Playing as a Judge and Things to Take Away.

Over the past couple of months, I have taken some time to play Magic: the Gathering at a competitive level. Since I started this, I have noticed things as a player that I think are very important for me to know as a judge as well. So I'm going to go over a few points of why I think every judge should play in a Competitive REL event and how it can help you grow as a judge.

Empathizing With the Players.

Empathy with the player is a very important thing when it comes to judging. It is needed for many different types of interactions when taking judge calls - from answering a simple rules question or how to deal with an upset player when giving them a game loss. recently, I played at SCG Indianapolis in the Modern PIQ and had some interesting things come up where empathizing with the player was important or where it could have helped out the situation a little more.

Going to Combat Ain't What it Used to Be.

The Origins of the Shortcut.

Lately, there has been some confusion about a tournament shortcut and how you would announce that you would like to "Go to the beginning of Combat Step".

MTR 4.2:

"A statement such as "I'm ready for combat" or "Declare attackers?" offers to keep passing priority until an opponent has priority in the beginning of combat step. Opponents are assumed to be acting then unless they specify otherwise."

 As we can see, there is a misleading ambiguity in this statement. How is "I'm ready for combat" seen as "go to my declare attackers" step? That is the question I propose to you. This specific tournament shortcut has been in the MTR since its conception in 2009(1). 6 years ago, we only had 6 cards had an ability that triggered "at the beginning of combat". Now, we have 17 cards that mention this rules statement and 8 of those cards can currently be played in standard(2). Given the influx of cards with this trigger, “Going to Combat” just ain't what it used to be.

At this point, it is time to make a change.