When a player signs up for an unsanctioned limited event, are they considered to have purchased entry into the event, or the packs? A discussion between myself, another judge, and our local shop owner and TO regarding the nature of Conspiracy drafting came down to this question. Since the rules for dropping from an event apply to sanctioned events, how should a TO handle dropping from an unsanctioned event? Should the cards be considered tournament material until the draft is concluded?

Same as a normal draft. Why would it be otherwise?

Because this is unsanctioned, the TO can choose to do anything they want. For best customer service recommend that they announce any changes before they sign up and again before the event starts. That way players know what they are getting into before they pay.

Originally posted by Nick Rutkowski:

Because this is unsanctioned, the TO can choose to do anything they want. For best customer service recommend that they announce any changes before they sign up and again before the event starts. That way players know what they are getting into before they pay.

This is the conclusion we'd reached as well–thank you for the confirmation!

Originally posted by Olivier Jansen:

Same as a normal draft. Why would it be otherwise?

The rules for dropping from a sanctioned event are that the tournament material becomes property of the player when the tournament concludes or when they legally drop from the tournament, tournament material being all cards in their possession, included open and unopened packs.

However, these rules don't apply to an unsanctioned event, so I wanted to figure out what recourse the TO had to preserve the integrity of the draft in case someone dropped. While I certainly don't advocate the forfeiture of drafted cards, TOs are well within their rights to impose that caveat upon players that sign up for an unsanctioned draft–of course, enforcing the caveat is another matter entirely. Unless, of course, I'm reading Nick's response wrong.

Conspiracy Drafts should be sanctioned as Casual (Multiplayer) Limited, so they are sanctioned or did I miss something?

Sanctioning a Casual (Multiplayer) Limited event merely allows the TO to report events run in the store, and the players to receive 1 lifetime planeswalker point. As it's casual though the TO has free reign to run the event as they like.

It sometimes feels like “sanction” means different things depending on what you're doing.

I've been confused by the wording as well, since the MTR talks about sanctioning requirements in a competitive context… “defining appropriate rules, responsibilities, and procedures to be followed in all DCI-sanctioned, competitive-level Magic tournaments”.

My understanding, which may be incorrect, is that the “competitive-level” mentioned in the MTR just means “not casual”. And when the MTR says “sanctioned”, it means “sanctioned at competitive-level, following one of the 3 RELs”, but just says sanctioned as a shortcut within the context of the document.

So, you've got a group of players that came and did something (and get 1 PWP)… that can be a sanctioned event as far as WER is concerned. And if you host an event that is run at “Pro-REL events”, “Comp-REL events” or “Regular-REL events” (which have PWP per-win, participation points, and/or multipliers), then the MTR starts to apply (and now that the MTR applies, you're subject to the extra sanctioning requirements it mentions).

This was synthesized from parsing the documents and talking to some other judges and TOs who were often unsure of pieces, so I could be way off. But that's how it sits in my head for the moment.

If the event is unsanctioned, the TO can handle things whatever way he likes. It would be good practice to announce to players how certain contentious issues such as the above will be handled.

I interpret “unsanctioned” to include “Magic - Casual” events.