Tuesday, November 24th – A PTQ player at 3-0 gets deck checked, and it turns out that while his deck contains Soul Stair Expedition, he has listed Sunspring Expedition instead. What do you think is the appropriate Infraction, Penalty, and Fix?
Thursday, October 15th – In a game of Magic, especially in multiplayer, the game can seem somewhat hectic. Indeed, this was something that attracted me to Magic in the first place. After all, there are these tricky spells called Instants that can be played at any time, meaning there are relatively few times where you can execute a plan consisting of more than a couple of moves without your opponent having the chance to wreck you.
Thursday, September 10th – My favorite time to judge is at prereleases, because all of the cards are shiny and new, and nobody knows exactly how they work yet. Players come to you with genuine questions because they don’t understand how something works on a card that you haven’t even seen yet, and that seat-of-the-pants judging is my kind of judging!
Tuesday, August 25th – British Nationals and Grand Prix: Brighton were, for me, a single event, as I was one of the relatively few judges on staff for four consecutive days. I had a great deal of fun there, and this is my tournament report.
Thursday, June 11th – What a hectic month of judging I’ve had! Since we last chatted, I’ve judged at a Regionals in Cardiff, A GPT, a PTQ and a Regionals in Kent held on consecutive days, a London Regionals, and a local Standard tournament to qualify for the Bath Invitational, not to mention playing weekly at the FNM. You would have thought with all that Magic the last thing I would want to do is write about judging, but far from it!
Thursday, May 14th – Every judge, at the beginning of their journey, was not a judge. Also, every judge has to have started as a player at some point. I think this assertion is easy to prove – you learn so much about the game just by attempting to play it, that I can’t really see how you can effectively judge without playing the game.
Thursday, April 16th – Judging is at times a careful balancing act. We want the players to have fun, but fun means different things to different people. Spike has fun by winning, and if his opponent plays fast and loose he’ll look for an opportunity for a free game win, no matter what the personal cost. However, forcing the casual player to play a precise, technical game whilst at an FNM held at a pub with alcohol at most games is an exercise in futility.
Thursday, March 19th – For this week, I want to start by reviewing my poll from last month’s article, then move on to a topic broadly on improvement and feedback for judges.
Thursday, February 19th – I’m interested in connecting the player and judge communities. I’m no Rashad Miller, but I do like to both play and judge, and I get the feeling sometimes that players don’t know what’s going on inside a judge’s head, and sometimes judges don’t know what’s going on inside a player’s head. Riki Hayashi has done a great job of expounding a judge’s thoughts on Slow Play; I’d like to tackle the area of Player-Judge communication.
