Yeah, that was me. I actually took 20 points from one and then two attacking welders. I probably drew about 20 cards but couldn't find a b-ring to save my life!

To clear things up, I got a match loss in rnd 5 for a marked mox ruby (it has a warp at the top middle obviously from too much riffle shuffling). My opponent (who was one of the Quebecers playing Bomberman) claimed that he could cut to it every time while he was shuffling my deck. This mind you while he was holding the deck vertically and so close to his face that he probably could have read the card names anyways. But whatever, a marked card is a marked card anyway you cut it and apparently at REL3 that's a match loss. Obviously if I had known beforehand that the card was considered marked I would have just proxied it (I was playing 0 proxies).

My problem stems from the fact that a kid with a piece of paper stuffed into the sleeve of his foil welding jar (why it was there I don't know) was given a warning for basically the exact same infraction. This because he was a kid whose deck the judges had helped with before the tourney.

And then you get the players with marked sleeves who only got warnings. It was my understanding that a marked card and marked sleeve are one in the same when your whole deck is in sleeves... am I wrong?

Combine that with some other stellar rulings and it adds up to some pretty mediocre judging. How about these hits:

A judge rules that you can respond to the triggered ability of saccing a lotus for mana.

With Samurai of the Pale Curtain in play, a judge rules that cards discarded to thirst for knowledge are removed from game, along with the thirst.

And my favourite, in a match between player A & B, someone playing a match next to them notices that player A has apparently stolen player B's goblin piledriver with a gilded drake. Problem is this happened two turns ago. So the judge is called over and rules that both players are to go back in time and redo the two turns! How cards in hand and board position was determined is anybody's guess but back in time they went anyways.

Oh, and when I went to appeal my match loss to the head judge I was told I was lucky I didn't get DQed. How nice!

THis from the same judge who threatened to DQ Lam if he asked a second time if we could start our top 8 match. A real barrel of fun that guy was.

And for the timed top 8 matches, did I hear correctly that matches that went to time would be decided on highest life totals? I was too stunned at the time for this to register but was that really the case?

Anyways, despite the shoddy judging I did have a great time at this tournament and met some great people to boot. Of course winning a mox for my troubles doesn't hurt. The highlight of the whole day was definitely seeing Lam just tear through the field with his deck, which as can be expected some people in this very thread are already calling a pile. Granted it does look like a pile on paper, and Lam is someting of a sack (Razvan has photo evidence from our t8 match to prove it), but once you start playing against it and realize that yes, you do have to FOW mental note, you'll see why he went 7-0-1 in the swiss, and probably could have won the whole thing if he had had a little better luck against bob in the semis.

By the way, I count at least 7 Canadians in the top 16 (possibly 2 more - Dany Laberge sounds awfully Quebecois and maybe Richard Myrand too). Go team Canada!

will there be side events?

This is my list that was never posted:

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
3 Duress

4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
2 Intuition
3 Cunning Wish
2 Deep Analysis

1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Gush
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Crucible of Worlds

3 Psychatog

5 Mox
1 Lotus
4 Island
1 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

side
3 back to basics
3 oxidize
2 annul
1 tranquil domain
1 berserk
1 wail of the nim
1 echoing truth
1 stifle
1 snuff out
1 fact or fiction

My sideboard was built with the idea that I'd run up against fish and oath in the swiss and workshop and slaver decks in the top 8. My day went like this:

oath 2-0
stax 2-0 (shawn stewart, the eventual winner)
oath 2-1
salvager combo 2-0
oath id
suicide black id

top 8
oath 2-1
raz, i get smashed 0-2

My first hand against Raz was Psychatog, Psychatog, Psychatog, Cunning Wish, Intuiton, AK, Land, which I mull. Then I get Psychatog, Psychatog, Cunning Wish, Brainstorm, Island, Mox. Which I keep unwillingly, knowing that if the brainstorm is bad I lose. Brainstorm gets me Psychatog #3, Intution, and some random other card I couldn't cast. And yes I shuffled a lot in between mulliganing. Ugh. Game two was pretty much the same, I kept another sketchy hand after a mull and Raz just exploded on me. In all fairness, the match I'm sure would have been very close. I just wish my deck had given me a chance to show up.

And yeah, I agree with Razvan about the Toronto meta. I have seen maindeck ground seals, maindeck planar voids, played fish 5 out of 6 rounds in a 40 man tournament, etc, etc. One key thing I don't think he mentioned is that our major tournaments in the Toronto area are all sanctioned (ie, no proxies). This would of course explain the large number of random hate/budget decks.  

marc