Ask the Judge, 10/27/2005: Feature Friday

Capitol City Champions

I know some readers have been missing Feature Friday, and I apologize for the gap. Things have been pretty crazy around my neck of the woods, and I dropped the ball a bit. It's my sincere hope that we won't miss any more columns for the foreseeable future.

What have I been up to, that's kept me from exercising my writing duties? Where to begin... My house hosts a large party every year on Columbus Day weekend, during which I judged a pie party with some 25 entries (the other judges were wonderfully deferential to me, as the resident "pro") most of which were amazing. I made several trips to the East Coast, visiting friends and relatives as well as attending a wedding in upstate New York. And I ran a number of Magic events, including the Ravnica prerelease and the Constructed debut for the set—Champs, which took place last weekend in Salem, OR.

Champs is a fun little tournament, the ideal in-between step from large local events or GPTs to PTQs and Regionals. Having it scheduled to coincide with the release of a new block helped make it even more fun; a pristine metagame full of new and interesting cards meant that my deck checks were well-varied and interesting. We had weenies of the White variety, old standbys like Gifts, a healthy smattering of new combo decks (some variations on the Kamigawa block Heartbeat decks, others combining Searing Meditation with Lifegift), permission decks, and finally, the return of everyone's favorite pile, Battle of Wits.

While I love to see Johnny decks do well, I have to admit to a certain degree of trepidation when I see someone turn in a two-page typed decklist. We had two of them—a B/U control version and a five-color Enduring Ideal deck. They were both suprisingly competitive, and while neither made top 8, both were in contention until fairly late at the tournament. I imagine that either of them, with a little tuning (I watched the 225-card UB deck fight for several turns to make a Battle stick on the table, only to discover that after a few turns of Honden-assisted drawing, he no longer had 200 cards in his library) could be a solid Tier 2 deck.

The things that worry me about seeing these decks in competitive events are the same things that have always bothered judges about Battle of Wits decks: shuffling and slow play. The rules for both of those impose a slightly higher burden than many players realize, and unfortunately, these burdens are slightly at odds with one another. When shuffling a Wits deck (and the modern incarnations shuffle often), many casual players are inclined to do something like: cut the deck into three or four piles; shuffle each pile as a separate deck two or three times; cut each pile in two or three, and stack those piles. While the vast majority of these players are not up to any bad behavior, when I watch these shuffles I can easily imagine that the player could be keeping track of the rough locations of one or several cards.

The slow play rules have been discussed, here and elsewhere, at great length, but this is the relevant section of the Penalty Guidelines: "Slow-play penalties do not require a judge to determine whether a player is intentionally stalling. All players have the responsibility to play quickly enough so that their opponents are not at a significant disadvantage because of the time limit." If you bring a deck to a tournament that requires a lot of time to randomize, and you play shuffle effects every other turn or so, there is going to be a high burden on you to play in a fashion that allows the match to procede efficiently. For the love of all that is good in this world, please don't bring a BoW deck to a REL 2 or 3 tournament that you've never played before. Know your deck; know what plays you're making and what cards you're searching for; which matchups are going to let you play the Wits ASAP and which ones require a counter for your opponent's Naturalize.

On the shuffling front, similar suggestions apply. While I mostly want to see players shuffling their decks more, there are times where you can shave a bit of time. When you have only seen a handful of cards from your deck, it's much easier to return your deck to a randomized state. Here, again, knowing your deck will help. Not needing to remind yourself of other cards will allow you to quickly find the card you need, and get the game going again. When you need to do a full shuffle, the main recommendation I have is to practice. Beyond that, make sure that if you're chunking your deck into three or four pieces before shuffling, you shuffle those pieces (or portions of those pieces) together, so that a card that starts out in pile 1 has an opportunity to end up in pile 2 or 3.

These thoughts are equally applicable to any of the other slow, shuffle-heavy decks in the format (Gifts, I'm looking at you) but 60 cards is so much more manageable than 250 that the slow play issue is much more the dominant one. Be aware that of your responsibilities as a player of a difficult deck and you should be fine.

When this gets posted to the site, I'll be in LA, running the LCQ for the Pro Tour. I'll also be assisting and evaluating at the other PTQs over the weekend. Feel free to drop in and say hi. I'll be the guy in the black and white striped shirt. Have a great week and until next time, happy shuffling.