In round 7 it's the end of game 1 — I have two Squadron Hawks in play and a Liliana's Specter all tapped. My opponent is at five. I have a Corrupt and land in hand and three Swamps two Plains in play. It's his turn.

He has in play a 5/5 Protean Hydra enchanted with Pacifism a Sacred Wolf a Grizzly Bear and a Sylvan Ranger. I am at twelve. He draws his card for the turn (he now has two) taps two of his five or six land and plays War Priest of Thune destroying the Pacifism and representing eleven possible damage.

He then taps all of his creatures only barely — at about fifteen degrees — and says “attack with everything.” Now to an experienced player this is going to set off serious alarm bells.

He has played a creature and disregarded its summoning sickness for the difference and is tapping his creatures in a non-committal way uncharacteristic of the way he's been attacking throughout the game. This situation can (and will) be played off as a mistake but it's so dubious.

I commit him to his action: “Which creatures are attacking?” He indicates the Ranger the Bear the Wolf... the War Priest... and the Hydra.

I call for a judge. The judge arrives; I explain that my opponent has tried to attack with a creature with summoning sickness for the win and the judge checks with another judge to confirm that the ruling is a warning for a Game Rules Violation.

I untap and attack in the air for what with Corrupt will amount to lethal. So then felt you or…?

He taps three lands and announces “Safe Passage.” My heart sinks. He flashes a white spell. I've played more than enough M11 to recognize it as an Excommunicate.

You've got to be kidding me.

I wait a beat to make sure he's not doing the “Safe Passage— Ah just kidding ya got me” thing. Or even the “Jeff… (puts hand on my shoulder)… I'm messing with you.” He isn't.

Again I commit him to his action: (dejected) “Safe Passage?”

Him: “Yeah.”

I can't remember if I say something (“That's an Excommunicate”) or if he just notices/“notices” but he then says something like “Oh I guess I can't even play this.”

I call for a judge and immediately ask him to speak away from the table. I describe how my opponent has misrepresented cards on two consecutive turns for the win in an extremely tight board situation and call attention to the high suspiciousness of the situation. At this point another judge is also around.

The judge tells me to return to my match to continue playing and that they'll covertly watch my opponent to see if he tries anything again! It goes without saying that this is insufficient and that obviously if my opponent were cheating he's now well keyed in to my awareness of that fact.

I restate my case to the effect of: “I'm an experienced tournament player and I believe I've presented substantial justification toward a claim that my opponent might be cheating a very serious allegation. I need to speak with the head judge immediately.” They seem to accept this and one judge leaves.

After a moment he returns and tells me that the head judge is occupied and to continue with my match with one of them keeping an eye on it and that I can speak with the head judge after the round if I have further concerns.

Pretty unreal. I agree on the condition that the head judge come as soon as possible reiterating the seriousness of my claim. The first judge seems to agree to this and I return to my match.

My opponent now drops to one life and I target him with Corrupt.

We go to game 2 and he's stuck on two lands. He promptly loses and drops.

5-2

After the round I find the first judge and tell him that I'm still interested in speaking with the head judge. I then see the head judge and just approach him. As I recount my story the first judge takes issue — apparently there had been some sort of miscommunication about whether my opponent had actually attempted to play the alleged Safe Passage. (I'm not sure what exactly he'd thought I was saying.) The head judge grasps the situation but there's not much to do at this point anyway.

I do also tell the head judge what I'm about to say now — that despite all of what was described I can't actually be confident my opponent wasn't just genuinely mistaken! He didn't know I had Corrupt in hand and in most cases there Excommunicate as Excommunicate would've been enough to seal the win. Weird. One small check that could've at least been performed by the judges is looking at his decklist for Safe Passage — if he didn't even have one in his deck that would be pretty damning...

I don't know maybe I'm being overzealous. I just like to play the game by the rules; that's my jam.

Maybe it was the fact that if it were intentional it was officially the oldest trick in the book. It was like someone trying to pull a three-card Monty hustle on David Blaine. Not that I'm a cheater; it's just that I know my tricks and am constantly developing my fare.

To put things in perspective: at a recent Legacy event playing Reanimator and holding my priority I called a judge over to confirm that Pithing Needle could shut down a Faerie Macabre in a player's hand; then once my opponent confirmed its resolution I promptly named Flooded Strand of which he had two in play. I'm not expecting a similarly fine Italian cursive just not to have my intelligence insulted with such impudence.

Between the incidents mentioned so far as well as a few others that came up one of the most frustrating aspects of this tournament for me was the judging an experience several players I talked to shared and of which there were numerous examples. When a nuanced situation comes up you almost always need to appeal to the head judge to receive the correct ruling or even to be properly heard. The ability to appeal to the head judge is a great and really necessary aspect of the current system. The problem is that in a massive Grand Prix the one HJ appeal system is plainly outmoded. I can well understand why the head judge might be swamped; there are just too many people. My suggestion is to add a head judge for every five hundred participants beyond the first (for the first day).

The feeling of the tournament was of being swept up in a sea of people and having to take what you could get instilling a submerged sense of lawlessness. For this reason as well as others one felt with his compatriots “as a man in a storm when dust and rain are blown by the wind stand[ing] aside under a little wall.”