George Michelogiannakis, level 3 DCI judge SYMBSYS 15SI: The Theory and Design of Magic: the Gathering

Introduction Magic: the Gathering (MTG) has many levels of play. Casual (home or store), local play, local competitive play, or global competitive play. Everyone finds their best fit. Many casual players exist. Some people make a living by playing this game. The DCI is promoting and running organized play. “We keep it fair”.

What Sanctioning Means The DCI strives for consistency. It defines rules and policy procedures: How to run tournaments. How to handle infractions. How to certify judges. We won’t go into details. Each player gets assigned a DCI number. A sanctioned tournament is not a scary tournament. Three rules enforcement levels: Regular, Competitive, Professional.

Basic Tournament Procedures After signing up, we either collect decklists, or have players build a deck from a pool or after drafting. Then we have the Swiss rounds (number depends). Algorithm: equal points play each other. 50 minutes (usually) each round. We may draft multiple times or change format. Then maybe followed by the top 8. Watch out for deck checks!

Types of Tournaments - Regular Local arena play. Friday night magic. Unique foils as prizes. Prerelease (and then release). Play with the new set! They get players. Any non-premier tournament. That is, tournament without a name. Organizer’s choice. Fun atmosphere. My favorites are prereleases. Players want to have fun.

Competitive Tournaments A gateway to professional magic. Some are really competitive. Nationals. One for each country. Invitation-only. $ prizes. Grand Prix (GP trials and regular REL). Open participation. $ prizes. Easily the largest tournaments. Current record: GP Paris 2008, 1,838 players. Other tournaments with significant prizes may be competitive. For example: state championships.

Professional Tournaments Pro tours (PT qualifiers are competitive). Hard to qualify. $230,000 total prizes. WoTC pays attention to the public image. World championship. Like PTs, except there is a team portion. Higher payout: $245,145. Every country sends a national team (or only a player).

Worlds 2008 (Memphis)

Large Events They have: Feature matches. Side events (large) with casual tournaments. Artist signing. Player welcome ceremonies. Extra events (other ceremonies, game of the year). Large events are big celebrations. Participants use them to meet people, travel around the world and catch up with old friends.

How Players Prepare Constructed: Study the metagame (what people play). Decide a deck from the internet or one of your own. Playtest like crazy. Decide on sideboard cards. (Oh and prepare your decklist). Limited: Still study the format. Which cards are good? What do people usually play (what to expect in the game). Study draft and deckbuilding strategies. How to choose among colors, send out signals (by what you pick).

What Are Judges? Judges ensure fair play and smooth tournaments. We handle the following: Answer rules questions. Handle in and out of game errors, infractions and disagreements. Investigate cheating. Keep the tournament going. Maintain presence out of tournaments. There’s quite a number of skills involved. Judges also train other judges, and work closely with the DCI to develop policy.

More Information on Judges Judges are certified to one of five levels. Depends on the scope of the community they lead. Local, area, regional, international, professional. During tournaments levels are irrelevant. There is the head judge, and the floor judges.

Common Player Mistakes Improper shuffling. Not keeping track of the game state (esp. life totals). Looking at or drawing extra cards. Illegal decklist or deck/decklist mismatch. Also, using card name abbreviations. Not calling a judge. Worn out sleeves or cards. Sometimes sleeves that are not exactly the same. Not signing and turning in the result slip.

Example Infractions Penalties: Caution, warning, game loss, match loss, DQ. Plus any remedy specific to the infraction. Illegal main decklist: 59 cards in constructed decklist. Deck/decklist mismatch: 4 different cards recorded. Drawing an extra card. Is there such thing as playing slowly? Playing a spell for less mana. Failure to reveal a card when required. Offering $50 in exchange for a match win.

The Path to the Pro Tour Start out casually. Get used to playing the game. Get to know the tournament scene through Regular REL tournaments. Also, reduce the mistakes per game ratio. Find a deck you are excited about or a format you feel great about drafting. And go to a GP trial, GP or PTQ. Iterate in the last step many times until successful Go to a PT and through that and GPs, try to ride the train! Also, don’t forget about national tournaments.

We’ve Had… Players falling asleep during deck building. Pro tours flooding. GP day 1 finishing at 3:30 am. The scorekeeper computer crashing multiple times. Once it was dropping the opponents of the players. Players adding Italian cards to a limited GP. (We always give out English cards). So many misplays… Players playing shock targeting a creature, when their opponents are at 2 life.

We’ve Had… Players forgetting to add basic lands at a GP top 8. They lost due to not drawing lands in any game. Hesitating to give a game loss to an 11 year old girl. But she had been to more GPs than most of the judges. Players loosing their pants at local events. Rules rulings taking 10 minutes to be decided. 4 players with the same name at a GP.

To Sum Up… MTG has many levels. You can find the one that fits for you. You can even play only online (using MTG online) You meet many great people and have fun. Also while keeping your brain busy. If you want to take it further you can travel. With all the math you learnt from this class, you have an advantage! The number of people who play MTG keeps surprising me (let alone that there is a class at Stanford for it).

…questions?