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The Judge
I’m unable to retrieve the URLs I have stored online for the Building a Campaign World Mapping entry, so that is delayed until tomorrow when I’ll be able to fetch everything. In the mean-time, this is the story of The Judge from my second trip to Gen-Con.
At the behest of my friends, I entered a Magic: The Gathering booster draft tournament with them. As Wikipedia says:
In a booster draft, several players (usually eight) are seated around a table and each player is given three booster packs. Each player opens a pack, selects a card from it and passes the remaining cards to his or her left. Each player then selects one of the 14 remaining cards from the pack that was just passed to him or her, and passes the remaining cards to the left again. This continues until all of the cards are depleted. The process is repeated with the second and third packs, except that the cards are passed to the right in the second pack. Players then build decks out of any of the cards that they selected during the drafting and add as many basic lands as they want.
This was my first booster draft game, and I was more than nervous given the unpredictable nature of it. I wasn’t sure how to plan what cards to take to put into my deck, or even what a lot of the cards might be, as this tournament was limited to cards from the Ravnica block, which I was unfamiliar with.
I put on my brave face and built my deck, determined to have a good time regardless of how I did and to learn so I could build a better deck during the next draft. In my first match, I was paired up against an obviously experienced player who entered these sorts of tournaments on a regular basis. Each pairing played best two out of three, so I knew that I had more than just one chance.
During our first game my opponent, who we’ll call The Judge, was quick to spot any flaw in game-play. For instance, after noticing that I had played my cards in the incorrect order, playing a creature card before I had played the last land card needed to pay the cost, he insisted I untap the land and return the creature to my hand. I obligingly did so, re-tapped the land and played the creature again. This made no difference in the course of game-play.
He continued to give advice of this sort to other players as well on both sides of the table, pointing out if someone had done something wrong or misread a card. Grumbles were thrown at him from around the table, as well as at least one evil eye.
I lost the first game, but I re-shuffled my deck and started the second, hoping to best him. At some point in the first few turns, we came to a disagreement about how to interpret a card I had just played. The person in charge of the event noticed our dispute and came over to resolve it and declare an official ruling. When he approached and asked what the problem was, my opponent raised his hands and declared quite loudly, “It’s cool. I’m a Judge.”
The Judge then insisted that the official leave, and actually managed to bully him into it. As I was pretty sure I was going to lose anyway, I scooped at this point to save myself further contact with him.
I continued to sit at the table to wait for my friends to finish, and happily watched their games and dissected different matches with them when they weren’t in the middle of a match. The Judge continued to offer advice, criticism and rulings on matches that he was in and observing. At several points, he was physically threatened with violence by other players at the table.
I’ve never encountered a player quite like The Judge before, and with a little luck I never will again.
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4 Responses to “The Judge”
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That guy may know the rules of Magic well, but he obviously doesn’t know the DCI floor rules very well. You can’t judge your own match. In fact, if a judge will be participating in the tournament he’s judging, I think there has to be 3 judges on duty (in case two judges play each other, so that there’s always a neutral judge).
Just out of morbid curiosity, do you remember the cards which caused this incident?
Asmor’s last blog post..Setting Seeds: Dominus
“That guy may know the rules of Magic well, but he obviously doesn’t know the DCI floor rules very well. You can’t judge your own match.”
While he may have been an official judge, he wasn’t judging the tournament we were playing in. Not officially at least. As to the cards that caused the trouble, I believe the last incident was caused by a mountain creature out of the Ravnica block, but other than that I’ve blocked much of the incident from my memory.
While he may have been an official judge, he wasn’t judging the tournament we were playing in. Not officially at least.
What I meant was that he has no right to wave the real judge away, and the real judge should not have been so cowed.
Actually, I think the real judge would not have been out of line to have given your opponent a warning for trying to shoo him away.
Asmor’s last blog post..Setting Seeds: Dominus
You’ll get no argument from me about that, Asmor…
The worst bit to me is that the real judge was a GenCon volunteer, not a DCI Official or Wizards employee… I can understand this happening at most tournaments or conventions, but this was GenCon!
I suppose on the one hand it isn’t too bad. Out of a nearly a thousand matches I must have played in my life by now, this was the only instance where I did not manage to enjoy myself (not counting mocking after the fact.)