Hello,
After discussing the matter with a few judges from Benelux I was invited to share the topic in the forum:
During a Legacy Side Event at GP Prague, I got a Game Loss after a Deck Check revealed that the 3 From the Vault Ancient Tomb in my Sneak and Show deck where slightly bend. Second offenders in the Deck have been 4 Prerelease Promo Emrakul.
The Judge demonstrated me how this could be abused, regardless if the Deck was double sleeved and without the many other foils in the deck having an impact.
I then downgraded my Foils at the vendors in order to be able to continue the tournament.
Since I only play Legacy a few times per year, my experience with From the Vault cards is rather limited. Apparently the foiling process is different from the normal foils, and therefore those cards have a higher tendency to become bend and therefore marked.
Please note that if you take the card by itself it doesn’t appear to be bend, only in conjunction with other cards it will stand out. (We are not talking about the foils that are clearly bend)
A quick research revealed that foils in general have this problem more often than non-foils, and among the premium cards the FtV and early Prerelease promos seem to be the worst.
Back home I took my last remaining FtV Ancient Tomb and started testing things that would get you rightfully DQ’ d at a tournament.
I have no talent for fancy card tricks, but within a few minutes I was good enough to fetch out that FtV Ancient Tomb out of my deck 38 out of 40 times, the 2 misses where due to a non-foil Griselbrand that turned out to be slightly bend as well. In both Griselbrand cases the Tomb was the top or bottom card of the library and therefore concealed.
I for myself found this rather shocking. Apart from the fact that I may be a talented cheater I could see this being a problem, especially with GP Paris in Legacy format on the horizon.
Recently many format staples have been printed in FtV sets, Jace tms being the most prominent addition. While I possess no FtV 20 cards, I just assume they present the same issue then the other FtV products. (Correct me if I am wrong)
In fact almost all the FtV cards I possess seem to be marked (read: bend)

Now to my question:

A player is allowed to call a judge if he thinks that his opponent’s cards are marked.
Well imagine a player calling a Judge every time one of his opponents plays a FtV card, since by common knowledge those cards have the tendency to become marked quickly.
Now imagine that player does that every round…
What would you do?


Greetings from Luxemburg
Steve HATTO

Moved to competitive REL.

Daniel

While this tends to be a lot of work, I see no other way to handle this besides actually checking every time. Yes, this is tedious and might actually slow down the tournament, but the opponent has every right to be suspicious about the FTV- (and other) promos, as they tend to bend quite remarkably.

For those that do play these, I can only advise you/them to ‘unbend’ the cards in question by putting them under heavy books (or sth similar) a day or two before the tournament, and play doublesleeved in strong sleeves (Dragonshields or KMC Mat-series beeing the most popular ones fitting this category I believe).

Agreed with Philip. Telling the player that you can't deal with his request because it's boring/it probably won't amount to anything is a really bad customer service move. Akin to a player asking to watch the match for slow play, the request should probably be at least humoured, if not investigated fully.

This is, really, an unavoidable part of people choosing to use especially old or used foils for their events. MPR promo Lightning Bolt and Cryptic Command are similarly treated.

~ Jack
Level 2, London

I think if it's expected to be a common problem for the event having a way to track who has and hasn't already been checked for marked cards might be something to look at. But honestly how most judges check for marked foils (shuffle place card on a table, can you find it) should take less than 2 minutes for a no problem deck so shouldn't cause that much disruption.

Gareth
Level 2, Portsmouth

Me: “So, what made you notice the card - i.e., how is it marked?”
Player: “Oh, I don't know that it's marked, but aren't ALL FtV foils marked?”
Me: “…”

I cringe every time I see this - essentially, it's prejudice against certain Magic cards, and players seize onto things like this with a surprising amount of passion. And once this takes root in the player community, Judges get to deal with situations exactly like this.

That conversation might continue like this:
Me: “Oh, you didn't notice any sort of marking before he played that card?”
P: “well, no … but…”
Me: “Let's take a quick look at the library” (as I look at each side of the deck, on the table) “do you see any obvious bends, or other marks? I sure don't.”
P: “well, no … but…”
Me: “OK, then, I think we're fine here. If you notice something obvious with a player's deck, please get us involved immediately.” (and, to the FtV player) “please be aware that some foils get a bend or curl faster than non-foils; you should probably check your cards between every match, at least, to make sure that's not happening.”

In this way, we can (hopefully) help the players understand, it's not reputation that makes a card “marked” - only the actual occurrence of markings matters.

d:^D

If playing with a mix of foils and non-foils, I advise the player to regularly do long-side riffle shuffles regularly and in both directions. It helps keep the bends consistent between cards. As long as you flip it over and do it again, you reverse the bend out of the card. It can take a while depending on how warped the foils are.

I'd also make sure to warn them against foiling out their decks in any kind of patterned way, as that will tend to look extra suspicious if the foils do end up marked. I once had to help an almost-in-tears player re-sleeve his wide assortment of foil mountains to non-foils on account of this.