I recalled how we’d worked so hard with those players to keep the peace, and in the end they’d both exploded anyways. My major regret with those two interactions was how long I’d let the players drag out each interaction, and how much of our time we’d let them waste. After it appeared Nate was going in circles I cut the interaction short and issued the USC-minor, and let him know the associated penalty would be a turn skip. He predictably exploded, saying he wouldn’t accept the ruling. I gave him back to the TO while I checked back in with the HJ who said the rest of the table had drawn while waiting for the entire thing to shake out. Nate would be in the top table if he wasn’t DQ’d. This player effectively had said he wasn’t going to listen to judges at this point, so I felt it was time to kick him out for good. Him talking to me was kind of his chance to prove he could continue to be a productive player in the room, if he’d taken his USC-minor and settled down a bit maybe he would’ve been able to go to the top table. As it stood, he wasn’t a player that would be able to stay in the event. That being said, I wasn’t very familiar with this TO and wasn’t sure if he was going to actually back me up on this DQ. He’d seemed pretty reticent earlier, as Nate was a regular at the store. Eventually, after some discussion about how difficult it would be to run the top 4 with a player this disruptive, the TO agreed to have Nate was removed from the venue. Afterwards a few players apologized to me for Nate’s behavior.

The entire thing was stressful, but every time I deal with a player like this, I get a little better at it, I see the signs earlier, and am more confident in removing them from the event. That being said this still took way too long. I should’ve been more assertive with the TO initially and should’ve taken control of the interaction with Nate earlier.

Another interesting thing I noticed was the commonalities between all three of these problem players. They all told me how experienced they were and how long they had been playing, maybe this is some kind of intimidation tactic? I’m not entirely sure, but it doesn’t really impact how I interact with them so I’m not sure why they keep doing it. Then they try to drive the conversation, they cut off and talk over others, they speak with confidence and try to take charge. This was pretty bad initially, but when I sat with Nate I managed to steer the conversation a bit more. Finally, they all threaten the organizer, the judges and whoever is within the vicinity when they finally explode. The first time this happened and I was at the center of it (TCGCon) I was pretty shaken, but this time, I was more confident. I’ve been on the other end of a controversy enough times to know that it’s going to all be okay at the end as long as I’m respectful and professional throughout the interaction, which I feel I was.

…In Conclusion

Overall I don’t think I handled Nate particularly well, but in a sense I’m glad it came up, it’s another tough call where I know I made the right decision in the end. I think having done this again, I’m going to be able to make this call quicker in the future. I think the rest of the day was handled fine, though with the amount of players we had it was basically unfailable. I think I learned a lot from this event, or more accurately this interaction, and I hope I can do better next time.