Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Slips and things.

Slips and things.

= The Scene
Star City Games Standard Open (Columbus)
HJ – Rob McKenzie
SK – Jared Sylva
Staff – Erik Aliff; Matthew Karr; Sam Robinson; (myself)
128 players (day 2); 6 rounds of swiss + cut to top 8
Note: Due to the 5-judge staff each judge was given tasks to take care of. In a sense we were all team leads with no team under us. I was in charge of Clock/EOR.

    I always have a good time when I can head out to Columbus to judge some magic, and this event was no exception. I was joining the staff late, only being there for Sunday, but learned some things that I hope to cover ahead. I've decided to take a slightly different approach to this article. I'm going to discuss how we record penalties on the back of slips, and connect that to some things I actually saw happen at the event. I'm hoping that by doing so I will make this educational for some of the new lv1s in my area – as well as similar judges elsewhere.

    So what do we put on the back of a slip when we have a penalty? Hopefully you are already familiar with acronym J-PIP? Standing for: Judge, Player, Infraction, Penalty – This mnemonic device gives us the information that needs to be on the back of a slip, and in the correct order. One thing that has been introduced at larger events, is that scorekeepers are now asking for the table number to be added to the beginning of this string. Although this is not particularly helpful for smaller local events using WER, it is extremely helpful for larger events.

    The last thing we add to the back of the slip is a note about what happened to cause the penalty, and if appropriate what the fix was. Rob McKenzie told me to mind my ABCs in regards to this. ABC is another acronym standing in for Accurate, Brief, Clear. Whatever you write as your note it needs to be these things. Accurate and clear enough that another judge (the head judge and/or the scorekeeper usually) can understand what happened without having been there. Also brief – because you don't want your scorekeeper to write a small paragraph for each penalty.

    Keeping these notes Accurate, Brief, and Clear is something of a balancing act that I will admit I had some difficulty with during this event. However now that we've covered these basics we can get to the interesting bits – situations. So I'm going to ask my lv1s to read this, and we're going to discuss what they would write on the back of the slips for these situations (if anything). Participation and commentary from the peanut gallery is encouraged!

=-=

    1 You are watching a game and on A's end step, N casts collected company. A responds with Hallowed Moonlight. You then see N untap and draw for turn.

    2 As you are called to a table N tells you that he just realized that he played a card face-down that does not have morph. Indeed there is only one face down card on his field a Duskwatch Recruiter. N also reveals his hand to you and you only see 1 card – Hidden Dragonslayer.

    3 N calls you to the table in A's upkeep step. They have just realized that they failed to transform their Duskwatch Recruiter into Krallenhorde Howler on their last upkeep. Does your answer change if instead it's a Krallenhorde Howler transforming into Duskwatch Recruiter?

    4 A says 'Combat' and N agrees. A then says 'Surrak haste' pointing to their Surrak, the Hunt Caller, and attempts to swing with the team. N stops them and calls you. The players agree that this is the first time the 'combat' shortcut has been used (or has been relevant) this match – and that they have not explicitly agreed to any specific treatment of it.

    5 A casts read the bones. They proceed to take a card, add it to their hand. They then quickly put that card back, and then look at the top 2 cards of their deck before we are called to the table. During investigation we are able to determine that the first card did come together with the other cards in the hand. The current state is A has a hand of 5 cards. There is card1 'the card added to hand for a moment' and card2 'card looked at'.

=-= Answers

    1; GPE-GRV Warning;  player failed to resolve collected company – after hallowed moonlight.

Hallowed moonlight doesn't actually counter Collected company. N should have looked at 6 cards (optionally) exiled up to 2 creatures, and put the rest on bottom – but he didn't. As for the fix a backup involves undoing N's draw step, and given that likely no cards are changing zones I'm more comfortable leaving the game state as is.

    2; GPE-HCE Warning; played a card w/out morph face down. Only one morph card in hand.

This is slightly interesting because normally misplaying the morph ability upgrades HCE to a game loss. In this particular case we have all the elements we need to call in the HJ to confirm that it is not upgraded. We have the player calling it on themselves, almost immediately (they just played the card, passed turn, and caught it) and with only one morph card in hand.

    3; GPE-MT Warning; did not transform Krallenhorde Howler.

    Either way this is missed trigger, and we're asking the opponent if they want the trigger to be put on the stack. If caught during the draw step or later in the turn, we simply instruct the players to keep playing. The interesting bit here is when is there a penalty? Philosophically we look at a trigger in isolation to determine if it is 'usually detrimental' So we shouldn't consider the other abilities of the cards faces. Generally speaking however the 'night' side of most transform cards is stronger than the day side, and I feel this is true here because the creature transforms from a 2/2 into a 3/3. So day to night is not usually detrimental and is no penalty. Night to day however is 'usually detrimental'.

EDIT: Further consideration by Judges of Higher level and more experience than I have since declared all 'transform' type triggers not generally detrimental. As a result there is no penalty either way you flip it. 

    4; N/A

    Surrak has a trigger, and it's a trigger that targets. Also the default 'combat' shortcut offers to move to a point when N has priority in declare attackers. A trigger that requires targets becomes missed if targets are not selected when it goes on the stack, and Surrak's trigger does this at the beginning of combat. Since declare attackers step is definitely after beginning of combat step, this means no haste for A. Also we don't write anything on the back of this slip because Surrak's trigger is not usually detrimental, and therefore no penalties have to be issued (did I trick you?)

    5 GPE-HCE Warning; Drew a card, put it back scry 2 off read the bones.

    So when I established the fact that card1 touched the hand this put us firmly in Hidden Card Error territory. Since the players seemed to agree that card1 was the card added to hand I struggled for a bit with the fix (HCE has some layers to it). However ultimately I added card1 to the hand (making it 6 cards) – applying the 'Thoughtseize' fix to those six cards, allowing the opponent to shuffle away one of their choice, and then continuing with the resolution of Read the Bones with the 1 card remaining.

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