Judging the ASH Northridge Planetary Qualifier at Fire & Dice Games
2026/08/01: PQ the weekend right after GC.
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Table of Contents
2026/08/01 - Fire & Dice Games
Format: Bo3, 7 Swiss rounds, 93 players, Top Cut to 8 players;
https://melee.gg/Tournament/View/435275
Honestly, a little surprised to see such a high turnout given that it was the weekend following GC. I think the number of registered players was like <= 50 in the week leading up to the event.
Side Note of the Event Itself
This PQ event experience was overall great and went pretty smoothly. No notable logistical issues and no game losses issued. I thought it was ran very timely.
Some of the Judge Calls
ASH Moff Gideon and Imperial Dark Trooper both die from opponent’s IG-2000’s “When Played” effect. Can Moff Gideon fetch the Imperial Dark Trooper?
Resolution: Yes, when resolving the “When Defeated,” both units would already be in the discard pile by then, so Imperial Dark Trooper would be a valid target.
Player B has Player A’s LAW Galen Erso. Player A plays Yellow Aces Bomber and utilizes the Support ability on another friendly unit. Does the friendly unit have Raid 2?
Resolution: Yes, Yellow Aces Bomber’s Raid 1 would be granted as well, so Raid 1 + 1 = 2.
If ASH Hera Syndulla with Condemn attacks, would it get the heal effect?
Resolution: No, Condemn blanks the effect.
Player has a friendly ASH Chimaera. If they play another Chimaera, can they use the existing Chimaera for the “When Played” effect?
Resolution: No, unique rule comes first, so one of them would have to be defeated first. Then the “When Played” gets triggered, so by then, there is only one friendly Chimaera.
(I personally gotten this question twice at GC.)
Player asked if they can plot out multiple Jar Jar Binks.
Resolution: Yes, they would still get the buffs, but unique rule would cause only one to remain.
Player deploys their JTL Boba Fett leader as a pilot, dealing damage to two of their opponent’s, one of which being ASH The Mandalorian with a shield. Can The Mandalorian’s effect be used?
Resolution: Yes, this is a replacement effect. The Mandalorian would end up taking damage from JTL Boba Fett leader.
Player A’s SEC Galen Erso named Chimaera. Player B has an ASH Chimaera. Player B plays Pre Vizsla to defeat Galen Erso. Does Player B get the heal from Chimaera?
Resolution: No, Chimaera was blanked during this time and only gets its abilities back after Galen Erso has been defeated.
If Player A plays Commandeer on their opponent’s Red Five and then pilot onto it with their Wedge Antilles leader, what happens at the end of the turn?
Resolution: From Commandeer’s effect, Red Five would be returned to the owner’s hand and the Wedge Antilles leader pilot would be defeated.
Top Cut Deck Check
No deck error, but one or two decks had some marked cards due to wear and tear on the sleeves. No pattern. The players were requested to swap out the affected sleeves.
Miscellaneous Judge Stuff
Before the event: a player asked for their sleeves to be checked for marked cards. There were two iffy sleeves and I recommended to swap them out. They ended up buying a new pack of sleeves.
Mid-round: Two players had asked for tokens (spy and Mandalorian). The store was able to provide spy tokens, but not Mandalorian tokens.
Mid-round: A player asked to refer to their sideboard on their phone. I said no due to it being potentially bringing notes from outside the match.
We did deck checks every Swiss round:
R2: One deck had a split outer sleeve.
R5: One deck had two damaged sleeves.
The other deck’s sleeves had two different tones. Player said that it was from the same pack of sleeves. No pattern. They had the GC Obi-Wan sleeves as backup, so we helped resleeving. After it got resleeved, we noticed that the Obi-Wan sleeves were inconsistently cut, making them marked 💀. They ended up buying a new pack of sleeves.
R6: One deck had two marked cards due to the sleeve’s corner. No pattern aside from both of them being two cost units.
R7: One deck’s sideboard had a marked card due to sleeve’s bent corner.
Two games where they mis-sequenced plot cards:
One of them was a judge call and they asked me to watch them as they did their plot stuff.
The other game was from me spectating them and me correcting them about it.
Another spectated game: Player A attacks with their JTL Fett’s Firespray into Player B’s Victor Leader. Player B shortcutted too much/fast by placing their Victor Leader into the discard pile and then the Player A mentioned its on-attack. I stepped in and reverted the game state to where Victor Leader was still on the board for Player B to apply the indirect damage.
Top Cut games: there were some players’ mistakes that we caught at the time-of, can’t recall the exact scenarios. It was like pretty “minor” stuff, like missed HK-47 triggers.
Conclusion
I think this was the lightest judge call PQ I’ve judged at. On the other hand, I think this PQ had the most issues found via deck checks I’ve judge at. Though this can be from me being more experienced with deck checks (was on the deck check team for GC’s LCQ and did a deck check for one round at Palm Springs LAW SQ), so I know what to look for and if something is an issue or not.
Anyways, fun and good experience as usual with this store. This is their fifth PQ and I’ve judge at every one of them, so the process is pretty ironed out and I’m familiar working with them.