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Judge Worthy: 1-3 or how I got rolled in legacy after a good day
So I attended both days of the Star City Games 10K in LA last week. All in all I had some good times and some bad times. I was a judge for the Saturday standard event and went 1-3 drop in the legacy event the next day. So what have I learned from both of these? Plenty.
Saturday started off easily enough. Me and my roommate Sean Catanese headed down pretty early and met up with Nicolas the event coordinator. After a quick breakfast, we met up with the rest of the staff. We had a quick introduction to both our head judge Jason Ness and our team leads in my case Brian Glenn. I was on paper team this time which was a change from my last few events where I was on deck checks. Before the event we talked about the changes to the IPG primarily the merging of several penalties. In this case, incorrect representation, illegal game state, and failure to discard were merged into game rule violations. This was both a good and bad thing. Many of these penalties are caused by game rule violations and as such merging them makes it easier to issue consistent penalties. However this also has the problem of making it easier for one player to gain upgrades. For example playing an Ajani Vengant while an Ajani Goldmain is in play and not destroying both would originally be illegal game state while playing day of judgment with no white mana is a game rule violation. This would result in two different penalties for two different reasons. Now both of these are in essence game rule violations as they break a rule of the game. However, we used to track them differently. Now this change gives us the ability to track penalties much more consistently.
The other penalty we merged is marked cards. Instead of having pattern or no pattern, we now just have marked cards. Marked cards carries a penalty of a warning. If we determine that a player may gain an advantage from this marked cards, then the head judge may upgrade the penalty to a game loss.
We also talked about the other cards that we knew we might have a problem with. The first being goblin guide. Now as a card it seems pretty simple, but its ability has and will continue to cause problems. If its trigger is not resolved properly, a host of different problems occur. The primary problem is that it is a trigger that you as the controller are responsible for, but it affects your opponent. Remember its a mandatory trigger and as such if you know your opponent forgot it and you don’t bring it up its cheating fraud which is a DQ. If you forget the trigger, you get a warning for game play error missed trigger. If your opponent forgot as well, he gets a warning for failure to maintain game state. If your opponent reveals a card and puts it into his hand, its a warning for game play error game rule violation as he has incorrectly resolved the trigger. If your opponent draws a card, then its a game loss for game play error failure to reveal.
The tournament went off without many problems. I started out checking deck lists with the deck check team. I found no real problems and moved on to walking the floor. There were few questions that I answered usually involving clarifications. My first complicated question involved valakut and harrow. Player A had harrowed in two mountains giving him six mountains and a valakut. His opponent wanted to know if he was taking six damage from two valakut triggers. The answer is yes. Valakut has the intervening if clause which means that it checks to see if the condition of the trigger has been met before and after it triggers. When harrow puts the mountains into play,the game sees two mountains entering play and valakut checks to see if the conditions have been met for both mountains. For each it checks and sees that there are six mountains in play and as such triggers.
I also issued a game loss for deck deck list mismatch. A player presented his deck to his opponent and it was 61 cards while his sideboard was 14. Simple as that. To all players, I advise you, before you present, count your sideboard. I also know that as easy as it is to sleeve everything in the same sleeve and make your sideboarding easier, desleeving is both easy and avoids these problems.
That day ended with no real problems. We had an effective round turnover, we got pairings and standings up in rapid succession and got them down in time as well. I went to sleep pretty late after I did some testing with some friends. The next day i woke up early and head down to the venue to prepare for the Legacy 5K. I had not played a sanctioned match of magic in over a year and as such, I decided to play a simple and effective deck that would be both easy to pilot and still be good. That choice was goblins. Here is the list I played.
Lands
19 Mountain
4 Wasteland
// Creatures
4 Goblin Piledriver
2 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Ringleader
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Goblin Chieftain
3 Gempalm Incinerator
// Spells
4 [DS] AEther Vial
// Sideboard?SB: 2 red elemental blast
SB: 4 Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 2 Tormod’s Crypt
SB: 2 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 2 Goblin Sharpshooter
SB: 2 Shattering Spree
SB: 1 Gempalm Incinerator
The only cards I wasn’t satisfied with were the fourth gempalm and the sharpshooters. I wanted stingscourgers, but couldn’t get the amount as my friends couldn’t find any and the dealers had none.
I went 1-3 losing to R/b/g goblins, 1 land belcher, and U/b/g dreadstill. Was I somewhat, disappointed. I felt prepared for this tournament and had tested what I felt to be the majority of the field. I was sadly mistaken. Here are a few lessons I learned from my time in the tournament.
Warren instigator is really good. I know I said I didn’t like him in my last article, but after having my face bashed in by him I realize that having more lackeys is really good. As a turn two play, he’s not bad as he stalls attacks since both him and the lackey have to be blocked. Now I still believe that 4 is the wrong number as having multiple one drops is good, but having multiple one and two drops that do similar things become worse. Two or three instigators is probably the right number.
The tool box idea I said I didn’t like is another idea I failed to test properly. I was destroyed by a kiki-jiki copying a stingscourger over and over again. Either attacking me, or bouncing my creatures. Matrons eventually became less than effective because I couldn’t find specific answers to cards when I needed them.
I have underestimated my ability to beat control. The only match up I won was round two against NO Prog Counter top. Game one everything went right with the deck. Early lackeys got in, I got some creatures down eventually he ran out of cards and despite two tops, he couldn’t draw his way out of his current situation. I brought in two relics and two red elemental blast cutting two ringleaders an incinerator and a mogg war-marshal. My plan of bringing in thorns and blasts were unneeded and the relics were probably also unnecessary.
I have failed to test properly after changes. When I switched from a splash to mono-red, I decided not to test warren instigator even though it becomes much better with the more stable mana. I also felt as if I needed blasts to beat control, when I can go as far as not sideboarding at all for the match-up to. I also cut ports for mana consistency reasons, but now without the splash, my mana base is much more stable and 15 mountains should allow me to successfully play every creature in the deck reliably. If I were to play this again I would run the following.
Lands
15 Mountain
4 Wasteland
3 Rishadan port
// Creatures
4 Goblin Piledriver
2 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Ringleader
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Lackey
2 warren instigator
2 stingscourger
1 kiki-jiki, mirror breaker
4 Goblin Chieftain
3 Gempalm Incinerator
// Spells
4 AEther Vial
// Sideboard?SB: 1 stingscourger
SB: 2 Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 2 Tormod’s Crypt
SB: 2 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 4 Pyrokinesis
SB: 2 Shattering Spree
SB: 2 pyrostatic piller
I cut a land and the war-marshals for the stingscourgers the instigator and the kiki-jiki. Copying any creature in the deck is incredibly effective. The worst card to copy is goblin lackey and even doing that isn’t so bad is it gives you another creature that has to be blocked. Instigator also allows you to kill out of nowhere as you can put in a lord with first strike damage and then with your creatures pumped, deal lethal in normal combat damage.
All in all I felt as if I had a good weekend. I met up with friends I haven’t seen in a while, got to play some good magic, and had a good time.
Thats all for now and remember, when in doubt give a shout.