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Eric Verbraeken

Sealed Deck Swiss Tournament
Jun 02, 2000
St-Truiden; Belgium
judge : Eric Verbraeken (lvl 1)

# players : 23
# rounds : 5

1 Mercadian Masque Starter
3 Nemesis booster
Deck-swap
Land-swap (max. 5)
30' deck construction - 50' playtime per round

general impression :
The Mercadian Masques/Nemesis environment seems rather slow. 21,9% of the matches counted at least one unfinished game. In 2 of the matches, the players couldn't even finsih one game within the 50' time limit. On the other hand this means 78% of the matches did finish within the time-limit and in round two I noted the fastest victory (two wins) after only 10 minutes. It can be frustrating, however, for a player to have a game he's sure he's going to win end unfinished. Perhaps DCI might consider ruling an unfinished game won by the player who has the most life left at that time ? This could prevent some players from playing slower than usual in the second game (after winning the first) or in the third game (when at a disadvantage).

10 out of the 23 participants played their first rated tournament. This invoked some leniency on my part in the first turns of the first round in which I explained to them that the untap fase comes before the draw fase in this game (with upkeep in between both). Especially Pokemon players had a tendency to draw a card as the first action of their turn. After turn five I had one player (in his third turn) keep his lands tapped after he'd drawn a card and that got the message through to him as well.

New properties or abilities seem to confuse as well and I have probably explained more than a dozain times that a creature with fading does not leave play when the last fading counter is removed, but only during the player's upkeep when he no longer can remove a counter, generally keeping the creature in play one more turn.

One question of interest perhaps : A Waterfront Bouncer used his ability on a Skulking Fugitive and the players weren't sure whether the Fugitive would end up in his owner's hand or graveyard? I ruled it was the graveyard considering : Skulking Fugitive : Whenever ~this~ becomes the target of a spell or ability, sacrifice ~this~ Waterfront Bouncer :
U,T,Discard a card from your hand : return target creature to owner's hand 1. Bouncer's ability targets Fugitive and thus triggers Fugitive's ability as it goes on the stack
2. Fugitive's triggered ability goes on the stack
3. Fugitive's ability resolves causing him to be sacrificed
4. Bouncer's ability resolves finding its target missing and thus fizzling.

In a situation where one of the first-time players had brought out some red creatures, unintentionnally mistaking a non-basic land that could only provide colorless mana, but which artwork featured a mountain for a red mana-card; I had him take the red creatures back to his hand because I judged the advantage of leaving the game undisturbed (as suggested by the universal penalty guidelines after moving through turns) as too large, especially because his opponent was waiting for an island to bring out the blue creatures in his hand. A game loss, however, would in my opinion have been too harsh a penalty given the calm atmosphere of the game, the 20/18 life-totals of both players and the fact that the infractor was now left creatureless against one black 2/2 creature.

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