Author: srittau

  • Ravnica Prerelease

    We had another Ravnica: City of Guilds prerelease at the FUNtainment Game Center (formely Magic Center). It was a whooping success with a total of 47 participants, much more than I had anticipated for this third prerelease. The store was full, since there was a large YuGiOh tournament going on at the same time (“Pharaoh Tour”) with about…

  • Record Deduction as Penalty?

    There has been discussion recently at dcijudge-l and other places about the proper penalties in two-headed giant matches. In 2HG matches, only one game is played per match. This means that a Game Loss actually equals a Match Loss and this is considered too hard a penalty for many rules infractions that warrant the former. This got…

  • Surprise Package

    Yesterday we received a mystery parcel from Hewlett & Packard at work: Today we opened it. Inside we found two layers of styrofoam and beneath them we found another, smaller package: Well, we were beginning to get curious. When we opened the small parcel, we found … lots of paper stuffing. But well hidden inside it, we…

  • Pro Player Picture Puzzle

    Well, yesterday I posted a picture of the new Pro Player cards that will be included in each Ravnica tournament pack. It seems that Brian David-Marshall’s article Collect ’em All! was sneak-edited and now contains a link to another page that contains more pro player pictures: Only that in the meantime in the latter picture the image of Fujita has been replaced by…

  • Horrible Idea

    Oh my god, what a horrible idea: Why not give us something useful, like token cards? But I guess there needs to be some Pro Tour marketing …

  • Multiplayer Rules

    I’ve had the chance to try out the new multiplayer rules with my play group. Let me start by saying that I love the new two-headed format! While there are certainly still some kinks that need to be worked out, the fast pace and necessary coordination between team members are really enjoyable. That said here are a…

  • German Nationals

    Sidenote: If you don’t want to hear about who I spent time with, what we might have eaten or drank, and/or where we went, then you might want to skip this entry. (With a nod to Sheldon Menery.) Last weekend I judged at German Nationals in Bonn. I got up at 4 in the morning to catch…

  • LCQ German Nationals in Berlin

    Sunday was the Last Chance Qualifier for German Nationals here in Berlin, out of a total of five LCQs in all of Germany. The top four players would qualify for Nationals (and the four eventual winners told me that they planned to go). There was a certain confusion about the way the tournament should be…

  • German Translation of Auras

    I played in the 9th Edition Release Event last weekend. I finished 5th in an event that paid special prices to the top 4. Of course if we had have 17 players instead of 16 it would have paid the to the top 9. But I’m not bitter, no … Apart from that I noticed…

  • Final Judgment is not a Bounce

    I just remembered another situation from last week’s PTQ in Hamburg. I was watching a match between two players I didn’t know during one of the early rounds of the tournament. Player A played a Final Judgment and player B picked up all of his creatures and put them into his hand. During his turn he started to…