Introduction
This is my first post on the blog about judging, so it's going to be a lengthy one. If you're not super into discussion of rules, policy, or my unrestrained navel-gazing feel free to scroll down to the Takeaways section.
Judging in General
There's a whole philosophy to judging. But at its core it's about providing a positive gaming experience to everyone involved.
There's a bunch of aspects that are all important, but if I had to organize judging in a sort of hierarchy of needs:
- (top level) Hiccups are handled, numerous events going on concurrently, well-organized with clear hierarchy and escalation paths -- big tournaments/convention tier.
- Errors are handled, cheaters are caught, competitive integrity is maintained.
- People have fun.
- The rules are being followed.
- (bottom level) An event happens at all.
My History with Judging
I got into judging MTG around 2018, certifying as an L1 and part-timing a large local FNM (~40). Since then I've been on-and-off through moves, the pandemic, different judge organizing bodies, returning to solo judge the large local FNM for a year, etc. It's funny when other judges say I'm really good for an L1 - I've played hundreds of Magic events including dozens of RCQs, some GP level events, and judged several thousand event-people by this point. But without a requirement for stores to staff RCQ judges, I've yet to make the move for L2.
Saturday Assignment: Pioneer Regional Championship Floor Judge
Took quite a few calls. Got all the card rulings correct, took a few error calls that I could have done better with. I awarded several warnings when they were appropriate, but not always using the textbook reason which I could do better with.
Sunday Assignment: Modern 5k Deck Checks
Doing deck checks, I found that my player experience was not unique - many players are also playing mismatched playsets of cards. 2 foil, 2 non-foil, in different arts. Presumably this is due to difficulties in sourcing 4 matching non-foil copies, or they prefer the heterogeneity.
Did have to award a game loss due to a mismatch of basic land count. It was 2/2 basic Swamp/Island vs a listed 3/1 split. Why it had occurred: player was using the desaturated Double Feature lands which are not obviously colored to the land type. Would not recommend.
Calls
- Cards involved: Elesh Norn Mother of Machines, Overlord of the Hauntwoods
- Situation: Player controlled ENMoM, resolved OotH ETB to make one Everywhere token. They should have created two with two triggers.
- Ruling: This is not a missed trigger, since the player demonstrated awareness of the trigger. However, they did not handle the replacement effect correctly which should have created a trigger. Game Rule Violation (GRV) to the player, Failure to Maintain Game State to opponent (FtMGS).
