I know he ain't yellin' at me. Right?

Look man, I don't care who the crap you are. Don't you ever, AND I MEAN EVER, compare us to YGO players. I (along with everyone else around here) resent that, thank you very much.

The event was fun for me, though I did get a loss in round three, ( I had written down a cost in the quantity column, got distracted when someone was talking to me ) it was some of the most fun I've ever had playing VS. I wasn't aware of the big scuffle with tdb, but over all I found the judges to be fair and cool. Great weekend guys!

Your missing Omar's point. Proper procedure should have been followed regarding this issue. If a spectator see's an incorrect play or ruling my understanding is that the observing player can bring it to a judges attention and it is that judges duty, not the players to interject. If the issue was truly the misruling then the proper procedure would have corrected the situation. Eric Lui is a great head judge. He is probably the most knowledgeable judge in the Southern California area, I'm sure an appeal to the head judge would have solved the problem quietly.

I said that already look up a few posts lol...... u recover from the weekend yet erick?

First of all, BIG UPS to the officiating crew. I missed the whole judging snafu but I found the whole judging crew professional, cool and knowledgeable. All of the players were cool, I had an awesome time. I was running the Spider-Stall to a 6-4 finish. Then I played in the MVL draft and pulled the chase card. I was able to get 26 of the cards that I was missing to complete my MVL set and I got to an old friend after a long time. On top of that, I beat TBS for an EA Death’s Embrace. I have to give props to:

DarkZypher – I took your deck to my best finish in a big event, thanx for hosing me with it at so many HL and CC tourneys!!!!!
Kotamer – Thnx for the sweet playmate and rolling with me to LA
Canadian Bacon – Even though you had to bail, you booked a choice trip!
Edawg – Always great good to see you! Next time, we are going at it:)
Baldman – Thanx for running to BK, it was right on time! Looking forward to trading with you!
Carlos the Dwarf – Thnx for TOTALLY de-valuing my The Dwarf card!
Erick – It’s people like you that that keep the game going!
Everyone who let me borrow cards to go to LA
Everyone I played in the SA tournament!
Everyone that I traded with to try and finish my MVL set!!!! (HUGE PROPS)

For those who were there, I was one of the players from Houston TX. I was wearing the REAL Megatron shirt and the Astros hat. I finished #26 in the SA event.

Later

In support of this statement: my son went 4-2 on Sunday with my subpar build of IG Hidden before we had to drop and go catch our plane; on Saturday he played the exact same Bizarro deck as I did and went 4-6. One is auto-pilot, the other is fully manual.

It is a difficult deck to play, with lots of important decisions to make, especially in the mirror, and requires you to make fast and accurate assessments of your opponent's deck and what effects he might have available to him so that you know what you need to do and when. It is VERY easy to make a critical mistake, such as the one made by Joe's opponent when he allowed him to Iron Extraction his Ahmed. He needed to react to that possibility before the stun occurred.

I maintained before the tournament that it was not a deck for everyone, and still do. But for those who have the cards to create a good build, who are comfortable playing that kind of deck, and who have sufficient knowledge of the metagame to make good decisions, it is an absolute powerhouse of a deck. I don't know whether an errata on Four Freedom's Plaza is in order or not, but I guess I would be in favor of it if the Bizarro deck ends up inspiring as much animosity as Quicksilver has. (Although I would have a bit of a hard time understanding why they would nuke the one archetype but not the other.) I do know that a Bizarro legend deck would be ridiculously overpowered, and I refuse to build one for our local legends tournament next weekend. That would be a little like entering the original Dream Team with Magic, Bird and MJ in the NCAA basketball tournament. Not fair at all.

Do we have a metagame breakdown for the silver age tourney somewhere?

It Looked something like this
Like 30 Bizzaro Decks (all different kinds)
Like 25 or so Quicksilver decks (with SS or 12-Man)
Not as many people played Deadshot decks as I expected, probably like 10
Some other CM variants, such as Cm/Mk Punisher
There were some Skrull
There were some Darkseid/GK Resource Hate/PT Negation
There were some Kree/VU
A couple Brotherhood Reservist
other decks were maybe 1 or 2 of but were negligible

The meta wasn't quite that skewed.

The official meta breakdown will be on vssystem.com tomorrow or Wednesday.

I can tell you there were approximately 49 deck types with the top being Bizarro (but not 30... it probably just felt like that).

That doesn't sound at all right to me. I never faced a Quicksilver deck all day, and only one Bizarro in the rounds of Swiss. I think there was a lot more variety than that. In the rounds of Swiss I faced:

- mono Syndicate rush
- IG Hidden
- Darkseid/Gotham
- Skrulls
- Kree/VU
- Shadowpact
- CM/Punisher
- Bizarro
- Deadshot/Riddler
- Moloids

This guys a judge, lol, not exactly sure the details of this situation, but your pathetically wrong. I am glad you have the "to my knowledge" disclaimer which basically makes you not knowing at all. And then you back it up with a Yu-Gi-Oh comparison, first class you are sir. First Class

ok ok
I know it wasn't exact
or probably even close
but it was just the jist of what I saw personally and what was most popular, there were a lot of 1 or 2 of decks but I didn't get to see many of those..let me rephrase
There was a lot of bizzaro
I saw some Quicksilver stuff
I saw TDB playing his ihatebizzaro.dec
I personally was playing Kree/VU
and for one round was in the Kree/VU corner with some people
Brian Red Shifted all the counters off of Blackbriar Thorn one match, and Brainy was playing Skrulls
Well at least the Meta had more diversity than a lot of us predicted, but everything went really well, thanks to everyone who showed up, juged, TO'd, put in results, Blogged while trying to play Vs. at the same time, and just generally made the all to short Mega-Weekend a great experience
To quote Brian:
"Pretty good turnout for a dead game"
Long Live Vs.!

A lot of NorCalers were with IHSS

Seemed pretty diverse to me, but I wanted to verify it for sure. Heres what I played against for anyone interested.

- X-men Curve
- Fantastic Four (curve)
- Titans/Doom Patrol (off-curve counter abuse)
- Bizarro
- Checkmate/??? (didn't go past 3)
- Punisher
- X-mental
- Quicksilver/SS
- Moloids
- Shadowpact

I wasn't playing at the top tables but i was at 50/50 or better the whole tourney.

Peace.

My name is Eric, and i was the head judge over the event where the controversy happened. I just wanted to hang a shingle and share a few of my thoughts and observations regarding the incident.

1.) Mistakes were absolutely made by floor judges this weekend. They happen, and they're the reason why we have an appeal process. I said this to several players over the course of the weekend, but i'll say it again here, "If you don't feel good about a ruling, appeal it. You lose NOTHING by doing this."

Appeals are not an excuse to badger your opponent, or cover up for your own lack of knowledge about the game engine, but if you suspect something is amiss with a ruling, appeal. If you don't, you have no one to blame but yourself.

2.) The disparity between accounts here is instructive. After reviewing the situation with the judge involved, the judge observing, one of the players involved, and several spectators, I noted that none of them recount the same situation. Observers NEVER have the whole story.

These statements are admissions that we don't know what actually transpires unless we're in the game. (and often, even then, our memories are imperfect) That we know what we're supposed to do, and don't do it anyway. This is why we ask observers to stay out of in-game situations.

In fact, after an observer pulled me over (for which i am deeply appreciative), *I* didn't get involved. I observed the judge and the players, and gathered my own set of information as to the game state. It would have been premature and game-disrupting for me to interject without a complete picture of the game state.

I don't get involved as the head judge unless i observe an incorrect ruling or an appeal is made. In this case, an incorrect ruling WAS made, and i stepped in to correct it.

3.) Time used. By the time i was pulled over, time had ALREADY expired for the round. Time is a funny thing. I've heard claims that the dispute resolution took from 3 minutes to 15 minutes, depending on who you asked.

Brian Eugenio asked me (after the match had concluded) if i felt a time extension was warranted. Noting the time that i observed, i said "no", since the players will be playing the additional turn and finishing the game. In hindsight, i may have been wrong about this-- the floor judge and i needed to have better communication on this topic.

Just wanted to clarify this: If a delayed ruling takes 15 minutes, but there were only 3 minutes left on the clock, the players only get 3 minutes from the conclusion of the resolution until "time is called" for that match. Subsequently, they are on "extra turns", just as if time had expired normally.

My observation of the game, and the game state, indicate that time would have ended that turn (given that they were in the build phase of turn 6), and they would have indeed only played one more turn.

4.) Warning issued. The account on Carlos's blog is the only one which made mention of a warning being applied to the player. In fact, upon reviewing the tournament records, there was NO warning applied against this match for either player. If there was one, it was not correctly applied. It is possible that the judge clarified response chains with a verbal caution, which sounds a lot like a warning to an observer. It's not-- it's not recorded, and is not an official penalty.

5.) Mis-ruling on Reality Gem and the optional nature of the discard. This was just a blown call, due to a misunderstanding on the floor judge's part. There's no mitigating factor here-- the player impacted could (and should) have appealed, but it was an incorrect ruling.

6.) Being told to stay out of the situation. Sorry if Failure felt that the judge was being harsh, but one's (own, admitted) lack of self-control is no defense against failing to correctly observe tournament policy.

7.) Behaving yourself on the Internet:

Might i suggest that if you don't want aspersions cast onto your maturity level...

... perhaps you don't want to make statements like this?

Conclusion
This was an unfortunate incident. There were numerous contributing factors (relative inexperience of the judge, failure of observers to adhere to tournament policy, short-handedness of staff, emotional responses because of the nature of message boards), but at the end of the day, we, the tournament staff, made mistakes. For that, we do apologize.

Whether you appreciate what judges provide for the game is up to you. I will note that several top judges played on Saturday because of their deep love of the game. I sent another judge home, because he was too sick to get out of bed. From my point of view, the two judges who served on Saturday acquitted themselves admirably, and gave up an opportunity to play and give Patrick, Joe, Michael, and Brainy a run for their money in Top 8. Without their contributions, the 10 rounds and Top 8 would have run well past midnight. I owe them a deep debt of gratitude, and probably a steak dinner.

(For those who haven't read DarkKnight's updated response, he has retracted his statements as regards the maturity of the players involved.)

Looking forward to hearing Failure's other concerns about the quality of the judging observed over the rest of the weekend. I crave feedback about the weekend, but i believe this issue has been beaten to death. Please let it rest unless you truly have something constructive to add to the conversation.