About
Riccardo Tessitori
Riccardo Tessitori
Riccardo
Tessitori is a level 5 judge from Italy (and former Pro Player ^__^); he judged a hundred professional events, headjudged 15 Grand Prix events in Europe, the United States and Asia and has been headjudging Pro Tours and World Champinships since 2009:
- Pro
Tour Kyoto 2009
- Pro Tour Austin 2009
- Worlds Chiba 2010
- Pro Tour Philadelphia 2011
- Pro Tour Barcelona 2012
- World Magic Cup Indianapolis 2012
The Challenges of GP Moscow and Life from the Loam
Hello everybody!
Return to Ravnica is about to be released (all the cards are now known,
don’t forget to take a look at the singles preorders here on Blackborder!) and
this is the last article with an event report of a Grand Prix with M13: GP
Moscow!
Let’s first warm up with our five questions of the week, and then read
all about the card of the month for September: Life from the Loam.
Happy reading.
Questions of the Week
Q: I control a Mosswort Bridge and I have enough creatures to activate
its ability and cast the card underneath it; my opponent controls a Trinisphere. Should I pay the three extra mana?
A: Yes. Mosswort Bridge’s ability allows you to cast the card without
paying its mana cost, which is the cost printed in the upper right corner. Trinisphere is the only card that checks for the final cost you have to pay for
any spell; independently of how you cast the spell or of any additional costs
or cost reductions, Trinisphere will make you pay three mana to cast the spell
(in this case, three mana in addition to any cost you paid to activate the Mosswort Bridge’s ability).
Q: I cast a Clone and I choose to copy an Insectile Aberration. Will I
get a 1/1 Delver of Secrets or a 3/2 Insectile Aberration?
A: You will get a 3/2 Insectile Aberration with flying. When Delver of Secrets transforms, its characteristics change and it has only the “night”
characteristics. Your Clone will be able to only see the “night”
characteristics.
Q: I cast a Duplicant and I choose to exile and copy an Insectile
Aberration. Will I get a 1/1 Delver of Secrets or a 3/2 Insectile Aberration?
A: In this case you will get a 1/1. Duplicant exiles a creature and then
it sets its own power and toughness to the values of the exiled creature card. Delver of Secrets can become an Insectile Aberration only on the battlefield, but it
will be a simple 1/1 in any other zone.
Q: I cast Devastating Dreams by discarding 3 lands to kill my opponent’s creatures; will my Countryside Crusher be killed too?
A:
No. When you cast Devastating Dreams, you need to discard the lands to
put the spell on the stack; doing this, you are triggering the Countryside Crusher’s ability that will put +1/+1 counters on it before
your Devastating Dreams resolves. Therefore, at the moment Devastating Dreams resolves, your Countryside Crusher will have three +1/+1 counters
that will save it.
Q: My opponent controls a Howlpack Alpha and I want to bounce it with a Repeal. How much mana should I pay?
A: One blue mana. The converted mana cost is the sum of all costs in the
upper right corner; all “night” versions have no mana cost, which is therefore
zero; it’s not important what the cost of the “day” version is, because a
transformed card on the battlefield has only the “night” characteristics.
In a couple of weeks Return to Ravnica will be released. The
expectations are very high, because the original Ravnica block was great and
the first spoilers already showed that it will be a great set, for both
Constructed and especially Limited. I am also sure that you are happy to see
that the shocklands have been reprinted. ^__^
Life from the Loam is a card from Ravnica (and today’s card of the month
is a tribute to Ravnica) that has been used since its first appearance in
competitive tournament play; it is still played in both Modern and Legacy.
Life from the Loam allows getting three lands back from our graveyard.
This way, we get raw card advantage; with some deckbuilding skills we can turn
this raw card advantage into real card advantage.
The possibilities are seemingly endless: Wasteland, Ghost Quarter, lands
to discard to a Seismic Assault, spells to cast again with the Retrace
ability; all these are examples of how a single Life from the Loam can generate
several effects.
Let’s now refresh our memory about how Life from the Loam works, and in
general about Dredge.
The effect of Life from the Loam is to return “up to three” land cards
from your graveyard to your hand.
Let’s see what choosing “up to X targets” means:
- Zero is a valid choice. It is legal to cast Life from the Loam without valid targets in your graveyard. Casting Life from the Loam without indicating the targets is NOT equivalent to casting
it with zero targets; if your opponent casts Life from the Loam without
declaring any targets and you just say “ok, it resolves”, he will be able
to choose his targets; because the declaration of the spell wasn’t
complete, the judge would rewind the game to the declaration and would ask
to your opponent to declare the targets, and then you would be able to
respond.
- If you choose one target, Life from the Loam
is actually a “spell with a single target” and it will be possible to
respond with a spell like Shunt.
- If you choose more than one target and one
target becomes illegal on resolution, you will return the other
targeted land cards to your hand; the spell is countered on resolution
only if all targets have become illegal.
About Dredge, it is important to remember the following:
“Dredge X” means that you must have at least X cards in your deck to use
the ability, otherwise you won’t be able to dredge.
If you dredge Life from the Loam, it isn’t considered drawn. Life from the Loam is “put into your hand”, not drawn; abilities like the one on Consecrated Sphinx will not trigger.
Dredging is a replacement effect that doesn’t use the stack and it
cannot be responded to. Every time you are about to draw a card, you decide if
you want to draw or dredge, and your opponent doesn’t receive priority after
you declare that you want to dredge (he has priority just before you are about
to draw, though).
For example, your opponent controls Tormod's Crypt; it’s your turn, you
untap and…
Situation a)
You say “I would like to draw”.
Your opponent replies “OK”.
You declared that you want to enter your draw step and your opponent
declared that he doesn’t want to respond.
At this moment you can draw or replace the draw with dredge; your
opponent will have no opportunity to “sacrifice the Tormod's Crypt in response
to dredge”.
Situation b)
You say “I would like to draw”.
Your opponent replies “In response, I sacrifice my Crypt”.
Technically, your opponent cannot sacrifice the crypt “in response”;
because this action is technically unclear, the judge (if called) would rewind
the game to the upkeep and would try to make you communicate a little better,
paying attention not to give any advice to your opponent (he has to say that he
sacrifices the Crypt before you draw, otherwise you will be allowed to dredge).
Situation c)
You say “I would like to draw”.
Your opponent replies “In your upkeep, I sacrifice my Tormod's Crypt”.
Saying “I would like to draw” you are declaring that you don’t want to
perform any other action in your upkeep; now, your opponent receives priority
(still in the upkeep step) and may choose to activate the Tormod's Crypt
ability.
If you have no cards in the graveyard, you won’t be able to dredge and
you will draw a card from your library; if, after the Crypt has exiled your
graveyard, you manage to put a card with dredge in your graveyard again before
drawing, you will be allowed to say again “I would like to draw” (and then
hopefully dredge).
Dredge is a replacement effect that replaces the action of drawing a
card. If there are several effects trying to replace the action of drawing a
card, you (the one who would draw) choose the order.
If you control a Possessed Portal and you have a Life from the Loam in
the graveyard, you either choose to replace the action of drawing a card with
nothing (Possessed Portal) or with dredging.
The interaction with Zur's Weirding is interesting:
- You can apply
dredge first, and Zur's Weirding will be ignored
- You can apply Zur's Weirding first and reveal. If no player chooses to pay 2 life points, you
will have the possibility to draw; at this moment, you can still apply dredge.
Finally, let’s note the difference between a replacement effect that
replaces the action of drawing a card with nothing and an effect (that is not a
replacement effect) that says that you cannot draw any cards, like Maralen of the Mornsong.
In the first case, you can choose which action you want to take.
In the second case, because the effect to be replaced is not going to
happen, you won’t have the possibility to replace it with another effect;
Maralen prevents you from both drawing and dredging.
Event Report – GP Moscow
Moscow, the very famous Russian capital that I only knew from books.
Moscow, where a special invitational tournament took place to celebrate
the translation of Magic into Russian; was it Ninth Edition, or Tenth Edition?
Too far in the past to remember.
Moscow, a city where I thought no GP had taken place so far (I didn’t
know that there had been a GP in 2001, since I wasn’t “born” yet).
Moscow, the name that attracted me the most the first time I saw the GP
schedule (sorry GP Costa Rica, you are exotic, but reading “Moscow” was even
more exiting).
And finally the big day arrived, GP Moscow 2012, 866 participants and 34
judges to help make it a great weekend.
This time, instead of talking about rules (Return to Ravnica will be
released in a couple of weeks) and policy (the new policy document that will become
effective in October has just been published), I would like to give you some
information about some small challenges that we sometimes need to face at our
Magic Grand Prix (at least, the challenges that are not confidential ^__^)
Challenge 1: Get a Visa
Yes, correct, I needed a visa to go to Russia (and I guess that most of
the foreigners who came to Moscow needed one… and all the Russians who travel
to other GPs might need one every time).
What’s the difficulty in getting a visa? You just need to go to a travel
agency and pay them, right?
“Sure, we will take care of everything; your passport will be ready in
20 days”
“What? I need to give you my passport for three weeks?!?”
When was the last time I spent three weeks in a row at home? Oh, yes, it
was at the beginning of June, when I gave my passport to the Chinese consulate
to get the visa for GP Shanghai.
When was the previous time? It was April, when I probably didn’t know
about GP Moscow.
So I came back from the World Magic Cup and had a little more than three
weeks… for the next GP seasons I will surely look for the list of countries
that require me to get a visa… or we create a Magic-worldwide-visa!! ^__^
Challenge 2: Online Registration
Great news, we have online registration!
Dazzle Events, organizer of half of the European GPs built a system to
register online, and the first event to use the new system was GP Moscow, and
I’m sure that we will be able to register online for all their future GPs,
avoiding the queue on Friday afternoon or, even worse, Saturday morning; I’m
expecting many other GP organizers to follow this example.
But what was exactly the challenge for us judges?
Actually, the only change from the previous GPs is that we had to assist
all the players to fill the “consent and release form” all together, just
before registering the card pool and building the deck; fast distribution,
clear instructions in both English and Russian, fast collection… and,
accordingly to my notes, after just five minutes we were already distributing
decklists and boosters (I still believe that my notes are wrong, since I
expected this to take much longer; in any case, thank you to all the players
and judges for getting this done so efficiently!).
Challenge 3: Sleep-in
The sleep-in option has been used at many GPs in the United States in
the last year, and will probably be used at GPs on all other continents; it’s
an extra service (for a little extra cost of more or less 10 dollars/euros)
that the organizer offers to players with byes who want to sleep more and get
to the tournament just before the actual beginning of their tournament.
I have to say that we didn’t have this option at GP Moscow, but we were
ready to make it happen, and I believe that it will be appreciated; think about
it: wouldn’t you pay a few euros to be able to sleep until 10AM, have a long
breakfast, walk to the tournament site for noon, build your deck and then
immediately start round 4; if I could always pay to sleep three hours more, I
would be very very happy!
Some technical aspects about the sleep-in option:
- You are responsible
for asking your friends about any special announcement that might have been
made during the player meeting at the beginning of the day (ok, you have three
byes, I count that you won’t have anything unexpected happening to you at the
GP ^__^)
- If it’s a
constructed GP, you have to give your decklist to the judges before the
beginning of round 1; you can do it by sending an mail to the organizer or to
the head judge (you must receive a reply, otherwise you can’t be sure that he
received it!), or one of your friends may give it at the moment he registers or
during the players’ meeting.
- If it’s a
limited GP, you have to arrive at the beginning of round X (with X being the
number of byes you have minus one) and you will register, swap and build with
all the other players with your number of byes who chose to use the sleep-in
option.
- You can expect
that the players’ meeting will start at 9:30 in Europe (30 minutes after the
official end of Saturday morning registration) (please check with the organizer
and the head judge for the normal times on the other continents),
registration-swap-construction will take 1 hour, and each round will last a
total of 1 hour and 10 minutes.
Judges will therefore manage four different shifts of deck registration
and construction at limited GPs, which looks indeed like a small challenge.
Challenge 4: Two Languages
GP Moscow was the third time I judged a limited GP where we offered
product in two languages (the others were GP Shanghai 2011 and GP Shanghai
2012; you can read about how it went in 2011 here).
This time, it was a little more interesting, because we didn’t ask the
170 players who registered online if they wanted to play with Russian or
English product; ok, ok, it’s unfair not to ask, we will solve it!
“Whoever is in the Russian section and wants to play with English cards
please stand up…. and follow me to the end of the English section!”, just a
couple of minutes of extra patience and we will start ^__^
Challenge 5: Language Barriers
This was the difficulty I was concerned about the most, but it ended up
being a very smooth day, with only a couple of situations where the two
competitors disagreed on what happened:
I control Odric (who has an ability that triggers if he attacks with
three other creatures), two soldiers and a Serra Angel (who has vigilance).
I attack, I tap Odric and the two soldiers (I don’t tap the Angel), and
I say that my opponent cannot block (thanks to Odric’s ability); my opponent
claims that I didn’t attack with my Serra Angel, while I claim that I did but
he didn’t see me indicating it.
In this situation the judge ruled that Odric’s ability couldn’t have
triggered if I hadn’t attacked with the Angel too; by declaring that I’m using
Odric’s ability, I am confirming that I am attacking with the Angel.
In general, many thanks to the Russian players for making the effort of
communicating very clearly about their actions, preventing miscommunications
(and very long and annoying conversations with me ^__^)
A Tournament Dedicated to… Alfonso Bueno
Alfonso is a very expert L3 judge from Spain, where he has the role of
Regional Coordinator (for Spain and Portugal), very skilled in rules and
tournament logistics and always of great company during the evenings…
… and this is my final ruling!
Don’t forget to submit all
your rules questions for the next installment of Ask the Judge:
You have the unique opportunity to ask Level 5
judge Riccardo Tessitori all the questions you want to!
You can ask him questions concerning rules
problems, the life of a level 5 judge, DCI policies, interesting tournament
situations and anything else you want to ask him!
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this article and I’m looking
forward to reading any comments.
In the next article we will analyze the October IPG (Infraction procedure
Guide), with all the news about lapsing abilities that we recently discussed;
you can already take a look at the document, which is scheduled to be published
on September the 20th, which is…. today!
Riccardo
Comments
Doesn't the Countryside Crusher die, as it doesn't get +1/+1 counters from lands going to an opponent's graveyard?
Hang on, doesn't countryside crusher's ability only activate when lands enter it's controllers graveyard? So my discarding lands wouldn't trigger it?
Both players sacrifice lands as part of Devastating Dreams' effect. This happens before damage is dealt to creatures. The +1/+1 counters he gets has nothing to do with the discarding.
When the players sacrifice lands from Devastating Dreams, the Countryside Crusher's triggered ability will trigger 3 times. The Countryside Crusher will die from the 3 damage while the triggers are on the stack.
Countryside Crusher's trigger when lands are discarded as the additional cost of the Devastating Dreams and he will also trigger from the lands that get sacrified so he doesn't die in either situation
Here you have the correct question and answer for the Crusher:
Q: I cast Devastating Dreams by discarding 3 lands to kill my opponent’s creatures; will my Countryside Crusher be killed too?
A: No. When you cast Devastating Dreams, you need to discard the lands to put the spell on the stack; doing this, you are triggering the Countryside Crusher’s ability that will put +1/+1 counters on it before your Devastating Dreams resolves. Therefore, at the moment Devastating Dreams resolves, your Countryside Crusher will have three +1/+1 counters that will save it.
Thanks, this way it works better :)
Riccardo
"Both players sacrifice lands as part of Devastating Dreams' effect. This happens before damage is dealt to creatures. The +1/+1 counters he gets has nothing to do with the discarding."
^ Ah, I made this comment without realizing the player was asking about his own Countryside Crusher. The other replies are correct for this situation, though I think my original comment here would be correct if Devastating Dreams was played by the opponent.
right
right
Sorry for asking such a noob question, but how do byes work? Are they given out to certain GP players because of their previous qualifications like wins at other levels or winning certain events?
Malk - there are three ways byes are awarded:
1- At Grand Prix Trial tournaments (usually held at stores that potentially feed players to the corresponding Grand Prix) approx 1-2 months prior to the Grand Prix. Each winner is awarded 3 byes to that Grand Prix. There are usually ALSO last-chance trials held the day before the Grand Prix at the venue.
2 - You can also earn byes by your Planeswalker Point tally from the corresponding season (see wizards.com for specifics). For the current season, you needed to obtain 450 points from April-August for 1 bye, 900 for 2 and 1500 for 3 (I think...didn't look this one up). Thresholds are set prior to the commencement of the respective season in order to give players a goal to achieve.
3 - Professional players who have earned enough Pro Points are awarded byes depending on what level of the Pro Players Club they're at (2 byes at Silver, 3 at Gold and Platinum) for the entire year.
Hi Riccardo, Niels Viaene here, I judged at the GP.
I wanted to add something on Dredge that I learned only at the GP:
When you dredge all cards go into the graveyard at the same time, not one by one as one would think because of the manual action of putting them in one by one. This means you can reorder the cards you dredged into the graveyard within one instance of dredge. In Legacy this actually matters for Ashen Ghoul.
Anon: Thanks for the rundown.