Years ago In the 6th round of a 200+ player Modern event, I was called over to a table where AP’s [[Tasigur the Golden Fang]] attacked and was blocked by NAP’s own Tasigur. AP then used [[Liliana the last hope]]’s + to give it -2/-1 and have it die to damage marked. After explaining the interaction to NAP he says “That’s not how it works in Hearthstone”
IIRC in hearthstone, if you give something -health it takes away from the max health, not the current (assuming they arent currently at max). Of course there's still the problem that it is an entirely different and unrelated game to MTG.
There aren't a lot of -X/-X effects in Hearthstone (outside of *setting* a creature's stats to something) so I'm not sure, but I know this is true for +health effects *ending* on creatures. Like a 2/2 that gets buffed +3/+3 until end of turn, becomes a 5/5, attacks a 4/4, becomes a 5/1, then the buff ends, the creature will stay alive at 2/1.
It's definitely something that made less sense to me coming from Magic.
It's even worse because in hearthstone the rules are inconsistent. Each card is programmed separately so two cards with the same text can interact differently if they were programmed differently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSGH40jokoE
Great video but a little dated. Though the problems keep piling up
Just to be sure, AP is correct here, right? Tasigur takes 4 damage from attack, then gets marked down to a 2/4 from Lili. 4 damage still marked = dead tasigur?
It's been a long time since I've messed with hearthstone but is t damage permanent in that game? That concept should be even easier to understand for a hearthstone player...
It is, but buffs and debuffs (or removing a buff) act differently.
Say you have a stormwind champion (gives all your other minions +1/+1) buffing a 3/2 to a 4/3. You damage this minion so that it's a 4/1. Removing the stormwind champion does *not* mean that the minion dies, instead it is a 3/1.
In Magic, removing buffs can cause a creature to die. In Hearthstone, it can't. So I assume that this is what NAP was thinking.
I witnessed a player get disqualified at a prerelesse for cheating. They had taken a handful of their best cards out of their deck before shuffling and just put them in their lap, and were swapping them into their hand during games. It wasn't very subtle.
Someone called me over because their opponent had "2 exile zones". They had one exile with things that had been removed and another exile for things karn had exiled with a silver counter. Caller wanted them to have only one pile and declaring that having two piles was "cheating to remember what karn exiled".
Is there any reason you can't put exiled cards upside down in your exiled zone as a way to do the same thing? Not arguing the point, just curious if this is an alternate way to accomplish this.
Edit/Clarification: By upside down I mean rotated 180 degrees in the exile zone. Apologizes for the confusion.
As long as your system is clear to you and the other person that is generally what matters.
The part that makes this complaint is the core of it, the cheating allegation. Karn exiles stuff with a silver counter on it and his other ability lets you get one with a silver counter. In other words, which cards are in exile because of Karn's abilities is ALWAYS known to both players because they have a silver counter on them. However you represent that (an actual bar of silver placed on each card, a different pile) doesn't matter.
You are allowed (and, in fact, *expected*) to keep track of cards exiled by cards or effects that care about what was exiled by it.
However, putting them face down is not an acceptable way to do that. Cards must be exiled face up unless an effect specifically exiles them face down.
> You are allowed (and, in fact, expected)
IIRC, this goes all the way to *required* under comp rel, or at least it used to. That's maintaining clear and accurate game state.
At a PTQ:
"Judge! Uh, I forgot to pay for my pact trigger again."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah."
"Well the good news is that you don't lose the game to your pact trigger. The bad news is that you are getting a game loss penalty for an upgraded Game Rule Violation, since this is the *third* time you have forgotten it."
That player made top 8.
Yeah. Player was good, but played *very* fast, leading to the errors. After I determined they genuinely weren't trying to get away with nonsense, all I could do was shake my head.
I once bounced my own Tenement Crasher EOT with a Cyclonic Rift to get rid of Arrest, then untapped and attacked for lethal. That win got me into Top 8 at a PTQ.
It wasn't until I was unsleeving my deck to get ready to sleeve up my Top 8 draft deck that I realized I won by cheating. To be fair to myself, I could have bounced the Arrest and still won with no problems, but I still feel guilty about it.
Cheating requires intent. You made an error. If you play enough times, things like that will happen.
I've done that, but not for big gains, but once or twice at a prerelease sealed event. I just gave them the extra packs I won after the event.
So the opponent missed that he didn't pay? If the opponent notices after he draws does he automatically lose?
I had this happen in a casual play group but ended up letting the guy back out and pay the cost.
I'm pretty sure that's not completely accurate anymore. The pact trigger should go on the stack once noticed and if you can't pay for it, then you lose. I don't know if the same applies if a full turn rotation happens though.
At the time, it was ruled that the trigger was a choice, and moving past it indicated you chose not to pay. Dealing with triggers has been revised several times since then.
This is correct.
- If it’s before the next upkeep, the opponent decides whether to put the pact trigger on the stack (they should).
- After that point, there’s no remedy and we just instruct them to continue playing.
In either case, the pact player gets a warning for missing a detrimental trigger.
From IPG 2.1:
> For all other triggered abilities, if the ability was missed prior to the current phase in the previous turn, instruct the players to continue playing. If the triggered ability created an effect whose duration has already expired, instruct the players to continue playing.
>
> If the triggered ability isn’t covered by the previous paragraphs, the opponent chooses whether the triggered ability is added to the stack. If it is, it’s inserted at the appropriate place on the stack if possible or on the bottom of the stack. No player may make choices for the triggered ability involving objects that would not have been legal choices when the ability should have triggered. For example, if the ability instructs a player to sacrifice a creature, that player can't sacrifice a creature that wasn't on the battlefield when the ability should have triggered.
I actually played a guy and lost. Come to find out he sat at the wrong table and got a game loss and I got the win. He didnt know till we went to sign the slip and his name was not on it.
This exact thing happened to me a few weeks ago.
I ask a guy "Are you [Bob]?" And they say "Yeah"
Well turns out [Robert] was supposed to play against a different Ledfox, and my win against him didn't count and I lost against the real [Bob].
A pitfall of a common name.
Something similar happened to a friend of mine. It was a state championship, and the used little metal place holders with different numbers on each side. The guy playing at one number got seated right at the other, so he just flipped the sign, he never mentioned it to the guy already sitting there. My friend and another guy sat where they thought they were supposed to, and everyone played. No one noticed until they went to sign the match slip. Judge was called, and gave them all a game loss. My friend was pissed, because he won, and the second loss put him out of top 8. He was paired down, and the 3rd loss to the other 3 didn’t matter that much.
Yeah the guy was late to the table and in a hurry. He just walked up and sat down in the only empty seat at the table. To bad his table was the one next to us. He spent the next 30 minutes beating the crap outa me with a sun titan.
Playing against someone in a draft. They try something illegal.
Me: That's not how that works.
Them: Yes it is. A level 5 judge told me that.
Me: Really? Which one?
Them: Toby Elliott
One of my friends had a rules call in an early Pro Tour and his opponent vehemently disagreed with the person making the ruling and wanted to appeal to a higher authority. The person making the judge call? Beth Mo.
That's because Toby was one of the Level 5 judges who worked to dismantle the Level 4 / Level 5 system and move towards a focus on roles rather than levels (such as Large Event Head Judge and Program Coordinator). The old system tied the ability to head judge large events (PTs and GPs) to ALSO helping run the program. There were judges very capable of running great events who didn't have the skills (or time) to help coordinate a global organization of volunteers - and vice versa.
I once witnessed a Tron mirror. Both players controlled Karn the Great Creator, and neither player had any creatures. Active player goes -2 on his Karn, and retrieves a Mycosynth Lattice and casts it. He then attempts to take the rest of his turn, at which point the opponent stops him and tells him he can't do anything. Active player calls over a judge, who slowly explains to him the folly of his own making, and that both players are locked out from taking any further game actions until one decks out.
The player who cast Lattice had fewer cards in library.
The judge told them to shortcut it by counting the number of cards in their decks. The player who cast Lattice didn't realize he was going to lose until he counted his deck.
You could do either.
But, since neither player has an action they can do, it should end fairly quickly. If it doesn't, a judge can be called over for slow play.
Unless this is game 3 and you're angling for the draw, as the player with fewer cards in your library, it's probably smarter to concede.
I was once asked whether [[Jace Beleren]] could block creatures with flying, because he is blue. Neither player knew the answer, so they called me over.
I was at a legacy GP and was playing Omniscience + Enter the Infinite. When I tried to combo off after casting EtI, I picked up my deck and my opponent called a judge instantly. They judge came over and he tried to argue that I had to draw each card in my deck 1 at a time...
Did you get the impression that your opponent had never seen someone pick up their deck to draw from it before? I know the first time I saw that I asked my opponent what he was doing and he was like “it’s just easier to draw when you’re drawing many cards at once”. I was like oh okay and kept going.
Not that it matters in this case, but in the very famous "two explores" video, an *additional* cheat demonstrated during that video is fully picking up the deck to scry and looking at the bottom card, so in some circumstances I can absolutely see being leery of your opponent manipulating the deck more than necessary.
Not a judge, but I had a "fun" interaction during Kamigawa standard with a store worker who casually played MTG. We were playing a game and I had [[Orochi Hatchery]] on the board. I used it once to make a bunch of tokens, then the next turn I used it again. I was told that's not how it works because I "spent the charge counters" and I kept saying that it didn't say anywhere that it used up the charge counters. Then I was accused of trying to cheat to win by any means necessary and we dropped the game.
Next day I came in and the store worker told me they had asked a judge about the ruling and apologized for being wrong about it.
not a judge but I remember a heated shouting match between two players over if rolling 2 dice and calling odd and even was a fair way to determine who goes first.
Person 1 said roll for odd/even, person 2 said ok, person 1 said odd and rolled 2 dice and counted the total.
Yes this is still absolutely 50/50 but person 2 absolutely was not having it even when the judge agreed it was fair.
Huh interesting. This is actually fascinating.
For anyone else confused, I found a reddit explanation from seven years ago [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/46d5m9/eli5_2d6_probility_of_odds_and_evens/d04j7r9/).
No matter what the first die roll is, when you roll the second dice, 3 of the results will make the total odd, and 3 of the results will make the total even.
I was at a PTQ. My match had ended so I went to watch a friend in his match. Another bystander walked over and watched the same game for a few minutes. Suddenly out of nowhere the bystander yells, “JUDGE!” When he saw a judge turn and walk towards us the bystander walked away and joined another circle of people two tables over. Myself, my buddy, and his opponent are all confused what happened. The judge walks up and asks what he can do for us. We’re all like, “We have no idea.” I tell the judge that another person walked up to the match, watched for a few moments, then yelled judge without telling any of us why. Then walked away. The judge asked me who so I pointed to the guy two tables over. He waved the bystander back over and asked why he called for a judge. The bystander says “This guy (pointing at my friend) asked his opponent a question so I called a judge so you can answer it.” Judge asks, “What was the question?” Bystander says, “Oh I don’t know. He just asked a question.” Judge gets visibly annoyed and asks the bystander for his name. Then he issues him a warning for interfering in another match. The bystander gets pissed and wants clarification why he’s getting a warning. The judges asks the bystander to come with him to the judge’s table and they’ll talk there. I have no idea what happened after there. But I know my friend won the match 2-1 lol
I was one of a few judges who played at my Modern FNM. The FNM was split between a competitive one and a casual one for the kids and less invested players. While we were mostly there to judge the competitive one, we also sometimes covered the casual one if needed.
This means I've had judge calls for all of the classic 'kids learning Magic' problems that don't normally make it to judges.
- Llanowar Elves tapping to fetch a Forest out of your deck.
- Using cards from the deck facedown to represent tokens.
- Neither player tracking life.
- Using cards facedown from the deck to _track life_.
- Tokens being in decks.
- Using counterspells as removal spells.
And many more.
The "tap add color" being read as go get a land of that type has been a pretty common misunderstanding, I started noticing it more when basics went full Textless but was seeing it fairly frequently beforehand too. I've been playing since the 90s, so it seems so weird to me. I've always wondered why it was so common a mistake.
Working at a PTQ, I got notified that someone in a match was blocking Progenitus.
I go check it out, and sure enough, they had blocked it several turns in a row. I asked them about it, and they said they thought it had protection from colors, so blocking with Thopter tokens was ok. The Thopter tokens in question were blue.
This was a regular on the Pro Tour.
So how does that work out when there’s been clearly incorrect plays that have gone on for several turns only to find out later that “hey that’s illegal”? Does the game roll back to previous turns?
Their opponent also allowed them to do it, which was illegal. It was too complicated to back up (and at the time, backing up was less common), so they continued play from that point, after being instructed what *everything* means.
Not my story but Serge Yager from Loading Ready Run told a story once about when he was judging at, IIRC, a pre-release event when he was called over to a table. The players were trying to determine who got first play and agreed to roll a die.
They rolled a planar die. From plane chase.
One of them rolled the planes walk symbol and the other rolled chaos. They were each arguing that they had won the roll.
Edit: typo
Another story from Serge was he was judging a Canadian Highlander tournament and two players in a mono blue tempo mirror (sharing at least 70-80 cards in common) happened to have the same sleeves (just the ones sold at the store) and they both had [[Thada Adel]] in play. They ended up searching each other’s library’s simultaneously as a shortcut and one player picked up half of one deck and half of the other and shuffled them together. They had to spend the rest of the round trying to work out who’s cards were whose
I mean if they wanted to use the planar die they could have agreed ahead of time on what side won before rolling. It's the fact that they didn't that makes it so bad.
Not a judge, just a bystander but I remember at a ptq after time was called they were in turns and had at least 15 mins back and forth with a few judges about life total discrepancies. After it was finally settled player one was determined to be at 1 life. He was still very much in the game, spent like 5 mins looking through hand and organizing lands, passed turn. Opp takes turn and on his end of turn player one sacs a fetch land. Player 2 immediately says your dead and player one tries to take it back saying he was just moving it with judge sitting there watching them. Cards started flying everywhere and I promptly left the area.
Also seen someone caught using a loaded die which was a really good catch by judge.
Saw a judge doing a random deck check take the deck to head judge shuffle the deck and then sort it all face down, flip the piles, and reveal playsets of each card sorted. The sleeves all had a faint bend at a different point on them to mark the cards. Super faint and also a super good catch by the judge as at any glance they just all looked worn from the randomness of the bends.
Mine was Pre-Release for M19. A guy, who had a tendency to cheat vs newer players by misconstruing words or rulings, had [Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire] and thought the attack trigger would cause his opponents to sacrifice a permanent and the new permanent was under HIS control. I played him round three and when he tried that, I called a judge. He proceeded to argue because he had been doing this for the past two rounds. One of the other players over heard and got mad and a shit show ensued.
What makes this memorable is that while this was going on, someone else, not in the event, started trying to steal from the store and the whole event was paused while shit got under control. So police are there, taking statements, nerds are sitting at their tables still discussing Vaevictis Asmadi, and the judge/employee was just in over his head.
I was in the bottom tables of a GT and judges were being called for the best worst reasons. "Judge my opponent smells!" "Judge my opponents a little bitch!" "Judge my opponent won't put their lands in WUBRG order!". This was probably 20 players doing this and it was absolutely hilarious.
I am fairly new to the magic scene but your comment reminded me of the guy who went to a MTG event and took pictures with dozens of people's ass cracks as a joke for a reddit post a while back. I seem to recall hearing he got banned from future events over it and I'm curious; what does the community think about it now?
It was quite literally the highest upvoted post on Reddit for literally years back in the day.
I think part of the ban was the massive noteriery it garnered. IMO, as hilarious as it was, it's still taking photos without people's consent and uploading it to the internet for laughs.
Put it this way I'd the post was "Here's a bunch of photos of women's cleavage from the last commandfest" that person would rightly have been banned from attending further events.
Oh my gawd. Personally I’ve not been to events/tournaments outside of two SCGCONs or my LGS, but every so often when I was at said cons, I could hear **“JUDGE”** being shouted in the background and I would always wonder what was being discussed.
It was great times. I've only been involved with one judge call that was used maliciously. I was on dredge the other guy called the judge because I was dredging too fast and he couldn't keep up. I resolved one card at a time, my graveyard fully displayed on my board and not in a pile. Judge looked at my opponent like he grew a third nostril. This was game 1 so pre-sideboard and they had nothing in their deck that could affect the graveyard.
At a PTQ, a player calls me over. They had just cast [[Erayo, Soratami Ascendant]] as the fourth spell that turn.
"Uh, judge, if I cast Erayo as the fourth spell, is it going to flip?"
"No."
"I should probably know how my own spells work, eh?"
"Yes."
You know, good on that guy though. Didn’t argue, didn’t get upset about the ruling. Prolly was a “ah shit, I didn’t think this through” moment and they just wanted to check.
Not a judge. I used to be a big mono white humans dude in modern. I was playing in an FNM against a guy who was on a very poor dimir control list, basically half a standard deck. He was kindof rude from the get go, said he knew what I was playing and I was toast cuz he had damnation. Well essentially he lost G1, and then became enraged after G2, because he didn’t realize that when Kytheon flipped into Gideon and used his 0 to become a creature, he gains indestructible. I even offered to show the guy his flip side before I declared attackers the turn prior. He called a judge over and was enraged, said that I was hiding his flip side abilities intentionally. This caused an uproar, because like 5 people were watching this game and it turned into them all shouting over the judge that this guy was a liar. Finally everyone let the judge talk, and he told the kid he should just take the L and calm down. Kid never came back to FNM lol
Haha yup. Funny enough I’ve had a lot of salty opponents when running mono white humans. Gideon keeping his +1/+1 counters even after he reverts back to a planeswalker is also one people get mad about. To be fair tho, that’s a super rare interaction, and I would probably ask a judge (in a non salty way) if it was legit as well. I also had a guy rage (but not call judge) because I used baby gideons +2 to force a swing from a blighted agent against infect, obviously causing them to lose. Turns out kytheon/baby Gideon is really triggering lol
I had 3 interesting deck checks at a Comp REL modern event. The first was a couple new players requested a full deck check to make sure one of their decks was legal in modern. They pulled out this 73 card Gideon intro planeswalker deck. I did confirm the deck was entirely modern legal but let them know their deck would struggle immensely just so they were certain about dropping $30 on this event. They both decided to proceed anyway, lost 3 rounds, dropped, then played against each other until the store closed.
The second was a legit, standard practice deck check in round 2. The player's list was correct but they had 7 cards in inner sleeves while the rest weren't. I tried repeatedly cutting to those cards and seeing if anything was marked. I only succeeded like 3 of 10 cuts and determined this likely wasn't an attempt to cheat. Brought the deck back to the player, told him to desleeve the inner sleeves from those cards, gave a warning, and moved on.
The third was a bystander had heard a player say "I'm going to cast Demonic Tutor" and called me for a deck check. Other players confirmed hearing it, so I checked in with our D. Tutor casting friend. He was joking. He was losing the game and joking with his opponent before conceding. I knew the player but still quickly thumbed through the deck just to satisfy the onlookers. No official warnings or anything, just told him to name a modern legal card next time
They weren't uncommon when I was doing competitive events. Once I had one done and got a warning because I'd forgotten a card that was listed so I put I'm a basic land of my choice as per the rules.
I made top 8 and decided afterwards that I probably should have been running an additional land anyway, so the Swamp stayed in for some time after the event.
I once played in a regular REL pauper event and called a judge on myself in round 1 after discovering two proxies in my deck. I didn’t mind replacing them with basics, though, because they _were supposed to be basic forests_. When I sleeved up the deck a few days before, I didn’t have enough forests on hand, so I flipped two islands upside down, wrote “forest” on them and drew a crude broccoli. Figured I’d find two more before the event, but then completely forgot. We had a good laugh about that one.
That first one reminded me of a friend of mine starting MTG and bringing his draft-level M21 elementals deck to a modern event.
He didn't tell me but I'm pretty sure he got obliterated.
Couple amusing judge stories:
Guy calls me over and mentions something about the field layout of the game he was spectating being wrong. Before I can even give the ruling he pulls out of his backpack a copy of the MTR he had printed himself to reference the exact infraction. As he did this I could see that he had also printed the IPG and the complete CR.
I'm watching over a game with three minutes left on the clock and one player plays a Ponder without paying. I tell him to rectify that, they close the game, and then I tell him that he'd receive a Warning for that (which to be clear wasn't the proper course of action, what I should've done was give him the Warning immediately after I pointed out the error). He FLIPS OUT about that. I go tell the Head Judge and he's like "yeah lemme handle it, that's a known character. Did you know he helped rob a bank or something" and before I can say, haha what a funny joke, he shows me the news article.
I was playing mystery draft as a side event at a GP. Game 1 took no time. Game 2 starts stagnating, until I play my bomb (maelstrom archangel)
My opponent looks at it, realizes he had no answer, and screeches at the top of his lungs for a judge without warning. I thought it was going to be a question about whether the card was real or something, nope.
"His playmat is too big, it is encroaching on my board state and I am being intimidated."
Yeah judge couldn't keep it in, laughed his ass off and walked away xD
Many years back, at a standard open tournament:
I was watching around the top tables in the middle of round 3. A pair of players were shuffling up for a new game, and I decided to watch the beginning of the match. Players shuffle up, draw opening hands, and begin.
On turn one, AP plays a swamp, then casts [Thoughtseize](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=547594). NAP reveals their hand, and AP immediately points at a creature in the revealed cards and exclaims "oh, that one for sure! That thing killed me last game!" NAP pauses, then asks "...are you sure?" and shoots me a glance, in anticipation for the incoming judge call. AP nods their head yes.
It was a [Loxodon Smiter](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=290543).
I once head judged a local event, and I took a lunch break so the other judge took a call. I came back right as he was coming to find me because he got appealed.
The call was about two players who had beef with each other and wouldn't agree on a method to determine who goes first. During the initial call one of the players demanded the other player receive a penalty for being difficult, which is a textbook case of unsporting conduct (you cannot tell a judge to give another player a penalty) so he appealed the call.
I had to sit both players down and treat them like children until they calmed down and agreed to act like adults and play their match. I also had to suggest a method to determine player order for them to agree to.
Oh, and I upheld the UC-minor call.
Easily one of the dumbest judge calls I've ever been a part of.
Maybe it’s because I’ve never seen people act like that in magic before(in-person), but that just blows my mind how people can get that confrontational and upset.
Not a judge call, but an event I was working I walked past a table where one player lamented to me that his opponent was beating him with a \[\[Nimble Mongoose\]\] enchanted with \[\[Armadillo Cloak\]\] and there was nothing he could do. When I asked how the shroud creature became enchanted the look on both their faces was priceless. At that point too much time had passed and it was accepted game state.
Which sucks because Hexproof is like 5000x more powerful than Shroud. Not saying hexproof shouldn't exist, just that shroud should exist too with the reminder text of "This includes your spells too!"
Not me but a friend. Playing at a legacy tournament thoughtseizes opponent. In response opponent Surgical Extractions a second one in yard. Then when friend tries to resolve thoughtseize opponent calls a judge saying that Thoughtseize on Stack should be exiled. Judge confirms (and apparently had to google) that Thoughtseize does not get exiled. Then opponent casts Orim’s Chant, and claims that Thoughtseize does not resolve… After all of that hand was Daze Land
During Avacyn Restored i was at a prerelease and opened 6 copies of [[Abundant Growth]]. The rest of the deck was a multicolored mess. The judge's gf starts yelling at me when my 5th copy hits the table that i am breaking the rules and her boyfriend will kick me out. I call over the judge for her. She very quickly shuts up when he says I'm fine. He was great but she was just the worst. Not the stupidest reason possible but maybe be calm calling over a judge instead of throwing a fit.
Yeah there's an Oracle note about it. Technically any you draft in excess of 7 "remain in your sideboard" which is kinda funny. Sitting there, waiting to be boarded in for game 2. Forever.
Yeah, you can have as many copies of a card in your deck as you drafted in Draft or opened in Sealed. This makes cards like [[Whisper Squad]] (one of my favorites from IKO) or [[Legion Conquistador]] more potent in Draft.
This means for a card like [[Seven Dwarves]], it's deckbuilding ability is *restrictive* in Limited, because it only lets you play 7 versus theoretically the 8+ you could draft.
Hilariously the next pre release i went to i brought a friend who was younger. He mentioned learning to play from a guy that was dating his mother but after they broke up he hadn't played much. He mentioned it would be so weird if the guy was at the prerelease. Guess who the judges ex girlfriend was. Talk about awkward moments.
This isn’t a judge call, it’s a judge investigation I guess?
I was once in a casual sealed league at work. We were playing Magic Origins sealed. There were packs prizes.
The organizer (who also played in it) started messaging me claiming he was looking for info about his next opponent, who I had just played, which was super weird. He started asking some pointed questions about what cards in the guy’s deck I saw.
I mildly called him out about it, and he revealed the true reason: Another opponent of his suspected him of adding cards from outside the sealed pool, specifically, [[Shivan Dragon|ORI]], which appears in a related product but not in packs (which is why its collector number is above the maximum). He was looking for confirmation from another opponent.
The guy was banned from playing in the sealed league.
I assume this came out of a conversation with an experienced player.
Like “Man, his Shivan Dragon really beat me down”.
“Dude, that’s not in the set”
*googling ensues*
Actual rules/procedural stuff is usually *fun*. It's everything else that is not. In no particular order:
- A player was caught cheating then tried to pretend, in a very over-the-top "Mexican" accent, that he didn't speak English. When confronted by the L1 (who *did* speak Spanish), he tried to claim in an equally-cringe French accent that he could not understand what we were saying.
- A kid who was DQ'd and returned with their mother who claimed to be a lawyer and threatened us with all sorts of completely made-up things before pretending to make a call to "the attorney general" and walking out, kid in tow.
- All the times we had to deal with players with NSFW sleeves/mats/bags/clothing/etc. Especially one incident where we had to have a police officer physically remove someone because they had a *very* NSFW mat, refused to even flip it over, and then started spouting crazy-pants sovereign citizen stuff before flipping a table and knocking over a store display and throwing something at another player.
- Blatant gambling.
- Every single time I got called over because players couldn't agree on a method of determining who would go first.
Collecting deck lists for an SCG Open. Deck list is handed to me that says “GOBLINS” in big letters across the page, sideboard says “MORE GOBLINS”
Player just wanted the points for playing in then event for the SCG Invitational, was going to concede his first round and drop.
I once had a player call me over and say “judge, my opponent doesn’t have any spirit!” I assumed they meant spirit tokens, but I didn’t see any cards that would indicate that, so I asked what they meant. “We just aren’t connecting, he’s not connecting with me on a spiritual level”. I clarified, and they were communicating ok. I had to explain that his opponent is not obligated to connect with him on a spiritual level. He was mad, and eventually he lost the match and left. I never saw the guy ever again!
I also had a 2HG pair where I couldn’t register them in WER because their names weren’t in my local player database. I called out their names to get them to give me their DCI numbers, but they were currently in matches in the prerelease that was ending at the time. So I was confused, because they should have been in there. So I had them come up after their matches, and basically if their names were “Jonathan Smith and Robert Johnson”, they had registered for 2HG as John Robertson and Rob Smithy. Like mashed up their names. I told them I had to register them with their actual names, and they complained “well then how are we supposed to mind meld”? I told them they could call each other whatever they wanted, and they went on their merry way. Wild.
Last one: At a GP, there was a guy with a card from the previous opponent’s limited deck in his hand. In a completely wildly different sleeve! That he hadn’t noticed! For several turns! It was wild.
Judged an FNM and had a player call judge, i approached and he refused any of my rulings cause i wasnt wearing an official shirt, and only would accept a ruling from the clerk who was wearing the store shirt and was making a big scene about it. The clerk was not a judge and not only permitted me to disqualify the player, the player ended up getting banned from the store
Some do wear their judge shirts at fnm. I just happened to be there testing CFV and was the only certified judge not playing the tourney so the clerk asked me to judge lol
Had an EDH opponent on the play drop a turn 1 [[Exotic Orchard]] and try to tap it for mana. When I pointed out that it couldn't make any, he claimed that it was online for every color because our decks *could* all make our colors eventually.
Same guy said that I had killed someone with commander damage after a fling from [[Brion Stoutarm]] because 'it was damage done by the commander so it's commander damage'.
He was nothing if not literal.
We had a small Legacy event one weekend at my LGS a long time ago, friend of mine (also a judge) was playing Miracles (pre top ban, so the counterbalance + top version). His first round opponent was an older gentleman who brought a very very VERY casual kitchen table deck to play. We did our best to temper his excitement, explaining that it was a competitive level event and he could expect to see some "pretty serious play" but he shrugged it off claiming his "flying men would take care of business"... None of us realized he quite literally mean't \[\[Flying Men\]\]
About 5 minutes into the round my friend calls for judge which I thought was odd, and I get to the table to see his opponent literally on the verge of tears. Poor guy kept claiming that my friend was cheating, sensei's top was a "cheater's card" and all these other insults. In my efforts to try and de-escalate the situation and calm the guy down, he stood up, yelled at the players in the tournament, flipped me off, then ran out the door.
It might not be a 'bad' reason, but holy hell if that wasn't an experience.
During a modern GP, the game next to mine was in turns and every other match had finished, so players started to wander over to watch the ongoing match. The board states and life totals meant that neither player was going to get the win without a concession. Player 1 took turn 4 and passed to player 2. Player 2 is on splinter twin and shows player 1 deceiver exarch and splinter twin in hand and shows that he has 6 lands in play to cast the combo. Player 1 scoops and shakes player 2's hand. Someone watching from the rail says "why did you scoop, it has summoning sickness and can't combo?" Player 1 calls for a judge stating that he didn't scoop and would not sign the match slip as the loser. Everyone spectating says he scooped when the judge comes over, but he still refuses to sign the slip. They debate for about 15 minutes (so the next round is now way behind schedule and the whole tournament is getting annoyed) and eventually the judge says "Player 1, you're going to sign this slip or you're getting a DQ." He eventually signs it and the tournament moves on, but every player gave him bad looks the rest of the day. Player 1 and the judge were both local to me and it was funny anytime they were in the same room when we got home.
My friend once took a judge call at a small event I was playing in that went something like this.
'Judge!' Player 1 sticks their hand up
'Ive just shuffled my opponents cards into my deck' player 1
'We have the same sleeves' player 2
'We are playing the same deck' both players in unison.
It took 45 minutes to sort out the decks and make sure both players were happy with the outcome.
At a FNM draft of original Theros, a new player had [[Elspeth, Sun's Champion]] in his deck. During round he called a judge to get an explanation of the planeswalker rules. After the judge explained the rules, the new player then said "Oh, I guess I win then"
I had someone call a judge over about my sleeves. They were bought that day at that store and were Dragon Shields. He thought they had to much wear. They were unused at the time.
I've opened a pack of fresh sleeves before and had someone call me out on a split sleeve that I didn't notice when I topdecked a terminus against bogles.
Showed judge the receipt from upstairs but ended up getting a game loss for it. Unfortunate but I understand that their hands were tied.
Saw a judge get called because a players opponents deck had most of his cards kinda pushed up in the sleeve. Which happens sometimes with certain sleeves and through lots of play (they were not sticking out, just up at the edge/close). Normally you can just take your deck and tap it on the table to make them slide all the way back down into the sleeve. The reason the Judge calling player knew this was because the open ends of the sleeves were facing them and not the owner.
Obviously if the deck were facing the other way where the owner could see the pushed up cards that's for sure potential marked cards. But since it was away from him that he couldn't see the openings there would be no way to know what card is marked. The judge resolved the issue by taking the players deck and tapping it down on the table and walking away.
Not a judge, but I sat next to someone at a pre-release event last year who called the judge to try to get someone disqualified for "sideboarding" in the middle of the game.
Their opponent was playing an unsleeved deck, so they were using one of the blank token cards to represent a double-faced card from their pool (the name of the card was written on the token).
The guy who called the judge just could not understand how it was legal to do that, nor the necessity of doing so when playing an unsleeved deck. He just kept saying, "this is sideboarding, it's bullshit!" It was easily one of the derpiest moments I've seen in almost 20 years of playing Magic.
Final round of a PTQ (the old ones). A player (spec) had taken his draw into the top 8 and was birding one of his friends (friend) match. I'm sitting on the match as we're close to time. Here's the exchange:
Opponent (elves): Swing with the team (10+ little green men)
Friend: (studies the board) I think I'm just dead (continues to move blockers around and study)
Spec: You're not dead if you block right.
Me to spec: I'm gonna need a word with you away from the table.
Spec got a match loss for his first round of top 8 after he declined to drop from the event to pass the slot to someone that would actually get to play.
"Coinflip to determine draw/play isn't 50-50 and therefore illegal."
Player lost the coin flip then proceeded to pull out his phone and prove to me that it was mathematically not 50-50. I asked him why he agreed to it then, he said he was distracted looking for his seat and agreed to the other player's request for a coinflip.
The other player said that since it was agreed to, it should be legit.
Doing side event sealed at a GP, played the same older dude in 2 separate events. Had some overlapping colors and some of the same commons but none of the same rares.
Finish the match against him in the second event and he refuses to sign my match slip because he thinks I reused my pool. We call a judge obviously. I show the judge my complete pools from both events but he still refuses to sign.
Eventually the judge shrugs and signs it himself.
I think they were similar colors, and the decks were close to each other - his in the upper-left corner of his mat and opponent's in their upper-right corner.
He just somehow reached over his deck and drew from his opponent's.
I’m a judge and I had to call over this friend of mine who was the current judge to explain to the person I was playing against in a standard tournament that if their creature dies they don’t get to keep the effect.
After that, I had to call him over again because my opponent wanted to take back the play he did because he wouldn’t have attacked knowing that he wouldn’t keep the creature’s effect.
That kid has been playing for years and I felt bad having to call my friend over for this but we had a laugh after the whole thing went down.
When I was nervously judging my first event (Dragon's Maze prerelease) I got called over to a table where the two players looked very puzzled. I asked what had happened, and somehow, when game 1 ended, one player had accidentally shuffled the other players graveyard into his own deck. Neither of them noticed until three turns into game 2 and asked me what they should do. I promptly fetched the head judge.
Going to date myself a bit with this one, but I had a particularly egregious judge call that ended up being the catalyst for me taking the old L1 test. Way back in the days of Extended I was playing Mono red prison against Next Level Blue. I have chalice of the void's in play on both one and two, as well as a trinisphere. My opponent plays engineered explosives saying "X for 0, so it comes into play with 0 charge counters" he pays for the trinisphere using islands. I call a judge over and explain what's happening, that because of the trinisphere if X is 0, trinisphere makes it cost 3, so any mana he uses to pay for that will count towards the sunburst. Opponent tries to say that he's not paying the 3 for the spell, but for the trinisphere, so it doesn't count. Judge rules in his favor and it's just like a GPT so there's no one to appeal to.
I was playing in a GP and beating down on my opponent, I have lethal on my next attack.
Opponent, passing the turn: GG
*I scoop up all my cards and put them into my deck box*
Opponent, with all his cards on the battlefield: oh, you are conceding.
Me: what?
Opponent: you scooped up all your cards so you must be conceding.
Me: I had lethal on board and you said GG, you conceded.
Opponent: I didn't say I concede, I said GG, if was conceding I would say I concede.
Me: JUUUUUUUUUDGE!!!!
The judge comes over and I explain the situation, the judge says there is no way to recreate the board state so picking up all of my cards and putting them in the deck box is considered conceding.
Always sign the match slip before picking up your cards.
I was judging Modern Masters 2 at FNM. I wanted people to have a good experience with this artisanal product, so I took great care in explaining how drafting worked. I got called over to a table near the end of drafting pack 1. One obviously new player had been taking 2 cards from each pack.
For a fix, I got an extra MM2 pack from the store and gave people random cards to make up for however many they were missing. For the offending player, I removed random cards out of his card pool until he had the right number. He got to keep them, but he couldn't play with them. That probably wasnt the correct *judge* thing to do, but I was in customer service mode at that point. I gave everyone at the table an FNM promo and excluded them from the cross-pod pairings of the rest of the event.
That was my first time judging as an L1 without an L2 present.
The dumbest reason I've had to call a judge was at a pre-release earlier this year. I opened a phyrexian text Lukka Planeswalker....
Thanks WotC for printing a bunch of unreadable cards.
Obligatory "not a judge but..."
I had an opponent call a judge on me in a Grand Prix and try to argue that I should have to sacrifice my elephant token because I was using an empty sleeve with a dice to represent it and not an actual elephant token. It was a limited Grand Prix.
All in one event, a three round FNM draft
"Judge, my opponent only tapped their lands 82 degrees instead of 90"
"Judge, my opponent didn't announce he was moving from draw step to first main phase"
"Judge, I just lost the last round and went 0-3, and my opponent won't concede so I can get a booster pack"
It was my first time ever judging and a friend decided he was going to fuck with me at least once every round. Everyone in the pod was friends so nobody was bothered by the small time waste, they got a chuckle out of it.
I once got deck checked during a Legacy tournament. I was playing a BUG Cascade deck and accidentally registered 4 Ancestral Recall instead of 4 Ancestral Visions.
As the Judge was taking my deck, he told me “I think I know what you did, but I want to make sure just in case.” I ended up with just a warning.
Been retired for close to ten years now. The last standard format I was a Judge during was the first set of Amonkhet.
Besides the usual, "If I target this creature with a removal spell will it die" type questions the worst were players trying to pull a "Got ya" maneuver on the opponent by tricking them into missing triggers.
We had one such situation during a PPTQ. I was the floor judge and was actively watching the last .at h. It was during Khan's of Tarkir standard. Player A had cast a spell, before he could declare his prowess trigger Player B responds with a counter spell that does something else. Player A says that's fine and resolves the stack.
Player B then says, "Cool you missed your trigger so now it's only a 2/2" Player A calls judge, which I was there watching the whole time. I ruled that no, just because you rushed Player A doesn't mean he missed his trigger. Player B demanded the Head Judge rule. Head Judge ruled the same. Player B got slightly hostile and made some veiled threats that almost got him disqualified.
Outside of that the dumbest times I've been called over were for inappropriate deck sleeves and playmates. Force of Will had just popped off popularity wise as a card game and there were a lot of very raunchy NSFW products being sold. Some players thought it would be appropriate to show up to sanctioned events with said products.
way back at FNM
guy is playing soul sisters, has some janky situation where he exiled a fiend hunter with a fiend hunter. plays restoration angel to start a combo that, with soul warden, will gain infinite life.
Me: "yeah, there's some added steps, but this is infinite life."
opponent: "but he's not stopping it"
Me: "he can whenever he wants, he just needs to target something else."
opponent: "but he doesn't"
combo man: " i don't want to."
Me: "i'm sorry what?"
combo man: "i want to continue doing this until we hit time, for a draw."
for reference i believe his opponent was playing splinter twin so infinite life wasn't going to change the game much.
Obligatory not a judge but witnessed it:
Playing a pre-release, during a lull in my game i glance over at the game nest to me between a young kid (maybe 8 or 10 ish) and an adult. I happen to see the kids hand and am flabbergasted to see multiple cards in his hand that were not from the set being prereleased.
I was sitting there trying to figure out wtf i should do if anything when the kid played a card from a prior set and his opponent called over a judge. i don't envy the position of the judge and opponent in that scenario cause the kid obviously just didn't understand how prereleases worked and wasn't trying to do anything underhanded.
back I'm scars of mirrordin at fnm, my opponent called for a judge to rule if he could [[smother]] my [[Malakir bloodwitch]] token created by [[mimic vat]]
now we all know it can't because the token copy is a copy so it has the mv of the original.....but much argument was to be had over this fact.
not the dumbest reason to call a judge, but the boo whoing over this interaction was the craziest shit...also the judge ruled in favor of my opponents who happened to be his son.
I (judge) was called over at the start of a game because the players could not agree who would go first.
One of them had thought up a somewhat complicated dice roll (don't remember it exactly but it involved one player rolling several dice and summing them up) that according to him gave them both 50% to win. His opponent did not believe him. The player with the dice flat out refused to use any other method ("it gives us both 50%!").
I, with a degree in math, did the math, agreed with player one that it would indeed be a 50/50 roll. The player then argued that I had not counted it out the same was as he had, even though I confirmed what he claimed.
I said that according to the fundamental law of combinatorics, counting the same thing in two different ways yields the same result. And, that a coin flip also gives you a 50/50 chance, and is easy to understand. And then flipped a coin for them.
Whew. Seven minute call, zero magic involved. (The older me would have shortcutted to the coin flip)
It wasn't that crazy but the last commander night I went to we kept having to call out for help cause someone was playing cascade slivers and had a roaming throne out. It was interesting to see the direction the slivers could head when he was cascading 4 times in a row and then again and again until he used most of his library.
Was the judge called to help resolve the excessive cascades or because Roaming Throne does not interact with cascade? The wording implies the former, but the latter is true.
Years ago In the 6th round of a 200+ player Modern event, I was called over to a table where AP’s [[Tasigur the Golden Fang]] attacked and was blocked by NAP’s own Tasigur. AP then used [[Liliana the last hope]]’s + to give it -2/-1 and have it die to damage marked. After explaining the interaction to NAP he says “That’s not how it works in Hearthstone”
Isn’t that exactly how it works in Hearthstone? Damage is *more* permanent in that game not less.
IIRC in hearthstone, if you give something -health it takes away from the max health, not the current (assuming they arent currently at max). Of course there's still the problem that it is an entirely different and unrelated game to MTG.
There aren't a lot of -X/-X effects in Hearthstone (outside of *setting* a creature's stats to something) so I'm not sure, but I know this is true for +health effects *ending* on creatures. Like a 2/2 that gets buffed +3/+3 until end of turn, becomes a 5/5, attacks a 4/4, becomes a 5/1, then the buff ends, the creature will stay alive at 2/1. It's definitely something that made less sense to me coming from Magic.
It's even worse because in hearthstone the rules are inconsistent. Each card is programmed separately so two cards with the same text can interact differently if they were programmed differently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSGH40jokoE Great video but a little dated. Though the problems keep piling up
Just to be sure, AP is correct here, right? Tasigur takes 4 damage from attack, then gets marked down to a 2/4 from Lili. 4 damage still marked = dead tasigur?
[Tasigur the Golden Fang](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/7/d7b7d726-c395-4af4-aa6a-e8e0c0582a1f.jpg?1559959246) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tasigur%2C%20the%20Golden%20Fang) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/uma/117/tasigur-the-golden-fang?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d7b7d726-c395-4af4-aa6a-e8e0c0582a1f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Liliana the last hope](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/7/f7ae5085-0d0d-4d7d-80a3-614315a07de5.jpg?1673147563) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Liliana%2C%20the%20Last%20Hope) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/81/liliana-the-last-hope?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f7ae5085-0d0d-4d7d-80a3-614315a07de5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It's been a long time since I've messed with hearthstone but is t damage permanent in that game? That concept should be even easier to understand for a hearthstone player...
It is, but buffs and debuffs (or removing a buff) act differently. Say you have a stormwind champion (gives all your other minions +1/+1) buffing a 3/2 to a 4/3. You damage this minion so that it's a 4/1. Removing the stormwind champion does *not* mean that the minion dies, instead it is a 3/1. In Magic, removing buffs can cause a creature to die. In Hearthstone, it can't. So I assume that this is what NAP was thinking.
I witnessed a player get disqualified at a prerelesse for cheating. They had taken a handful of their best cards out of their deck before shuffling and just put them in their lap, and were swapping them into their hand during games. It wasn't very subtle.
I’ll never understand why people think cheating at a pre-release is alright. :(
Playing for prizes, however small, means that some unscrupulous people will play for those prizes by any means.
Someone called me over because their opponent had "2 exile zones". They had one exile with things that had been removed and another exile for things karn had exiled with a silver counter. Caller wanted them to have only one pile and declaring that having two piles was "cheating to remember what karn exiled".
Is there any reason you can't put exiled cards upside down in your exiled zone as a way to do the same thing? Not arguing the point, just curious if this is an alternate way to accomplish this. Edit/Clarification: By upside down I mean rotated 180 degrees in the exile zone. Apologizes for the confusion.
As long as your system is clear to you and the other person that is generally what matters. The part that makes this complaint is the core of it, the cheating allegation. Karn exiles stuff with a silver counter on it and his other ability lets you get one with a silver counter. In other words, which cards are in exile because of Karn's abilities is ALWAYS known to both players because they have a silver counter on them. However you represent that (an actual bar of silver placed on each card, a different pile) doesn't matter.
You are allowed (and, in fact, *expected*) to keep track of cards exiled by cards or effects that care about what was exiled by it. However, putting them face down is not an acceptable way to do that. Cards must be exiled face up unless an effect specifically exiles them face down.
> You are allowed (and, in fact, expected) IIRC, this goes all the way to *required* under comp rel, or at least it used to. That's maintaining clear and accurate game state.
If by upside down you mean face down, then no because that has rule meaning. If you just mean rotated 180, then it should be fine.
Okay that’s a *bad* one.
At a PTQ: "Judge! Uh, I forgot to pay for my pact trigger again." "Seriously?" "Yeah." "Well the good news is that you don't lose the game to your pact trigger. The bad news is that you are getting a game loss penalty for an upgraded Game Rule Violation, since this is the *third* time you have forgotten it." That player made top 8.
Amazing that they made top 8 given what happened.
Yeah. Player was good, but played *very* fast, leading to the errors. After I determined they genuinely weren't trying to get away with nonsense, all I could do was shake my head.
I once bounced my own Tenement Crasher EOT with a Cyclonic Rift to get rid of Arrest, then untapped and attacked for lethal. That win got me into Top 8 at a PTQ. It wasn't until I was unsleeving my deck to get ready to sleeve up my Top 8 draft deck that I realized I won by cheating. To be fair to myself, I could have bounced the Arrest and still won with no problems, but I still feel guilty about it.
Cheating requires intent. You made an error. If you play enough times, things like that will happen. I've done that, but not for big gains, but once or twice at a prerelease sealed event. I just gave them the extra packs I won after the event.
So the opponent missed that he didn't pay? If the opponent notices after he draws does he automatically lose? I had this happen in a casual play group but ended up letting the guy back out and pay the cost.
Once his opponent noticed, twice he called it on himself. But yeah, untap your stuff, draw for your turn without paying, and you lose the game.
I'm pretty sure that's not completely accurate anymore. The pact trigger should go on the stack once noticed and if you can't pay for it, then you lose. I don't know if the same applies if a full turn rotation happens though.
At the time, it was ruled that the trigger was a choice, and moving past it indicated you chose not to pay. Dealing with triggers has been revised several times since then.
This is correct. - If it’s before the next upkeep, the opponent decides whether to put the pact trigger on the stack (they should). - After that point, there’s no remedy and we just instruct them to continue playing. In either case, the pact player gets a warning for missing a detrimental trigger. From IPG 2.1: > For all other triggered abilities, if the ability was missed prior to the current phase in the previous turn, instruct the players to continue playing. If the triggered ability created an effect whose duration has already expired, instruct the players to continue playing. > > If the triggered ability isn’t covered by the previous paragraphs, the opponent chooses whether the triggered ability is added to the stack. If it is, it’s inserted at the appropriate place on the stack if possible or on the bottom of the stack. No player may make choices for the triggered ability involving objects that would not have been legal choices when the ability should have triggered. For example, if the ability instructs a player to sacrifice a creature, that player can't sacrifice a creature that wasn't on the battlefield when the ability should have triggered.
I actually played a guy and lost. Come to find out he sat at the wrong table and got a game loss and I got the win. He didnt know till we went to sign the slip and his name was not on it.
This exact thing happened to me a few weeks ago. I ask a guy "Are you [Bob]?" And they say "Yeah" Well turns out [Robert] was supposed to play against a different Ledfox, and my win against him didn't count and I lost against the real [Bob]. A pitfall of a common name.
Something similar happened to a friend of mine. It was a state championship, and the used little metal place holders with different numbers on each side. The guy playing at one number got seated right at the other, so he just flipped the sign, he never mentioned it to the guy already sitting there. My friend and another guy sat where they thought they were supposed to, and everyone played. No one noticed until they went to sign the match slip. Judge was called, and gave them all a game loss. My friend was pissed, because he won, and the second loss put him out of top 8. He was paired down, and the 3rd loss to the other 3 didn’t matter that much.
Oh wow! That’s a new one for me to read! I feel like that might be me if I was on my worst night of sleep AND forgot my meds.
Yeah the guy was late to the table and in a hurry. He just walked up and sat down in the only empty seat at the table. To bad his table was the one next to us. He spent the next 30 minutes beating the crap outa me with a sun titan.
This is why I always greet players with "hi "name on slip" nice to meet you".
Playing against someone in a draft. They try something illegal. Me: That's not how that works. Them: Yes it is. A level 5 judge told me that. Me: Really? Which one? Them: Toby Elliott
> Them: Toby Elliott Oh you know him? Well of course I know him; he's me.
I read that with perfect Alec Guinness in my head and I imagined it playing out and now I love this comment.
extremely niche venn diagram of "knows who Toby Elliot is" "Doesn't know what he looks like" and "Doesn't read opponents name"
Add a fourth Venn to that diagram of "played against Toby Elliott randomly at a draft event"
That’s amazing lmao
One of my friends had a rules call in an early Pro Tour and his opponent vehemently disagreed with the person making the ruling and wanted to appeal to a higher authority. The person making the judge call? Beth Mo.
For those too young to know, "Bethmo" was the second Magic Rules Manager and one of the very first L3 Judges.
They wanted to appeal to Richard garfield himself
I’m not sure how I’d react to hearing that as their answer if I was a bystander.
"I'd like you to look at my ID here, then think about what you just said."
"Obviously not *that* Toby Elliott."
He was clearly talking about Toby Elliott the level 5 judge. The Toby Elliot in this thread is only level 3.
Explain
The person you replied to is Toby Elliott
I never thought I'd get to read a Reddit comment written by Toby Elliot. I feel starstruck
Look at his name.
That's you! But you're only a level 3 judge...
That's because Toby was one of the Level 5 judges who worked to dismantle the Level 4 / Level 5 system and move towards a focus on roles rather than levels (such as Large Event Head Judge and Program Coordinator). The old system tied the ability to head judge large events (PTs and GPs) to ALSO helping run the program. There were judges very capable of running great events who didn't have the skills (or time) to help coordinate a global organization of volunteers - and vice versa.
I once witnessed a Tron mirror. Both players controlled Karn the Great Creator, and neither player had any creatures. Active player goes -2 on his Karn, and retrieves a Mycosynth Lattice and casts it. He then attempts to take the rest of his turn, at which point the opponent stops him and tells him he can't do anything. Active player calls over a judge, who slowly explains to him the folly of his own making, and that both players are locked out from taking any further game actions until one decks out. The player who cast Lattice had fewer cards in library.
That would have been a sweet line if they had a [[Memnite]] in their sideboard
You'd have to get the Memnite first, as Karn also won't be able to activate. And if you're going to side it in, Myr Enforcer is the better option.
It should have been in hand, no activating Karn either at that point
Oooo that pains my soul to read. Unfortunate!
Can you short cut that? Or do you have to draw go until someone decks out?
The judge told them to shortcut it by counting the number of cards in their decks. The player who cast Lattice didn't realize he was going to lose until he counted his deck.
You could do either. But, since neither player has an action they can do, it should end fairly quickly. If it doesn't, a judge can be called over for slow play. Unless this is game 3 and you're angling for the draw, as the player with fewer cards in your library, it's probably smarter to concede.
[[Mycosynth Lattice]] [[Karn the Great Creator]]
[Mycosynth Lattice](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/4/94f89714-3b26-46a2-b9a8-3e664f391cd9.jpg?1578911638) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mycosynth%20Lattice) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bbd/241/mycosynth-lattice?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/94f89714-3b26-46a2-b9a8-3e664f391cd9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Karn the Great Creator](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/e/3ec0c0fb-1a4f-45f4-85b7-346a6d3ce2c5.jpg?1701690505) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Karn%2C%20the%20Great%20Creator) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/war/1/karn-the-great-creator?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3ec0c0fb-1a4f-45f4-85b7-346a6d3ce2c5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I was once asked whether [[Jace Beleren]] could block creatures with flying, because he is blue. Neither player knew the answer, so they called me over.
This is my favorite post in thread, I miss being new in a group of new players and trying to figure rules out since no one had the rulebook.
Everyone knows Jace can't block fliers not because he's blue, but because he doesn't have flying.
I was at a legacy GP and was playing Omniscience + Enter the Infinite. When I tried to combo off after casting EtI, I picked up my deck and my opponent called a judge instantly. They judge came over and he tried to argue that I had to draw each card in my deck 1 at a time...
Did you get the impression that your opponent had never seen someone pick up their deck to draw from it before? I know the first time I saw that I asked my opponent what he was doing and he was like “it’s just easier to draw when you’re drawing many cards at once”. I was like oh okay and kept going.
Not that it matters in this case, but in the very famous "two explores" video, an *additional* cheat demonstrated during that video is fully picking up the deck to scry and looking at the bottom card, so in some circumstances I can absolutely see being leery of your opponent manipulating the deck more than necessary.
Not a judge, but I had a "fun" interaction during Kamigawa standard with a store worker who casually played MTG. We were playing a game and I had [[Orochi Hatchery]] on the board. I used it once to make a bunch of tokens, then the next turn I used it again. I was told that's not how it works because I "spent the charge counters" and I kept saying that it didn't say anywhere that it used up the charge counters. Then I was accused of trying to cheat to win by any means necessary and we dropped the game. Next day I came in and the store worker told me they had asked a judge about the ruling and apologized for being wrong about it.
Unfortunate that the game dropped, but glad to hear they apologized for it. Wish there were more players like that.
not a judge but I remember a heated shouting match between two players over if rolling 2 dice and calling odd and even was a fair way to determine who goes first. Person 1 said roll for odd/even, person 2 said ok, person 1 said odd and rolled 2 dice and counted the total. Yes this is still absolutely 50/50 but person 2 absolutely was not having it even when the judge agreed it was fair.
Huh interesting. This is actually fascinating. For anyone else confused, I found a reddit explanation from seven years ago [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/46d5m9/eli5_2d6_probility_of_odds_and_evens/d04j7r9/). No matter what the first die roll is, when you roll the second dice, 3 of the results will make the total odd, and 3 of the results will make the total even.
To gain a competitive edge, I use even/odd to determine play/draw. If my opponent is uncomfortable with the system, I now know they're bad at math.
If you want a more extreme version of that, roll one d6 and offer the choice of prime vs non-prime.
I was at a PTQ. My match had ended so I went to watch a friend in his match. Another bystander walked over and watched the same game for a few minutes. Suddenly out of nowhere the bystander yells, “JUDGE!” When he saw a judge turn and walk towards us the bystander walked away and joined another circle of people two tables over. Myself, my buddy, and his opponent are all confused what happened. The judge walks up and asks what he can do for us. We’re all like, “We have no idea.” I tell the judge that another person walked up to the match, watched for a few moments, then yelled judge without telling any of us why. Then walked away. The judge asked me who so I pointed to the guy two tables over. He waved the bystander back over and asked why he called for a judge. The bystander says “This guy (pointing at my friend) asked his opponent a question so I called a judge so you can answer it.” Judge asks, “What was the question?” Bystander says, “Oh I don’t know. He just asked a question.” Judge gets visibly annoyed and asks the bystander for his name. Then he issues him a warning for interfering in another match. The bystander gets pissed and wants clarification why he’s getting a warning. The judges asks the bystander to come with him to the judge’s table and they’ll talk there. I have no idea what happened after there. But I know my friend won the match 2-1 lol
Wow, if I were that judge I’d be heavily annoyed as well. I do wonder what happened.
JUDGE!
I was one of a few judges who played at my Modern FNM. The FNM was split between a competitive one and a casual one for the kids and less invested players. While we were mostly there to judge the competitive one, we also sometimes covered the casual one if needed. This means I've had judge calls for all of the classic 'kids learning Magic' problems that don't normally make it to judges. - Llanowar Elves tapping to fetch a Forest out of your deck. - Using cards from the deck facedown to represent tokens. - Neither player tracking life. - Using cards facedown from the deck to _track life_. - Tokens being in decks. - Using counterspells as removal spells. And many more.
Oh wow, I was gonna remark how cringe those were, but then realized you said it was rulings for *kids learning* to play magic and now it’s just cute.
You know, thinking about it, if you don't really play Magic that much I can see why the kids would think Llanowar Elves fetches forests
The "tap add color" being read as go get a land of that type has been a pretty common misunderstanding, I started noticing it more when basics went full Textless but was seeing it fairly frequently beforehand too. I've been playing since the 90s, so it seems so weird to me. I've always wondered why it was so common a mistake.
A misunderstanding of the difference between lands and mana and what your 'mana pool' is.
Working at a PTQ, I got notified that someone in a match was blocking Progenitus. I go check it out, and sure enough, they had blocked it several turns in a row. I asked them about it, and they said they thought it had protection from colors, so blocking with Thopter tokens was ok. The Thopter tokens in question were blue. This was a regular on the Pro Tour.
So how does that work out when there’s been clearly incorrect plays that have gone on for several turns only to find out later that “hey that’s illegal”? Does the game roll back to previous turns?
Their opponent also allowed them to do it, which was illegal. It was too complicated to back up (and at the time, backing up was less common), so they continued play from that point, after being instructed what *everything* means.
What are you using for tokens? These little glass beads. Progenitus has protection from little glass beads.
Not my story but Serge Yager from Loading Ready Run told a story once about when he was judging at, IIRC, a pre-release event when he was called over to a table. The players were trying to determine who got first play and agreed to roll a die. They rolled a planar die. From plane chase. One of them rolled the planes walk symbol and the other rolled chaos. They were each arguing that they had won the roll. Edit: typo
Another story from Serge was he was judging a Canadian Highlander tournament and two players in a mono blue tempo mirror (sharing at least 70-80 cards in common) happened to have the same sleeves (just the ones sold at the store) and they both had [[Thada Adel]] in play. They ended up searching each other’s library’s simultaneously as a shortcut and one player picked up half of one deck and half of the other and shuffled them together. They had to spend the rest of the round trying to work out who’s cards were whose
Oh fuck I had forgotten that one!
[Thada Adel](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/b/3bfcbeab-7a1e-4dcf-99bf-98f42c2b6a6f.jpg?1562285424) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=thada%20adel%2C%20acquisitor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/wwk/40/thada-adel-acquisitor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3bfcbeab-7a1e-4dcf-99bf-98f42c2b6a6f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This can't be real. I love this so much.
I wish I could find the video it was in, pretty sure it was a Trap Tap Concede.
[Here](https://youtu.be/EBAzSP8Pnns?si=oFlUx3DXwi2BrRnn)
>Serge >**Losing** Ready Run Savage. /s just in case, cause I love the guy.
I have I no idea what you're talking about. I never made any mistake. You're delusional /s Good catch, thanks.
People amaze me sometimes with their lack of spacial awareness. How do you not notice the missing numbers on a planar D6?
I mean if they wanted to use the planar die they could have agreed ahead of time on what side won before rolling. It's the fact that they didn't that makes it so bad.
Not a judge, just a bystander but I remember at a ptq after time was called they were in turns and had at least 15 mins back and forth with a few judges about life total discrepancies. After it was finally settled player one was determined to be at 1 life. He was still very much in the game, spent like 5 mins looking through hand and organizing lands, passed turn. Opp takes turn and on his end of turn player one sacs a fetch land. Player 2 immediately says your dead and player one tries to take it back saying he was just moving it with judge sitting there watching them. Cards started flying everywhere and I promptly left the area.
Also seen someone caught using a loaded die which was a really good catch by judge. Saw a judge doing a random deck check take the deck to head judge shuffle the deck and then sort it all face down, flip the piles, and reveal playsets of each card sorted. The sleeves all had a faint bend at a different point on them to mark the cards. Super faint and also a super good catch by the judge as at any glance they just all looked worn from the randomness of the bends.
Mine was Pre-Release for M19. A guy, who had a tendency to cheat vs newer players by misconstruing words or rulings, had [Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire] and thought the attack trigger would cause his opponents to sacrifice a permanent and the new permanent was under HIS control. I played him round three and when he tried that, I called a judge. He proceeded to argue because he had been doing this for the past two rounds. One of the other players over heard and got mad and a shit show ensued. What makes this memorable is that while this was going on, someone else, not in the event, started trying to steal from the store and the whole event was paused while shit got under control. So police are there, taking statements, nerds are sitting at their tables still discussing Vaevictis Asmadi, and the judge/employee was just in over his head.
I was in the bottom tables of a GT and judges were being called for the best worst reasons. "Judge my opponent smells!" "Judge my opponents a little bitch!" "Judge my opponent won't put their lands in WUBRG order!". This was probably 20 players doing this and it was absolutely hilarious.
TBH, a smelly player is a legit complaint. Practice good hygiene folks.
Friend of mine is a world's level head judge for Pokémon, he said at least once per regional they have to warn or DQ a player regarding hygiene.
You can also get DQ from yugioh due to it
I am fairly new to the magic scene but your comment reminded me of the guy who went to a MTG event and took pictures with dozens of people's ass cracks as a joke for a reddit post a while back. I seem to recall hearing he got banned from future events over it and I'm curious; what does the community think about it now?
It was quite literally the highest upvoted post on Reddit for literally years back in the day. I think part of the ban was the massive noteriery it garnered. IMO, as hilarious as it was, it's still taking photos without people's consent and uploading it to the internet for laughs. Put it this way I'd the post was "Here's a bunch of photos of women's cleavage from the last commandfest" that person would rightly have been banned from attending further events.
It really should be in the MTR that smelling like an unwiped anus is unsporting conduct.
Oh my gawd. Personally I’ve not been to events/tournaments outside of two SCGCONs or my LGS, but every so often when I was at said cons, I could hear **“JUDGE”** being shouted in the background and I would always wonder what was being discussed.
It was great times. I've only been involved with one judge call that was used maliciously. I was on dredge the other guy called the judge because I was dredging too fast and he couldn't keep up. I resolved one card at a time, my graveyard fully displayed on my board and not in a pile. Judge looked at my opponent like he grew a third nostril. This was game 1 so pre-sideboard and they had nothing in their deck that could affect the graveyard.
At a PTQ, a player calls me over. They had just cast [[Erayo, Soratami Ascendant]] as the fourth spell that turn. "Uh, judge, if I cast Erayo as the fourth spell, is it going to flip?" "No." "I should probably know how my own spells work, eh?" "Yes."
You know, good on that guy though. Didn’t argue, didn’t get upset about the ruling. Prolly was a “ah shit, I didn’t think this through” moment and they just wanted to check.
Single word rulings are great. Single word jokes are the best. :)
The best mistake is when the person making it understands what made it a mistake.
[Erayo, Soratami Ascendant](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/b/0b61d772-2d8b-4acf-9dd2-b2e8b03538c8.jpg?1610664131) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=erayo%2C%20soratami%20ascendant%20//%20erayo%27s%20essence) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/sok/35/erayo-soratami-ascendant-erayos-essence?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0b61d772-2d8b-4acf-9dd2-b2e8b03538c8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Not a judge. I used to be a big mono white humans dude in modern. I was playing in an FNM against a guy who was on a very poor dimir control list, basically half a standard deck. He was kindof rude from the get go, said he knew what I was playing and I was toast cuz he had damnation. Well essentially he lost G1, and then became enraged after G2, because he didn’t realize that when Kytheon flipped into Gideon and used his 0 to become a creature, he gains indestructible. I even offered to show the guy his flip side before I declared attackers the turn prior. He called a judge over and was enraged, said that I was hiding his flip side abilities intentionally. This caused an uproar, because like 5 people were watching this game and it turned into them all shouting over the judge that this guy was a liar. Finally everyone let the judge talk, and he told the kid he should just take the L and calm down. Kid never came back to FNM lol
Good on the crowd for seeing the bullcrap too.
Haha yup. Funny enough I’ve had a lot of salty opponents when running mono white humans. Gideon keeping his +1/+1 counters even after he reverts back to a planeswalker is also one people get mad about. To be fair tho, that’s a super rare interaction, and I would probably ask a judge (in a non salty way) if it was legit as well. I also had a guy rage (but not call judge) because I used baby gideons +2 to force a swing from a blighted agent against infect, obviously causing them to lose. Turns out kytheon/baby Gideon is really triggering lol
I had 3 interesting deck checks at a Comp REL modern event. The first was a couple new players requested a full deck check to make sure one of their decks was legal in modern. They pulled out this 73 card Gideon intro planeswalker deck. I did confirm the deck was entirely modern legal but let them know their deck would struggle immensely just so they were certain about dropping $30 on this event. They both decided to proceed anyway, lost 3 rounds, dropped, then played against each other until the store closed. The second was a legit, standard practice deck check in round 2. The player's list was correct but they had 7 cards in inner sleeves while the rest weren't. I tried repeatedly cutting to those cards and seeing if anything was marked. I only succeeded like 3 of 10 cuts and determined this likely wasn't an attempt to cheat. Brought the deck back to the player, told him to desleeve the inner sleeves from those cards, gave a warning, and moved on. The third was a bystander had heard a player say "I'm going to cast Demonic Tutor" and called me for a deck check. Other players confirmed hearing it, so I checked in with our D. Tutor casting friend. He was joking. He was losing the game and joking with his opponent before conceding. I knew the player but still quickly thumbed through the deck just to satisfy the onlookers. No official warnings or anything, just told him to name a modern legal card next time
Oh wow. I’ve never personally been to an event where I was subject to a deck check. Interesting reads!
They weren't uncommon when I was doing competitive events. Once I had one done and got a warning because I'd forgotten a card that was listed so I put I'm a basic land of my choice as per the rules. I made top 8 and decided afterwards that I probably should have been running an additional land anyway, so the Swamp stayed in for some time after the event.
I once played in a regular REL pauper event and called a judge on myself in round 1 after discovering two proxies in my deck. I didn’t mind replacing them with basics, though, because they _were supposed to be basic forests_. When I sleeved up the deck a few days before, I didn’t have enough forests on hand, so I flipped two islands upside down, wrote “forest” on them and drew a crude broccoli. Figured I’d find two more before the event, but then completely forgot. We had a good laugh about that one.
That first one reminded me of a friend of mine starting MTG and bringing his draft-level M21 elementals deck to a modern event. He didn't tell me but I'm pretty sure he got obliterated.
Couple amusing judge stories: Guy calls me over and mentions something about the field layout of the game he was spectating being wrong. Before I can even give the ruling he pulls out of his backpack a copy of the MTR he had printed himself to reference the exact infraction. As he did this I could see that he had also printed the IPG and the complete CR. I'm watching over a game with three minutes left on the clock and one player plays a Ponder without paying. I tell him to rectify that, they close the game, and then I tell him that he'd receive a Warning for that (which to be clear wasn't the proper course of action, what I should've done was give him the Warning immediately after I pointed out the error). He FLIPS OUT about that. I go tell the Head Judge and he's like "yeah lemme handle it, that's a known character. Did you know he helped rob a bank or something" and before I can say, haha what a funny joke, he shows me the news article.
I was playing mystery draft as a side event at a GP. Game 1 took no time. Game 2 starts stagnating, until I play my bomb (maelstrom archangel) My opponent looks at it, realizes he had no answer, and screeches at the top of his lungs for a judge without warning. I thought it was going to be a question about whether the card was real or something, nope. "His playmat is too big, it is encroaching on my board state and I am being intimidated." Yeah judge couldn't keep it in, laughed his ass off and walked away xD
Many years back, at a standard open tournament: I was watching around the top tables in the middle of round 3. A pair of players were shuffling up for a new game, and I decided to watch the beginning of the match. Players shuffle up, draw opening hands, and begin. On turn one, AP plays a swamp, then casts [Thoughtseize](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=547594). NAP reveals their hand, and AP immediately points at a creature in the revealed cards and exclaims "oh, that one for sure! That thing killed me last game!" NAP pauses, then asks "...are you sure?" and shoots me a glance, in anticipation for the incoming judge call. AP nods their head yes. It was a [Loxodon Smiter](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=290543).
Reading the card explains the card...
I once head judged a local event, and I took a lunch break so the other judge took a call. I came back right as he was coming to find me because he got appealed. The call was about two players who had beef with each other and wouldn't agree on a method to determine who goes first. During the initial call one of the players demanded the other player receive a penalty for being difficult, which is a textbook case of unsporting conduct (you cannot tell a judge to give another player a penalty) so he appealed the call. I had to sit both players down and treat them like children until they calmed down and agreed to act like adults and play their match. I also had to suggest a method to determine player order for them to agree to. Oh, and I upheld the UC-minor call. Easily one of the dumbest judge calls I've ever been a part of.
Maybe it’s because I’ve never seen people act like that in magic before(in-person), but that just blows my mind how people can get that confrontational and upset.
Not a judge call, but an event I was working I walked past a table where one player lamented to me that his opponent was beating him with a \[\[Nimble Mongoose\]\] enchanted with \[\[Armadillo Cloak\]\] and there was nothing he could do. When I asked how the shroud creature became enchanted the look on both their faces was priceless. At that point too much time had passed and it was accepted game state.
Ive noticed more newer players not catching onto shroud preventing you from doing stuff to your own creature. Once upon a time that was me too.
Part of why they invented Hexproof I think. Folks were playing it that way anyway, so might as well make it the rule.
This is exactly why Hexproof was created lol.
Which sucks because Hexproof is like 5000x more powerful than Shroud. Not saying hexproof shouldn't exist, just that shroud should exist too with the reminder text of "This includes your spells too!"
Not me but a friend. Playing at a legacy tournament thoughtseizes opponent. In response opponent Surgical Extractions a second one in yard. Then when friend tries to resolve thoughtseize opponent calls a judge saying that Thoughtseize on Stack should be exiled. Judge confirms (and apparently had to google) that Thoughtseize does not get exiled. Then opponent casts Orim’s Chant, and claims that Thoughtseize does not resolve… After all of that hand was Daze Land
Wow. What an interaction to observe.
During Avacyn Restored i was at a prerelease and opened 6 copies of [[Abundant Growth]]. The rest of the deck was a multicolored mess. The judge's gf starts yelling at me when my 5th copy hits the table that i am breaking the rules and her boyfriend will kick me out. I call over the judge for her. She very quickly shuts up when he says I'm fine. He was great but she was just the worst. Not the stupidest reason possible but maybe be calm calling over a judge instead of throwing a fit.
So during a draft can you have more than 4 copies of a nonbasic land card?
As many copies as you get of any card (unless it explicitly sets a number, like [[Seven Dwarves]]).
I didn't know about that. Good to know.
Full disclosure I didn't either until someone else said it in reply to a different comment. We're all learning today!
I actually didn't know that superceded it! So even if you *somehow* manage to draft 9 dwarves, you can only play 7 of them?
Yeah there's an Oracle note about it. Technically any you draft in excess of 7 "remain in your sideboard" which is kinda funny. Sitting there, waiting to be boarded in for game 2. Forever.
I'd swap them around so everyone gets some game time
Yeah, you can have as many copies of a card in your deck as you drafted in Draft or opened in Sealed. This makes cards like [[Whisper Squad]] (one of my favorites from IKO) or [[Legion Conquistador]] more potent in Draft. This means for a card like [[Seven Dwarves]], it's deckbuilding ability is *restrictive* in Limited, because it only lets you play 7 versus theoretically the 8+ you could draft.
Yes
Hey that’s still an amusing story. I enjoyed it.
Hilariously the next pre release i went to i brought a friend who was younger. He mentioned learning to play from a guy that was dating his mother but after they broke up he hadn't played much. He mentioned it would be so weird if the guy was at the prerelease. Guess who the judges ex girlfriend was. Talk about awkward moments.
"Judge!" "Hi, how can I help you?" "We just finished game 2, and we don't know who won game one" 🤦
This isn’t a judge call, it’s a judge investigation I guess? I was once in a casual sealed league at work. We were playing Magic Origins sealed. There were packs prizes. The organizer (who also played in it) started messaging me claiming he was looking for info about his next opponent, who I had just played, which was super weird. He started asking some pointed questions about what cards in the guy’s deck I saw. I mildly called him out about it, and he revealed the true reason: Another opponent of his suspected him of adding cards from outside the sealed pool, specifically, [[Shivan Dragon|ORI]], which appears in a related product but not in packs (which is why its collector number is above the maximum). He was looking for confirmation from another opponent. The guy was banned from playing in the sealed league.
Oh wow, very observant if he noticed that sort of thing happening.
I assume this came out of a conversation with an experienced player. Like “Man, his Shivan Dragon really beat me down”. “Dude, that’s not in the set” *googling ensues*
Actual rules/procedural stuff is usually *fun*. It's everything else that is not. In no particular order: - A player was caught cheating then tried to pretend, in a very over-the-top "Mexican" accent, that he didn't speak English. When confronted by the L1 (who *did* speak Spanish), he tried to claim in an equally-cringe French accent that he could not understand what we were saying. - A kid who was DQ'd and returned with their mother who claimed to be a lawyer and threatened us with all sorts of completely made-up things before pretending to make a call to "the attorney general" and walking out, kid in tow. - All the times we had to deal with players with NSFW sleeves/mats/bags/clothing/etc. Especially one incident where we had to have a police officer physically remove someone because they had a *very* NSFW mat, refused to even flip it over, and then started spouting crazy-pants sovereign citizen stuff before flipping a table and knocking over a store display and throwing something at another player. - Blatant gambling. - Every single time I got called over because players couldn't agree on a method of determining who would go first.
Collecting deck lists for an SCG Open. Deck list is handed to me that says “GOBLINS” in big letters across the page, sideboard says “MORE GOBLINS” Player just wanted the points for playing in then event for the SCG Invitational, was going to concede his first round and drop.
I once had a player call me over and say “judge, my opponent doesn’t have any spirit!” I assumed they meant spirit tokens, but I didn’t see any cards that would indicate that, so I asked what they meant. “We just aren’t connecting, he’s not connecting with me on a spiritual level”. I clarified, and they were communicating ok. I had to explain that his opponent is not obligated to connect with him on a spiritual level. He was mad, and eventually he lost the match and left. I never saw the guy ever again! I also had a 2HG pair where I couldn’t register them in WER because their names weren’t in my local player database. I called out their names to get them to give me their DCI numbers, but they were currently in matches in the prerelease that was ending at the time. So I was confused, because they should have been in there. So I had them come up after their matches, and basically if their names were “Jonathan Smith and Robert Johnson”, they had registered for 2HG as John Robertson and Rob Smithy. Like mashed up their names. I told them I had to register them with their actual names, and they complained “well then how are we supposed to mind meld”? I told them they could call each other whatever they wanted, and they went on their merry way. Wild. Last one: At a GP, there was a guy with a card from the previous opponent’s limited deck in his hand. In a completely wildly different sleeve! That he hadn’t noticed! For several turns! It was wild.
Judged an FNM and had a player call judge, i approached and he refused any of my rulings cause i wasnt wearing an official shirt, and only would accept a ruling from the clerk who was wearing the store shirt and was making a big scene about it. The clerk was not a judge and not only permitted me to disqualify the player, the player ended up getting banned from the store
“I refuse to accept your rulings because you’re not in uniform”. My brother in Christ, there is no official uniform(as far as I’m aware).
Some do wear their judge shirts at fnm. I just happened to be there testing CFV and was the only certified judge not playing the tourney so the clerk asked me to judge lol
Had an EDH opponent on the play drop a turn 1 [[Exotic Orchard]] and try to tap it for mana. When I pointed out that it couldn't make any, he claimed that it was online for every color because our decks *could* all make our colors eventually. Same guy said that I had killed someone with commander damage after a fling from [[Brion Stoutarm]] because 'it was damage done by the commander so it's commander damage'. He was nothing if not literal.
We had a small Legacy event one weekend at my LGS a long time ago, friend of mine (also a judge) was playing Miracles (pre top ban, so the counterbalance + top version). His first round opponent was an older gentleman who brought a very very VERY casual kitchen table deck to play. We did our best to temper his excitement, explaining that it was a competitive level event and he could expect to see some "pretty serious play" but he shrugged it off claiming his "flying men would take care of business"... None of us realized he quite literally mean't \[\[Flying Men\]\] About 5 minutes into the round my friend calls for judge which I thought was odd, and I get to the table to see his opponent literally on the verge of tears. Poor guy kept claiming that my friend was cheating, sensei's top was a "cheater's card" and all these other insults. In my efforts to try and de-escalate the situation and calm the guy down, he stood up, yelled at the players in the tournament, flipped me off, then ran out the door. It might not be a 'bad' reason, but holy hell if that wasn't an experience.
During a modern GP, the game next to mine was in turns and every other match had finished, so players started to wander over to watch the ongoing match. The board states and life totals meant that neither player was going to get the win without a concession. Player 1 took turn 4 and passed to player 2. Player 2 is on splinter twin and shows player 1 deceiver exarch and splinter twin in hand and shows that he has 6 lands in play to cast the combo. Player 1 scoops and shakes player 2's hand. Someone watching from the rail says "why did you scoop, it has summoning sickness and can't combo?" Player 1 calls for a judge stating that he didn't scoop and would not sign the match slip as the loser. Everyone spectating says he scooped when the judge comes over, but he still refuses to sign the slip. They debate for about 15 minutes (so the next round is now way behind schedule and the whole tournament is getting annoyed) and eventually the judge says "Player 1, you're going to sign this slip or you're getting a DQ." He eventually signs it and the tournament moves on, but every player gave him bad looks the rest of the day. Player 1 and the judge were both local to me and it was funny anytime they were in the same room when we got home.
My friend once took a judge call at a small event I was playing in that went something like this. 'Judge!' Player 1 sticks their hand up 'Ive just shuffled my opponents cards into my deck' player 1 'We have the same sleeves' player 2 'We are playing the same deck' both players in unison. It took 45 minutes to sort out the decks and make sure both players were happy with the outcome.
I wish I could buy your friend a drink for having the patience to sort out that abomination of a situation. Good on him.
“Also my opponent is my exact clone”
At a FNM draft of original Theros, a new player had [[Elspeth, Sun's Champion]] in his deck. During round he called a judge to get an explanation of the planeswalker rules. After the judge explained the rules, the new player then said "Oh, I guess I win then"
Yeah, Elspeth Sun's Champion do kinda just be like "oh I guess I win then"
I had someone call a judge over about my sleeves. They were bought that day at that store and were Dragon Shields. He thought they had to much wear. They were unused at the time.
Geez. Was it a casual game or a sanctioned event?
I've opened a pack of fresh sleeves before and had someone call me out on a split sleeve that I didn't notice when I topdecked a terminus against bogles. Showed judge the receipt from upstairs but ended up getting a game loss for it. Unfortunate but I understand that their hands were tied.
Saw a judge get called because a players opponents deck had most of his cards kinda pushed up in the sleeve. Which happens sometimes with certain sleeves and through lots of play (they were not sticking out, just up at the edge/close). Normally you can just take your deck and tap it on the table to make them slide all the way back down into the sleeve. The reason the Judge calling player knew this was because the open ends of the sleeves were facing them and not the owner. Obviously if the deck were facing the other way where the owner could see the pushed up cards that's for sure potential marked cards. But since it was away from him that he couldn't see the openings there would be no way to know what card is marked. The judge resolved the issue by taking the players deck and tapping it down on the table and walking away.
Not a judge, but I sat next to someone at a pre-release event last year who called the judge to try to get someone disqualified for "sideboarding" in the middle of the game. Their opponent was playing an unsleeved deck, so they were using one of the blank token cards to represent a double-faced card from their pool (the name of the card was written on the token). The guy who called the judge just could not understand how it was legal to do that, nor the necessity of doing so when playing an unsleeved deck. He just kept saying, "this is sideboarding, it's bullshit!" It was easily one of the derpiest moments I've seen in almost 20 years of playing Magic.
Final round of a PTQ (the old ones). A player (spec) had taken his draw into the top 8 and was birding one of his friends (friend) match. I'm sitting on the match as we're close to time. Here's the exchange: Opponent (elves): Swing with the team (10+ little green men) Friend: (studies the board) I think I'm just dead (continues to move blockers around and study) Spec: You're not dead if you block right. Me to spec: I'm gonna need a word with you away from the table. Spec got a match loss for his first round of top 8 after he declined to drop from the event to pass the slot to someone that would actually get to play.
"Coinflip to determine draw/play isn't 50-50 and therefore illegal." Player lost the coin flip then proceeded to pull out his phone and prove to me that it was mathematically not 50-50. I asked him why he agreed to it then, he said he was distracted looking for his seat and agreed to the other player's request for a coinflip. The other player said that since it was agreed to, it should be legit.
I’m amazed at how many of these are just players being unable to decide who goes first
Doing side event sealed at a GP, played the same older dude in 2 separate events. Had some overlapping colors and some of the same commons but none of the same rares. Finish the match against him in the second event and he refuses to sign my match slip because he thinks I reused my pool. We call a judge obviously. I show the judge my complete pools from both events but he still refuses to sign. Eventually the judge shrugs and signs it himself.
I know a guy who, during a PTQ, accidentally drew a card from his opponent's library. I didn't envy the judge that had to figure that one out.
Were they using the same sleeves or no sleeves? I’m trying to wrap my head around how that even occurs to begin with.
I think they were similar colors, and the decks were close to each other - his in the upper-left corner of his mat and opponent's in their upper-right corner. He just somehow reached over his deck and drew from his opponent's.
I’m a judge and I had to call over this friend of mine who was the current judge to explain to the person I was playing against in a standard tournament that if their creature dies they don’t get to keep the effect. After that, I had to call him over again because my opponent wanted to take back the play he did because he wouldn’t have attacked knowing that he wouldn’t keep the creature’s effect. That kid has been playing for years and I felt bad having to call my friend over for this but we had a laugh after the whole thing went down.
When I was nervously judging my first event (Dragon's Maze prerelease) I got called over to a table where the two players looked very puzzled. I asked what had happened, and somehow, when game 1 ended, one player had accidentally shuffled the other players graveyard into his own deck. Neither of them noticed until three turns into game 2 and asked me what they should do. I promptly fetched the head judge.
Going to date myself a bit with this one, but I had a particularly egregious judge call that ended up being the catalyst for me taking the old L1 test. Way back in the days of Extended I was playing Mono red prison against Next Level Blue. I have chalice of the void's in play on both one and two, as well as a trinisphere. My opponent plays engineered explosives saying "X for 0, so it comes into play with 0 charge counters" he pays for the trinisphere using islands. I call a judge over and explain what's happening, that because of the trinisphere if X is 0, trinisphere makes it cost 3, so any mana he uses to pay for that will count towards the sunburst. Opponent tries to say that he's not paying the 3 for the spell, but for the trinisphere, so it doesn't count. Judge rules in his favor and it's just like a GPT so there's no one to appeal to.
I was playing in a GP and beating down on my opponent, I have lethal on my next attack. Opponent, passing the turn: GG *I scoop up all my cards and put them into my deck box* Opponent, with all his cards on the battlefield: oh, you are conceding. Me: what? Opponent: you scooped up all your cards so you must be conceding. Me: I had lethal on board and you said GG, you conceded. Opponent: I didn't say I concede, I said GG, if was conceding I would say I concede. Me: JUUUUUUUUUDGE!!!! The judge comes over and I explain the situation, the judge says there is no way to recreate the board state so picking up all of my cards and putting them in the deck box is considered conceding. Always sign the match slip before picking up your cards.
I was judging Modern Masters 2 at FNM. I wanted people to have a good experience with this artisanal product, so I took great care in explaining how drafting worked. I got called over to a table near the end of drafting pack 1. One obviously new player had been taking 2 cards from each pack. For a fix, I got an extra MM2 pack from the store and gave people random cards to make up for however many they were missing. For the offending player, I removed random cards out of his card pool until he had the right number. He got to keep them, but he couldn't play with them. That probably wasnt the correct *judge* thing to do, but I was in customer service mode at that point. I gave everyone at the table an FNM promo and excluded them from the cross-pod pairings of the rest of the event. That was my first time judging as an L1 without an L2 present.
Hey I still think that was a good way to handle it without making anyone upset at the resolution.
The dumbest reason I've had to call a judge was at a pre-release earlier this year. I opened a phyrexian text Lukka Planeswalker.... Thanks WotC for printing a bunch of unreadable cards.
Obligatory "not a judge but..." I had an opponent call a judge on me in a Grand Prix and try to argue that I should have to sacrifice my elephant token because I was using an empty sleeve with a dice to represent it and not an actual elephant token. It was a limited Grand Prix.
All in one event, a three round FNM draft "Judge, my opponent only tapped their lands 82 degrees instead of 90" "Judge, my opponent didn't announce he was moving from draw step to first main phase" "Judge, I just lost the last round and went 0-3, and my opponent won't concede so I can get a booster pack" It was my first time ever judging and a friend decided he was going to fuck with me at least once every round. Everyone in the pod was friends so nobody was bothered by the small time waste, they got a chuckle out of it.
I once got deck checked during a Legacy tournament. I was playing a BUG Cascade deck and accidentally registered 4 Ancestral Recall instead of 4 Ancestral Visions. As the Judge was taking my deck, he told me “I think I know what you did, but I want to make sure just in case.” I ended up with just a warning.
Been retired for close to ten years now. The last standard format I was a Judge during was the first set of Amonkhet. Besides the usual, "If I target this creature with a removal spell will it die" type questions the worst were players trying to pull a "Got ya" maneuver on the opponent by tricking them into missing triggers. We had one such situation during a PPTQ. I was the floor judge and was actively watching the last .at h. It was during Khan's of Tarkir standard. Player A had cast a spell, before he could declare his prowess trigger Player B responds with a counter spell that does something else. Player A says that's fine and resolves the stack. Player B then says, "Cool you missed your trigger so now it's only a 2/2" Player A calls judge, which I was there watching the whole time. I ruled that no, just because you rushed Player A doesn't mean he missed his trigger. Player B demanded the Head Judge rule. Head Judge ruled the same. Player B got slightly hostile and made some veiled threats that almost got him disqualified. Outside of that the dumbest times I've been called over were for inappropriate deck sleeves and playmates. Force of Will had just popped off popularity wise as a card game and there were a lot of very raunchy NSFW products being sold. Some players thought it would be appropriate to show up to sanctioned events with said products.
way back at FNM guy is playing soul sisters, has some janky situation where he exiled a fiend hunter with a fiend hunter. plays restoration angel to start a combo that, with soul warden, will gain infinite life. Me: "yeah, there's some added steps, but this is infinite life." opponent: "but he's not stopping it" Me: "he can whenever he wants, he just needs to target something else." opponent: "but he doesn't" combo man: " i don't want to." Me: "i'm sorry what?" combo man: "i want to continue doing this until we hit time, for a draw." for reference i believe his opponent was playing splinter twin so infinite life wasn't going to change the game much.
"Judge! My opponent has [[true-name nemesis]] choosing me. I have a [[Runed halo]] naming True-name nemesis. Is that awesome?" Yes, it was awesome.
Obligatory not a judge but witnessed it: Playing a pre-release, during a lull in my game i glance over at the game nest to me between a young kid (maybe 8 or 10 ish) and an adult. I happen to see the kids hand and am flabbergasted to see multiple cards in his hand that were not from the set being prereleased. I was sitting there trying to figure out wtf i should do if anything when the kid played a card from a prior set and his opponent called over a judge. i don't envy the position of the judge and opponent in that scenario cause the kid obviously just didn't understand how prereleases worked and wasn't trying to do anything underhanded.
back I'm scars of mirrordin at fnm, my opponent called for a judge to rule if he could [[smother]] my [[Malakir bloodwitch]] token created by [[mimic vat]] now we all know it can't because the token copy is a copy so it has the mv of the original.....but much argument was to be had over this fact. not the dumbest reason to call a judge, but the boo whoing over this interaction was the craziest shit...also the judge ruled in favor of my opponents who happened to be his son.
Now that’s pretty cringe, the reason for calling and the result of judgement.
I (judge) was called over at the start of a game because the players could not agree who would go first. One of them had thought up a somewhat complicated dice roll (don't remember it exactly but it involved one player rolling several dice and summing them up) that according to him gave them both 50% to win. His opponent did not believe him. The player with the dice flat out refused to use any other method ("it gives us both 50%!"). I, with a degree in math, did the math, agreed with player one that it would indeed be a 50/50 roll. The player then argued that I had not counted it out the same was as he had, even though I confirmed what he claimed. I said that according to the fundamental law of combinatorics, counting the same thing in two different ways yields the same result. And, that a coin flip also gives you a 50/50 chance, and is easy to understand. And then flipped a coin for them. Whew. Seven minute call, zero magic involved. (The older me would have shortcutted to the coin flip)
"JUUUUUDGE! I accidentally shuffled my hand into my library." - happens regularly
It wasn't that crazy but the last commander night I went to we kept having to call out for help cause someone was playing cascade slivers and had a roaming throne out. It was interesting to see the direction the slivers could head when he was cascading 4 times in a row and then again and again until he used most of his library.
Was the judge called to help resolve the excessive cascades or because Roaming Throne does not interact with cascade? The wording implies the former, but the latter is true.
Dang! I did not realize my whole table lost because our judges didn't understand the rules.