[GP] Indianapolis Thread

[Hanni]

Not just the mind games. If he rips a Brainstorm off the top with 4 lands in hand (one being a fetch), he's basically drawing into an Ancestral Recall. A single Brainstorm at that stage in the game could have completely turned the game around. A topdecked Brainstorm with no other cards in hand... not so much.

[TheShaun]

I am definitely glad that the tournament was won by somebody playing incredible magic, seeing something like 4 turns ahead of the game before it happened. Congrats to Tom, he honestly deserved this win no doubt in my mind.

[sdematt]

What's the Top 8 order and deck choice?

Nice job to any and all Sourcers who attended!

-Matt

[RJM]

Not a bad tournament overall to watch. Still wish I could have been there to play. Nothing totally shocking showed up as far as new tech, which I think as legacy players is our collective secret wish every big event. But I usually manage to learn something new from watching the matches, regardless.

Unfortunately, what stuck with me the most from the latter part of the tournament was finding out how much of a d-bag Kenny Castor can be. I think the head judge's initial decision that it was both players who failed to maintain game state and that play would continue was the correct one. More backbone when presenting a "final decision" next time, plase.

"What?! ...Are you kidding me?!" "...I couldn't remember to take my extra turn either, I guess that seems important now that I think about it!" should have been the end of that sentence and of the matter.

Where the heck did the table judges go on that one too?

[Einherjer]

Are the top8 decks up yet?

[Beatusnox]

Dredge player here. Good job to Colin. He'd better win the whole thing, after what my deck did to me.

In other news, flayer of the hatebound is incredible.

I have been saying this since the card was spoiled....... I was even the one to post it on the dredge thread..... Feels good to know I was right on that end.

[Tao]

Unfortunately, what stuck with me the most from the latter part of the tournament was finding out how much of a d-bag Kenny Castor can be. I think the head judge's initial decision that it was both players who failed to maintain game state and that play would continue was the correct one. More backbone when presenting a "final decision" next time, plase.

holy cow you guys are biased towards Di...

[Namida]

holy cow you guys are biased towards Di...

I'm surprised that your assumption is that there is a bias toward Di here.

From the Infraction Procedure Guide:

Professional [REL]
Professional level events offer large cash awards, prestige, and other benefits that draw players from great distances. These events hold players to a higher standard of behavior and technically correct play than Competitive events.

---

Game Play Error — Failure to Maintain Game State
Philosophy
If an error is caught before a player could gain advantage, then the dangers of the ongoing game state becoming corrupted are much lower. If the error is allowed to persist, at least some of the fault lies with the opponent, who has also failed to notice the error.

Day 2 of a GP is a Professional Rules Enforcement Level, and Kenny Castor literally behaved like a spoiled child instead of a professional. I could give a fuck who he was playing against--it's just as much his fault that he failed to maintain game state, and his actions portrayed an unwillingness to accept the consequences of his mistake.

The Head Judge of the Grand Prix balked under the weight of Castor's bitching and decided to completely change his mind after making a final ruling. I disagree immensely with this course of action, especially when the new ruling deviates completely from the norm, with the only apparent motivation for doing so being a desire to make Castor stop crying. That's what this boils down to for me: Castor cried his way into a favorable ruling. Everyone at the table made a mistake; any action taken to correct the error would end up badly for someone, and Castor prevented himself from being that person based merely on his ability to scream the loudest. I'll concede to you that perhaps the judge *did* get some new information that caused him to change his ruling...but it really looked like the only knowledge he was able to gain was Castor's opinion.

[Hopo]

I have been saying this since the card was spoiled....... I was even the one to post it on the dredge thread..... Feels good to know I was right on that end.

Looks like somebody wants some recognition.. It appears you missed the Stalking Vengeance era when Parcher figured this out already years ago.

[Pippin]

holy cow you guys are biased towards Di...

If I'm not mistaken, Di also forgot to pay for his blue pact in his feature match in earlier rounds. I remember vaguely but it went something like this - Chris got off with Time Spiral (protected with blue pact), then fizzled and on the following turn didn't pay for blue pact. Something similar happened later to Alix Hatfield as well.

[flrn]

I'm surprised that your assumption is that there is a bias toward Di here.

From the Infraction Procedure Guide:

Day 2 of a GP is a Professional Rules Enforcement Level, and Kenny Castor literally behaved like a spoiled child instead of a professional. I could give a fuck who he was playing against--it's just as much his fault that he failed to maintain game state, and his actions portrayed an unwillingness to accept the consequences of his mistake.

The Head Judge of the Grand Prix balked under the weight of Castor's bitching and decided to completely change his mind after making a final ruling. I disagree immensely with this course of action, especially when the new ruling deviates completely from the norm, with the only apparent motivation for doing so being a desire to make Castor stop crying. That's what this boils down to for me: Castor cried his way into a favorable ruling. Everyone at the table made a mistake; any action taken to correct the error would end up badly for someone, and Castor prevented himself from being that person based merely on his ability to scream the loudest. I'll concede to you that perhaps the judge *did* get some new information that caused him to change his ruling...but it really looked like the only knowledge he was able to gain was Castor's opinion.

To make things worse, Castor gained an advantage by backing it up, because after backing it up, he knew that his opponent couldn't go for it. Therefor he played mainphase Brainstorm to get a critical amount of damage on the board. Who knows, if he would have done that, if the game did play out correctly and he had to assume that his opponent would go off in his next turn.

[Beatusnox]

Looks like somebody wants some recognition.. It appears you missed the Stalking Vengeance era when Parcher figured this out already years ago.

Not quite, someone (read me) was glad to have been right for once lol.

[Getsickanddie]

I was sitting at the table for Colin and Kenny's game one and Kenny was rude and obnoxious the entire time.

[Blitzbold]

Are the top8 decks up yet?

Here you are: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazin...nd12/welcome#1

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

I was sitting at the table for Colin and Kenny's game one and Kenny was rude and obnoxious the entire time.

Yeah, Kenny was a fucking douche. He's like that at SCG tournaments, too. I'm so glad Martell kicked his nuts in.

[Tao]

If some people think that a head judge should always stand by his initial ruling even if he comes to realize that there could be a better ruling, then I think you are very wrong. Let's face it: had the head judge not changed his ruling, then the wrong guy would have been in the GP finals. And I could not care less if some people just think Kenny is a douche or if he is really a douche. It is not relevant. His deck/play/draw was better in that game and he rightfully went to the finals.

At least he didn't take an extra turn! And yeah Namida, no need to quote the rules, these are well-known. It is a complete freeroll to do this. People are more trusty towards Di than me but I am not sure if I can believe him. I don't think so. The problem is that for everyone else the Meditate thing is a rare occurance, you usually don't take extra turns so the table judge and the Delver guy missed it. For a Solidarity player firing a Meditate one turn before you Combo is a relatively normal play if you need cards so I really don't see why he would forget, especially given that he apparantly is a very good player.

[Bignasty197]

At least he didn't take an extra turn! And yeah Namida, no need to quote the rules, these are well-known. It is a complete freeroll to do this. People are more trusty towards Di than me but I am not sure if I can believe him. I don't think so. The problem is that for everyone else the Meditate thing is a rare occurance, you usually don't take extra turns so the table judge and the Delver guy missed it. For a Solidarity player firing a Meditate one turn before you Combo is a relatively normal play if you need cards so I really don't see why he would forget, especially given that he apparantly is a very good player.

I play against Colin every week and I can honestly say that he is not a cheater in any way at all. The Meditate thing was a legitimate mistake after 2 days straight of playing a mentally taxing deck. Stuff happens. Get off your horse and move on.

[CorpT]

Videos are up: http://ggslive.com/2012-videos/

[Di]

Wow lot to take in here. I appreciate some folks coming to my defense, but let me try to clarify a lot of this stuff being thrown around.

First of all, I want it to be known that I feel they made the correct call regarding the Meditate situation, and I applaud head judge Riccardo Tessitori for his efforts in managing the situation. Yes, Kenny flipped out and acted like a child on it (and rightfully so), but I don't think that had an impact in the decision. They ultimately decided to rewind the game state solely because I was never given new information during my turn by drawing a card, as I knew what it was from my Ponder. Had I not known what that card was, they would not have reversed the call as we couldn't easily rewind the game state, but because I did they felt it was easy to go back. It had nothing to do with the judge balking over Kenny's behavior. The head judge (a level five) consulted privately with Sheldon Menery (heard of him?) and a couple others for a long time and they both came to the conclusion to rewind the game state. Sure it sucks because it put him in an advantageous position, but I could not win the game regardless of him having that information or not, as he would've still had the Tarmogoyf on his extra turn pressing for lethal, and would still have FoW + Stifle and I didn't have enough outs. I'm not upset at all by the result of it, and had they stood by the initial ruling it would be far worse. Had that stayed, I would've won the game given the information I knew about his hand and such, and if that happened there'd be a huge shitstorm of controversy about that win, and I certainly didn't want it to come down to something like that.

Second, the fact that people are claiming me to be either shady, trying to cheat, or not being trustworthy or anything of the sort is outrageous. Anyone who knows me knows damn well that I'm the last person to do something like that. The simple fact of the matter was that we, not just "I", forgot about the Meditate turn. We, as in myself, my opponent, and the two judges watching my match. It was an honest mistake that none of us caught, and Kenny and myself laughed about our forgetfullness once the judges intervened. It simply came down to me playing a rather unorthodox mainphase Meditate on a non-combo turn (first time I've ever done it with the deck), and given all the events that followed we simply forgot to account for it. When you play a deck like that for 17 rounds and have a lot of rough playing conditions against you (I'll get to this in a second), you're bound to slip up a little bit. It's rather obvious to remember to skip the turn for Meditate when you cast it on the opponent's endstep as people often do, but it's a little harder to account for it when you did it on your own turn and a lot of things happened afterwards. I think it says more about the awkwardness of the situation as a whole when everyone watching in the area overlooked it, rather than me allegedly trying to pull a fast one. Seriously, top4 of a Grand Prix in front of two judges and on camera. I am not fucking Alex Bertoncini. Give me a break.

Third, mentioning these playing conditions:
A. I had a whopping seven hours of sleep the entire weekend, three on Friday night and four on Saturday. Deck is not easy to play with full night's rest. Deck is a lot harder to play with no sleep.
B. I was sick Sunday morning. I threw up a bit when I got to the event hall, and shit like five times throughout the day (tmi? meh) and was fighting stomachaches and headaches the whole day.
C. I was freezing. The event hall was incredibly cold, and I was shivering for most of the day and kept my hood up and hoodie zipped most of the time. This could also I suppose explain any "nervousness" that people might've thought they saw. I was pretty calm and confident the entire time, but I was just really fucking cold.

Fourth, anyone who mentioned anything about Kenny's behavior is spot on. Anyone who says anything otherwise about them being "biased" towards me simply doesn't know the extent of situation. I'm not one to generally judge people like this, but Kenny was a complete jerk. From the moment we sat down, he was incredibly rude, arrogant, and condescending towards me. Everyone watching the match can account for this, and apparently people mentioning things about him being like this elsewhere should mean something. I enjoyed playing against every single person except him. I won't argue with him flipping out on the initial judge ruling of the Meditate because he had every right to react in that manner, but the fact that his behavior was so ridiculous and he ended up being the person to end my run put a bad taste in my mouth. It was just a shame my deck couldn't deliver games two and three because his play really have any impact on the match, and if anything would've cost him it as I don't think he had a clear idea on how to play against the deck.

Fifth, overall I'm still incredibly happy with my performance even if it ended the way it did. I'm going to Barcelona, so I have no complaints. I will likely have a report up within the next day or two, unless someone randomly approaches me to write it elsewhere.

If I'm not mistaken, Di also forgot to pay for his blue pact in his feature match in earlier rounds. I remember vaguely but it went something like this - Colin got off with Time Spiral (protected with blue pact), then fizzled and on the following turn didn't pay for blue pact. Something similar happened later to Alix Hatfield as well.

I didn't forget to pay for it, I just let it happen. I could've played the High Tide in my hand and tapped out, but my hand was four lands in hand and I was dead to his attack the following turn regardless. Alix actually forgot about the Pact trigger altogether, but that was irrelevant given the game state and his misplay after he resolved Time Spiral prior. We spoke about that after his match, and it was mentioned he should've used Turnabout on his opponent, either tapping him out or drawing a counterspell, then Turnabout himself and then use Meditate with his Pact backup. Oh well, he got really close. At least my only loss in the swiss came at the hands of me fizzling twice in three games, and had little to do with his deck stopping me. Says something about the strength of High Tide I suppose.

[nedleeds]

Yeah, Kenny was a fucking douche. He's like that at SCG tournaments, too. I'm so glad Martell kicked his nuts in.

He looks like a poor white rapper.