German Highlander is a format you don’t get to judge at competitive often and for many players this was the only tournament they play within a year.
German Highlander is a format where players play decks of at least 100 cards, if they want they can play more, containing only 1 copy of each card besides basic lands. They are allowed to play gold-bordered cards and have their own banlist. Rounds go 1 hour and the number of extra turns after the timout is 3.
I got the honor to HJ this 90 player tournament with 2 Floorjudges. In preperation I wrote a comment on the Facebook pace of the tournament to make sure players had decklists and I also encouraged players to show me their altered cards and what concequences problematic altered cards can have. I feel like this brought me closer to the community (that I am not part of outside of this tournament) and prevented some problems. And many players checked their sleeves and altered cards with me! There sadly were still many people that didn’t check their cards with me though but I had many players just asking me and my team to look at their sleeves.
I gave my team members tasks, one floorjudge was responsible for the deck checks and one for pairings and the end-of-round process. For deck checks I decided that I would rather have my team on the floor so we would check mainly for the number of cards, for marked cards and for banned cards.
As I knew and have worked with both judges before I was very exciting having those people in my team. I tried my best to make clear that I do want to work in a team where everyones voice had the same value, just that mine was the one spoken in the end if troubles arose. I felt like we were able to be a team in which our strenghts helped each other and the tournament. I decided that I want Backups and Hidden Card Errors doublechecked with any judge, just gamelosses should be confirmed with me. I feel like my plan worked out well and I enjoyed this form of leadership a lot. There is a lot we can learn from our fellow judges so I am happy to take those opportunities.
Round 1 was, lets say, interesting. One player came to me saying they can’t find themself on the pairings, I checked their name in the Wizard Event Reporter and yes, could not find them. I paired them against the player with the bye. Now no one of us judges nor the TO were too farmiliar with the Wizard Event Reporter. By trying to enter that player and manually repair the players I acidentally deleted all pairings (yes, acidentally), so I repaired everyone which took me almost the whole 60 minutes … . At least now I know how to delete all matches, delete one match, repair matches, add players, drop players and how to change spelling mistakes in names. Next time I know!
There were of course several interesting situations too! Anabell will be the active player and Nicklas the nonactive player, I will post the scenarios and the answer can be found at the end so you can think about the situations too.
1. You get called to a table. Anabell explains the situation. She attacked with a 2/2 creature, Nicklas blocks with a 1/3 creature. Annabell then casts a sorcery thinking they are done with combat, the sorcery deals 2 damage to any target and 1 damage to one creature, she targets Nicklas’ Oko with 2 loyality and the 1/3 creature. Nicklas reacts with a grindstone activation and Anabell responds with an instant.
Now Nicklas is confused because he thought as no damage has been announced that they were still in the blocker declare step realising too late that Anna has cast a sorcery, while Anna thinks they are already out of combat.
During an Investigation Anna tells you that they never declared damage in the match before in combat but Nicklas claims they always asked “damage?”. Nicklas explains that he wanted to respond with something in the combat before damage.
What do you do?
2. You tell your floorjudge to make a targeted deck check because there is an card alteration that has not been checked with you and you want to have a closer look at it.
The deck contains various altered cards but one is outstanding (see picture).
The floorjudge and you have already spent 10 minutes on the deck check.
What would you do?
3. It is round seven, the last round before top 8. Annabell and Nicklas call you to their table and explain that Annabell attacked for lethal, Nicklas reached out with his hand and Annabell partially scooped the board when Nicklas sees that he can activate one land to gain some life so the attack is not lethal anymore. Both players look at you for an answer on how to deal with this situation.
Both players are in contention for top 8, Nicklas boardstate could be theoretically restored, how do you rule?
4. Pairings for round 3 are posted, you want to print out the result slips and the printer snaps! You try printing standings to see the issue and they get printed like the picture (blurred out names for privacy reasons).
The resultslips had partially no tablenumbers and partially no names on them which didn’t change with multiple attempts and not being able to find the issue.
The first players are finishing their matches, you need to make a choice on how to solve this problem for this round. What do you do?
5. What happens when you flicker a manifest card that is an instant or sorcery?
6. “If I have a Teferi, Time Raveler and activate the +1 ability, can I suspend an Ancestral Vision in my opponents end step?”
Answer 1:
When I went back to the table to give my ruling the players already agreed that they don’t need to play the game out as it was obvious that one player was clearly winning this game. My solution would have been to make a backup to the point where Annabell passed priority in the declaring blockers step without announcing it. I sat down with the players (as their match already ended) and explained this. They were very motivated to cummunicate more clearly in future matches.
Answer 2:
This altered card violates the rules as it does not have the original artwork. Therefore I did not allow the player to keep on playing with this card. They were allowed to find another copy of the card within 10 minutes (which they did) or we would have needed to adjust the decklist and therefore issue a game loss.
Answer 3:
For me this situation seemed to be covered under the “new” take back rule as I do not believe the player was able to gain any new information in that 2 seconds. I discussed the scenario with one of my floorjudges and when I came back the player who conceded scooped already as they “conceded”. I still explained the players what I would have done and explained the take back rule to them.
Answer 4:
For this round we cut empty paper in the size of result slips and let the players write down their names and how they played. My floorjudge came up with this solution and it worked without any problems. We even were able to get the printer going for the next round.
Answer 5:
After giving this ruling being not fully sure we checked with other german judges over discord and our thoughts proved correct! If an instant or sorcery tries to enter the battlefield as a permanent it stays in the previous zone. It does not retain the information that it was a manifested card and because of not being able to move zones it stays in exile.
Answer 6:
“You can suspend a card whenever you could cast that card, so if Teferi allows you to cast a card at instant speed you can also suspend that card at instant speed.”
Thanks a lot to Sebastian Braune for proofreading
Eser talks 