Running Team Events

Team events are very popular, allowing players to ~~argue~~ play with their friends in Competitive events. They present a number of unique challenges for judges, which to my knowledge have never been compiled in any comprehensive form. This page is an attempt to do so. If you notice anything missing, please leave a comment or let me know some other way.

Before the event

Neither Eventlink nor MTG Melee has a setting for team tournaments. As such, you'll simply create an individual-player tournament and pretend that each team is a single player for the purposes of the software. Have each team pick a "team captain", and only that person is entered into the software. Don't forget to set the tournament to be best-of-one, since game-win tiebreakers cannot be used.If your software doesn't allow best-of-one, you'll need to enforce this manually so that players can't gain an unfair advantage by entering nonexistant tiebreakers in their favor. Choose a specific format in which players should enter their win, announce this to the players, and have the scorekeeper correct any results that are input incorrectly.We don't use individual match wins as a tiebreaker because this would require teams to finish all 3 of their matches before they can report, which would make rounds take much longer.

Team matches are composed of three individual matches. Time extensions, penalties, deck checks, etc. apply to individual matches. To avoid confusion while communicating about the event, any time you mention a "match", you should mention when you're talking about the team match or the individual match unless it's obvious from context.

A team match takes up three chairs on each side of the table, so assuming double-sided table-number signs, you'll need each row of tables to have a multiple of 6 chairs per side.

Once a player has finished their match, they may want to scoot their chair over next to their teammate to help them out. This has a tendency to clog up the aisles. You can tell players not to do that and instead kneel on the ground, but if you have the space, it's better to just prepare wider aisles in advance.

By default, team events have the same cut as individual events, in larger events cutting to the top 8 teams. But events that offer invites frequently don't want to give invites to 24 players, so they may add an extra Swiss round and cut to top 4 instead.

Team events have fewer roundsSince each team just counts as a single player for the purposes of determining a round number., and players tend to play more slowly because they have to ask their teammates for advice. As such, you may want to consider compensating by making the rounds longer than 50 minutes.

Team events have fewer judge calls, but those calls are more complicated and take longer. As such, you will probably want to hire fewer judges than usual, while also making sure that those judges are of above-average skill and experience. There will also be more appeals, so perhaps staff an extra appeals judge.

Morning of

Players will have an order within their team, with player A, player B, and player C. Once they've decided on their order, this cannot be changed after round 1 has begun. (If it's a sealed event, they are allowed to change their order during deckbuilding.)

You'll want to announce the specific player locations at each team table, like "Player A is the one closest to this wall, B in the middle, C closest to the vendor booths in the back." This order allows players to find their seat quickly, without having to communicate with the other team about which player they're playing. This obviously cannot be part of your opening announcements after players are seated, so you should mention this when you announce that pairings have been posted.

You may be tempted to just tell the players "sit wherever as long as you're playing the right opponent." You will regret this. In addition to delaying each round's start time, this will also screw up your judge staff's ability to collect decklists in order and to issue time extensions to the correct match.

(Also remember that the person in the middle has twice as many adjacent teammates to communicate with, and some teams design their deck choices to reflect this, so you need to keep your order consistent with whatever was posted online in advance.)

In trios events, you can optionally skip A/B/C and instead identify players by the format they're on.

Decklist sorting will be much easier if the lists are collected in the same order for each team, and then stapled together. You should also have each team write their team name (or team captain name, whatever's in the software) on the list that will be on top of the pile, so that the deck checks team will be able to find a specific team's lists.

Eventlink and MTG Melee cannot handle team time extensions, since there's no way to indicate which individual match they apply to. For a large event, Purple Fox does properly handle teams, so you should use it. For a small event, don't track extensions digitally and use paper slips.Some EOR leads like having the longest extension put into the software, but in my experience this is not very helpful because they will have to check the table anyway to see if that individual match is still playing. Make sure the slips have the specific individual match written, either A/B/C or the format the player is playing if it's trios.

They also can't handle individual penalties very well, but since there's a description box, you can enter the penalty for the whole team and write which specific player it's for.

During the event

Players who have gained any hidden information about a teammate's match can't talk to them anymore. (If they do, it's Outside Assistance, punished by a match loss in their current or next individual match.) This is most relevant when a player leaves the table; if they could have seen an opponent's cards in hand, they can't speak when they get back. Due to this, we generally ask players to not stand up if they want to move closer to the teammate in question, and to leave a wide berth around the table if they need to go to the bathroom. (Some events fully disallow communication if a player has to go to the bathroom, in which case be sure to explain this to the player before they get up. This will also apply to a player who was significantly tardy, meaning they can't talk to their teammates for the duration of that team match.)

Teammates are treated as a single player for most gameplay purposes. If a player does something and a teammate suggests they shouldn't do it, they're allowed to take it back as long as the team hasn't gained any unfair information from the opposing team in the mean time.

Teammates are allowed to shuffle for each other to save time, and if a player shuffles in a way that allows a teammate to know the bottom card of the deck when it's presented, they have committed Insufficient Shuffling. (This will be a very common infraction, as most players do not realize this is an issue. That's fine, they get a Warning and now know not to do it again.)

As for opponent's decks, opinions differ. Scenario: A1 is playing against A2. A1's teammate B1 sees a card in A2's library while they're shuffling, and tells A1 what deck they're playing against. Some head judges think this is fine, because, while it's technically not allowed for a player to reveal cards to their opponent while shuffling, it happens all the time in individual tournaments and we don't penalize for it, because there's no advantage to the player. Teams are treated as individual players for most informational purposes, so it should by this logic also be fine to reveal a card to an opponent's teammate. However, some head judges believe this is not allowed, and that if a player sees a card from an opponent's teammate's deck, they are required to notify that player and not share the information with their teammate. For your event, decide what you're doing in advance, and if you're going to be ruling this as illegal, make sure the players are made aware.

Players are allowed to take notes for their teammates. Past that, the details of how this works are not specified. Some head judges believe that it's ok for a teammate to bring external notes into the match and tell the player what's on those notes, since this is technically legal as per the MTR. Other head judges believe this is not allowed, and a teammate's notes must only be about their own sideboarding plan, or they're not allowed to look at any notes while advising a teammate.

If a player drops or is disqualified, the same happens to the entire team. A team is not allowed to have only two players. If a player is late, the rest of their team is allowed to start playing without them, and the team is dropped once the late player has been missing for 10 minutes. Some tournament organizers may waive this policy because it is stupid, instead allowing teams to play with a missing player who is treated as losing every match.Certainly don't do this for a DQ however. It would be unfair to allow the other teammates to remain in the tournament after having gained an unfair advantage from their teammate's cheating.

When a player has a question, they will usually turn to their teammates rather than call a judge. This makes judge calls less frequent in team events. It also makes slow play more common, as the players can spend forever discussing a play at a critical point. Make sure your judges are watching for this. Rounds are still (by default) only 50 minutes, so the line for when to cut them off should not be any different from an individual event.

If sent to watch a match in EOR, you can ask questions like "what game/turn is it" to a teammate instead of the player playing in order to be less disruptive. If it's the last individual match of the team, you should also ask what the team match score is, because it's possible that this individual match doesn't matter and they just haven't reported yet.

Any judge call can involve up to 6 players instead of just 2. This is beneficial as it allows you to get more perspectives on what happened; it will often be easier to resolve communication disputes when there are more than two sides of the story you can consult about what actually happened. However it also means that interruptions and arguments are more likely during your ruling, so it's important that judges know how to keep the players under control and can arrive at a final ruling in a timely manner.

If you're taking a call in one individual match and their teammates are not yet done with their own matches, make sure that those teammates continue playing during the judge call and aren't losing time watching or participating unhelpfully in the call. If you do need to speak to the teammates, don't forget to issue an extension in their match as well.

Players in a team event are less likely to cheat, because there are an extra 4 players who might catch it. (Which is especially embarrassing when it's their own friends catching them.) On top of that, if they're caught, it results in their entire team getting disqualified, which is a huge social risk. Players in a team event are also more likely to cheat, because they have the pressure to perform well not just for themselves, but also for their friends. As such, cheating prevalence is likely not significantly different in team events. (Investigations are a bit easier though, because you have easy access to a player's friends to ask about their past experience and play style. Remember to take players away from their teammates so as not to have one's answers contaminate their teammate's answers.)

After the event

Fix the table numbers to put them back to individual matches, if that's what the next event is going to be.

Format-specific

Team events come in three flavors: Trios, Unified Constructed, and Sealed.And Two-Headed Giant, but that's a totally different thing, and almost never run at Comp REL anymore, so I'm not covering it here.

Trios events are the most popular, where each team member plays a different format, usually Standard-Pioneer-Modern.

In unified constructed events, players all play the same format, and they must play different archetypes. Specifically, no card may be in more than one deck on the same team. (This will make deck checks take slightly longer, as the checking judge must check the teammate's lists to see if they recognize a card they just saw in the deck.If an error is discovered, the team gets to choose which deck they want the card to stay in, and the other deck has its copies replaced with basic lands. This is a minor concern, so just a quick skim is fine.)

In team sealed events, the team is given 12 booster packs and must collectively construct three decks out of those cards. After the decklists are registered, the individual decks are locked in and players are no longer allowed to swap cards between them. (If it's regular REL, they can continue to swap cards between rounds, but not during sideboarding.)

Building decks in team sealed is easier if the players are sitting together rather than spread out in a line. The easiest way to accomplish this is to keep the same table numbering as you'll use in the play rounds, but instruct the teams to send two of their members on one side of the table and one member on the other side. They can then coordinate with the other team at that table number to sit in two triangles/L shapes, with one person from each team in the middle seats. (Whether teams are sitting in an L or a line should not be left up to the players, as they will argue. Announce a consistent arrangement for everyone.)

The opening process is as follows: Instruct all teams on one side of the table to open their packs, with the other team watching. (If sitting in an L-shape, go by the player in the middle seat.) Then the other half of the teams do the same. They swap pools and register all cards opened from all 12 packs on a master decklist. (Have them sort by color first, then one person can be writing down one color while their teammates are alphabetizing the cards within each color.) Then they swap the cards and lists back, and proceed to build their three decks, registering each deck on a separate list. At the end, each team should have four pieces of paper; one master pool list, and 3 decklists. (Remember that the decklists must include a sideboard as well; players cannot swap sideboard cards between them once build is over. If no team member wants a particular card in their sideboard, it's acceptable to not register it anywhere other than the master pool list.) Consider making these papers 4 different (light) colors so it's easy to tell them apart.

Be sure to give very clear and explicit instructions to the players about this process, as they're otherwise likely to get confused and do thing like register a player's decklist on the master pool list, or leave sideboard cards unregistered on any decklist. (To avoid confusing them, you may want to distribute only one decklist sheet per team at first, then only once master pool registration is over do you give them 3 more.) Complex instructions are not conveyed well by voice announcement, so consider printing out instructions and putting one copy at each team table in advance.

The time limits are 20 minutes for pool registration, and 60 minutes for deck construction and registration.