Hello people! This is my report from Pro Tour Kuala Lumpur.

I left Helsinki on Tuesday night before the Pro Tour. The departure hall at Helsinki-Vantaa was strangely empty, and when I asked for an aisle seat, the friendly airport lady said, "All I have available is an exit row seat, is that okay?" Yes lady, I'm okay with the extra leg room, thank you very much. Unfortunately, this exit row was next to the bathrooms, so for ten hours I had a crowd of senior citizens keeping me company and blocking my view of the TV. Also, for some reason a lot of people wanted to change their clothes in the bathroom about an hour before we landed. I do not understand why anyone would want to do one-legged gymnastics in a smelly broom closet when there's a more pleasant alternative available very soon.

I had a short layover in Bangkok, so I grabbed a frappucino and camped outside a Business class lounge and stole their internets. The flight to Kuala Lumpur was on Malaysian air, which was much nicer than Finnair. At the hotel, an uniformed guy took my luggage, another one told me how to find the reception desk, and a third one walked me to the elevator and pressed the button for me. I was tired enough to need all that help. I didn't even realize that the taxi was driving on the left side of the road until halfway through the trip. After taking a shower, I quicky located Nick Sephton of England who was bored and desperate to play EDH against people who haven't slept for 30+ hours. We had a quick game in the hotel bar, before meeting some WotC people for dinner. In the hotel lobby we met Juan del Compare of Argentina, who had finally arrived a day later than originally planned, and without his luggage. Nick and I decided to wait for Juan to get checked in, and we ended up having dinner at a Thai restaurant at the KLCC mall. Nick had said the place was good, but my "crispy duck" should really have been called "bone shard duck". We returned to the hotel and after another game of EDH, I went to bed.

The hotel was really nice. I loved the breakfast buffet—they had a wide variety of Asian breakfast stuff, in addition to the typical Western things like muffins and bacon (well, almost—the bacon was actually made of beef, because Malaysia is an Islamic country and therefore pork is not on the menu). My favourite part was the sushi. Sushi, fresh fruit and coffee might sound like a weird combination, but it really kept me going.

Thursday was a day of shopping, eating and gaming. We wandered around the KLCC mall for a few hours and had lunch and dinner there before going to the tournament venue for the judge 2HG draft. The 2HG draft was a great success at Pro Tour San Diego—judges got to try out the format, experience a timed 2HG draft and get to know each other. I was paired with Ryan Dare of Australia and we drafted a card pool that looked at least decent, but somehow we went 0-3 with it. My lifetime record in judge 2HG is now 2-3. Scott Marshall showed up while we were playing and gave me a cape with alleged superpowers of deckbuilding. If only he had shown up earlier...

After we finished playing, I decided that it was time to go back to the hotel. I ordered some delicious food from room service (just because I'd never done it before and because it was so inexpensive) and spent some time reading the Penalty Guide and the Comprehensive rulebook.

When I went to have breakfast on Friday morning, Toby ordered me to drink lots of tea. This was because my special task for the day was calling all three drafts. I've called a PT draft before, and I've called countless other drafts at various Finnish events, but I still got incredibly nervous because that's what I do. I made one embarrassing mistake in the first draft: I apparently forgot to say "take the next pack" once, which caused a bit of confusion. The second and third drafts went much better. I secretly enjoy being on the microphone even though I'm always close to panicking when I have to use it.

If you have to call a Pro Tour draft, it's a good idea to make a clear script. If I call a draft at home, I just write down the card counts and the corresponding pick times and that's enough. For the PT drafts, I wrote down everything I was going to say. I used words that I felt comfortable saying—I have problems pronouncing certain sounds and words correctly, so I wrote a script that avoided those sounds and words. In normal conversation I wouldn't care too much, but when I'm talking to hundreds of people, I don't want to stumble on my consonants too much. It's also important to keep an eye on the draft tables, so that you'll be able to tell if you're going too fast. The judges on the floor will handle minor problems, but if there's a big cluster of confusion, it may be a good idea to stop the whole draft until the problem has been fixed.

While I wasn't on the stage juggling with my pen, script, microphone and cup of water, I was assigned to Brian Schenck's logistics team. Our job was to set up table numbers, land stations and the draft product. My biggest regret about this day is that I didn't spend enough time talking to my teammates. I talked to people I already knew, but I should have also taken the time to speak with the people I had not worked with before. Brian commented on this at the end of the day and I tried to do better on Saturday.

The only notable rules question of the day came from a player who wanted to pay for Brighthearth Banneret's reinforce ability by using the mana from a Smokebraider. Now, this doesn't work because Smokebraider's ability can only be used to play Elemental spells and activated abilities of "Elementals". When the word "Elemental" (or any other creature type) appears on its own, it means "a permanent of this type." Reinforce is an activated ability, and Brighthearth Banneret has the Elemental type on it, but when it's in your hand, it's not an Elemental permanent—it's just an Elemental card. The players in this match were both Japanese, so communicating with them was a bit difficult. I eventually asked a Japanese-speaking judge to help me, and after he had translated my ruling, the players still didn't believe me and asked for the Head Judge. It's a slightly un-intuitive interaction, after all. Toby came over and explained that I was correct. Every time I see Toby make a ruling, I am impressed by his friendly and confident way of interacting with players (he even wrote an article on the subject). Then followed a little bit of confusion on what to do with a second Banneret that was already in the graveyard. It seemed like the player wanted to take it back, but since he had not used Smokebraider mana for that reinforce ability, we didn't need to even consider backing it up.

After the Pro Tour was finished for the day, Mitchell Waldbauer (from Texas, currently residing in Japan) asked if I wanted to go on an adventure, and of course I said yes. Our epic quest took us from the cool halls of the Pro Tour through the sweltering hot concrete desert to the magical tower of Kay-el Ceecee. After battling many enemies, we found what we were searching for: a hair salon. Mitchell had long hair, and he needed to get it cut because his new job requires a "professional" hair style. He thought it would be fun to get it cut in the middle of a Pro Tour. Unfortunately, he failed to answer the riddles of the hair salon sphinx correctly, and we were informed that they were closed for the day. Mitchell had to come back the next day on his lunch break.

For Saturday, I was assigned to the side events middle shift. I had a nice quiet breakfast and then spent the rest of the morning writing postcards to my friends and family. When I arrived for my shift, the shift leader asked me to help the PTQ staff count their decklists. When that was done, I was assigned to help Yoshiya Shindo with an Amateur cash prize tournament. I was supposed to run a GP Trial with an L2 candidate at 4 pm, but only 5 people signed up for it, so I stayed with the Amateur event and covered for Yoshiya when he went out for his (very late) lunch. When they finally got 8 people for the Trial, it was decided that the candidate could handle the Trial on his own, so I stayed with the Amateur tournament until the end of my shift.

There was one interesting situation in the top 8 of that event: player A was attacking, and during combat, his opponent played a Mistbind Clique as a surprise blocker. After combat, player A tapped all his mana and announced Profane Command. Then he realized that player B had not resolved Mistbind Clique's triggered ability that taps lands. Initially, it was ruled that it was too late to back up the Profane Command, but after we discussed it for a bit, we decided that since player A had not actually finished announcing the Profane Command (he had only said that he was playing it, he had not announced modes or targets yet), we should back it up and put the Clique ability on the stack.

After this event was finished, the shift leader released me and I went to get ready for the judge dinner, which was held at a nearby Chinese restaurant. The nice thing about the meal was that we got to try lots of different things that I'd never seen before and probably would never dare to order on my own. The bad thing was that some of it I just didn't like because it was too unfamiliar. I'm not a big fan of rubbery seafood, and the ginger soup dessert was scary. The dinner was very loud, as it always tends to be these days, but I had some interesting conversations with the people at my table. After the restaurant closed, we went back to the venue for some EDH. The game was longish and after I said I wouldn't mind going to bed already, Edwin Zhang attacked me with an army of animated land and left me at 1 life, although he could have very easily killed me. He was at 54 life. I untapped, equipped a Sword of Fire and Ice on my general (Intet the Dreamer), made two extra combat steps with Aggravated Assault, and killed him with general damage. I died before my next turn, but it was worth it. I went back to the hotel, chased Rich Hagon out of my hotel room (hi Rich!), and went to bed.

My assignment for Sunday was participating in a Level 3 interview. This was my first time as a member of the panel, although I've been an observer several times. Brian Schenck was the interview lead, and Mark Brown was the third member of the panel. Mitchell, who speaks Japanese, acted as an observer/translator. His help was invaluable to us, because Naoaki is not used to communicating in English. It was quite challenging to ask questions in such a way that he understood us, and to understand his answers. It took us several hours, but finally we decided that we were happy to pass him. Congratulations to Naoaki. I'm sure that he will work hard to help the Japanese judge community.

After the interview was over, I joined a seminar that was about to finish, and I really can't remember what the topic was, because I was distracted by L4 Scott Marshall, who had his big bag of random boosters (from different sets, everything from Alliances to Lorwyn), and he very generously let everyone play with them. We formed two pods of six and picked random packs to draft with. Our table had quite a bit of Mirrodin and Time Spiral, but we also had some Alliances and a pack of Starter 1999, which produced the awesome, game-wrecking bomb Devastation. I ended up with a red/blue/green with some big fliers, bounce effects, Forgotten Ancient, Tromp the Domains, and Aladdin's Ring. Devastation ruined my mana base just before I was going to start shooting everything with the Ring, but then I drew more land and my good creatures. Unfortunately, I stupidly played a creature that couldn't block and lost to Scott Marshall. Oh well, I deserved it. The cape of deckbuilding failed me again!

Several people wanted dinner after the game was finished, so I decided to join them. It took us a while to get out of the building because everyone needed to talk to someone before leaving, but finally we made it to the KLCC mall and found a Japanese restaurant that looked decent. The group included German L3 Falko Görres (playing, not judging at this Pro Tour), Mitchell, Brian, Richard Drijvers of the Netherlands, and myself. We played some booster-opening games while we waited for the food, and afterwards I dragged Falko with me to help me buy some gifts for Pasi. The day finished with a nice EDH session. We had to leave the venue around midnight, and I figured that was a good time to go to bed, because I had an early flight.

Pro Tour Kuala Lumpur was a really enjoyable event for me. I felt good physically; I didn't have any problems with my feet or with dehydration. I felt like I did some good work there, I got to play a lot of Magic, and I got to meet new people and hang out with some old friends.

That's it from me this week. I'll be back next month with more judging stories. Thanks for reading!

Johanna Virtanen
Level 3 judge, Finland
flame- on Efnet's #mtgjudge
flame (at) bore dot org