| Mercadian Masques Prerelease Tournament - Providence RI |
(Day 2)
Matt Villamaino
9/26, 1999
Your Move Games, Providence RI
107 Players
Judging Staff - Me (Head Judge), Rob Dougherty (also TO), Mark White, &
Helen Dunsmoir (Admin)
The Providence prerelease was an interesting experience. From a player's
point of view, the event ran smoothly, but we had a few issues that made
the judging staff's life a little difficult.
Midway through day one of the prerelease Rob came over to talk to me
about the staff (or lack thereof) for the next day. While we had a good
size staff for day one, three people couldn't make it again for day 2.
Fortunately, I was able to find a judge who had been planning on playing
and convinced him to judge instead. The other thing that complicated the
staffing issue was that Rob had to run the store in addition to judging.
This meant we had a really small, though well-trained, staff for day two.
We managed to get everyone seated for announcements promptly at the
starting time. Because of problems with people leaving their trash around
on day one, Rob and I came up with a policy to stop this for day 2. Anyone
caught leaving their trash around would be issued a single warning and
game loss. No matter what tournament you were in at the time. Main event
or side event. Don't ask what happens for second offenses. Needless to say
I didn't have to pick up much trash after the event.
The biggest problem of the day came when Helen (our scorekeeper) had to
leave early because she wasn't feeling well. This made a small staff even
smaller. We needed to have one person at the judging table, one doing side
events, and one roaming around answering questions. Looking around I saw
one of the Your Move Games employees who had just dropped from the main
event. Dan, buddy, pal, please help us! Thankfully he was able to take
over watching the judges station and taking sign ups for side tournaments,
while I took over the scorekeeper position (in addition to head judging).
Rulings were relatively simple. Here are some of the notable ones. Some
of these may have been made on day 1, the weekend kind of melted together
and I can't remember which rulings were made which day.
- Player A cast Charmed Griffin (lets your opponent put an artifact or
enchantment into play). Player B wanted to put an enchant creature on his
Deadly Insect. Player A said he shouldn't be able to do that since the
Deadly Insect was untargetable. I told him putting the enchantment into
play didn't target the Deadly Insect, therefore he could do it.
- There were several questions regarding creatures abilities that trigger
when they are blocked and the blocking creature has protection from that
creature's color. For example, a Nightwind Glider (2/1, flying, protection
from black) blocks a Quagmire Lamprey (1/1, Whenever Quagmire Lamprey
becomes blocked by a creature, put a -1/-1 counter on that creature). The
Glider will get the -1/-1 counter because the Lamprey's ability is not
targeted.
- A few questions regarding trap runner trap runner came up. Most of them
involved a tramping creature being blocked by its ability. In this case
all the trample damage is assigned to the defending player. My favorite
question with trap runner was "Does this work on unblockable creatures?"
Out of habit I read the card text aloud to remind myself of what the card
was. Guess that answers our question :-)
- During Helen's lunch break I was watching the judge's station for her.
Of course, a situation comes up that I have to rule on. The situation was
that Player C cast Cho-Manno's Blessing. Player D cast Misdirection on the
Blessing. The question came to me in two parts. First, does Player C still
get to choose what color the creature gets protection from? Yes,
Misdirection only changes the target, not the controller. Second was when
does Player C choose the color? Player D thought it had to be the same as
when Player C played the spell. No, Player C chooses as the Blessing comes
into play, which happens after he knows where Player D moved the Blessing
to.
Near the end of the tournament, two players had a disagreement on
reality. Player E claimed that Player F never announced using the ability
of his Undertaker so he didn't know that he had returned his Ramosian Sky
Marshall to his hand, therefore he used a creature elimination spell on a
lesser creature, whereas he would have saved it if he knew the Marshall
was in Player F's hand. I told them there was no way I could go back in
the game to find out what actually happened. However, there was a card in
Player F's graveyard that made sense to be the payment of the Undertaker's
ability. Therefore, I let the current game state stand.
We also had a small problem during one of the side drafts. Somehow, at
the end of the draft one player had 46 cards and one player had 44 cards.
The players knew which card was the extra one, so after double checking
with Rob, I gave the extra card to the player with 44 cards and told them
to continue as normal.
Until next time,
Matt Villamaino
DCI Level II Certified Judge
MadMage682@aol.com
| 
