The Time Spiral prerelease was a great success. The total attendance for all of Finland was the highest ever, and players who had not been seen in years came out to try the new (and old) cards. Here are some anecdotes from my local events.

We usually have prerelease events on two weekends. In recent years, the events in my local area have been quite small. For various reasons (including laziness and the phenomenon known as "real life"), I stopped attending prereleases regularly and let the local Level 1 and Level 0 judges handle them. However, this time I ended up working both days—the Saturday prerelease at Fantasiapelit (the company I work for), and the Sunday prerelease at Safe Haven (the main tournament store in Helsinki).

I was, let's say, moderately excited about Time Spiral. I knew there'd be purple cards, but I hadn't looked at any non-official spoilers. I'd opened a few packs at the warehouse while putting together the prerelease product for all the Finnish tournament organizers, but the purples I got were not very exciting. Consecrate Land! Dandân! Fiery Temper! Dragon Whelp! Swamp Mosquito! Poison is every judge's favourite state-based effect, and I'm a huge Drew Tucker fan, but those cards didn't really make me realize just how cool the Timeshifted cards are.

I walked to the store, expecting a nice little tournament of twentyish players. Instead, I found over 40 players eager for some fresh cardboard. That's when I realized that we only had product for 24. Luckily, I knew that there was some extra product at the warehouse, which was only a single subway stop away. We registered and seated the first 24 and asked the rest of them to wait about 40 minutes while we sent someone for more product.

That someone turned out to be me, because I realized that nobody else would be able to find the product. It's in a box! Next to the...other box! And don't take any product from that other box that is really easy to find, because that is reserved for someone and taking it would mess up my system! So I rushed to the warehouse while a fellow employee who was really supposed to be doing something else got the first 24 players started on deck registration. I made the trip in little over 30 minutes and got the other 24 players seated when the first event had just started building their decks. I split the tournament because that way I could run only 5 rounds, and also because instead of having 48 players impatiently waiting for me to come back, I could have 24 people opening packs and registering cards, and the other 24 people could avoid complete boredom by watching them (sounds stupid, but it seemed to work).

While I was setting up the product, one of the players came up to me and told me that he didn't want to play and would be leaving as soon as he had received his product. It's against the rules to drop from a Limited event before round 1, and I don't like it when players do this, but there's not much I can do if someone just decides to run away with their precious foil rare. I told the player that I would like him to stay for the deck swap, but that I wouldn't use my extensive martial arts training to stop him if he decided to not do the paperwork. He'd get a match loss for violating section 64 of the Universal Tournament Rules. He thanked me and left his seat as soon as I had put the product in his hands. He didn't exactly leave, though—he stayed around for an hour or two, watching games, and taking a demo of Dreamblade. I was a bit annoyed, but didn't do anything else.

Prereleases always attract a lot of new players, so I try to make my opening announcements are bit more detailed than at more competitive events, and really emphasize the "if you're not sure how something works, call a judge" part. However, sometimes it's hard to get the right level of detail for newbies. During the second to last round, I had this conversation with a new player:

New Player: I think I want to leave now so give me a loss for the next round. How will I get my cards back?
Me: Well, first of all, you will not get paired for the next round, and you can just take your cards with you now.
New Player: Yeah, but what about the guy who is playing with them?
Me: Uhh, nobody will be playing with your cards and we will drop you from the tournament...
New Player: No, I mean the cards that I opened. You gave them to some other guy to play with. When will I get those back?
Me: (insert explanation of deck swap here)
New Player: Oh, that makes sense, then...

Of course I wanted to laugh at the guy. But would you go back to a store where you got laughed at by a staff member? Professional behaviour is especially important when dealing with new players. I tend to be more informal with the regulars, but when I'm answering a Stupid Question, I should always behave professionally. Unfortunately, I sometimes forget this when dealing with players who should know better.

Not-So-New Player: Judge!
Me: What?
NSNP: I can ask for the Oracle text of a card, right?
Me: Sure, if you can name the card or describe it so that I know exactly which card you're talking about.
NSNP: Okay, can you give me the text for a green spell that costs 2 or 6 mana.
Me: (unattractive snort) Obviously not, I have no idea what card you're talking about and I'm not going to search Gatherer for you.
NSNP: Well, can I go do it myself? (We have a computer with limited internet access in the store for customers)
Me: Hell no.
NSNP: But I should be able to get the text!
Me: Look, I'll get the text for you if you can name the card. I can't expected to recognize cards by incredibly vague descriptions at the prerelease, and I have other judge calls to handle. Byeeeeee!

His request was unreasonable (and he had made unreasonable requests before), and I had two other tables waiting, but I still should have been more friendly with him, not only for his sake but also for all the other players who might have been listening. There is no official rule that says I have to find the Oracle text whenever requested, but my personal rule is that I will find the text if the player can name or uniquely describe the card, and it's not going to cause a significant delay in the tournament. For example, if I was judging alone and doing a deck check, I would not go look for Oracle text in the middle of a deck check. Since I was running two tournaments at the same time, all by myself, I was quite busy all day. The rounds started about 30 minutes apart, so results for tournament 1 would always start to come in when I was trying to get next round of tournament 2 started. Both events finished at a reasonable hour and I went home to get ready for day 2.

Safe Haven is one of the major tournament stores in the country, and I've been working for them or with them since the beginning of my judging career. The store recently moved to a new, spacious location. They can seat 24 players during normal opening hours, and 50 when the stores is closed for non-magical customers and they put tables all over the sales floor (the old store could seat 24 but the "air conditioning" would always die at 12) That was the plan. On Sunday morning, we found another unexpectedly large crowd in our hands and had to take all the chairs from the office and the storage rooms in order to accommodate all 63 players. Luckily, this time I had Pasi to help me, as well as Toni the friendly store owner. We ran the full six rounds with a top 8 draft, and we also ran four side drafts. It was at this event that I started to get to know the cards, especially the purple ones.

Many years ago, when I was a little girl with a ponytail and chubby cheeks, I got my first 4th Edition starter. My rares were unspectacular (Chaoslace, El-Hajjaj, Hurr Jackal), but the commons and uncommons formed the basis of the crappy red and back deck that I kept playing for the next few months: Dark Ritual, Hypnotic Specter, Lightning Bolt, Disintegrate and... Uthden Troll. I don't know why I liked that creature so much. Hyppie was cool too, and I soon traded my Mishra's Factory for a second copy, but it was not nearly as lovable as Uthden Troll.

And now good old Big Ears is back! I think WotC did an amazing job with the Timeshifted cards—almost everyone can find a card they really liked in that set. I'm also impressed with the new Time Spiral cards, although I haven't had many opportunities to play with them. There's brand new Drew Tucker art in the set, so that alone makes me happy. Madness, Buyback, Morph and most of the other old mechanics didn't cause any problems at my events. The card that generated the highest number of rules questions was Vesuvan Shapeshifter, which was probably put in the set just to annoy normal people.

That's all from me this week. Next month: my judge application for Worlds 2006 was accepted, so I will be going to Paris! I will talk about how to prepare for a big event, and how to get the most out of the whole experience. Next week: Lee trades away some of his judge staff. Is he involved in something shady? Read Feature Friday next week to find out!

Thanks for reading.

Johanna Virtanen
DCI Level 3 Judge
flame (at) bore dot org
flame- on #mtgjudge (Efnet)