The last year was quite exciting. For me as a legacy player, but mostly for me as a judge. Let me introduce myself. I’m Oliver Blank, currently L1 and aspiring L2 from Bern, Switzerland. I’m working at one of the local game stores in our city and I’m part of an association supporting the local Magic communities in Switzerland. In this function we are organizing one large Event per year, which this report will be about.
The Swiss Magic Masters
My main function in regard to this event as part of the association, was organizing the judge staff and being active as a judge myself. In this report I want to give you a small review about all the stuff that happened at the event and some small details about what I had to do before the event happened.
Before the event
The planning of the event started roughly around January 2019. We were looking for an affordable location that would be able to accommodate around 250 players and would be easily accessible for most people from Switzerland. The year before we had a great convention center in Interlaken, which had a lot of space and was quite affordable. But Interlaken and the venue in itself were not that easy to get to, so we were looking for a place more central, in cities like Bern or Olten.
In the end we were able to get a nice little venue in Bern. Organizing this part of the event went rather smoothly. Organizing the judging staff on the other hand didn’t.
I was mainly using our regional whatsapp group for getting in touch with our local judges and also posted the event on judge apps for applications. Around September, I had two applications, the event was going to happen in October, so I was getting nervous. I was planning with 6-7 judges per day + a dedicated scorekeeper for a two-day event. The scorekeeper was already set, as our scorekeeper of last year had done such a phenomenal job, that we couldn’t even think about enlisting someone else.
At that point I was taking part in the Judge Mentoring program for my L2, and so I asked my fellow Mentors and Mentee, If any of them would be available and if they could share the event as well. This way 3 more applications came in. I tried two more times on our whatsapp group and roughly around 2 weeks before the event I got my team.
Or so I thought. One of the judges had some issues in his family, so he/she wasn’t able to attend, but I was able to get a replacement in short time.
But then another problem arose. The preregistration for the event didn’t stop to come in. We were overwhelmed by how many people wanted to show up for our event. We were happy and thankful that the community in our small country seemed to be more engaged and more excited than the year before.
But this also meant, that I needed another judge, there were only a few days left, so I send out a last “call to arms” in our group and luckily it was answered.
In hindsight maybe I should have been a little less worried during the time before the event and especially during the last few weeks, as it all went well in the end, but this was only my second time staffing for an event of this size and still having 3-4 empty slots in my planning 1 month before the event really made me feel nervous.
Saturday – Modern Main Event Head Judge
So the big day arrived. Sadly I tend to get nervous before such big events and with this being my first event as a head judge with more than 100 players and 3 judges working with me, I didn’t get much sleep the night before.
Within the week leading to the event, I had assigned my staff for the different teams we were running I polished up my IPG-knowledge and told them to do the same. I got out all the necessary information they needed for the event, so from my point of view I was well-prepared for the days to come.
Limited Main Event 61 players
Modern Main Event 161 players
Tiny Leader Main Event 11 players
Unfortunately the start of the tournament turned into a little mess, an awful lot of players DCI numbers, were not available in the system, so we asked them to generate new ones via mobile, which delayed the start of the tournament by a whole whooping 40 minutes. If we had prepared some dci sheets beforehand we could have just entered the players with those and saved a lot of time, on the other hand the registration process in itself was a little messy. As we used a preregistration system with tickets that had to be verified, the TO has set up a two-line-system, first scanning the tickets and then getting into another separate line to enter into the Event. With only one line verifying tickets and then directly entering the person into WER this would have been much faster and easier.
Another problem was people that have been awarded byes before the event, for example the winner of the last years event or winners of trial tournaments. We entered them into WER at the round they would have entered with the bye but this caused confusion during the portion of the HJ announcement when deck lists had to be handed in. We could have just entered everyone regardless of byes during the initial portion, then printed out seatings and manually awarded byes during pairings, which would have caused less of a disruption.
The tournament in itself went rather smooth, from what I saw as a head judge there were no major incidents during the tournament itself. And after we finished 8 rounds of swiss, the top8 splitted prices and 3 of them went on to play for the trophy and prestige to call themselves Modern Master.
Sunday – Legacy Main Event Floor Judge/Head Judge
Legacy Mainevent 115 players
Standard Mainevent 27 players
Modern Trial 2020 21 players
Scorekeeping, and TO have done their homework that night and as messy as the preregistration went the day before, as smoothly it went on Sunday. There were still some minor hickups, especially with the byes, but altogether registration went well that day.
As a floor judge there were only minor issues this day, mostly oracletext issues and some missed triggers. Overall everything went fine up to the last round of the swiss portion. Suddenly we were in an investigation for bribery. One of the players dropped this on us.
“Yeah Player X and Player Y from my team were playing against each other and player Y conceded, so they are going to split the Top8 pricing player X receives.”
This started an investigation into bribery and at the end we did not issue a penalty at all. From what we had found out Player Y had conceded the match without any incentive from Player X as he didn’t want to play the matchup anyway and thought his chances in the Top8 were quite slim overall. The rest was added in a drunken stupor from the friend of both players. After discussing the matter with both players and giving the bystander the scare of his lifetime. “Oh fuck I caused both my friends to be dqed at the tournament”(It’s not a DQ anymore but it’s more dramatic for players this way, so I didn’t want to correct him) The story of the players added up, and we felt, as if there were no shenanigans in regard to bribery.
We went into this call with a somewhat clear decision to hand out bribery matchlosses to both players. But after talking to the parties and talking to some bystanders we came to the conclusion that nothing happened, so keep in mind when you go to a table with a key witness clouding your judgement. Keep an open mind, because maybe the witness you have at hand might be the one causing a huge misunderstanding.
At the start of the Top8 my headjudge had to leave for his trip home. We did a small debriefing with the team and afterwards I became head judge for the Top8 portion of the event. The players agreed to split and as it was still relatively early, so only one of them dropped out of the Top8.
The Tops went on without any issue and in the end one of our local Legacy players even managed to win the trophy.
I collected my earnings and together with my scorekeeper I went to grab some spareribs and a Caipirinha at a local restaurant to unwind.
Afterthoughts
Overall I think this was a blast for everyone participating, judging and for the people organizing it as well. 445 players including all side events made this the biggest event in Switzerland in the last years. I think I should get rid of the habit of being so nervous before such events as it doesn’t help at all. I was even close to collapsing at Saturday evening due to sleep deprivation.
My team was great and I’m looking forward to work together with all of them at the next Swiss Magic Masters if they are willing to apply again.
I learned a lot during these days. I got some more insight on How to organize and recruit judge staff for an event. I learned a lot about how to be an approachable Head judge for players and other judges alike.
Interesting Rules Questions
If I control no lands but two Lotus Petals am I able to cast Emry, Lurker of the Loch and why/why not?
Player A casts the Stomp Part of Bonecrusher Giant // Stomp, Player B casts Spell Queller countering the spell. When Spellqueller dies, which part of Bonecrusher Giant is Player A allowed to cast?
Player A controls Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and 2 Islands, Player B enchants Urborg with Spreading Seas. What color can player As Islands produce?
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed my little report of the Swiss Magic Masters 2019
Kind Regards
Oliver
In Response Diary 