The doors opened at 9am Saturday morning to little fanfare and it seemed that not many players congregated in the room.  We had a little concern about attendance but at 10am, we had a nice comfortable 128 players, just enough for seven rounds. Naturally, we had another 7 players sign up after the close of registration to bring us to a final count of 135 and 8 rounds of Swiss. Curses!

Since this was constructed today I didn’t anticipate many rules issues or appeals as most players would be familiar and comfortable with their decks. And as usual when I say something like that during the judge meeting it rears up to remind me of my words.

Something to be aware of is how you deliver a ruling to players. There was an issue where a player wanted to attack with his hero into an opposing ally even though he did not have a weapon or any other visible means to increase his attack. When the opponent asked the judge if that was legal, the judge was caught a little off guard and replied, “I don’t see why not” in a puzzled tone. This caused the player to appeal because he felt the judge was unsure as to the ruling. If you are sure of a ruling, make certain that it shows. The player’s hero then attacked the ally, took damage and then activated his Backlash to draw a card. 

There was one appeal that I was nearby when the floor judge was called over to the situation. I could tell by the animation and discussion between the players and their expressions that it was one of those that one player was going to be unhappy with the judge’s ruling no matter which way it went. In my opinion the best thing to do as the head judge here is to move yourself away from the situation. This lets you observe the floor judge take control of the situation. Also there is a possibility that once the players see you nearby they will automatically turn to you before the floor judge makes his ruling in the first place which may be seen by some as undermining his authority.

Another appeal had an interesting twist. During round 2 a player called a judge and pointed out that his opponent’s sleeves were damaged. The judge examined the sleeves and several of them had a small piece of a corner missing. The cards involved were in no discernable pattern and the markings themselves while similar were not identical. The judge assessed a Marked Cards – Minor infraction and was appealed by the player who discovered the error. We pulled the offending player aside and asked him about the markings. He claimed that the sleeves were old as he hadn’t played much recently and most of his deck was borrowed at the last minute as well. Both the floor judge and I felt that the player did not have the intent to abuse the markings for his advantage and so I upheld the original ruling. The thing to take away from this is that it may be easy to see the obviousness of the marking and try to give a higher penalty because of them. However, Marked Card infractions do not take into account the severity of the markings, only the pattern involved. His opponent wanted to know what the difference between a minor and major infraction was because he was basing what he thought should happen based on the markings themselves since there was no way he could know what cards they were. We had the player change sleeves immediately and continued the match with a time extension.

It’s always entertaining at a DMF when judge juggling happens. You start out the day with certain judges but as the day winds on and other events happen you slowly have to place judges there as well. However, you still have to coordinate breaks and lunches. The best advice I can give to everyone else is preplan. Know which judges are going to be head of which side events. This will enable you to adequately schedule lunches and still be able to have floor coverage too. It also has the added advantage of reducing panic when it seems you have no judges available anymore.

This all took place in the first four rounds of the day. It seemed to calm as I had no appeals in rounds 5 or 6, but an issue cropped up in the early part of round 7. A player during round 6 was caught by a judge having a two-handed weapon and a shield in play at the same time. A Procedural Error – Minor was assessed and the player chose one to destroy to remedy the uniqueness violation. Fairly simple, yes? Unfortunately, in round 7 the same judge noticed the same player make the same error with the exact same cards as before. This led the judge to upgrade the second PE – Minor to a Game Loss which the player promptly and politely appealed. Because the offense was the exact one he had committed in a previous round, I upheld the upgrade to a higher penalty. The player then asked if his opponent could just let him destroy one of the equipment without the upgrade. Opponents can never waive a penalty. No one can. Can you imagine if that were true? A more physically imposing player or a player with a more forceful personality could basically browbeat their opponents into letting them do whatever they wish. Certainly not something we wish to encourage.

All in all, eight rounds of Swiss went very smoothly with little issue. We handed out prizes to the Top 64 players and made sure the hall was clean and shiny for the next morning. Something I like to do after a day like this is to sit down with all the judges and talk for a few minutes before heading out to dinner. This gives us a chance to talk about any interesting rulings that came up, bring people up to speed on the next day, and generally just decompress from the event.

Sunday came and we sat down with the Top 8 and began deck checks. Something that you have to watch out for on a multiday tournament is accumulated penalties. This was particularly important in this Top 8 as the player who received a Game Loss for a repeated PE – Minor had advanced. This meant if he performed the same action resulting in an infraction again, we would upgrade it to a Match Loss which would be quite suboptimal for a Top 8 result.  Luckily, we did not have to worry about this.

Judges were assigned matches to watch. Table judging has evolved over the years. In past times, we would actively try to prevent player errors to enable the game to be played out “as it was meant to be”. With the more recent philosophy shift to having both players having primary responsibility for the gamestate, this has changed to the table judge being less safety net to traffic cop. We are still going to help players with their questions, but we aren’t going to help prevent play errors. We’ll certainly fix them when they crop up, and we will certainly assess the appropriate penalties. I’ll probably go more into this in a future article about table judging.

Overall, this DMF was a great event and it couldn’t have been so smooth without the work of all of the judges on the floor. So a big “Thank you!” to Robert Clark, Jennifer Dery, Michael McGee, Sean Ryberg, Tom Sims, and Robert Wakeland!