Tournament Magic has always been a game played between two people where a mixture of skill, luck, and untimely mistakes would decide the victor. After this past weekend's PTQ, my outlook on the game has been completely warped. Magic is now a game played between two people where the judges decide who wins or loses. Where wins decided by the judges set the top eight, and completely mold who wins the slot to the Pro Tour. Before going into a discussion on the weekend, I would like to say that the judges for the event are wonderful people. They are some of the nicest and most sincere people I have ever had the privilege to meet, or join me for a game of Magic. I would be happy to call any of them friends, but with that said, I would also be happy if they never ran another Magic event.

Complaint Number One
People have different play skill levels. Judges and players have a very different perception of cards. Judges tend to enjoy the intricacies of timing, and how cards interact. All that players' care about is that Petals of Insight, and Glacial Ray are an eight mana Shock with buyback. During the day, a player had Gutwrencher Oni in play and forgot to discard a card during the upkeep. He proceeded to draw the card, pass his first main phase, and play a spell during the combat step. It is at that point, the opposing player realizes he did not discard a card to Gutwrencher Oni. A judge is called over to the table. The old ruling would be that the player forgetting to discard the card would receive an automatic game loss, as there is no way to determine which card he drew, or which card he would have discarded without the additional information provided by the draw step.

The ruling was that the player forgetting to discard was allowed to tell the judge which card he drew. That was now considered to be a fact by the judge. The judge then would decide if there was a definite card that any player would discard. The problem here is that it assumes the judge has the same competency as an average Limited player. Judges see the value a card could provide not the actual value of the card. In this case the player was holding Kabuto Moth, Gibbering Kami, and Ragged Veins. Any Limited player knows that a card that says flying is infinitely better than anything that does not kill a creature. The Black enchantment in question is absolutely horrible and would only serve as a twenty-third card in a two-color deck. Even then it is awful. The judges decided that there was no definite card that any player would discard, so the gentlemen in question received a game loss.

The second situation was caused by that same pesky Oni, and a player forgetting to discard before drawing. This time the player's word was taken for the drawn card once again. The hand consisted of Keiga, the Tide Star, Kokusho, the Evening Star, and Kiku, Night's Flower. [Nice deck. - Knut, envious] The player was sitting on five lands for several turns, and the drawn card was a land. The ruling was that the player would discard Kiku. I completely disagree. If you had been sitting on five lands for several turns you would typically discard Keiga, keep Kokusho, and play Kiku. But if we are going to say that the rule is, "There has to be a clear choice that any reasonable player would make," then I must say there is no definite answer any player could give you that involves three bombs. Do you discard Starstorm, Slice and Dice, or Akroma's Vengeance when you are sitting at six available mana? There is not a clear-cut decision - therefore a game loss should be awarded.

I understand the theory behind the ruling. If someone draws a card and forgets to sacrifice an artifact to Molder Slug while having a used Pentad Prism and Skullclamp in play, the decision should be obvious. However this assumes that the people playing and the judge are on the relative same level of play skill. This also allows judges to decide who wins or loses games. While I believe all judges are upstanding individuals it gives them a great amount of power over the game. What was once a warning followed by taking it back to the upkeep and forcing a discard or a game loss was instantly given, is now left up to the judge to decide. The judge gets to choose whether to give a loss, or warning. Objectivity is now gone. There is not a ruling that will apply to all situations equally. Instead everything is now subjective, and the fate of the game rests in the judge's hands.

I won't mention that the player could also lie about the drawn card. I'm not saying everyone is devious, but it could happen.

Complaint Number Two
In previous articles I have covered things from cheating to the incompetence of judges. This does not make one liked in the judging community, and on this day, it is my opinion one of my associates may have been persecuted because of their association with me. While I could read the judge message boards to research this issue, I will instead just respond based on mathematics. The question at hand involved the shuffling of a deck. The person in question riffle shuffled their deck eight times, followed that with a pile shuffle, and finished with a side shuffle of their deck. This is how everyone I know shuffles their decks. The gentlemen in question had to just win this round to automatically place in the top eight. His opponent was less than skilled, but had a few bombs. The judge interceded before the start of the match and gave him a match loss for insufficiently randomizing his deck. The judge had earlier told him that he could not just pile shuffle - that he had to riffle shuffle as well.

The explanation was that after riffle shuffling he proceeded to pile shuffle his deck. By doing this, he was de-randomizing his deck, and giving himself an advantage by eliminating mana clumps. The judge did not even look at the deck. He just awarded the match loss. The problem with this way of thinking is that it is absolutely preposterous. Once something is deemed to be random, the only thing that can be done to not make it random is to look at the cards. Without looking at randomized cards, there is no way to de-randomize them. Now, if he had clumps of mana in his randomized deck, and he proceeded to pile shuffle the deck, he could potentially take the clumps of mana apart. If his deck was randomly spell, spell, land, land and he pile shuffled into piles of four, he would completely screw himself. If cards are marked, discolored, or have some way of telling them apart like foils, then you can cheat, but if there is no way to determine which card is which in a random pile of cards, nothing short of looking at them will de-randomize them. If doing anything to a deck after riffle shuffling changes the randomization, then every opponent I have ever played should have received a match loss for de-randomizing my deck by cutting it. My opponent has now changed the "randomized order" of the cards and now they are no longer in that random form.

My main complaint is that I always riffle my deck ten times, pile shuffle twice into piles of eight, and then side shuffle. I take my opponent's deck and pile shuffle into two piles separating the cards with two in one pile and one in the other. After completing, that I am able to count the pile where one card has been separated, and if it has twenty cards, then my opponent is playing sixty cards. I have done this at every tournament since 1998. I have done this at GP: Atlanta, GP: Pittsburg, GP: Jersey, GP: Ft Worth, GP: DC, and over 250 sanctioned matches. I have never once been warned or told by a judge that I have to riffle shuffle after pile shuffling. If this will give someone a match loss, it needs to be announced at the beginning of every tournament.

This decision placed three people into the top 8 that would not have made it otherwise. It kept two people from making the top 8 that could have drawn in. Finally, it ended up giving one player a first round and second round match against people who did not understand how to tap lands for mana, thus allowing him to make it to the finals. The two people he played would not have been in the top 8 if it were not for the decisions of the judges. To sum it all up, I believe that the rules should be set in stone. Judges should be there to make decisions based on objective versus subjective rules. In the end, a loss should be a loss. The judge should not be able to decide Player A gets a match loss because the judge could not decide whether he would have discarded the Forest or the Mountain. While Player B gets to discard Rend Flesh because it is clearly worse than Befoul.

Looking Ahead
On to bigger and better things like FNM drafts, and Pro Tour: Columbus. While the Highland Games and my daughter's first Halloween will keep me away from these events, I will include the deck I would play if the tournament were tomorrow.

First up is Extended. We are back to a wonderful Rock, Paper, and Scissors environment. While there are lots of potential combo decks, none of them can beat The Rock. The Rock will dominate Tog, Affinity, Goblins, and Combo (Desire, Aluren, Ironworks, Station Works, Helix-based decks etc.) The Rock still has problems with Madness, and Red Deck Wins running Chrome Mox and Shrapnel Blast. Without further ado. here is the decklist I would run.

4 Birds of Paradise
4 Wall of Blossom
4 Eternal Witness
4 Pernicious Deed
4 Vampiric Tutor
1 Buried Alive
1 Living Death
1 Genesis
1 Bone Shredder
1 Ravenous Baloth
1 Cranial Extraction
4 Smother
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy

4 Treetop Villages
4 Llanowar Wastes
8 Forests
6 Swamps

Sideboard
3 Cranial Extractions
1 Coffin Queen
4 Engineered Plagues
4 Naturalize
1 Withered Wretch
2 Terror/ Diabolic Edict

My prediction for Columbus is that there will be a lot of Goblins, Rock, and Tog. Some people will play Affinity, Combo, Mono-Black, and some might even try Tooth and Nail. At the end of the day, Jeroen Remie will place in the top 8 along with Gabriel Nassif, playing some version of The Rock.

Drafting at FNM
An end to this article is a fun mention about the deck for store drafts. Everyone knows that sometimes on Friday night you have the twelve or fourteen person draft. I have won the last seven ten-person plus drafts I have played in. The deck for the challenge is the Zubera Nation. The deck is fairly simple - just draft all of the Green, Red, and Black Zuberas you can. Combine that with Devouring Greed and you have a winner. It is nice that Dripping-Tongue Zubera produces spirits when he dies. It is also nice to sacrifice two Ashen-Skin Zubera to Devouring Greed and watch your opponent discard four cards while you gain six life.

In general, the deck is so much fun to play, and people misplay against it all the time. They sit back and wait for their bombs instead of attacking into your wall of Zubera. Little do they know that Devouring Greed is one of the best finishers in the game. Sacrifice two Ember-fist Zubera, two Dripping-Tongue Zubera, and an Ashen-Skin Zubera to your Devouring Greed will have them lose twelve life, you gain twelve life, they discard five cards, you get ten 1/1 spirit tokens, and get to deal them ten damage. The deck is amazingly good. So far, my only loss was to Brain Kelley and his Time Stop when I sacrificed ten Zubera's of differing colors - not the best card to have played against you. Actually, I am pretty sure it is most definitely the worst. In an eight-man draft, the deck is a bit worse, as it requires at least two Devouring Greed to be playable, and sometimes you can't seem to find them.

'Til next time, Happy Beatings,
JD