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May 20, 2024

Controversial Magic: The Gathering Tournament Moments

Magic: The Gathering's long competitive history is home to some truly incredible controversial moments, some of which changed the rules forever. While Magic: The Gathering's Pro Tour and similar

Magic: The Gathering's long competitive history is home to some truly incredible controversial moments, some of which changed the rules forever.

While Magic: The Gathering's Pro Tour and similar tournaments have made competitive play popular for MTG's players, they've also led to some serious issues. Any time a game raises the stakes, it invites cheating and other bad behavior. It's not surprising that Magic has attracted its share of scandal and controversy in its 30 years of history.

Some of these infamous controversies were enough to force Wizards of the Coast to reevaluate and modify the rules of the game; others simply shined a light on the worst aspects of Magic: The Gathering. At the very least, players as a whole can be thankful for the ways most of these events helped to better define the game today, no matter how agonizing they might have been for those directly involved.

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While most Magic: The Gathering controversies come from the events that transpire during an actual game, 2010's Grand Prix Columbus produced a truly unforgettable moment after the match in question was over. During the final round of the Swiss pairings, Drew Levin and Craig Wescoe faced off in a match that would land one of them in the Top 8 of the tournament. When the dust settled, Levin emerged victorious and joked that he had previously made a substantial wager on the outcome of the match.

To the crowd of spectators gathered nearby, this was nothing more than an offhanded remark, one that could easily be taken as a joke. To Wescoe, however, it was a tacit admission of violating Rule 5.3 of the Magic Tournament Rules, which states: "Tournament participants, tournament officials, and spectators may not wager, ante, or bet on any portion (including the outcome) of a tournament, match, or game." Over an hour later, the judges determined that Levin had egregiously violated the rules to the point that he was disqualified from the tournament entirely. The wider player base did not take this development well. The ensuing outrage led Wescoe to issue an apology to both his opponent and the Magic: The Gathering community, although pointing toward the technical difference between a player and spectator to justify that same apology didn't endear him any further to the fans he lost.

For a game with thousands of different cards, it is more than understandable that Magic: The Gathering players would occasionally forget exactly what something is called. This becomes even more understandable when there is a specific character who has received multiple cards versions, each of which is usually only denoted with a different suffix added to their name. Usually, this isn't a problem, especially on a competitive level. Not until Bradley Carpenter faced off against Bob Huang at the Star City Games Open in Charlotte in 2016.

During the second and ultimately final game of their match in the tournament semifinals, Carpenter played a Pithing Needle naming Borborygmos, hoping to cut off Huang's most problematic finisher. Shutting off Borborygmos' activated ability was one of the few ways Carpenter's midrange, semi-toolbox Abzan Company deck could reasonably hope to with against Huang's reanimator-style combo deck. Unfortunately for him, Huang's finisher wasn't actually Borborygmos, the original version of the character from the first Ravnica block, but Borborygmos Enraged, a new card from Gatecrash. This minor mistake proved to be pivotal when the judges sided with Huang, who noted that Carpenter had named a card other than the one he was using. Thankfully, this caused enough of an uproar that Wizards of the Coast quickly issued a statement and adjusted the rules of the game to accommodate such obvious errors and ensure a good-faith reading of all player actions wherever possible.

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While the Borborygmos incident highlighted the unforeseen issues with cards sharing nearly identical names, it was the humble Dryad Arbor that showcased the problems that could arise from a single card having a myriad of printings available. As a 1/1 creature, Dryad Arbor is a potentially irritating yet largely inconsequential card on the battlefield. As the only creature land, however, Dryad Arbor posed a unique problem that helped to usher in a meaningful rules change.

During the sixth round of Swiss pairings at Grand Prix Lyon in 2018, fan-favorite Gabriel Nassif's aggressive Hollow One deck was up against an equally aggressive Bogles build piloted by Thomas Langlotz. When Nassif went in for what he believed would be a game-changing attack, sending numerous creatures into what he believed was a lone, albeit heavily enchanted, Slippery Bogle, Langlotz moved his Dryad Arbor up to the battlefield from where it had been sitting with the rest of his lands to offer a second blocker. Nassif was clearly caught off guard by the move, as he had been under the impression that the Dryad Arbor was just another basic Forest. The confusion stems from the fact that Dryad Arbor's original 2007 Future Sight printing had a distinctive frame that made it easy to spot, but Langlotz was running the From the Vault: Realms printing, which much more closely resembles an ordinary Forest. Though there was no game rules violation at the time, the incident drove Wizards of the Coast to state that all creatures must be placed with the rest on a player's side of the battlefield regardless of whatever other card types they may have.

The number of controversial moments surrounding confusing or convoluted board states is numerous. But it's rare that a misplay or rule violation is only caught after the game because the player in question admitted it themselves.

The 2009 World Championship was a major event for everyone in attendance, but especially for Charles Gindy. Having only broken through to the prime time the previous year, Gindy was considered one of the brightest up-and-comers in the game at the time. Unfortunately, his run at the World Championship ended only shortly after beating Antoine Menard in an intense match that culminated in Gindy clearing his path to victory by using Master of the Wild Hunt and a pack of wolf tokens to deal direct damage to one of Menard's creatures. After the match, Gindy asked Menard why he hadn't dealt the reciprocal damage that is required by Master of the Wild Hunt, indicating that Gindy knew a trigger had been missed but failed to point it out during the match. This was enough to oust Gindy from the tournament, yet players noted afterward that it wouldn't have mattered either way, as the only legal target Menard could have done damage to would have survived to attack and end the game all the same.

Despite how many cameras and judges are aimed directly at the players at high-level Magic: The Gathering events, cheating is still an issue that the game has had to face with unnerving regularity. Even some of the greatest players of all time have had their otherwise stellar careers marred by cheating. But the first of Tomoharu Saitou's multiple suspensions for breaking the rules was unlike anything players had ever seen.

Only two months after being disqualified from the 2001 Asia Pacific Championship for bribery, Saitou was disqualified from Grand Prix Kobe for unsporting conduct. That was the official ruling anyway, though the reality of the situation was much stranger. Faced with an unwinnable game state, Saitou picked up his deck, counted the remaining cards in it, shuffled, and presented it to his opponent to cut. When his bewildered opponent did just that, Saitou called a judge on his opponent, presumably to report them for illegal deck manipulation. Unsurprisingly, this did not go as Saitou had hoped, and he was disqualified from his second major tournament of the season.

Whereas Saitou was ultimately able to salvage his career in spite of his less-than-stellar track record, not every Magic: The Gathering cheater has been able to do the same. In fact, the most infamous cheater of all time saw his career end in a lifetime ban from both the game at hand and the then budding Transformers trading card game. Alex Bertoncini's history with cheating is easily among the best known of any, stretching back years before he was forced from Magic: The Gathering tournaments on a permanent basis.

The most notable instance of this was also the one that landed Bertoncini his first suspension back in 2011. During a match at the Star City Games Open in Kansas City, Bertoncini was caught on film playing one land too many. When asked what turn it was, Bertoncini simply pointed to his graveyard and noted that he had cast Explore twice. Although Explore does allow a player to play an additional land on the turn it is cast, the math didn't add up, leading to an 18-month suspension. In the years that followed, Bertoncini was caught using the wrong mana to cast his spells, playing with marked cards, consulting with spectators for outside information during a match, and breaking a host of other rules. After multiple suspensions, Bertoncini was finally banned from Magic: The Gathering and Transformers, also run by what was then the DCI, for life.

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With how tightly modern Magic: The Gathering tournaments are run today, the fact that cheating is still an issue is a stark indictment of what the early days of competitive play looked like. In turn, some of the original greats of the game just so happen to have spotty track records of their own, including two of the game's earliest stars, Mike Long and Mark Justice.

As one of the first professional Magic: The Gathering players, Long was also one of its original innovators, which he proved during the 1998 season with his Cadaverous Bloom deck that has come to be considered by many the game's first widely successful combo strategy. The deck was running particularly hot during the 1998 U.S. Nationals, (reportedly) carrying him to an 11-0 record before running into trouble when someone noticed a copy of Cadaverous Bloom either under Long's leg or in his lap. Whatever the case was, Long was handed a match loss for the offense, yet that didn't stop him from finishing second overall at the event. It also didn't stop him from being nominated for the Magic: The Gathering Hall of Fame by lead designer Mark Rosewater, either, a decision for which Rosewater provided a long and thorough explanation.

Like Long, Mark Justice was an early pro and pioneer of the game. He is also someone who would likely have already been inducted into the Magic: The Gathering Hall of Fame if it weren't for his long and storied history of cheating. There is even an argument to be made that Justice is responsible for not one, but two of the most disruptive moments in tournament history, and they couldn't be more different.

Pro Tour Atlanta in 1998 was, like so many other early Magic tournaments, absolutely rife with cheating. So much so, in fact, that it has garnered itself the name Pro Tour Cheatlanta among those who remember it not so fondly. The biggest example of this at the event had Justice at its center, and it quickly spilled over quite literally onto the venue floors. After the draft portion of the event, Justice was found to have a fourth Muscle Sliver in his deck that was clearly from another print run. Justice provided an explanation involving purchasing a copy from a vendor to replace one he had drafted that was defective in some way and that he had thrown out. When the vendor in question corroborated the first half of that story, the judges offered Justice a choice: Help them fish through the four trash cans in the venue for the Muscle Sliver he threw away to prove his innocence or be disqualified. Justice took the latter, and the ordeal went down in history as a case study in unnecessarily sticking to an obviously made-up story.

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The other iconic story involving Mark Justice isn't one about cheating, but about how the game should be played in general. It wasn't even Mark Justice who suffered because of the odd set of circumstances in question, but it was still he who rallied the rest of the players in attendance at 1997's Pro Tour Los Angeles to make sure they never came about again.

Over the course of the tournament, David Mills made his way through opponent after opponent, safely securing himself a place in the final round of the event. Along the way, he had been given numerous warnings for violating a particular game rule. Mills had a habit of announcing his spells first and tapping his lands to cast them second, which today is perfectly normal and in no way an issue under any circumstances. At the time, however, this was against the rules, and one of the tournament judges made it their mission to ensure Mills knew that. As such, when Mills went to cast what would have otherwise been a tournament-winning spell, he was disqualified for doing so in the manner he always had instead of as it was described in the rule book. This was utterly unacceptable to Justice, who ignited a fervor in the player base that soon rushed the stage and stole the microphone to voice their displeasure. As a result, Wizards of the Coast announced that they would both change the rules so that players could announce their spells before tapping for mana and award Mills second-place prize money for his trouble.

There is no question that Magic: The Gathering is a complex game. This has led to players coming up with all manner of ways to remember various rules, effects, and phases of the game. It has also led to players coming up with all manner of shortcuts, though not all of these are universal nor are they all agreed upon by even the most seasoned veterans.

It was one of these supposed shortcuts that cost Cesar Segovia his eighth-round match against Thien Nguyen, and that caused one of the biggest uproars that the wider Magic: The Gathering community has seen. In a tense match, Segovia stated that he was entering combat on his turn before attempting to crew his Heart of Kiran with one of his creatures. When Nguyen objected and called a judge, a long argument ensued about what saying "combat" indicates. The official ruling was that by saying "combat" Segovia had invoked a "common" shortcut that moved the game state along to the declare attackers phase of combat. This was a huge problem, as Magic: The Gathering does indeed a beginning of combat phase during which both players receive priority before any attackers can be declared. To make matters worse, Segovia had a card on the field that triggered during the beginning of combat phase, meaning that the judge ruling not only cost him the chance to crew his vehicle, it forced him to miss the trigger that he had in fact not missed whatsoever. In the weeks after the tournament, pro players and game designers alike shared their thoughts about the ruling online, with the overwhelming majority noting that they had never heard of any such shortcut, nor had they any idea why the situation played out in the first place.

John Dodge has been an avid consumer of comic books and nerd culture for as long as he can remember. An expert on competitive gaming and obscure kids shows from the 80's and 90's, John has far too many opinions about Beetleborgs for someone in their thirties. You can find him occasionally discussing them over on Twitter at @JohnJDodge.