Judging the LOF Redlands Planetary Qualifier at Top Choice Gaming

2025/09/20: Floor judge for the Swiss rounds.

My TCGPlayer link to support: https://partner.tcgplayer.com/LumiMouse

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Table of Contents

1. 2025/09/20 - Top Choice Gaming (and Photo Dump)

   1. Quick Side Note of the Event Itself

      1. The Good Stuff

      2. The Not-So-Good Stuff

   2. Judging Staff

   3. Some of the Judge Calls

   4. Games I Was Watching

   5. Miscellaneous Judge Stuff

2. Conclusion

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• Thanks to Top Choice Gaming for letting me record gameplays and this timelapse footage.

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2025/09/20 - Top Choice Gaming (and Photo Dump)

The judge table.

9th-16th players (some players not shown).

Top Cut was played downstairs in the actual store.

The updated graphic with the new starting time.

Format: Bo3, 7 Swiss rounds, 102 players (it says 110, but 8 were dropped prior to the event), Top Cut to 8 players;
https://melee.gg/Tournament/View/347374

Alyssa went 4-3, placing 39th.

I really wanted to play given the low $25 entry price and I felt pretty comfortable playing Cad Tarkintown this set, but I also really wanted to judge PQs to meet my L2 judging eligibility. So, I went with the latter.

In addition to the standard PQ prizing, the prizing was:

• 1st-8th: 1 box

• 9th-16th: 12 packs

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Fellow SWU content creator, Daniel, from SD played as well. Here’s his PQ perspective post on his Substack (https://ecomodegames.substack.com/p/the-redlands-lotf-pq)":

The Redlands LotF PQ

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Side Note of the Event Itself

This PQ event experience was overall not comfortable, but the store did its best given the situation.

The Good Stuff:

• The time in between rounds was pretty minimal. The store owner and head judge were pretty on top of making sure that completed matches had their records reported toward the end of the given round.

• The table play space surface area was good and the seats were cushioned.

The Not-So-Good Stuff:

• The venue was very warm. One of the AC units wasn’t functioning, so multiple large fans were used, but it was still pretty warm. From the above timelapse video, you can see that players exited the room after they finished their games.
  Not comfy.

  • Water bottles were given out for free. I had one player ask me to get them water.

  • I saw some players wiping their sweat while playing.

    

• The round timer was on one single monitor. Some tables didn’t have a good line of sight to it. There were a few players asking how much time was left.

• Prizing wasn’t announced until during the event itself.

• The change of start time (from 12PM to 10AM) wasn’t communicated well. They posted the change on their Instagram and on their Discord (and this was after being asked about it on their Discord), but not everyone checks their socials. Though the change is reflected on the Melee page itself, players don’t usually check that after registering until submitting the deck list. Not sure what actions the store could’ve taken aside from emailing every player individually via Melee.

• Lighting was inconsistent. You can see from the gameplays (soon™️) how not well lit it is. One of the rounds, I noticed a player had their phone propped against a wall with its flashlight on.

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Judging Staff

• Head Judge (HJ): Jeremy (one of the two L2 judges in California!)

• Floor Judge 1 [FJ1]: Me

There was supposed to be another floor judge, but they never showed up, so…¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The store owner, Dio, helped with the Melee stuff and deck checks. Luckily, in terms of the judging experience, this event went pretty smoothly, it went more smoothly than either of my FAD PQs’ experience.

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Some of the Judge Calls

1. Player A asked if Yoda (TWI) leader effect is enabled if a unit was captured earlier in the same phase.

Answer: Yes, per CR 1.34.1, “A captured card leaves play when captured…”

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2. Player A asked what the interaction was between indirect damage and shields.

Answer: Indirect damage bypasses shields, so if any indirect damage is placed on a shielded unit, the shield would still remain.

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3. Player A called judge to confirming that if a Phase-III Dark Trooper was attacking into a unit that the damage it took counts as combat damage, because player B wasn’t sure.

Answer: Yes.

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4. Player A called judge and said that a spectator was talking to Player B. No specifics were mentioned, so I just asked the spectator to not disturb the game. After the event, Player A told me how the spectator was looking through Player B’s sideboard and was commentating on the game before they called for a judge.

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5. [Not a judge call, but this was a big enough deal that I’m putting it in this section] When doing a deck check, one of the decks had marked outer sleeves. About a fourth or fifth of the sleeves had severe dents, while the remaining sleeves were clean or had very minor dents. When I noticed this, I immediately called the HJ over.

   1. Giving the player the benefit of the doubt, we assumed it was just wear and tear, given that the cards with the marked sleeves seemed random. The player did have some extra outer sleeves and we replaced the severely marked outer sleeves. But we didn’t want to delay their games any further, so the player was told to replace the sleeves before the next round.

   2. This was a mistake/bad assumption on our part, but because the player was using an out-of-print art sleeves, we assumed the player wouldn’t want to play with the art sleeves naked. It turned out that the player didn’t care that much and later just took off all of the outer sleeves.

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Games I Was Watching:

1. The player had six (iirc) readied resources, and they smuggled out a Cassian Andor (SHD). Both players were a bit confused about the correct number of resources that should be readied/exhausted.

   1. Because the smuggle card can pay for itself, there should be one resource readied after smuggling it out.

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2. Miscellaneous missed stuff:

   1. Mandatory effects: Restores, Guavian Antagonizer’s bounty, and HK-47.

   2. Miscalculations of base damage.

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3. An Ackbar Data Vault player resolved Greedo’s effect, even though their opponent’s ground arena is empty and they still had a friendly ground unit. The effect missed, so no damage was dealt.

   1. After the game, I spoke with the player and mentioned how it’s a “may” effect, and if the effect did hit, the damage is mandatory, so it would’ve hit their own unit.

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4. Player A played Traitorous on a Player B’s unit. Player B was asking Player A if the upgrade is removed, would the unit return as exhausted or readied. Player A responded saying how if the captured is returned, it comes back exhausted.

   1. When I heard that, I decided to step in to clarify that the card is taking control, not capturing. So, if the upgrade is removed, the unit would be returned in the same readied/exhausted state it was in at the time of the upgrade removal.

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5. I saw a proxy leader being used (it’s like one of those custom ones that can be found on Etsy). I brought this up to the HJ, and he came over to see it. To the player’s benefit, they did ask their opponent (who was fine with it) beforehand and they did have a legitimate copy of the leader visible on the table.

   1. The HJ asked the player to use the real copy.

   2. For additional context, the cards that make up a deck have to be legitimate. Tokens are an exception to this rule.

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6. This was the last game of a given round, so both the HJ and I (along with other players) were spectating. Player A played Bounty Hunter Crew, returning an event from their discard pile to their hand. However, they said that they didn’t have to reveal it and that the opponent can look through the discard pile to figure out what is missing. The HJ stepped in and explained that the card must be revealed. The player complied.

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7. Player A had three units, including a Ki-Adi-Mundi (TWI). Player B played their second card for the phase, Luke Skywalker (SOR), defeating a Player A’s unit. Player A stated that they’re going to resolve Ki-Adi-Mundi’s effect and proceeded to do so. Player B objected. Player A said that’s how it works, and said that they can ask the judge.

   1. At that point, I stepped in agreeing with Player A. Because the moment Luke Skywalker is played, Ki-Adi-Mundi’s effect is triggered, so it’s going to still resolve, regardless if Luke Skywalker defeated one of the three Player A’s units or not.

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8. [This is one that I missed at the time of, and only realized/discovered after the fact when talking to Player A] Player B plays Force Lighting, targetting Player A’s Regional Governer, which had called Devastator. Later in the same phase, Player B plays Devastator (JTL).

   1. Player B shouldn’t have been able to play Devastator.

   2. This is because Regional Governor creates a lasting effect that only cares if the unit is still in play or not. As such, Force Lightning “blanking” Regional Governor doesn’t actually blank this lasting effect.

Miscellaneous Judge Stuff

• There were random deck checks that happened throughout the Swiss rounds, I helped in that and gave time extensions accordingly.

• A player asked me about prizing, I redirected them to ask the store.

• There was only one late player and they arrived within 5 minutes of the event’s start time (players who didn’t check in were dropped).

• Starting around round 5, because there were fewer players left in the event, the HJ started spacing out the tables.

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Conclusion

Very few judge calls in general. It was a very unfortunate situation with the venue’s cooling situation.

The judging compensation was more generous than Fire & Dice Games’. Lunch and dinner was covered (though I did decline the dinner offer). Gas was also covered depending on distance.

[Basically, a copy paste of my previous PQ judging Substack posts]
Overall, I appreciate given the privilege of judging a PQ and the store allowing me to record both the gameplays as well as the 360° footage. Similar to last two times, I was asked if I was playing or not by others.

It was quite tiring on my feet (as expected).

Answering the card ruling questions is the easy part, but questions regarding policies is a bit harder.

Anyways, pretty fun experience, I would do it again.

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