When you judge seven large multiday tournaments in one year, you tend to make friends quickly. These connections come in handy when you’re in need of some highly talented and motivated individuals to assist you on a special project.
Almost two months ago, Ask the Judge ended its run here at StarCityGames.com. It was a sad day for many people, myself included. It wouldn’t be such a stretch to say that I grew up as a Judge on AtJ. I’ve seen many other people say the same. I thought it was possible to keep some aspects of it going strong, particularly the Feature Friday articles. After all, what is my column if not a continuation of that very tradition of bringing judging issues to the player base.
My first thought was that I wanted to recruit the cream of the Level 2 crop. It’s not like I have anything against L3s. They are quite obviously the pillars of our community. Seamus, Nick, Johanna, and Chris have had a lot of influence on my own work on the floor and on the net. But I think the L3s had a lot of “been there, done that” to their writing. Everything’s been written about somewhere, so I wanted to find some fresh, hungry Judges who could bring a new perspective to these old issues, and maybe find some new issues along the way.
Another thing was that Feature Friday was always written more for Judges or people who wanted to be Judges. As a Judge, I never minded this, and I learned a lot. To this day, I still go back and read those articles to gain insight on a topic or know what’s already been written in the past. However, as a resource for players, FF was always lacking.
For me, focusing on the player angle was tied closely with getting L2s. Once you reach Level 3, you are much more Judge than player (Rashad Millers aside) because you have a responsibility to your community. At a seminar at Worlds on Judge levels and responsibilities, several people expressed outrage at the thought of a Level 3 choosing to play at his or her “local” GP (with a healthy amount of debate about what constitutes local).
After getting the go ahead from Pete, I set myself out on the task of finding four Judges for “The Justice League.” (The name started as a bit of a joke, but then again so did “The Riki Rules.”) I found my first candidate at Worlds. You may recall my story of one Paul Smith from Great Britain asking Judge Coordinator John Carter for his opinion on this very column. I talked with him about it, and it became clear that it wasn’t just idle curiosity that drove him to ask that question. Paul was inquiring about other writing opportunities for Judges on the Internet, and was looking to contribute somewhere. So why not here?
Getting Paul on the team added an important international flavor that I always loved from Feature Friday. One of things that strikes me when I talk to Judges from other countries is just how different things are out there, especially in Europe. Reading about Johanna Virtanen criss-crossing European journeys was a treat because we got to read about tournaments with a completely different flavor than the typical U.S. fare. It’s hard to say how much of that element Paul can bring to us. As he has told me, “it’s hard to know how things are different from the U.S. because I don’t know what things are like in the U.S.” This is true, and the shoe fits on my foot in the same exact way. The best that either of us can do is write about what we know and see what naturally develops, see which parts of our stories resonate with people as “Hey, we don’t do things like that at our tournaments!” And from that, we can all learn something new.
Paul won’t just be writing about how things are in merry old England all the time. Like all the members of the team, he’ll bring more general Judge issues to the table as well, and maybe a few TO issues. You may have missed the announcement, but all Judges worldwide have also been certified as TOs. It’s an acknowledgement that we already know how to run tournaments, so we might as well… run tournaments. Great! I’m currently going through the steps to activate all of my new TO powers, and I hope to be able to bring some new benefits to the local store where I Judge, Drom’s Comics and Games.
Meanwhile, there’s a lot about TOing that is fairly mysterious to me, and to all those other new Judge/TOs as well as players. Paul was a TO for some time previous to this big shakeup, so my hope is that he can bring some insight to all of us in this area.
I’m often credited with being a road warrior. Last year I made it to Philadelphia, Hollywood, Chicago, Denver, Berlin, Atlanta, and Memphis. Would you believe that there was a Judge that managed Philadelphia, Hollywood, Indianapolis, Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Atlanta, and Memphis, as well as a State Championship and several PTQs outside his home state. He has a current streak of six domestic GPs in a row, and plans on doubling that by the end of 2009.
James Elliott isn’t just well-traveled, though. He is also an excellent Judge both on the floor and off. At any tournament where James has a car, either because he drove his own car or rented one to get from the airport, he is constantly ferrying Judges back and forth from the airport to the hotel. I believe he made close to a dozen such trips at Memphis, and he never ever accepts my offers to pay for gas or otherwise compensate him. That’s about as good of a summary of James Elliott as you can get, and yet it doesn’t even begin to tell his story.
Hopefully James will tell us all the rest of the story. A lot of his articles, including the first one later this week, should be of the road warrior variety, tournament reports from his numerous journeys. After reading some of his past reports, I’m heartily looking forward to his take on Grand Prix: Los Angeles. Despite working the same event as him, I hardly saw him out on the floor and I reckon that we must have had dramatically different tournament experiences.
I met the next Judge at U.S. Nationals 2008. He immediately caught my attention being from Roanoke, Virginia, home of StarCityGames.com and uber-Judge R. Jared Sylva. In fact, he used to be Jared’s roommate. That’s all you had to say to catch my attention, Nicholas Sabin.
Of course, Nick distinguished himself in many other ways, particularly with his unique brand of probing questions. I call them “Nick Sabin Questions,” for reasons that may not be immediately obvious to everyone. At Worlds, Nick came up to me and said, “Let me ask you a question, Riki,” which is always a very exciting thing for me. His question had to do with essentially decertifying all Judges, just busting them all back down to Level Zero. At that point, Nick proposed that after six months, everyone would retest.
Then what? Would the Judges then receive new levels based on their test scores? I asked Nick this follow up question, and he turned the question right back on me. Did I think that was a good idea? What would happen? It was a fascinating series of questions. On one hand, there are many people who believe that, after a certain point, Judges actually lose some of their edge in terms of rules knowledge. On the other hand, being a high level Judge isn’t all about rules knowledge. I think those are the two conflicting essences that the questions are meant to make you think about. I think. It’s hard to say with Nick Sabin Questions. But that’s what I love about them. Again, I’m not saying that we’ll be getting a Nick Sabin Question from his article every month, but his ability to ask interesting questions should be a benefit to everyone involved.
Like Paul, Nick is also a TO, or was a TO before the mass transition. And as someone who in intimately involved in the inner-workings of the StarCityGames.com operations as both an Organizer and Judge, he might be able to tell us some interesting stories behind the rapidly growing StarCityGames.com Standard Open series.
The final Judge is a bit of a dark horse amongst a team of dark horses. I’ve only worked with him at one event, Grand Prix: Denver, but Max Knowlan struck me as the next generation. He actually tested for L2 there at Denver and, based on my limited interaction with him on the deck checks team, I fully expected him to pass. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I noticed that Max posted frequently on the SCG forums under the name Moogle. Technically it’s MoOgLe, or some other variation with a bunch of uppercase and lowercase letters, but I hate silly Internet things like that. Leet can go to hell, and I have only reluctantly adopted lol in my vocabulary.
Despite his annoying forum name, Max Moogle showed himself to be knowledgeable, courteous, and an excellent ambassador to the player community. It’s my hope that his spirit of community will translate nicely to articles. Another factor with Max is the he still straddles the line between Judge and player. As a fresh and young L2, he still hasn’t become a regular on the GP circuit like the others. Being from Vancouver, Canada may also present a slight roadblock in his traveling endeavors. Playing as much as he judges should help Max relate better to most of you. It’s one of the reasons why I have been making an attempt to get out and play more often.
On that note, I want to briefly mention the Conflux Prerelease. I had the chance to play in the 2HG flight and rocked the event to the tune of a 3-0-1 record with Matt Benjamin. He had a solid Esper deck with Sharuum the Hegemon and the big time 5/5 milling Demon [Extractor Demon — Craig]. My own deck RG with splashes of Black (Sprouting Thrinax, the pump for Viashino Slaughtermaster, and the 1/1 Underworld Dreams parasite, which is nuts when two opponents are drawing cards) and White (a Ranger of Eos who could only get Underworld Parasite, and a Titanic Ultimatum). The Ultimatum was an awesome game-winner, or close to it, in two of the rounds, and it is much better in a format where what was previously overkill becomes relevant damage. Basically we played defense with our multitude of burn spells, then refilled with card draw (Kiss of the Amesha, two Courier Capsules, and Soul’s Majesty) to take over in the late game when our opponent’s sputtered on their draws.
I was the Scorekeeper for the Main Event flight, which was a solid 250+ players, and I received an amazing compliment from the TO when he called me “the new Nick Fang.” LSV and Gerry Thompson were out gunslingers, and Gerry had a story for the ages while playing with my EDH Doran deck. His opponent ripped up a Blacker Lotus to play Chaos Confetti to wreck his board. When I got home and opened up my deck box, I found the remains of said Blacker Lotus on top of my deck.
We also had an artist, Mark Hyzer. He’s only a half dozen cards in Shards block, but I must say that is art is awesomely creepy. Take a close look at Corpse Connoisseur. He had plenty of other pieces from non-Magic sources that looked like they were straight out of Silent Hill. While he didn’t have any original art for sale, I did add to my collection with a nice sketch. According to Mark, it is the original sketch of Kederekt Leviathan that he sent into his art director. The sketch is basically the same as the card, except there are a bunch of Grixis zombies in little air balloons. Air balloons! Apparently the art director didn’t like the balloons and told Mark to take them out. Whatever. They give the picture the perspective to show you just how big the Leviathan is, plus did I mention that the balloons seem to be made out of the Leviathan’s skin? Wow.
My hope is that we will be able to continue with these Regional Prereleases. Adding the gunslinging and artist were definite pluses to the specialness of the event. I’m sure there are more unique things on the horizon to continue to build these back up to where they used to be. I’ll be curious to see what other writers have to say about these “intermediate” Prereleases. Meanwhile, I’m signing off from my local Prerelease at Drom’s where Mark Rodriguez is inexplicably playing two of the 0/3s over Realm Razer and the 6/6 regenerator [Vagrant Plowbeasts — Craig] in a RGW deck. Go figure. I told him that if he could win two rounds with it, he would be “the man.” I like my chances.
Until next time, this is Riki Hayashi telling you to call a Judge.
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