15 minutes passed.
30 minutes passed.
Finally, at almost 10:45, the judges began collecting decklists and waiver forms (allowing event coverage to show us in pictures and such). For those unaware, Wizards of the Coast was also giving out GP Promo Batterskulls to each player at this event, and we assumed we would receive them during the player meeting.
No promos were handed out at any of the tables around me. When I asked a judge where I should go to receive one, he was unsure at first, then told me to go ask at the Judge’s Station. I asked the same question when I arrived there, and was simply handed a promo without so much as giving my name.
“Fine,” I thought, just some minor slip-ups here and there so far, it couldn’t get much worse...right?
Oh, how wrong I was.
Let me state this first: I respect the judges that help with these events deeply, and hold them in the highest regard. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) wanted a Lv 4 Judge at this event (keep in mind there are maybe 45-50 Lv 4 judges in the world), and ended up paying a Lv 4 Judge from Italy to be the Head Judge at this event. While she seemed like a great person face to face, she had an incredibly thick accent. Coupled with a huge room and shoddy speakers, it was literally impossible to understand what she was saying. Myself and some of the other players initially thought something was wrong with the speaker system, but not 5 minutes later another individual got on the speaker system and we could understand him perfectly.
The next big issue was the waiting period between rounds. I’ve been to enough large events to know what the average wait time between rounds is usually around 10-15 minutes if there is an error with the system or the judges are waiting on match slips. For whatever reason, there were 30-35 minute wait periods in between rounds. Whenever we asked a judge what was going on, they were at a loss for words. Often times they would simply tell us to go ask a different judge, and almost every time the other judge had as much an idea of what was going on as the one we originally asked. There seemed to be an incredible lack of communication between the judging staff and the Pastimes staff, resulting in numerous issues.
Since I hadn’t mentioned it yet, for those unaware, Pastimes is the store that WotC had run the GP for this event. One big bonus for playing at a GP is the limited-edition playmats that are given out. Unlike most GPs, where playmats are handed out on a first-come-first-serve basis, Pastimes decided to give the mat out only for few, incredibly select side events, including the Sunday Super Series Standard Event, which was an additional $30 to register for. This was particularly frustrating because initially Pastimes justified increasing the event signup price for the GP from $40 to $50 by saying that playmats would be handed out, and by giving each participant a “side event credit” to play in one side event “for free”. It was not free. They made us pay for it, and some people like my friend Jon, who did well in the event, didn’t even get to use this “free” credit, because he was busy playing in the main event all weekend. This is particularly ironic because the person who won the main GP event received a trophy, but did not receive a playmat for being there the whole weekend.
So let’s make a quick list of the issues we ran into throughout the weekend:
1. Understaffed and underprepared judges
2. Communication issues between the TOs (Tournament Organizers)
3. Events started 30-35 minutes late ALL WEEKEND
4. The mandatory price increase that boasted a “free” side event was unusable for many players
5. It was impossible to understand the head judge, who was announcing every event all weekend
6. Playmats (that should have been first-come-first-serve) were only given in specified situations
So I’ve complained about all of this. How could it have gone differently? What can be done to prevent future events from having such a low quality? What can be done to prevent any level of event from running this poorly? A few things come to mind:
What you can do:
Report the event to WotC and the DCI.
Even though they are a big company, Wizards of the Coast is dedicated to good customer service and will investigate most complaints. In addition, any behaviors that may seem fishy or fraudulent will be investigated by the DCI, which is a child company of WotC that focuses on the tournament reporting.
If you want to file a complaint use the following link: http://wizards.custhelp.com/
Search for “delinquent events” and sign in to your DCI account, or create one if you don’t have one.
Don’t attend events that are run by Pastimes, or its affiliates.
This may not seem like a solution, but for those of us who have attended Pastimes events for years it is quite apparent that the quality of events has declined exponentially over the past few years. This is in part due to lack of caring on the managements part, and to the community of players who attend Pastimes on a weekly basis. The fact of the matter is that if we simply stop supporting stores that run shitty events, they will either stop running shitty events or close up shop.
What could have gone differently:
There should have been at least twice as many judges, if not more.
The lack of staffing was probably the part of the weekend that impacted the events success the most. My buddy Jon brought up an incredibly good point when we were discussing this exact fact: during the final rounds when your overall record is X-2 you were in contention to either make it to Day 2 with an X-2 record, or lose out on any payout at all with an X-3 record. Judges should have been hovering around the X-2 tables to ensure that no one was cheating or being colluded into conceding any matches. Unfortunately, due to the lack of judges this was impossible, and while there were many bystanders nearby, a good cheater could still have found a way to manipulate the situation if they were desperate enough.
To conclude, the event was very poorly run. I have already sent a letter to WotC myself complaining about how poorly it was run, and urged them to not allow Pastimes to run any events of such a large scale anytime in the near future. Whether they listen to me, and the many others that are disappointed, remains to be seen, but I hope they take our thoughts into consideration.
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