The Worst Crime
My partner recently asked me an interesting question; what's the worst thing a judge could possibly do?
"Subject all of humanity to extreme torture until the heat death of the universe, obviously."
"No no no, like how a doctor is supposed to save lives, so taking a life would go against their core duty. What could a judge do that similarly violates everything they've sworn to uphold?"
I thought about it for a while, to ensure I was giving the question due consideration. After some time, here's what I came up with:
The judge is a player in a limited Grand Prix, and they're up game one with only a few minutes left in game two. To try to make the game end in a draw, they ask their opponent out on a date, despite having been rejected earlier. When the opponent calls for a judge, the player interrupts the judge to appeal immediately, threatening to fight that judge in the parking lot if they don't go get the head judge.
While everyone else is distracted by this, they pick up one of their opponent's morphs and look at it, before putting it into their bag mixed together with several other stolen morphs. It was enchanted with one of their five Funeral Marches, but the Funeral March was hidden in with their lands so the opponent doesn't notice. When the head judge arrives, the player asks to go to the bathroom, where they spend 11 minutes on their phone asking a friend what to do now, and agreeing that whoever doesn't get disqualified has to drive home.
Upon returning to the table, the head judge asks why the Funeral March is in a yellow sleeve while the rest of the deck is in green sleeves, and why it doesn't have the GP stamp on it. The player quickly untaps one of their Forests and uses it to cover up the Funeral March, telling the head judge that there is no card named "Funeral March" on the battlefield. The head judge is not fooled and continues to ask questions, so the player brings up the fact that their opponent forgot to draw a card 3 turns ago, and offers to determine the match by restarting the game and drawing 9 cards in the new game, as a compromise that would be fair to everyone.
The head judge agrees, and the player takes a few minutes to pile shuffle their deck, making sure not to accidentally mix in the two out of their four Delver of Secrets that are represented with checklist cards. With a 47 minute extension they start playing the restarted game 2, and the player wins, going up to the scorekeeper and asking whether, given the situation, it would be appropriate for them to put their match slip in the box labeled "match slips" or whether they should do something else with it instead.
I believe this would be truly unforgivable.
