Author: Richard Drijvers

Reports

RPTQ 9-12-2018: Tournament Report

| Richard Drijvers

I want to share with you all the experiences I had up to and including the RPTQ on december 9th. I hope you find some cool takeaways for yourselves.

Application process
RPTQ’s were definitely on my ‘Judge bucket list’. With them moving out of organized play this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity. I blocked the day in my schedule and wrote this cover letter:

I have not judged an RPTQ and would very much like to change that. As you probably remember from the last 2 Dutch Nationals I am highly motivated to ensure the tournament runs smooth and everything resolves correctly. I have tons of PPTQ experience and am really curious about the atmosphere and level of play at this kind of tournament.

Having worked for Martijn (the TO for the RPTQ) in the past, he did not hesitate to accept my application. Thus began the process of prepping for the tournament.
The first thing I did was make a post on the regional L2+ forum looking for information on RPTQ’s. Niels gave me a reply that contained some of the information I was looking for, and set me up for the next steps in my preparation.

Preparation
When the HJ (Jasper) was selected, we started mailing back and forth to discuss how to do things. I scoured the blogs for articles and set goals for preparation. The format was Modern and I wanted to be completely updated. That meant a couple of things;

I want to stress the importance of tournament reports. Reading about the good practices other Judges are applying is setting me up for success in a big way. Don’t underestimate the value of just one good take away in a report. Also, I love reading how someone overcomes a particular challenge, interprets and executes policy, etc. This report is also meant to set you up for success.

You probably noticed I do a great amount of preparation. That has mostly to do with these being activities I enjoy a ton, and also lessons learned from the past. I used to take a lot of things for granted and made many assumptions for which I’ve suffered the consequences. So nowadays I do a lot more prep, because it is fun and because my performance will be better.

The tournament logistics would not be a challenge as the HJ has worked a lot in this venue and we had a dedicated scorekeeper. My task would mainly consist of covering the floor, handling deck checks and paper.

An important part of prep is getting a good night’s sleep before the tournament. SoI made sure I got that and then went on my way to Rotterdam.

The day of the tournament
I always pack a regular shirt for when I am off duty and an extra Judge shirt. The car was gassed up on the day before so onwards to Rotterdam. I always leave early so that I can have a relaxed ride over. On a Sunday, parking is free and I was the first to arrive at the store. Jasper and Martijn joined me shortly and I set foot inside Magic United for the first time. Back in my days as a player I used to order there a lot, and I have worked for Martijn before, but it was my first time in the store. I made sure to take in all the important stuff regarding bathrooms, entrances and exits, table numbers, WER PC’s, printers,etc. before the tournament started.

I had a good briefing with Jasper after which we set up the space for the pre registered 44 players. There was a clear difference in our approach; I was way more analytical and trying to set up structures for everything, while having a relatively low amount of players perhaps did not really require that. I liked the fact that my opinion was heard, was pleased with the plans that were made both in advance and during the briefing. Time for execution!

The tournament
The good preparation really showed throughout the day. Having a dedicated scorekeeper means one can truly focus on the players. Not having to handle WER or printing stuff meant I had a lot of time to watch matches. Deck checks were super smooth too, as these players know what sleeves to use, how to fill in a decklist and what goes inside their deckbox and what doesn’t. The structure was 6 rounds of swiss (32+ players), but unfortunately the 47 player threshold was not reached. This meant that only the finalists would qualify for the Pro Tour.

RPTQ vs PPTQ
I was very curious about the difference between these kinds of tournaments. The biggest difference as for the players, was their familiarity with tournament rules, regulations and good practices. These players know to show up on time, how to handle bathroom breaks and how to turn in result slips. Also, their technical play is a lot better. I only gave out a couple of game play errors during 6 complete rounds of swiss. At your friendly local game store, it is not uncommon to have people playing with little to no understanding of how competitive Magic works. It was refreshing to have all high quality decklists and players so accustomed to how we do things. I never saw Magic players listen to announcements so closely before.

Floor Judging
I tried to apply all the lessons learned throughout the year on dedicated Floor Judging. When I check on a match, the first thing I check are the lifepads. Are both players keeping track? Do they have the same life totals? If there are discrepancies, it’s good practice to try and solve them. Also stuff like energy, poison etc. needs to be properly tracked.
Then I start counting cards to make sure nothing funny is going on. I also listen on how the communication is going. Most matches were a lot more tense, even from an early stage in the tournament. Quite logical, because so much is on the line. Fortunately there was also some goofing around, and a certain Mr. Alexandre Darras cracked me up from time to time.
I also wanted a good metagame overview, and with the format being Modern, the room had almost as many archetypes as it had matches. I was expecting a lot of Arclight Phoenixes, KCI and Amulet, and I was only wrong about the last one. When deck checking we tried to focus on the decks in contention for Top 8 as much as possible, but I also made sure to have a recheck in there once in a while. As you can see I had loads of stuff to do and also had great fun.

As a floor Judge, you are highly visible and I was approached by several players/playing Judges to talk about the Judge Program and changes to organized play. I could handle most questions and have no issues with giving my personal opinion or talking about program philosophy, but had a really hard time talking with a motivated L1 on how to become L2. I honestly have no clue how to do that right now, and I sincerely hope that this changes soon.

Cool stuff happening
Rules question
There is a Cryptic Command on the stack, chosen modes being: return target permanent to its owner’s hand and drawing a card. The target was Shalai, Voice of Plenty. The player controlling the Shalai wanted to respond with a Chord of Calling, searching for a Spellskite. Then the plan is to activate the Spellskite, to change the target from Shalai to Spellskite.

These are all legal game actions. That was my ruling and the match continued on. The result of this play was the Cryptic Command being countered. When discussing it later on with Jasper my spider sense started tingling, and it turns out that these are indeed legal game actions but Spellskite will not be able to change the target. The game had already concluded and the Shalai player had such a big advantage that the Cryptic Command did not really change that, but I made sure to tell both players about the interaction, they were both unaware of this. I apologized to them, and they both were really cool about it.

I keep thinking back on that interaction, and wonder what I could have done to handle that question better. Even if I had realized that particular rules interaction in time, it would have been difficult to give a good ruling, as you don’t want to give strategic information.

Investigation 1
I am watching a match between a Dredge and Tron player. The match is of interest to me as they are in extra turns. The Dredge player has dredged a Stinkweed imp 3 times, hitting important cards such as 3 Creeping Chill and 1 Narcomoeba. This drops his opponent from 15 to 6. He has 3 Prized Amalgam, 2 Bloodghast and the Narcomoeba that just entered the battlefield. He is contemplating whether to attack, the only relevant card on his opponent’s battlefield is a Wurmcoil Engine. Swinging with all his creatures means 14 power, when his opponent block a 3-power Prized Amalgam, 11 damage will come through. 5+6 from the lifelink also equals 11. It was very important for me to properly analyze and investigate, because on the surface it is “just” attacking with a summoning sick creature, but it could be something different entirely.

As he realized this mistake himself before actually going through with it, I did not interfere but made sure to talk about it with Jasper.

Investigation 2
I am consulted by Jasper on a missed trigger from a match he was observing. The trigger belongs to Dark Confidant. If the trigger is missed intentionally, it is Cheating. If it is missed unintentionally, we just have a missed trigger. Quite a big difference! The match is tied at 1-1, the Jund player is at 7 life and staring down at a Shalai, Voice of Plenty. This is turning off a lot of cards in his hand, he has an advantage on the ground but has no answer to the flying Angel. I am very proud of the way Jasper and I handled this delicate investigation in a short amount of time. We had to get the story from both players, needed to know about the composition of the deck, cards in hand and how previous Dark Confidant triggers had been in the past games.

Jasper had been observing this match for quite a while, and stopped the players when he noticed the missing of the trigger. Because the situation was so tense, both players had not become aware of this. I believed that the missing of the trigger was intentional, Jasper did not, as he was standing right behind the player for quite some time, and the player was also aware of him being there.

Investigation 3 – I am called over by a player who has found a Karn Liberated on the floor. It is one of his cards and he does not know how it ended up there. A quick library check confirmed that the library is missing a card. A spectator noticed that the card fell, but has no idea were it came from.

After talking to all the players and the spectator, we could clearly identify this as an honest mistake, the problem was fixed and the match carried on.

I was pleased with good practice on my investigation skills, and made sure to use the techniques and lessons provided to me.

Looking back
This tournament was a really cool experience. The high stakes and high levels of play are something that I have only witnessed a couple of times before. Apart from the rules question mentioned above I am very pleased with my performance.

Looking ahead
As we are finishing the last season of PPTQs, there will be a last round of RPTQs. The date seems to work out so it is likely that I can apply to judge another RPTQ in a couple of months! I got a lot of great practice during this tournament and became aware once more how much I love judging at competitive REL. Now my focus shifts toward the first Benelux Regional, as I will be Head Judging that amazing tournament.

Thanks for reading,
Michiel van den Bussche

Exemplar

Exemplar Wave 14

| Richard Drijvers

Hello everybody and welcome to the Benelux Blog, where we are once again putting a couple of Exemplar recognitions in the spotlight, this time for Exemplar Wave 14! We’ve chosen five entries that we would like to share with you, and asked the recognized judges to enlighten us a bit more on what was going on.

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Exemplar

Exemplar Wave 13

| Richard Drijvers

Hello everybody and welcome to the Benelux Blog, where we are once again putting a couple of Exemplar recognitions in the spotlight, this time for Exemplar Wave 13! We’ve chosen five entries that we would like to share with you and asked the recognized judges to enlighten us a bit more about what was going on.

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Exemplar

Exemplar Wave 12

| Richard Drijvers

Welcome to the Benelux Blog, where today we bring you another Exemplar Recognition Spotlight, this time for Wave 12!
As usual we had the honour of sifting through the recognitions that were given to the many judges in our region, and we’ll highlight a couple of the ones we wanted to give some extra attention in this article.

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Area Captains, Article

10 ways to improve as a Judge

| Richard Drijvers

The idea for this article has been stirring in my mind for quite some time now. As an active member of the BeNeLux community and an Area Captain I frequent a lot of stores and tournaments; places that contain a lot of amazing Magic Judges. Observing and interacting with all of you helped me notice some patterns of behaviour. Written from my own perspective, I have 10 small tips that could help you improve.

1. Write that review

Reviews are a fundamental part of the Judge program. When you write someone a review, you help that person to become a better Judge. This shows that you care for this person and their well-being, because you are making an effort and spending some of your precious free time in order for them to grow.

Writing a review is also a beneficial process for the writer. By observing other Magic Judges, you will hone your observational skills. A written review is at its best when complemented with a feedback conversation. Providing good feedback, and developing good communication are useful skills that are hard to master. Practising this is the only way to progress.The easiest way is to work an event together, but you can also write a review when you are playing or spectating. You could also review someone who gave a seminar. If you happen to have a multi-Judge event coming up, start preparing for that review in advance. Choose a Judge you want to review and make sure to take notes. It sometimes helps to ask them for topics in advance. Maybe that Judge is going to try out something new, or wants to act on previous feedback. If you have gathered some materials for a review, don’t postpone it. Your notes will only be good for a couple of days after the event. After that your memory will fade and your notes won’t be enough to help you to write that awesome review. Plan some time to write your masterpiece.

2. Take practice tests regularly

We’ve all been there, spamming practice tests before an exam to improve our understanding of the rules. I admire everyone’s efforts to pass their test, but ask yourself: when was the last time you tested your knowledge?I am certainly not suggesting you test daily or weekly, but keeping up with new rules and policy every new set release should be doable! Check out the new rules of the mechanics, spend some time with the release notes and read Toby’s blog post regarding policy changes. Players will come to you with questions, and at your next events, these rules and policies will be in effect.

With Judge Center in a difficult state at the time I am writing this article, make sure to use other available resources such as quizlets (like the one for Hour of Devastation), Judge Booth, Judge Classes, and Judge Exams here on Judge Apps.

3. When you answer a question online, refer to the used rule(s)

As players tend to frequent social media, this has become a popular tool to ask questions about rules or in-game situations. I love it when a Judge responds with the correct answer, but dislike when they say: “It works this way because I am a Judge”. Sometimes Judges even include their level in their answer. I would much rather see an answer with a quote of the relevant section in the rules document. This will also let you grow as a Judge, because your understanding of the rules and documents will increase.For your ease, you can find a hyperlinked version of the Magic: the Gathering Comprehensive Rules here.

4. Bring a friend

I admire and respect all of your professionalism and capabilities at events. When you read or hear about events, the amount of players for one Judge varies a ton. Sometimes Judges take on events with 40 or more players single-handedly, even at Competitive REL. I understand that experienced Judges are able to do this. It could however be great to bring a friend! In this case, a less experienced judge.  Imagine the things they could learn from you at this event. Consider the better customer service you can provide to all parties at this tournament.Speaking from a personal point of view, when Judging a PPTQ, I always bring a friend. I get to teach them some things, and they get to teach me. It’s also a lot more fun!

5. Back to your roots

Don’t forget where it all started. Your Local Game Store is still the best breeding pool for new judges. After all, that’s where you started too! Regardless of level or experience, you shouldn’t pursue only the most glamorous events, but a pre release or FNM from time to time will enable you to keep in touch with your local community. They are great fun and it’s a good way to interact with players and TO’s.

6. Get involved in a project

If you go to apps.magicjudges.org/projects you will find a ton of projects looking for help. Find a project that peaks your interests and apply for it. They need your expertise, knowledge and input! Don’t worry about not being the world’s leading expert on the subject. As long as you have a genuine interest and a willingness to put in the time, your efforts will be appreciated.You all know how much fun it is to Judge alongside a friend at a tournament. Engaging and interacting together during a project also accomplishes this goal.

7. The Gathering(s)

Our region is blessed with an abundance of amazing Judge dinners (4-8 per year) and conferences (approximately 3 per year).The dinners are a social gathering, where you can catch up with everyone and talk about Magic while you’re at it. Judges from all areas and levels are represented and food always tastes better in good company.

Conferences are more complex. They are also social events, but with a strong educational purpose. They offer a great opportunity to get more acquainted with your fellow judges over a drink or two in the evenings, with the day being filled with seminars, presentations and workshops.  So you’d better make sure you still get enough sleep, because partying too much may cause you to miss seminars, or worse, fall asleep during them! That would mean you have not made this event into the great learning experience it should be!

The person presenting a topic cares greatly for it, and when he sees you sitting in the crowd on your smartphone, he might get the idea you don’t care or don’t want to be there. Try an open minded and welcoming approach, that is the best atmosphere for a conference.

The seminar schedule is known in advance, so you can add extra value for yourself by being prepared for specific topics. You can also make use of your notepad and write down observations, which you can later turn into reviews. (See tip 1.)

8. Level up your cover letter

When applying for an event, you usually have the option to provide a cover letter. Use this wisely. When a TO or Judge manager is making difficult decisions, the strength of your cover letter is taken into account. You are not required to write a biography, so make sure that it has an appropriate length.Talk about your experiences and motivations. Talk about goals and ambitions. Write about what you can add to this event, or what this event could mean to you. It can be useful to share your cover letter with another person. Have them proofread it for you. Please don’t send in a blank letter!

Want some pointers from an experienced Judge manager? Click on this link.

9. Nominate exemplar behaviour

If you observe someone going above and beyond, please nominate that person. Exemplar behaviour is admirable, inspiring, and deserving of you writing a nomination. The BeNeLux has a project named Exemplar Accessibility that makes it possible for L1s to recognize other awesome Judges. It is possible that you have observed Exemplar behaviour, but are unsure how to write a recognition. This guide is a tremendous help: https://blogs.magicjudges.org/exemplar/recognition-guidelines/
There can sometimes be a small overlap between a review and a recognition. It is possible that you include something in both, or that you write a review and use something you observed that Judge doing to write a recognition. Good observation skills come in handy again!

10. Write tournament reports

It’s a great feeling to log onto Judge Apps and see someone made an effort to write a tournament report. It’s a great learning experience for many reasons.In order to write a decent report, you need to take good notes and gather information required to write down what happened. Plan ahead and decide to write a report up front.

Share experiences and unique logistical challenges you encountered during a tournament. Its an interesting read for your fellow Judges, similar situations might pop up in the future, and they can also ignite the spark for a great discussion.
Gather the most important, difficult or interesting calls and write about your interactions with players, other Judges, TO’s, etc.

The questions you ask the audience are a great learning tool for inexperienced Judges. They get to think and answer, and you can provide them with pieces of information to complete the puzzle. It is also a great way for the Judge community to get to know you. When you write down your thoughts and feelings, I get to know about your motivations, your developed skills and about your goals.

It is not easy to have these sorts of interaction with everyone offline, so use these online tools to spread your message. The atmosphere is friendly and welcoming over in the Benelux Judge group, so please don’t hesitate to share your experiences.

If you feel like an event failed to provide you with enough content, perhaps double up and use two events. You could share the lessons you learned in between events for instance. It is possible you were unhappy with for instance your announcements, and you can share what you changed or are planning to change at your next FNM.

Wrap up

These are my 10 tips for you. If you think I missed something or if you believe one of these should be expanded upon, please let me know! You can respond below or send me a message via JudgeApps.