Ask the Judge, 07/07/2006: Feature Friday

[A little assistance for an overworked judge on a short week. I've been slammed with work, and with the extra column in June and then the short week, I had little time to write for today. Dutch judge and Fine Upstanding Fellow Richard Drijvers (those Dutch consonant pairs get me every time) has stepped up to help with a column to help you get ready for the prerelease tomorrow. Have a great, fun weekend. -Seamus]

Hi folks,

Due to something called "I dunno how many Fridays July has", there suddenly was an opening for a Feature Friday article here on StarCityGames.

You may be thinking: "Who the hell is this Richard Drijvers?" Well... I will no longer keep you in the dark about that.

My name is Richard Drijvers and I am a level 3 judge from Goirle, which is in the southern part of The Netherlands. Lately, I've been quite active on the international circuit, attending many European Grand Prix, but I'm also active in my local community.

A recent article on the DCI judge website discusses Thirty Common Mistakes Players Make. With the Coldsnap prerelease on our doorstep, I would like to review some of these mistakes. We encounter them most often at during prereleases, because these tournaments are attended by the most casual players, and are not always judged with great expertise.

As you can read in the article, the mistakes made are divided into four areas. During prereleases, you will may not have any match slips [While match slips are common in the United States, prereleases tend to be much smaller in the EU -Seamus] and sometimes you won't even use decklists. But if it's a huge prerelease, chances are that decklists and matchslips are being used.

In that case, not writing your name on the decklist—or writing it illegibly—is one of the most irritating things judges will encounter. Especially when there are multiple cases in larger tournaments. It will take quite a lot of time to figure out which decklist belongs to whom.

But the most common mistake made with limited decklists is forgetting to write down the lands. Sadly enough this will be penalized with a Game Loss at all RELs while it's something the judge can easily check when taking in the decklist. Nevertheless it is still the players' responsibility and to prevent discussions about biased rulings it will probably stay that way.

Another common mistake is misuse of the played and the total column. Either by mixing them up, or by using tally or check marks instead of numbers. Using tally marks doesn't seem like it's wrong, but imagine that you have just drafted Coldsnap-Coldsnap-Coldsnap during one of the prerelease side-events, and you've drafted one card five times. You wish to play only three copies of it. Now you'll have to record it on your decklist as drafted five times and played three times. Do you really think you can tally three and five in those tiny little boxes without losing clarity to the judge about what you mean?

In constructed events, one is more likely to find abbreviated or incorrect card names on the decklist. This can lead to some strange situations sometimes. For instance, thinking back a while... remember playing with a Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight sealed deck? Yes? Then think forward just a little while, until you reach the time where both Rootwalla (Tempest) and Basking Rootwalla (Torment) were legal in Extended. What do you do then, when you find a decklist that's clearly a Madness deck, but the player has written down "Rootwalla" instead of "Basking Rootwalla"?

Enough about that! Back to the prerelease that's on our doorstep!

I already mentioned that there usually are a lot of casual players who come to the prereleases. Considering the fact that they normally don't play sanctioned tournaments, some of them may not know the concept of sleeves.

The purpose of sleeves is that they're basically meant to protect your cards from wear and tear. But what players don't always keep in mind is that these sleeves also get wear and tear. With this comes the possibility of certain sleeves getting worn more than others—often with cards you keep in your hand longer because of their high casting cost. It's advisable to ask the head judge whether or not the sleeves you wish to use are allowed before the tournament. I could go on about sleeves for another four or five pages, but since Level 5 judge Gijsbert Hoogendijk has already written an article about it some time ago, it seems better to just link you towards that here.

If you thought that was it, well, we're just getting started. I've covered about half the mistakes commonly made by players. The mistakes I've mentioned so far are not the mistakes that are most common. Those mistakes are yet to come.

Okay. These common mistakes fall into the 'general' area and many of them aren't even recognized by players as mistakes. For instance: when you start your match, do you present your sideboard? Or... do you always shuffle sufficiently? Do you shuffle your opponents' deck? These three cases are mistakes known to be made at any event. Similar common mistakes are forgetting to desideboard after each match, or returning cards that were under your control to your opponent at the end of each game.

At the lower level events, people often don't use pen and paper to keep track of their life total. It's not an official rule, but it sure helps when there's a decrement in life totals between the two players. A judge will always stick to the life total they can trace back to.

On the subject of judges, failing to call a judge when someone makes a procedural error or asking your opponent for the ruling are mistakes that are very common at prereleases. This is mainly because people are there to have fun, but don't forget... Even during these events there are players that will happily take advantage of the situation and ask to take back their mistake with the extra information they gained from it. Flipping over a card while shuffling is an excellent example of this.

Some of you may recognize the next scenario. You sit down for the match and after you've done the preliminaries, your opponent shows his/her hand without lands in them and goes ahead with mulliganing to seven. This is called drawing too many cards at the beginning of the game and if caught in time, will always be penalized with forcing the player to another mulligan.

Another scenario that happens a lot is players using the wrong items for tokens. Face down Magic cards, when you're using an unsleeved deck, is a common version of this. Sometimes players even use the same items for different types of tokens.

The last few mistakes are usually not really 'mistakes'. Therefore, you will probably be penalized the most harshly for these. You all must be trying to figure out which mistakes I'm talking about now. Littering, or profanity, for instance, is annoying, rude, has nothing to do with your match... and still, it's part of the tournament. Judges will give out harsh penalties for this kind of infractions.

Discussing a match with someone who isn't your opponent or a tournament official, outside of the team-constructed format, is a serious offense, potentially punishable with a disqualification. The same goes for conceding a match with the expectation of being compensated later.

I think I've covered just about everything. If you think otherwise or you have any other comments on this piece, please let me know.

[One more note here. One of the responsibilities of DCI-certified judges is to help educate players on the rules and policies of the DCI, which is our aim here. But also please remember that your first goal at a prerelease should be to have fun. Go out, play some cards, ask a judge if you need help, and have a great time. -S]

Richard Drijvers
RichardD in #mtgjudge
R Drijvers at hot mail dot com