No fair! Paul Ross took a job with UDE and moved to San Diego.
=)

I've got a total man-crush on Eric now.

Hehe... Lui is biting my numerical list system of posting on VSRealms.

(You know you want to add a 'k' to your first name)

I hope TDK's apology and Eric's summation of events is the end of this whole "judging issue"... let's focus on the positive.

Just wanted to chime in here in hopes that we can all put this one incident to rest.

I didn't mean for Failure's posting on my blog to cause an anti-judge uproar. I was playing at the time this all happened, but I could tell something was going on behind me. My thought was, if I am interested in knowing what went down, I'm sure vs-blog readers would be interested as well. Since Failure was right there when it happened, I had him write it up. It sounds as if he did get a little too involved, but I know him and I know his heart was in the right place - he wanted the play to be judged correctly.

That said, he knows (and I know) that the rules do not allow for observers to interfere like that.

Did Omar go overboard in his response here on realms? Yeah. But it was in response to a number of overly harsh posts from people who weren't even there. This is not to say people shouldn't put their two cents in (that's what realms is all about), but we've got to remember that on the other end, there is a team of judges just trying to do their best.

I'm sure Failure would disagree, but for every bad call that was made over the weekend, I estimate 100 good calls were made. In fact, one of the judges (whose name I don't remember) was casually strolling by a game I was playing and caught a random play error as it happened. He told us exactly how to backtrack it and what the penalty was, saving us minutes in wasted "Hmm...I don't know...how do YOU think we should correct this?" time.

As far as I can tell, the ratio of errors at this event was right on track with every other mid-to-large event I've been to. And considering the event was understaffed on day 1, I'd say that's quite an accomplishment.

In any case, this one incident has now been beaten to death. Taken out of context, it's been built up to look like it ruined MegaWeekend. But in context, it was one of the least interesting Vs.-related things that happened in L.A. last weekend.

Dude, he compared us to YGO players. That's an insult in my book.

So stop acting like them.

Bottom line, Paul was on the short end of the stick and he took it with class. Everyone else who is spitting about it? Clownshoes for you.

It was a fabulous weekend, without a doubt. Big props to all involved.

In all honesty, if I knew that #####ing and screaming like a child would've let me recur my Darkseid seven, you can be sure that I would've done it. I've learned a valuable lesson this way and I hope everyone does too.

Anyhow, this topic is crazy drawn out. Looking back, I believe I could've won the game in spite of the misruling via skill - why the #### did I play Reality Gem before subs - or through luck - drawing some HaBs - but it didn't happen.

C'est la vie.

Thanks to Josh and everyone who was looking out for me. This one humbly thanks you.

TDB two words for you: eisai foveros (είσαι φοβερός) :p

PS: You prolly won't understand that but thought to try out your greek language knowledge. ;)

Quick $.02

4 Freedoms doesn't need to be errata's. Biz World doesn't need to be banned/errata'd. Let the metagame evolve. There are answers. QS needs banning before 4Freedoms/Bizarro, because QS makes so many Bizarro answers tough to play because Quickie can beat you on 3.

I thought the judging was fine on both days. On Saturday I had the judge at my table quite a bit as many players I was against didn't fully understand substitute & esp Unravel Reality. There was one issue that came up that the floor judge was a little iffy on and he went and got the HJ rather than give a bad ruling. Kudos to the floor judge for not just giving a ruling.

The only thing I'd say is if 10-15 minutes are lost to judging issues, the players should get that time back. This is at the judge's discretion, but I think a good judge should give the majority of the time back. Losing a minute or two for a judge question is part of the game, but when you hit 8+ minutes on one issue or the judges are at your table 3 to 4+ times, there needs to be some time given back. I don't know if this really came up during the weekend, but it's just my $.02.

I want to agree with all of this.

I want to thank everyone I played, and everyone who was involved in making this a great weekend, and it was a great weekend.

Thank you.

I was the other judge at the event. The Megaweekend was the worst Vs experience of my life. My observations:

1st) I wasn't prepared for the event. I'm not up to speed on the rules since the templating change with the Legends sets. I haven't played in anything where I called a judge since 10k LA 2006. My mistake. Please note that I volunteered for this because I knew that no one else would judge and I didn't want to leave Eric Lui, Erick Reyes, and Chris Wong hanging.

2nd) Most of the players don't have a level 1 rules knowledge. I had to correct over a dozen endurance differences which eat up significant time. I had to correct one in a Top 8 match and it was only turn 4. Pay attention, take notes, and confirm with your opponent. I was super-burned out from correcting a bunch of prerelease-level mistakes and trying to make sure that people were having fun/understanding the cards. See point 1, add this in and you get some bad calls. I cost Foley's kid a game due to a stolen Ahmed misruling, and in restrospect I should probably have cautioned the opponent who tried to do it to him for misrepresenting cards. But the point of this item is for you to know how the cards work, espcially the ones in your deck.

3rd) Batman6 issue--I obviously didn't understand that Batman was in play, I thought he was being recruited. If the judge doesn't understand the situation, clarify it. I obviously didn't get it for the first 5 minutes of the reconstruction. Both players had played so far forward from the point of contention that the situation was FUBAR'd. I wanted to give both players a full warning for irreparable game state, but since the FFPlaza player hadn't searched I was letting them go with a caution. Eric Lui fixed it better than I did because i asked him to help me out. Appeal before it gets to that point. Simple as that.

4th) Butting in, second guessing, posting about it the day after once you've groused about it with your buddies, etc. You don't like it, fine. Complaining about it know isn't going to change tie-breakers. Appeal at the time. In reference to the Batman6 thing, the situation was corrected by the head judge.

In summary, I was (and am) a bad judge. But the player has a responsibility to pursue understanding of the game and game state. If a judge makes a call you disagree with or even just don't understand, appeal. Omar and I took no offense to requests for appeal. Remember Jeff Donias' mantra. It should rule over your entire Vs. experience.

Hope that most of you had a good time. Props to SCGE and UDE for running such a big event and prizing so well. Slops to my judging.

I disagree based on principle... not on Bizarro World. From the beginning, we've been told that cards are errata'ed or banned for only few things, one of them being usage beyond its intent.

The power of Four Freedoms Plaza is mitigated by the fact that you had to control 4 distinct objects that had designated names. By skirting this requirement with a single object with all names totally abuses FF Plaza beyond its design. This really has something to do with the CRD and not the card itself. This should be clarified to allow for consistency for controlling named objects versus effects that look for number of named objects.

In addition, for new players, this creates some confusion as they are able to use FF Plaza but not use Family of Four for multiple bonuses? Even experienced players had problems with this as demonstrated by the multiple threads here.

Do I believe the metagame will shift, of course I do. But I still think that UDE should protect the design intent of their cards as much as possible in order to not frustrate new (and existing) players.

So It doesn't need an errata to neuter the card, it needs an errata to clarify that you need to control 4 individual objects, just like Family of Four/Bizarro.

You wouldn't be referring to Kate Corrigan vs the Deadshot decks, would you, hehe? GG.

Yeah... reminds me of the Sage 1-of versus Arkham discard.