Hi all!
I Head judged a 1k yesterday, and I had an interesting series of calles in round 1 that I wanted some second opinions on.
Player A is playing burn
Player B is plaing Amulet Titan

For this match, in game 1, I had already given the Amulet player 2 LEC warnings for various things. NEither of these things seemd to have malicious intent, as after the second, I did some investigation, and felt that there was nothing nefarious involved. Unfortunately, the burn player was convinced that the Amulet player was trying to scum him out of the game, and was becoming visibly flustered during the second LEC call.

With about 25 minutes left in the round, the Floor Judge assisting me got called over to the table for a THIRD LEC from the Amulet player. The floor judge, knowing that this table was already heated, went over and grabbed me.

This is the call that I wanted to analyze, as I am not sure I handled it properly.

Amulet player says “Combat” and turns his Primeval Titan sideways and then picks up his deck to start searching. At this point, the burn player says “Woah! I might have wanted to respond to that trigger!” and calls a judge. Obviously, this being the third call of a similar nature, I was going to be asking some questions to both players. For this call specifically, I felt that the primary issue was one of communication, so, I wanted to ask the players separately if triggers had been acknowledged verbally throughout the match. Both players, independently, said that they had been using verbal cues to allow triggers to resolve the whole match. This, in my mind, meant that the Amulet player had violated that impromptu shortcut, and had committed LEC. At this point, I had not delivered a ruling and the burn player was getting visibly frustrated and multiple times while discussing the call with the players together, I had to remind them to talk to me, and not to each other.

Now, here is where it gets tricky. I was conferring with my floor judge, and, when I went back to deliver the ruling, the match slip had already been signed by both players, and the burn player informed me that he had conceded the match to his opponent 2-0, as “there was no way I was beating him.” At this point, I had not delivered a ruling of any kind, which leads me to believe that he conceded out of frustration, as opposed to malicious intent, as I am pretty sure he thought that I was going to rule in his opponent's favor. At this point, I reminded the players that I still had to deliver my ruiling and asked them both to remain seated while I did so.

I issued the third LEC to the amulet player, informed him that this had to upgraded to a game loss, and since the current match was over, that the game loss would be moved to the next match.

The IPG does not explicitly say that game losses are moved to the next match, but, I felt that since the match had technically concluded (the signed match slip before I gave my ruling) that my Game loss was issued outside of the match it had been relevant to, that it would be pushed to the next match.

Please let me know if more details are needed. :)

Well, that's it. I would love some feedback, thoughts, and opinions! Thank you for the opportunity to grow!

Thanks,
Sam

*Edited for clarity and minor typographical errors.

Edited Samuel Hammond (Feb. 24, 2019 08:08:10 AM)

Originally posted by IPG, definition of penalties:

Game Losses are applied immediately if the game is still ongoing, or to the player’s next game if it is not, unless otherwise specified.1/quote]

I am curious what the opponent's response might have been. If I was taking the call, I'd ask about that - away from the table, probably - to see if the Burn player could prevent that trigger, or if they were just “fishing” for a penalty. If they don't have a valid response (say, tapping Primeval before attacks), I'd be tempted to caution the Titan player about jumping ahead, and let the game continue.

d:^D

Scott,
Thank you for the quick reply!

I saw that line in the IPG and got confused by the “next game” language, and did not connect the dots that that could be pushed to the next round, if applicable. :P

I think that, in retrospect, I should have asked some more questions and seen if the burn player had any real responses (double bolting the titan, or something like that).

Thank you for the insight!

Sam

Could you tell us something about the other two LEC cases?

The third one sounds for me like the opponent was fishing… The only real option there is in a burn deck is either double bolting the titan(Kinda unlikely, also he could have done that before too) or a PtE, that would “negate” the LEC anyway.
But then I wasn't @ the tournament, so can't tell for sure.

Originally posted by Johannes Wagner:

Could you tell us something about the other two LEC cases?

The third one sounds for me like the opponent was fishing… The only real option there is in a burn deck is either double bolting the titan(Kinda unlikely, also he could have done that before too) or a PtE, that would “negate” the LEC anyway.
But then I wasn't @ the tournament, so can't tell for sure.

Of course!

The first was when there was a Goblin Guide trigger, the Amulet player revealed the top card of his library, which was Aszusa, Lost but seeking. He left it face up on top of his deck, and, when he got to his turn, he drew the Aszusa, and then started to draw the next card down. It didn't make it to his hand before they called a judge, so it was an easy LEC.

The second one was during his own draw step, he drew a card and knocked the top card of the library off of it. Once again, clean LEC.

This player was clearly nervous, as his hands were shaking a bit. I see this quite a bit in the early rounds of comp events, as players who don't do them often can be quite nervous.

I can clearly see and empathize with the fishing argument, I just wonder what the advantage would then be to the burn opponent for conceding there, as opposed to waiting to at least hear the ruling from me first. I can see a world where a dishonest player would concede there if they thought we were “onto them” or something, but, given how flustered the burn player was, I have a hard time imagining that that was the reason.

Would love your thoughts on this!

Thanks,
Sam

*Edited for being bad at quoting people

Edited Samuel Hammond (Feb. 24, 2019 10:45:03 AM)

Just go with what Scott said and use it as a learning experience.

At a local event (I knew most of the players) almost the same situation happened, and the opponent of the Titan player started arguing without an response in hand. So I just went with the frank “If you want to do sth, do it now” what he declined… Still told the Titan player to make sure that the trigger resolves before searching and the opponent got a stern talking after the game.