Judging the LAW Northridge Planetary Qualifier at Fire & Dice Games
2026/04/04: Floor judge to the end of Swiss.
My TCGPlayer link to support: https://partner.tcgplayer.com/LumiMouse
Table of Contents
2026/04/04 - Fire & Dice Games
With the new featured match table location compared to prior PQs, I was able to keep my 360° camera charged (it used to sit on top of the shelves), so I was able to record a timelapse of the entire Swiss portion.
Format: Bo3, 7 Swiss rounds, 99 players, Top Cut to 8 players;
https://melee.gg/Tournament/View/408295
Side Note of the Event Itself
This PQ event experience was overall great and went pretty smoothly. There was a Melee issue that caused a ~10min delay before starting round 2 which got resolved after contacting Melee via their Discord server. We think the error was caused by a late player joining during round 1. There were two more (minor) Melee errors that I’ll go into more detail in a section below.
Judging Staff
Head Judge (HJ) and one floor judge (me).
The store tried to find a third judge, but previous judges at FAD PQs weren’t available. But luckily, it went fine with just two judges.
The co-store owner helped with some deck checking and other logistics.
There were other FAD employees there who helped with Melee stuff and other logistics.
The Good Stuff:
Pretty much the same as described last time I judged here for their SEC PQ:
https://www.lumimouse.com/i/181510645/the-good-stuff
The Not-So-Good Stuff:
None; this is their fourth PQ, so things are pretty smooth at this point.
Some of the Judge Calls
Player attacked with Stolen AT-Hauler, but meant to attack with Punch It instead.
Resolution: After confirming with both players, due to no new strategic information, the player can rewind the attack action to play Punch It instead. It helped that the opponent was fine with the rewind.
Player played Annihilator against their SEC Padmé opponent. Does Annihilator’s effect trigger SEC Padmé’s effect if it doesn’t discard from the hand?
Resolution: No, because Annihilator’s effect doesn’t cause Padmé player’s hand to be revealed.
A JTL Boba player asked if their leader pilot deploy effect of dealing 4 damage is mandatory. Context: their opponent has a Legacy Run.
Resolution: No, it says to “deal up to 4 damage”, which includes 0 damage.
A player played Faith in Your Friends. They asked where to put the two cards, the top or bottom of the deck?
Resolution: Per CR 8.26.2, the cards should be returned to the bottom of the deck in a random order.
In the same phase after Lawbringer was played, if the opponent plays a unit that matches with the chosen aspect, will it be debuffed?
Resolution: No, because this effect is applied to the existing units at the time of resolution.
A player asked if they played The Tree Remembers on their opponent’s Stolen AT-Hauler, can they still play it from the discard pile afterwards?
Resolution: No, The Tree Remembers blanks the unit’s effect.
If Blue Leader has been moved to the ground arena, is it considered as a ground unit or space unit?
Resolution: Per CR 4.3.5, it would be considered as a ground unit.
If Blue Leader is in the ground arena, would it be defeated if Hyperspace Disaster is played?
Resolution: No.
If Blue Leader was on the ground arena and got captured, which arena would it return to when it got freed?
Resolution: It would return to the space arena.
When playing LAW 4-LOM, can its effect be applied to itself?
Resolution: Yes.
Player A had Queen Amidala and a spy token unit. Player B had an Onyx Squadron Brute. If player B plays Turbolaser Salvo targeting the ground arena, can Player A use Queen Amidala’s effect to prevent damage by defeating the spy token unit?
Resolution: Yes.
If a player deploys their JTL Boba leader as a pilot and shows SEC Cinta Kaz from the resource row, can they resolve Cinta Kaz first and then resolve JTL Boba leader’s deploy effect?
Resolution: Yes, the player can choose the order of resolution for their leader deploy effects (if any) and the shown plot cards.
If a player has The Daughter and their opponent plays Single Reactor Ignition, can they trigger The Daughter’s effect to heal their base?
Resolution: No, it’d be too late as The Daughter would already be in the discard pile by the time the player takes damage.
Player A has The Daughter. Their opponent has JTL Devastator and plays Planetary Bombardment directing the indirect damage to the Player A’s base. Can Player A trigger The Daughter’s effect?
Resolution: Yes. (I’m assuming the confusion is whether indirect damage is the same as damage in this case.)
A player asked if the credit token is named for SEC Galen Erso, can Mother Talzin leader’s effect still be used?
Resolution: Yes, because Mother Talzin only cares about the existence of the Force token.
Player A has SEC Yularen leader unit and another unit. Their opponent has a ground sentinel. Does the SEC Yularen leader unit need to survive to trigger/resolve its effect so the player can attack with another unit?
Resolution: Yes, it would need to survive.
Context: We both attended the judge call and initially ruled it incorrectly. The HJ looked it up to confirm, and we went back to the table to give the correct ruling. We ended up rewinding a few actions that had occurred in the time since. I think we got a bit too tunnel-visioned with LAW’s new templating system of “Attack ends:” and it specifying whether the unit needs to survive or not that we forgot that the older templating implied the unit surviving. Hopefully, I won’t make this same misruling again in the future >.<.
Player A has The Blade Wing and wants to play another The Blade Wing. Can they keep the pre-existing The Blade Wing and still trigger/resolve the new The Blade Wing?
Resolution: Yes. Even if a newly played unit is defeated due to the unique rule, its when played/when defeated effects would still be triggered.
Can LAW Rey be damaged by events?
Resolution: Yes
A player asked if capture is the same as defeat regarding LAW Rey.
Resolution: No.
In a JTL Luke mirror game, a player asked if their Outer Rim Constable can defeat their opponent’s JTL Luke pilot upgrade.
Resolution: No.
If a JTL Boba player attacks with their JTL Fett’s Firespray into their opponent’s Victor Leader, can their opponent assign the indirect damage from Fett’s Firespray and JTL Boba leader’s effect onto their Victor Leader and have it deal 2 damage back to JTL Fett’s Firespray?
Resolution: Yes, on-attack occurs before combat damage.
Player A’s SEC Galen Erso named Maul. If Player B attacks their LAW Maul into the SEC Galen Erso, would LAW Maul trigger?
Resolution: No, LAW Maul’s effect is blanked during the attack, so when it regained its effect back after SEC Galen Erso is defeated, it would have already missed the timing window to trigger.
Random discussion outside of a game: a player, both judges, and another player (who is also an L2 judge) talking about Condemn and how badly it was templated.
Issues Caught When Spectating
After resolving Tear This Ship Apart, if a resource card was played, the resource that enters to replace it comes in exhausted.
During the regroup phase, a player accidentally knocked off the top few cards of their deck.
Resolution: After confirming there is no known deck information, the player shuffled their deck and offered their opponent to cut afterwards.
There is a TIE Fighter token unit with JTL Vader leader pilot. The opponent plays Hold for Questioning on the unit. Both players initially included the green aspect from the JTL Vader leader pilot. I stepped in and we rewound the discarding decision.
During the round 2 deck check, one deck was found to have an error with one card mismatching.
Resolution: Game 1 loss issued, decklist revised to match the actual deck.
(The player said they made a last minute change. Please double check your deck and decklist before the event.)
Top Cut Deck Check
There was a deck error for one deck:
The decklist says 52 card main deck, but, in reality, it was 51 card main deck.
We think the missing unit card was captured and not returned (they noted that this unit has been captured throughout the Swiss rounds).
HJ issued a judge proxy, so they played Top Cut according to their decklist.
For another deck, we found two marked outer sleeves that we attributed to normal wear and tear (one sleeve had a split on the corner, the other sleeve had a marking), so we asked the player to replace them.
Miscellaneous Judge Stuff
There was an leader alter on the sleeve that only covered the card’s artwork and not the text box. I redirected them to the HJ who ok’d it.
There were a few proxy 30 HP bases (e.g. Kyber Cup bases), and it was ok’d by the HJ.
We did deck checks every Swiss round except round 7.
Three Melee errors that we haven’t seen before:
1. Pairing error as detailed above.
2. From our dashboard, some players’ decklist shows up as “decklist” instead of the usual “<leader> <base>” title. But when clicking into “decklist,” it does show a legal deck. The player’s controller also displays the decklist normally.
3. There was a player whose player controller wasn’t displaying pairing info. From our dashboard, a table is assigned for the player. After their round 1 match results were submitted, their player controller still wasn’t showing any pairing or match details, it was still saying “Waiting on pairing!”.
Conclusion
A new personal record in the most amount of judge questions answered in an event.
Overall, the event went smoothly, considering that we managed with just two judges. Similar to the last PQ I judged (SEC Pasadena), I’ve talked to the HJ about how improper play with plot is still occurring, but not sure how to educate players about it.
As usual, it’s tiring on my feet at the end. I did end up staying until the start of the third round of Top Cut.
About two weeks before the event, the store expressed some concerns with the low pre-registration numbers (it was at ~80 for a while). There are some conflicting PQs on the same day from NorCal and Las Vegas, which meant that players who usually make the trek to play here wouldn’t this time. But I think we still had a good turnout considering the circumstances, matching last Fire & Dice Games’ SEC PQ at 99 players.