Situations and Reflections from a PPTQ

Event: PPTQ feeding PT Atlanta @ Pittsburgh Mills
June 2, 2018
Role: Head Judge

  Some events are really interesting in terms of stuff that happened and things to write about. This
event did not feature any grandiose situations or earth-shattering revelations, but did contain a few notable situations. I debated somewhat on whether to write these up or not, but obviously landed on doing so. Small events are good events for teaching and learning experiences within one's community, and I had one good interaction where this was the case. Also we must all recognize that different people have different opinions and skill levels, and by posting about this I might learn from the comments left, or someone else may take away something valuable from me.

Situations:

(1) AP untaps, discovers they only have 6 lands, and they cast Second Sunrise the prior turn. This is a
clear GRV, so we're either backing up or leaving the game state as is. On NAP's prior turn we discover they drew, played a land, attacked with 2 creatures, and deployed a green gear hulk while their opponent was tapped-out. While that sounds like a pretty simple turn, nearly all the decisions they made were based in part that the other (control) player couldn't interact, so it seemed too risky to back up and we left the game-state as is.

(2) AP is about to declare attackers and has 2 Ahn-Crop Crasher and a Glorybringer. His opponent has 5 creatures, including Shalai, Voice of Plenty (You, planeswalkers you control, and other creatures you control have hexproof.). Because Crop-crasher and Glorybringer both have an attack trigger, and targets must be chosen when the trigger goes on the stack, there's no way the AP can force anything other than the Shelai to not be able to block (Shelai is the only legal target for all three triggers).

(3) AP untaps, draws a card, plays a land, and then goes to return a Scarab God to their hand from the
graveyard from the prior turn. NAP stops them, and AP accepts and continues with their turn. Spectator pulls me aside and points this out. As a delayed-zone-change trigger, if called we put it onto the stack no matter how long it's been missed. Policy also indicates that we don't step into a missed trigger situation unless we're prepared to issue a penalty, which I'm not in this case. Obviously I don't intercede, but it was an interesting case to discuss with the spectator who knew a bit about delayed-zone-change triggers and how they work at competitive.

Refelctions:

(3) At the time it felt that perhaps one should interceed in some way, but of course policy does not support that. In discussing it with felow judges, one pointed out that stepping in creates a feel-bad situation. When the AP agrees that he doesn't get his trigger, the players have agreed to the game state, and are ready to build on that agreed game state to reach a perfectly valid conclusion to the game. Stepping in actually causes more harm than good.