mtgia.com

So, I have no idea how to handle these situations. Your thoughts?

1. You sit down for a round and present your deck. Your opponent turns the deck so the bottom is visible as he riffles, staring at your deck. I'm not talking explicitly...not flipping the deck over all the way, just on the side so it would be visible. Do you call a judge? How would a judge even handle this?

2. Your opponent has a foil playset of a card in his deck and it's the only foil. Do you call a judge?

1. Yes, call the judge since there is no excuse for looking at your opponents deck while shuffling. They may receive a warning and if they do it to you again a game loss or in a later round. Also make sure the judge makes a note of this so it can be tracked as potential cheating. If you don't properly deal with this there is no repercussion for this kind of cheating. You should clearly be able to distinguish if a player is making an active effort to not look at your cards.

2. Only if you have good reason to believe that they are using it to cheat. Foils are fine. Marked cards are not. Not all foils are marked. If the foils are bent to a much higher degree than the rest of the cards in the deck then they are marked and you should call a judge if you notice a pattern. I should clarify that an opponent may have marked cards and not be using it intentionally to cheat but they are also responsible for checking there deck with the judges on things like that.

1. You probably want to talk to the judge away from the table on this one. Ask the judge to surveil your opponent's shuffling. There are basically 3 ways it can end up going down:

blatant cheat - flipping them and intentionally looking gets a DQ
can see card faces, seems unintentional - looking at extra cards, warning at competitive REL
can't see card faces (high angle but still facing away) - judge informs that he should be more careful about shuffling, caution

Without the judge seeing it in action (or maybe a witness from a neighboring table), you probably aren't getting anything more than the caution. Keep in mind you can ask a judge to shuffle rather than your opponent, but honoring that request is discretionary.

2. Scheel nailed it exactly.

What is the penalty for damaging an opponent's deck?

Round one of a draft, a player dumps a beverage all over your draft deck. What happens?

Beheading... I'm guessing the judges would allow you to proxy the deck. They would likely give a penalty to the opponent that spilled the beverage due to there generally being a floor rule about food and drink not being allowed on the table during sanctioned matches. As far as the replacement of the cards I think the players themselves would have to resolve that issue.

I am so glad I am not a judge. There are so many things that can come up at a Magic tournament. To be able to call them all in a reasonable way is quite a chore - and it's often a thankless one. Kudos to judges.