Greetings, happy Turkey Day to all of you in the United States and uh… happy Thursday to the rest of you. Today I’m going to switch things up from the normal standard for articles that we use and talk a bit about the game and the people who work behind the scenes to make things awesome, but who also get far too little credit for doing so. So today will be a very simple day of thanks for deserving folks. If that interests you, read on and if it doesn’t, go have a piece of pumpkin pie for me. I think I’ll be eating duck today as a sort of fowl tribute, but I’m guessing my jones for pumpkin pie will have to wait until Christmas.
Judges Need Better PR
I’m hard on judges when I need to report info, but at least part of that is because I tend to be acting as a force of change for various aspects of the game. The truth of the matter is that I’m pretty decent friends with a large swath of the judging community and the game wouldn’t function without them. Not only that, but these people are usually quite good at their jobs. The amount of garbage minutiae that judges need to know is astounding, but you can’t do the job well without it and at the upper levels, you can’t do the job without it period. Then of course you have to deal well with people, have excellent communication skills, be able to organize events, a judging team, do paperwork, run DCI Reporter… it’s a tough job for which you will be compensated an hourly wage that makes sweatshop work seem lucrative.
Oh, and you have to be perfect. Every time.
See, when players screw up, all they do is screw themselves out of a win or three on their way to the 0-x drop bracket. When judges screw up, they have the potential to derail entire tournaments and dear God are they going to hear about it from players and pundits alike, who often take things like incorrect rulings as personal affronts. Sh** happens, folks, even to the best of us. When you get right down to it, “judges” as a whole are very good at their jobs, and the astounding thing is they are always trying to get better. In spite of being underpaid. In spite of having to deal with bitchy players all the time. In spite of having a very difficult job in the first place.
Thank you judges, for doing what you do so well.
The Pro Tour
When you think of the “face” of the Pro Tour, who do you think of? Randy Buehler, who is in the announcing booth for every Sunday in memory? Maybe a couple of you in the know think of Scott Larabee, who is always on the mike at the end of webcasts congratulating the winners and inviting you back to the next PT. He’s a pretty good choice and someone who does a lot of work for few public kudos (he’s also in charge of tournaments on MODO and he’s also a prince among men, but never mind that), but there are a whole host of folks that you never see or hear of that have a massive impact on the game’s most public forum. (And pardon me if I screw up anybody’s title, yer all Aces and I’m an idiot without an organization chart sitting in front of him.)
When I think of the Pro Tour, I generally think first of Renee Roub and Whitney Williams, the two amazing ladies who put the show together each time. They are smart, funny, tough, and always willing to listen to suggestions for improvements. I also think of Andy Heckt, the head of the judge program and somebody who works tirelessly to make sure that the judges know their shiz and are working for the betterment of playerkind. The judge program is light years better since he’s been in charge (or so the judges tell me).
I also think of people like Laura Kilgore, a fixture at the retail booth for every Pro Tour since I started attending, John Grant, master of the smackdown for running dirty cheats and he of sound musical tastes, Chris Galvin, Cubs fan, VP of something important and singer of the world’s finest rendition of “Jambalaya.” None of these are people that you see in coverage or even probably notice if you attend a Pro Tour, but all of them are integral to the function of the game’s biggest stage, do a great job, and are fine people to boot. I’m pleased simply to have been able to make their acquaintances over the years and just wait until you see what they’ve cooked up for Worlds.
From a personal standpoint, three other people need special mention from me for making my own life better/easier. Greg Collins is the editor of the Pro Tour coverage and works unending hours at Pro Tours to try and make sure that the product on the page is as good as humanly possible. He’s a good man that we writers rarely get to hang out with at PTs because he’s either working or sleeping nearly the entire time. Special thanks as well to Ron and Reiko Foster, an incredible couple who make the jobs in Japan a delight, and Dale Aitken, the Australian head of Wizards Asia who is one of the best dinner companions around.
Wizards R&D
Over the years I have bashed R&D’s mistakes as hard as anybody, but I have also come to feel like I have friends in R&D instead of simply viewing them as this faceless body of men (and they are all men) who have limitless potential to screw up a great game. R&D takes almost as many shots from the public as judges do, but the truth is that they are just as vigilant about improving what they do and how they do it, and they only want to turn out the best product possible.
I’m going to go on record here as stating that the entire Kamigawa Block was one of the best and most skilltesting Limited environments the game has ever seen. Whine about it all you want to (and more than a few players have), but Kamigawa had a ton of flavor, a million things to keep track of on the board, and a sea of shifting archetypes across set releases. It was a tough environment that generally rewarded good players. Kudos for that, even if you guys lost the audience somewhere in all the unpronounceable names.
I also want to thank R&D for Ravnica, which is fun to draft, great for Constructed, and hopefully signifies another golden age of Magic. I make almost all of my income via Magic-related activities, so its success is a very big deal to me, and the energy Ravnica has kicked off in the playerbase is incredible. I hope that this continues through the rest of the block and explodes into a new generation of players who now think that Ravnica Block Draft is the greatest thing since sliced bread. You done good with this one, boys… take a moment to pat yourselves on the back.
The StarCityGames.com Family
Before I ever became editor of this fine website or even began writing for it, I was a fan. Since then, I’ve become friends with the men who make things happen around here and it has been a rewarding experience. None of what you see on the page would exist without all the hard work that Pete Hoefling, The Ferrett, Ben Bleiweiss, and countless others have put in. They have given tens of thousands of people daily reading for years now and provided the opportunity for a number of those folks to earn extra money by writing about the game we all love.
I also want to thank all of the writers, whether they are the best of the Featured staff or just someone who submitted their one work and then disappeared from our page, though presumably not from the game. My job revolves around making these folks look as good as possible, but great content from them makes me look good as well. I think that our website is an excellent piece of work, but it would be pretty terrible if none of these folks cared about producing memorable material for you guys to digest, and trust me – they do care. Almost nobody writes Magic articles just for the money — it’s not worth the time. Pizza delivery likely pays better and you don’t get nearly the same level of criticism from the guy you gave a sausage and pepperoni when he really wanted ham and bacon. We have a great website because our writers want to consistently produce great material.
Thanks for making me want to start work every day. Not everyone is as lucky as that.
You Guys
The last set of people I want to thank are the people who read and react to what we have to say on a daily basis. You are a tough crowd, but Magic thrives because it has a community of concerned players behind it, dissecting every detail of what goes on. Without you this website wouldn’t exist, the game would have died off years ago, and the world would be a considerably worse place than it currently is. Thank you for reading, for writing, for playing, and for caring.
Hug your families, have some pie with whipped cream for me, and enjoy some football on the tube with people you are close to. I’ll be here in China, flabbergasted that I’m lucky enough to have all the opportunities this silly game has served up, and tremendously thankful to every one of you that has made all of this possible.
Teddy Card Game
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