A Lesson In Humility

This past weekend I had the opportunity to do something I've never done before - judge at a 40k Magic Event. I was a judge at Grand Prix Philly which is the first (and possibly the last) Legacy format Premiere Magic Event. Based on the absurd turnout of last years' GP New Jersey (near 1,000), the tournament hall for Philly had similar capactiy, but unfortunately we only had about 490 people.

Still, I learned a great deal from this experience. Being able to work with judges of a variety of skill levels and being able to work with judges that have not worked with you before is a great way to get feedback and learn things you might not realize you were missing. I learned more during one day of this event than I did at both 3-day Pro Circuits I worked this year. Of course, I was afraid that I would make a major mistake somewhere during this weekend and all hell would break loose, but that never came to pass. I did have one notable mistake where my training had me doing something differently than DCI policy, so that was a bit embarassing, but the head judge was totally cool about it and I'm glad that I now know the official policy.

In case any of you are wondering whether Level 3 and Level 4 judges are effectively perfect, well they're not. The legacy format had some thick card interactions and the card Humility offered a good number of headaches. This card used to be a disorganized monstrocity and now it's a highly organized monstrocity with two abilities that apply in different layers for continuous modifiers. Over the course of the weekend, even the head judge (a Level 4) mis-ruled on Humilty. Yikes! I was privy to an interesting scenario seen above and left. We have a Swords to Plowshares targeting a Creature Land, a Teferi's Response targeting the Swords and then a Wingshards is played to destroy the Creature Land. The Wingshards resolves destroying the land. Next up is Teferi's Response. Does it resolve as normal giving a card draw or is it countered upon resolution? I wasn't the acting judge on this one. The judge who answered ruled and his ruling was appealed. When the head judge came over I figured he would overturn the ruling, but he upheld it. I was surprised, because I disageed with them both. A few minutes and a phone call later, the head judge came back and said that the ruling he made was incorrect. Fortunately it didn't influence who won the match. So, yeah, I felt pretty good that I knew the right ruling all along. Ten points if you can come up with the right ruling.

On the last day I was asked to observe the quarter-final and semi-final single elimination rounds (you can see me in the picture to the left of Sonne who went on to win the event). I'm not sure why I keep getting asked to table judge the top 8s (I did so for both Pro Circuits I attended), because I'm definitely not the best at it. Maybe it's my dashing good looks? At any rate, observing (what I'm doing in the picture) isn't the same as table judging, but I did table judge the Grand Prix and it was nothing less than the final match of the whole gosh darn event. Sheesh. I *must* be damn sexy. Fortunately there were no mishaps and all went smoothly. The weekend convinced me that I defintetly need to pursue my Level 3 status and that is my aim for 2006.