Being the Head Judge and getting ahead of the game

Hello dear readers, and welcome once again to Judging From Exile!

Today I have a topic to talk about that is near and dear to my heart - what I learned from being Head Judge for a large event.

A Checkmark on my 'Bucket List'

Yesterday was a big day for me, both on a personal level and professionally as a judge, as I was given the exciting opportunity and great responsibility to serve as the Head Judge for the Toronto Face To Face Games Tournament Series Open 3K event held during Modern Masters release weekend.  

For those of you who are not local to Toronto and it's current meta, just know that Modern is very popular in Toronto, and as such the Tournament Series events there are always successful with player attendance ranging between 140 and 170 players during most events. 

We knew right away that yesterday was going to be a little different than usual, when we had to assign a judge to our draft area in the lobby to fire the first Modern Masters draft side event of the day, and we hadn't even closed registration for the main event yet. 

160+ players registered in the Main Event,  a Face To Face Open 3K

March 18th, 2017

Preparing My Team For Success

For those of you who haven't had the opportunity to play in a Face To Face Open before, you are missing out on some of the best run Magic events going in Canada today.  Face To Face Games takes great pride in their Open Series, and they do everything they can to help their teams perform well.   I won't list all of the little things here that they do to help us succeed, but one thing in particular that Face To Face does which I admire is that they have created 'judge kits' which they hand out to every judge at the beginning of the event, which contains all of the useful things we will need during the day to perform our jobs well.

Every F2F judge kit usually contains:

• Tape (handy for putting up those pairings and standings!)
• Scissors (sometimes we need to cut some slips by hand)
• Blue pens (players always forget to bring their own supplies)
• F2F branded Power Bank (if our phones die, we can't look up oracle text for the players anymore)

As this event was going to be my first time working as Head Judge for F2F I wanted to step up and really take ownership of the event.  One of the ways I decided to achieve that was by doing some extra preparations before the day of the event in order to help give my judge staff every opportunity to succeed.  I started with upgrading the F2F judge kits to make them even better for my team.

In every judge kit yesterday I added 2 red pens, as judges are expected to have red pens to write out infractions.  I also made some custom reminder cards for our judges, so that they would remember the proper way to fill out penalties on match slips.  I think they turned out really nicely, and I was happy to notice at least one judge using them during the event.

Laminated reminder cards, with the F2F motto on the front,

and how to fill out a penalty on a match slip on the back.

I also made some table numbers for certain places that don't have numbering tents due to rows having an odd number of matches.

Being a leader means being part of the team

Before a large event like this can begin, there is a lot of prep work on site to be done.  I arrived before 9 am and along with a couple other early arrivals we were able to get most of the tables and chairs set up for the event before other staff arrived.  

Once we had the room looking like a tournament venue I had some individual conversations with key members of my team, to ensure that everyone was working with the same vision for the day.  It was important to me that everyone on staff get their best opportunity to succeed, and so the Team Leads and myself planned to ensure that everyone had tasks that were best suited to their strengths, while also ensuring that help would be nearby in the unlikely event that someone began struggling with a judge call or task during the day.   

We then followed that up with a 'town hall' meeting where all of our judge staff was able to take a few minutes to introduce ourselves to each other, and I went over my expectations for the day and gave the team the traditional speech that Head Judges often give.  Everyone understood that taking care of themselves is a top priority during a long day of judging, and that we can all work together to accommodate someone needing a brief rest during the day.

As the room continued to fill with players who had begun preparing their deck lists for the day our judges dispersed into the room to begin final preparations for the start of what was sure to be an exciting event.

Letting go is the hardest part

One of the biggest changes I had to adjust to as the Head Judge was not walking the tournament floor for the majority of the event.  It kind of goes against my natural instinct to stay back and let other people take all the judge calls, as I love to be working in the trenches (so to speak), talking to the players and helping them resolve any problems they have.  

When you take on the role of being the Head Judge, you generally stay away from taking any calls in order to preserve the appeal process.  On the rare occasion you may have to take a call if it happens to be right where you are standing at the moment and no other judges are immediately available, but for the most part the Head Judge has to stay back and watch other people have all the fun.

Head Judge is an appealing job title

As my day progressed yesterday, I was involved in several appeals, which allowed me to interact with some players and scratch that proverbial judging 'itch'.  In one call, I had to overturn the initial judge ruling due to the fact that the version of events told to the floor judge were subtly (but crucially) different from the version of events I was told during the appeal.  No error was made by the floor judge, but I learned a key tidbit of information that changed the ruling.  

During another appeal I upheld a ruling made by a floor judge, but chose to deviate slightly from policy during the appeal partly due to the fact that the deviation felt significantly closer to where we want to be philosophically, and partly due to both players agreeing it would be better resolved that way.  I usually will follow policy strictly to the letter, but on rare occasions we should be willing to bend a little to resolve things in ways that make sense and leave everyone at the table happy. 

Mission Accomplished

As the day came to an end we had run 22 Modern Masters drafts, 1 Modern Masters Win-A-Box, and our 160+ player main event.  While some of our judges began our end of day tear down, I was able to take turns grabbing individual judges for some 1 on 1 debriefings, to hear their thoughts on how their days went and if they were satisfied with their performances.  It was very satisfying to hear that every one of my judges had felt that they had had a positive experience working the event, and they all were happy with how things had been run.

I was blessed to have a very good staff to work with on my first turn at being Head Judge for a Face To Face Open, and the entire day was a big success for judges, staff and players alike.  I had several people tell me as they were leaving that they had a great time playing and that the event had been run especially well.  I'll leave the credit for that to the staff at Face To Face, and to the judges who all performed their tasks so well throughout the day.

It was a long day with leaving home at 7 am and returning home shortly after midnight, but it was an honor and a privilege to be part of such a fun event.

Until next time dear readers, I'll be here if you need me - walking along my pathway through Exile.

-JVM

Hot Topic - The 'Beginning of Combat' Shortcut: Is it Broken?

Hello everyone, and welcome back to our Path to Exile!

NOTE:  This blog entry on how the Beginning of Combat Short-cut works is now out of date, as of the publication of Policy Changes for Amonkhet, which can be found HERE.

My original blog post about how the old (and now obsolete) BOC Short-cut used to function is left here for posterity.  

This weekend was a fun weekend of Magic for both myself on a personal level, and for all of us Magic-loving folk who happened to watch some of the action of the Pro Tour Aether Revolt coverage from Dublin, Ireland.  As some of you may have heard, there was a bit of confusion resulting from a ruling that occurred during the feature match of Round 8 on Friday.  I'll leave a convenient link for you to watch the ruling in question by clicking HERE.

A lot of discussions happened on reddit, Facebook and other social media almost immediately, as everyone was confused by the situation.  People were asking if the current Magic tournament rules actually prevents players from being able to do things they are completely entitled to do at the beginning of combat?  Are judges enforcing the short-cut incorrectly?  Could a player of the highest caliber, who had traveled to Ireland to compete with the best players on the Pro Tour actually make such a blatant mistake simply because he didn't understand how one of Magic's most commonly used short-cuts works?   Fortunately for us I've spoken to some of Magic's most experienced judges on this topic and I am able to help explain what happened here and perhaps more importantly, I can finally tell you...

Just what the heck is the 'Combat Short-cut' anyway?

One of the documents that judges use when we officiate Magic tournaments is the very aptly named 'Magic Tournament Rules' document, also known as the 'MTR'.   Most casual players will never need to read the MTR, as it is a very long and detailed document.   However, if you often play in Competitive REL tournaments such as PPTQs, Face To Face Opens, or Grand Prix, I would suggest you take a look for yourself sometime with this handy link right HERE (current as of  Feb 5th, 2017).

I'll allow the first paragraph of Section 4.2 to do the explaining of what a short-cut is:

"A tournament shortcut is an action taken by players to skip parts of the technical play sequence without explicitly announcing them. Tournament shortcuts are essential for the smooth play of a game, as they allow players to play in a clear fashion without getting bogged down in the minutiae of the rules. Most tournament shortcuts involve skipping one or more priority passes to the mutual understanding of all players; if a player wishes to demonstrate or use a new tournament shortcut entailing any number of priority passes, he or she must be clear where the game state will end up as part of the request."

Short-cuts in tournament Magic are used in order to allow players to be able to play the game without having to constantly pass priority or verbalize other things that almost never have an impact on game play.   

The short-cut that everyone is discussing this week is the one that affects what happens when an active player attempts to end his pre-combat (or "first") main phase.  Let's take a closer look at the Combat short-cut, shall we?

• A statement such as "I'm ready for combat" or "Declare attackers?" offers to keep passing priority until an opponent has priority in the beginning of combat step. Opponents are assumed to be acting then unless they specify otherwise. 

Okay, but why do we need this 'Combat Short-cut'?

To answer the question of why we need this short-cut I defer to an article written by a far more knowledgeable and experienced Magic Judge on this topic: 

"More than a decade ago, one of the common “tricks” was to try to make your opponent use their Icy Manipulator in Main Phase 1 so you could cast your Ball Lightning. To achieve this, you would say “attack?” repeatedly before saying “Combat phase?” once. The habit would likely make your opponent not specify when they wanted to act.

This was not pleasant Magic. This was legal, extremely competitive, and at some point High Level Judges realized that this was undermining the tournament scene on the lower level."

   - Kevin Desprez, from the blog post:  [O]fficial: Attacking, blocking and shortcuts

Anytime a player in his or her first main phase says "Declare attackers?", "Move to combat?", or even "Move to beginning of combat?" it automatically advances the game to the 'Beginning of combat step', but after the Active Player has already passed their final priority opportunity before declaring attackers.   This short-cut exists as it does in order to prevent the non-active player (NAP) from being tricked into casting a spell during the active player's (AP) main phase.

Things the 'Combat Short-cut' gets right

Scenario:  AP has 2 creatures in play, both are  3/3 beast tokens.  NAP is at 3 life.

AP: "Declare attackers?"

NAP: "Wait, first I'm going to cast Consume the Meek and destroy your tokens."

AP:  "Okay.  We're still in my main phase, so now I'll just cast this Spark Elemental, swing with it, and you're dead.

Clearly NAP wanted to cast his removal spell after AP had left his main phase to prevent any other potential attackers this turn, but in the old times clever wordings and rules lawyering often led to 'feel bad' moments where people were left frustrated by counter-intuitive language costing them potential wins, such as in the scenario above.

Thanks to our handy 'Combat Short-cut', NAP always is now assumed to be casting any pre-combat spells at the most beneficial time, which is in AP's 'Beginning of Combat Step', not in AP's 'Main Phase' - unless NAP specifically states that they want to do something in AP's Main Phase instead. 

Things the 'Combat Short-cut' gets... not quite as right

Now let's take a look at some of the things that can go wrong when players don't understand how the 'Combat Short-cut' works.  Keep in mind that when you say "Move to Combat" or "Declare Attackers" or anything similar to that, the next time you will get priority is in the 'declare attackers step' and the very first thing that happens in the 'declare attackers step' is that you have to choose what (if any) attackers you are going to declare.

• Once you have used the short-cut to leave your main phase, you cannot activate your creature-lands (for example, Mutavault or Needle Spires) to attack with them.  You will already be at the point of declaring attackers (with just whatever eligible creatures you already have).   
• In almost every scenario, you should be activating your creature lands before leaving your main phase.

**Important Info**   

If you have a trigger that happens at the Beginning of Combat and it is a trigger that requires a target to be chosen, you cannot simply use the standard "Go To Combat" wording, or YOU WILL MISS YOUR TRIGGER.  This is because the target for the trigger has to be chosen as the trigger goes on the stack, which happens during your priority in the 'Beginning of Combat' ('BOC') step.  Since the normal 'Combat Short-cut' skips right past your priority and ends at your opponents priority in the 'BOC' step, you will have missed your chance to choose a target and hence missed your trigger completely.  
*****

This guy does not work well with the 

normal 'Combat short-cut'!

I know what you're thinking; "But Judge, how am I supposed to get my trigger if I can't use the short-cut?".   The answer is simple enough, you just have to add your target choice to your sentence when you ask to move to combat.

Bad:  AP:"Move to Combat."   

         NAP:"Okay." 

         AP: "Target my Heart of Kiran with Weldfast Engineer."    

         NAP: JUDGE!! 

Good: AP: "Move to Combat, targetting my Heart of Kiran with Weldfast Engineer"  

          NAP: "Excellent play, my good fellow!"

In fact, this is partly what happened during that incident at Pro Tour Aether Revolt that I mentioned earlier.  It looked like the active player used the short-cut to enter combat, and then tried to resolve his Weldfast Engineer  trigger afterwards.  His error was even further compounded by the fact that he hadn't crewed the vehicle that he wanted to pump with the trigger during his main phase, so even if he had used the wording "Move to combat, targeting my vehicle with my Weldfast Engineer trigger" it still wasn't going to work out for him as the vehicle he chose wasn't already a creature, so it wasn't a legal choice to a target of the ability at the time that it needed to be.

**Important Info**  

If you have a trigger that happens at the 'Beginning of Combat Step' and it does not require a target, you can use the normal short-cut.  In fact, you don't even have to mention the trigger at all before it resolves!  Now this next line is a very subtle point that a lot of people (including some judges) may not always realize, so pay close attention here:  

**While policy dictates that the normal Combat Short-cut ends with your opponent having priority in the 'Beginning of Combat' step, it does NOT state that the stack has to be empty when it gets to your opponents priority.**  *****

What this means is that if you say "Move to Combat" while you have a  Toolcraft Exemplar and an artifact in play, you will be offering to pass priority back and forth until it gets to your opponents priority in the BOC step.   What your opponent may not realize though, is that at your priority in the BOC step the Toolcraft Exemplar trigger goes on the stack, and since it doesn't make a visible change to the game state you won't have to announce it. 

This fellow works very well with

the standard 'Combat Short-cut'

Here is an example of how a BOC trigger that doesn't target can be handled in a game.

Scenario: AP has (2) Toolcraft Exemplar and (2) Heart of Kiran, (1) Mirror Gallery and no Planeswalkers in play.   NAP is at 7 life, and has (2)  3/3 beast tokens in play 

AP;  "Move to Combat"

NAP: "Okay, sure."

AP: "Cool, my Toolcraft Exemplar triggers resolve.  Use each Toolcraft Exemplar to crew each of my Heart of Kiran.  Swing for lethal in the air."

NAP:  "Oh....

The legality of this line of play is further confirmed in an article written by one of our most revered Magic Judges, Toby Elliot is his article 'Do Not Pass Go' which I totally recommend reading thoroughly.

End of the Line

Well then, I think that covers everything we really need to know about the Combat Short-cut.   I believe that if you've taken the time to read this whole article you'll likely gain an advantage at some point in your future matches, either by taking advantage of your opponents lack of knowledge for how the short-cuts and priority passes work, or by catching them when they make a mistake and lose the opportunity to make a key attack.

Best wishes to you, dear readers.  As always, I will remain here should you need me - walking along this path through Exile.

-JVM