BeNeLux

Hi, my name is Michiel Van den Bussche and I am a L2 Judge from Sinaai, Belgium. This story has a lot of history to it, and I considered it worth telling. Given the fact that you are reading this, you probably consider it worthy of some of your time. I want to tell you all about my experiences with the Exemplar Program. I would like to stress that this is all my personal opinion, and completely written from my point of view.
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Hi everyone!

Just like we did for the last Exemplar Wave, we once again would like to put the spotlights on some very deserving Recognitions, and dig just that little bit deeper in the how and why of the actions that led to them. We’ve chosen four Recognitions from Wave 8 that we would like to share with you, and will give the nominees the chance to elaborate on them.

Without further ado, let’s move on to the first Recognition, which is one that was given to Area Captain Thibaut Clause, coming from our very own Regional Coordinator, Richard Drijvers:

“Hello Thibaut,

The Review you submitted for the L2 maintenance requirements really surprised me in a good way. Firstly, it was a review for someone who you had just tested for L1 successfully. Secondly, there were several well thought out strengths in the review. Thirdly, you didn’t emphasize on the new judge’s Areas for Improvement, which is made perfect by your comments in the Comments box. Which brings me to, finally, an outstanding guide for the new judge to get through the wilderness that is the official documents, forums, etc. Well done!!”

We asked Thibaut for his take on this recognition, and he had the following to add:

“Whenever I write a review I try to focus on both the good and bad habits of the judge. I comment on the preparation, the way they help new players, how they pay attention to the matches, …
Then when I get the strengths and the areas for improvement I explain why it’s something great or I give them insights on how to improve.
Moreover, when I write a review for a new judge or a candidate I tell them what is happening for them next and give them the necessary links (apps.magicjudges.org for new judges, the link to the judge classes for the ones who missed their test, …) so they know what to do next!”

We chose this recognition because improving is one of the greatest advantages that can be gained through the Judge Program, and in order to improve, knowing where to put your focus is an extremely important part!
To stay in theme, our next choice is a recognition that was written by the very same Thibaut Clause, this time for Laurent Jaminet:

“During the Aether Revolt Pre-Releases, you were an active participant in the certification of new judges. You moved outside of your community and you were very well prepared to help me out during the interviews. You already knew which questions to ask, you made a plan for the interview, and you had inquired about the candidate in order to be able to be as efficient as possible. Thanks, and continue your great work!”

In order to get more information about this recognition, we talked to Laurent, who had this to say:

“Having been judging for about a year now, I wanted to get to know the different Magic communities in Belgium, and especially in Wallonia. For that reason, Thibaut Clause let me know that he was planning to go to Liège in order to interview some new Judge Candidates.
Step by step, I try to get closer to Level 2, and accompanying Thibaut was an excellent opportunity to learn more. I came prepared with notes amongst which were some examples of card interactions. My goal was to keep the candidate at ease, and not to overwhelm them with my questions.
It turned out to be a very good experience, and it showed me the advantages of becoming a Level 2 Judge and aiding other future candidates.”

There are many ways to get out of the comfortable bubble of your Local Community. This example really highlights a way to do so, while in the meantime also being a great helping hand in improving our Judge Community!

Which brings us to the third Recognition of this article. One of our other Area Captains, Toby Hazes, recognized the efforts of Mark Dragstra:

“Thank you for the “peripherals” you bring to events! This includes the schedule handouts you make for the DOS events (which has gotten to a point where the head judges are tacitly counting on you to do that!) and the judge call bingo cards you make for events, that provide a fun competition between judges throughout the day to see who got the most stereotypical calls. Thanks for making the days easier and funnier! [≡]٩(･ิᴗ･ิ๑)۶”

This sounded like a very intriguing Recognition, so obviously we went looking for more information from Mark himself:

“On a regular basis, we hold the Dutch Open Series in the Netherlands, which is a weekend full of tournaments, drawing between 150 and 200 players each day. This calls for a big judge team (between 5 and 7 judges) with a very complicated schedule. There are multiple tournaments, roles and breaks to be handled. This leads to a different allocation of roles every round. Because I find this impossible to remember, I always make a personalized A6 sheet for every judge. This sheet shows the schedule, their additional assignments, and useful information (side events, price payout, etc.). I probably look at that sheet three times every round.

Once, I made a Quest on the backside of the sheet. It was comprised of nine common calls a judge can encounter during an event. For example calls about Blood Moon or Spellskite. If a judge would get a call that matched a quest, he or she would cross it off and write down the time. At the end of the day, the judge with the most calls crossed off would win a foil Quest for Ancient Secrets, using the time as a tiebreaker. The judge with the least crossed of quests won a foil Unquestioned Authority. The goal of the game was to make judges more engaged in the tournament and in each other. It was the perfect opening to start a conversation.”

Judging can be a chore, for some it can even be a job, but efforts like these, where the tasks become easier, either by giving them more order, or by adding that extra fun-factor to them, can only be deserving of some extra spotlight!
And so we reach our last spotlight recognition of this post, and it is one from (once again) an Area Captain, this time Luxembourg’s Steve Hatto, who had this to say to Artur Queiroz:

“A year ago I was applauding your efforts regarding the casual community in Luxembourg. By now we have seen your project step out of the shadow of the more competitive formats and establish itself in our community. Players that barely showed up for pre-releases join for your regular commander events. You basically took one of our community’s greatest weaknesses and turned it into an asset. Thank you!”

Artur was kind enough to give us some extra insight in the recognition:

“Though I started playing in 1997, I have been a regular on the Luxembourgish scene since 2011, when I moved to the country. During several years I played semi-competitively, often helping less experienced players, which got noticed by our L2 Judge: Steve Hatto. He encouraged me to become L1, and to get a bit more involved in the community, and the non-profit association that was organizing the events: “Les Trolls du Gasperich”.

Being a fan of casual formats myself I quickly realized that the offer in Luxembourg was scarce, too focused on Standard and Limited. With Steve’s (and a few other judges) backup I took on the organization of Commander and other casual limited like Chaos or Conspiracy Drafts. While the first events were a bit ad-hoc, with limited participation (6 to 8 players), they showed there was an interest from the community.

In order to leverage the momentum, I proposed a few measures to increase the participation in the casual events, and in the Luxembourgish player community in general, namely:
– create a website to centralize the static information and to increase visibility
– create a Facebook page to spread information more quickly
– create a Commander League, covering both Multiplayer and Duels

These measures quickly brought results. In terms of Commander crowd, the league was of utmost importance, since it brought better prizes, structure and competitiveness to the format. Players from Luxembourg and the greater region attend regularly, and for some events we reached 15 players, which represents almost 30% of our active community as a whole. Each league ends with a grand finale, where a champion is crowned. We are already in the 3rd edition!

The lesson learned is that when things are done methodically and professionally, people appreciate it and react!”

We chose this one because it shows the importance of building communities. There are many players out there that share the same passion in playing games, but in order to get those people together and playing the game we all love so much, it takes effort from community builders, and many of those can be found right within our very own Judge Community!
With that said, we’ve reached the end of this post, but don’t despair. A new wave of Exemplar Recognitions is coming up soon! We’re already looking forward to read about all your exemplary behaviours and to highlight some of our favourites.

See you soon,
The BeNeLux Blog Team

Hello and welcome to Exemplar Accessibility for the BeNeLux. This is the place where you can submit a recognition for a fellow judge in case you don’t have the means to do it yourself.
The goal for this project is to make recognizing other judges accessible for all judges in the BeNeLux.

For example:

• You judge as a level 1 alongside another judge and you observe that judge going above and beyond of what you expect for their level;
• You observe a judge contributing exceptional content on a forum or blog;
• Perhaps you’ve just ran out of recognition slots for the current wave and you feel like this recognition can’t wait.

Now you have the possibility of recognizing the excellence of that judge in the current wave.

Just as a reminder, you can read more about the Exemplar Program here.
There are also several great articles that tell us how a recognition should be written and what it needs to entail. Here you can find the guidelines and some more explanation.

Now that you’re all up to speed, you’re ready to submit your recognition by filling out this form:

Open in a new Window

It’s not guaranteed that your recognition will be accepted, but it should be alright as long as you stick to the guidelines. It is possible you are contacted by another judge for some additional information about the recognition. If all is well, a L2+ judge will submit the recognition on JudgeApps on your behalf.

Enjoy!
Mark Dragstra

Hi everyone!

The latest window to submit new Exemplar recognitions recently closed, but while we wait for them to go public, we would like to put the spotlights on a couple of nominations from the previous batch. We handpicked some of them to show the many different things Magic Judges can do for the Judge Program, and asked the recipients to give us a short explanation on their side of the story! What happened? Why did it happen? How did it happen? Did it even happen at all? Only one way to find out, and that is to read on!

For our first entry we bring you a recognition made by Riccardo Mangano for Anniek van der Peijl, who was a Level 2 Judge at that time, but has since then added a Level to that number:

This is what Riccardo had to say:

Your article on ODEs was very helpful when I was on the ODE team at GP London. I read it while preparing for the event, and I believe it not only improved my performance a lot, but it also helped me learn much more during that day than I usually would, providing a “theoretical” context for the way things worked in practice and how they could be improved. All of this made it so that, while initially I was unexcited about not being on the main event, I really enjoyed working on ODEs, and I’m now really looking forward to my next opportunity to work in that role.

In order to get some more insight, we asked Anniek about her thoughts on what the recognition was about:

On demand events are a very specific thing. They only happen at GPs (in the way that I was talking about in the article at least), and even then only a small portion of the Judges who are there will be on the on-demand team.

It’s something I had collected a lot of experience and enthusiasm about, but it was hard to share because the audience for this information is quite limited and I don’t know who those people will be for future GPs. That’s why I decided to write an article, so the info would be out there for whoever might be looking for it at some point.

I have gotten feedback about it from Judges all over the world whom I never would have reached otherwise, which is amazing to me.

I’m also very happy that Riccardo became more enthusiastic about on demand events as a result. Thanks Riccardo!

We chose this recognition because it shows the importance of spreading your experience so other Judges can learn from it. Being a master at a certain task is one thing, but being able to teach that skill to other people, and certainly in a way that reaches as many aspiring Judges as this one, more than deserves a shout-out from us! If you’re interested in reading the article for yourself, you can find it here!

Our next entry comes from John Brian McCarthy, who had the following feedback for Level 1 Judge Quinten van de Vrie:

Your responses to players confused about the “combat?” shortcut on Reddit were really helpful (https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgJudge/comments/55d0ar/move_to_combat_and_vehicles/). You explained it clearly, explained why policy works the way it does, and didn’t resort to trying to help them find the “Magic words” to get around it. Thanks for your contributions!

Quinten was kind enough to give us some very insightful follow-up on this recognition:

Sometime around the release of Kaladesh I was browsing Reddit and came across a question on vehicles and the combat shortcut. I had recently read up on the interaction so I knew what the answer was. I typed out my response and added the relevant quote from the MTR. And, just in case anyone came looking for a policy explanation, I linked the article I had read as recommended reading. I stuck around for some follow-up questions and many other Judges added their expertise on the matter.

I did not think anything special had happened there. Answering questions on the internet is one of the ways in which I have familiarised myself with the rules of Magic. It is something that I started doing before I certified as a Judge and it is something that I continue doing. It has forced me to look things up and learn. And it has informed me of what types of questions people have. Knowing those questions allows me to prepare better answers for my local community, as they have many of the same questions. I believe it has helped me become a better Judge.

Last December when the exemplar nominations were posted I was excited to read up on all the cool things my friends from the BeNeLux had done. After reading loads of cool messages I spotted my own name in the list. I was excited, but even more than that, I was really surprised. I had not gotten to Judge all that often. I certainly did not recall having anything exciting happen at my events that had allowed me to demonstrate exemplary behaviour. When I read the author of the recommendation I had received I was completely stumped as I have never met John Brian McCarthy. When I got to the message of the exemplar nomination I had received I was reminded of this Reddit post I had long forgotten about.

I never set out to be an exemplary Judge. I was just killing time on the internet and saw an opportunity to be helpful. I have since learned that being a Judge is about more than the things we do in stores and at events. Taking some time and being helpful improves the community. As it turns out you can do that anywhere.

And that last paragraph hits the spot on why we chose this recognition for a spotlight position! There are many ways to improve and help the community, and in these ages of digital connection, there are no limits on who you can reach.

For our third spotlight, we have a recognition given to L1 Judge Michiel Valcke, by our very own Michiel Van den Bussche (through the medium of Niels Viaene):

I Judged a GPT at your local store. You gave me a review afterwards that was very eloquent and well written. You managed to highlight some of my strong points and also analyze some of my weaknesses spot on. The feedback you gave me was helpful and consisted of stuff I could apply at my next event. It’s not easy to play in an event and at the same time monitor a fellow Judge with such a high level of detail.

From Niels: I want to echo this, writing reviews as a playing Judge is something that is hard to do, yet gives insight in ways a judging Judge could not and I feel it is done not enough and not well enough.

Michiel Valcke had this to add:

When I received the recognition from Michiel and Niels I was very surprised. It had been over a year since that event took place, and I didn’t think of what I did as worthy of a recognition.

As a matter of fact I am more or less a recluse in the BeNeLux Judge world. I became a Judge at my local game-store to help them organise their events and to be an official go-to person for the local players, both new and experienced.

Outside of that you will rarely find me judging an event or attend a Judge conference.

My first concern lies with the local community. I have always felt that one of the greatest difficulties for a community of players to overcome, is the unknown factor. An unknown venue, an unknown Judge, an unknown opponent, etc. can be the barrier that makes a community fold into itself.

To prevent this from happening I invited a lot of other Judges to come Judge at the local shop, and to make their acquaintance with the local players I know so well.

You cannot do this without also offering feedback to the person you have invited. As communities can get closed and the BeNeLux Judge Community is just as much of a community I want to return this opportunity for reflection.

The review I have given to Michiel, and to other Judges, are based on the feedback from the players and my own perception.

It is easy to think that we can’t or aren’t contributing to our communities (for example: because of our limited interaction with other Judges), but even as a “judging recluse” I feel that on a lower and more personal level, I can use these opportunities for the betterment of the communities and the people around me.

I wish to thank Michiel and Niels once more for reminding me this is indeed a valuable thing to do.

For our next recognition we go to another intra-BeNeLux choice, this time from Emilien Wild to Antoine Oria:

Thank you for the Judge Classes you run with Steeve Lhomme in Liège. This has been a problematic area for some time and, so far, our efforts to develop the Judge program there have been fruitless. So seeing you full of energy and enthusiasm in order to tackle this challenge as soon as you were certified is heartwarming.

We asked Antoine for some deeper information on this project, and he presented us with the following:

I’m very proud and surprised for getting this Exemplar Recognition, and it’s a great motivation for me to give even more time to Judge Projects.

It’s really important for Steeve and myself to be able to build a strong Judge community, by increasing the amount of Judges, but also their levels.

Liège was an empty region for many years and restoring a Judge community there is a priority mission for us and Thibault Clause (our Area Captain).

A lot of players were interested in becoming a Judge, but they were afraid of the test and they were not sure of their knowledge.

We both followed the Judge Classes in Namur and we proposed to our Area Captain to start them in Liège too.

We have great tools for other Judges interested in motivating their community, and to give more opportunities for their L0’s to become Level 1 at http://wiki.magicjudges.org/en/index.php/Judge_Classes, and the best way to handle this is by having 2 teachers for 4 students.

As an extra on the side, by giving these classes, we as teachers also learn and grow as a Judge.

It’s not easy to grow a community in a previously barren landscape, and many Area Captains will be able to concur that a huge amount of effort is needed to try and sow the seeds of a healthy Judge populace. It is through hard work from people like Antoine that said communities grow, and that is certainly something to commemorate!

Last, but not least we have the author of the last recognition, Emilien Wild, now on the receiving end of a recognition by Jack Doyle:

Emilien, at GP Lille’s ODEs on Sunday, you had a chair for ODE runners near the printer. This solved many problems — it gave tired Judges a rest after a long weekend, it ensured that there was always someone ready and responsible for the next bracket, and it allowed Judges to share their experiences with me, the scorekeeper. Because of this simple trick, Sunday ODEs were super smooth, and I had some really interesting conversations with Judges I would not have otherwise personally interacted with. To top it all off, you were supportive of the lead without being obstructive or taking over, and I think that’s a skill very lacking in today’s leaders. Keep up the great work, Emilien.

Of course we also asked Emilien for his input:

The idea was that the lead was less experienced than me in that position, so I was looking for small things I could suggest to improve his system, without overtaking it, so he could be fully in charge. It was more about making the execution smoother than suggesting changes of plan.
Often, systems could be improved easily by adding some physical component to them, making them easier to understand. Plus, having a line is easier to maintain if you provide an incentive to stay in line. Chairs are good incentive to tired Judges, and a line of runners makes sure that no event is left waiting.
Good logistics make the human nature work for you.

As a Judge with a bit more experience than average, you can often be put in situations where it is hard to keep yourself from trying to take over. We thought this recognition showed that not only is it possible, those seemingly small additions can also have a huge influence on the experience for the people involved!

With that said, we’ve reached the end of this post, but don’t despair, because a new wave of Exemplar Recognitions is coming up soon! We’re already looking forward to read about all your exemplary behaviours and highlight some of our favourites.

See you soon,

The BeNeLux Blog Team