This post will be a continuation of my last post, going over the second half of the year, and some broad lessons to be learned. In later posts I plan to go more in depth on specific calls, policies, or tournaments, but for now I’m mostly going to continue waxing poetic.

If the first half of my 2023 was about new opportunities – I got to HJ multiple RCs, AJ my first major SCG event, I leveled up, and more – then the back half was about refocusing on The Gathering. I had a lot more time as team lead than head judge, I got to travel more, I moved across the country … a lot of things happened that reminded me of what this thing of ours is really all about.

September 28, 2023

Some setup: at a past event, my pal Sam had accidentally walked into a gathering point.

You know, as one does.

Now, Sam had once given me some some very detailed and actionable feedback (below), so as a good friend, I naturally felt the need to repay that gift.

Another friend, Tobi, makes stickers and frequently (always?) brings them to events for the staff to have, so when it was discovered that two of the stickers could be combined to reproduce Sam’s moment of glory, I knew what I had to do. I approached Sam between presentations at a judge conference and asked for his autograph.

Sam and I have become good friends since we started judging together, which I think speaks to why judging is great and unique. When we met, we lived 500 miles away from each other. In any normal world we would never have known the other existed. Thanks to judging, we’ve been able to be there for each other in good and bad times, we’ve traded reviews with slightly more meaningful feedback than I showed here, and now we play D&D together regularly.

It’s been great.

Sometimes it can be easy to lose track of what drew us all to judging in the first place. Sometimes it can get easy to give in to our baser instincts. When a friend gets staffed for some event position you’d applied for over you, or it looks like a former mentee is going be promoted to a shiny new level before you, it’s understandable to have a moment of jealousy, or disappointment, or anger.

In those moments, I try to remember what I can control. I can control how I behave. I can control whether I reflect or whether I lash out. I can attempt to improve myself, or I can cut others down. I can reread the IPG and write a review, or I can spread a rumor. And ultimately, I believe that how I act defines who I am – both as a judge and as a person – more than a fleeting feeling.

I can try to stay focused on what drew me to judging, and all the great friendships I have gained from it.

Judging is great for a hundred reasons, but at the end of the day, it’s good to remember it’s about The Gathering.

December 1, 2, 3, 2023

At the end of the year, I was fortunate enough to be staffed for two events in Europe on back-to-back weekends, which made it affordable enough to make the trip and stay for a little bit. I spent about two weeks across the pond, from Wednesday to Wednesday.

The first event was The Four Seasons. This was an event I had heard was unique and fun and special and etc etc before, but I hadn’t had the chance to attend before, so I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.

The event was a blast.

This tournament was doing several things differently than I was used to, and it was interesting to see what was the same as things in the USA, and what had changed. The biggest difference from most events was that this event was more laid back than most Competitive REL events. Proxies were allowed, and the tardiness policy was more forgiving than what was laid out by the IPG. This was for some reasons you might guess (the event was stretched between multiple halls, moving between the two halls required passing through a small, tight corridor that constricted traffic significantly, and there were no speakers set up in the second hall) and some reasons you might not guess (there was a bar in the building, and I was told to be prepared for several players to show up to their match with a beer in hand, saying “I was in line at the bar when the pairings went up … there was nothing I could have done to get here on time”).

I was slightly worried going into the event, as I knew it was a community-focused tournament. Given I wasn’t a part of the local community, it crossed my mind I could be seen as taking someone else’s place, or something along those lines – but I was blown away by my reception. Everyone was incredibly kind and welcoming, and I had a great time talking about judging with everyone.

While I was playing tourist on my way from The Four Seasons to the next event, the aforementioned Sam and I did enough math to take a guess at the time zones involved and chatted a bit:

Between the two events I had four days alone, with a lot of train trips. It was easy to find the time to think on how lucky I was to be where I was, doing what I was doing, thanks to judging.

December 8, 9, 10, 2023

The second leg of my trip to Europe took me back to Barcelona. My last visit to Barcelona seemed like a tough act to follow, but there was a lot of room for this tournament to be worse than my last event in Barcelona and still be a great weekend.

The Four Seasons tournament in Bologna, Italy did not present any large language problems for me (I live up to the American stereotype and only speak one language, English), but on this visit to Barcelona I needed to get a translator several times. Going to a call and discovering the players don’t speak the same language you do is an interesting experience.

I think you can get pretty far with pointing at cards and the occasional grunt or thumbs up/thumbs down, but it does require the players to buy in. If they’re unwilling to attempt to communicate the question because they’re just assuming it will be wasted time, you’re going to have to get a translator even if you feel you could have muddled through it.

The questions I had to get translators for were not terribly complex, and I remember feeling slightly frustrated with my inability to get the players to go ahead and try to ask me their question. Next time I’m headed outside my usual stomping grounds, I’m going to make more of an effort to memorize some key phrases.

(The questions were: 1 – if AP uses Teferi, Time Raveler’s -3 and targets NAP’s Orcish Bowmasters, does the Bowmasters trigger from the Teferi letting AP draw a card? 2 – if AP casts Persist and NAP responds with Commandeer while they have no creatures in their own graveyard, does the Commandeer give NAP the creature from AP’s graveyard?)

This felt much more like an event I was used to than The Four Seasons. As soon as I walked in the doors I felt like I knew what was happening, where to go if I had a question, and so on. Other than the fact I managed to arrive late one day because I was not used to using a functional public transit system so I got on a train heading the wrong direction, LMS Barcelona had no major hurdles.

Well, that’s not quite true – there was a hurdle. At one point my team put our hands in for a quick cheer (3 2 1 Deckchecks!) and the poor scorekeeper, not used to seeing such displays of fun or positivity, went a little green around the gills. Thankfully, no medical assistance was required.

December 15, 16, 17, 2023 – On Debt

My final event of the year was Dreamhack Atlanta. I had been one of the head judges for DH San Diego in April, and one of the head judges this time had come out to team lead for me then, so I had to repay the favor.

I’ve often thought about the idea of debt, in terms of judging. I think there’s something weighty to the idea of owing a debt to some ancestor, some forebearer … a debt that can never be quantified exactly, or truly paid back, per se – but it still means something.

Put it like this: imagine you’re working a large event like an SCGCon or an LMS or whatever, having a tough time with a call, and someone more experienced than you takes you under their wing to explain how to tell if it’s GRV or LEC. They’re doing you a favor. When they take the time to give you some feedback, they’re helping you out, for no immediate or tangible benefit to themselves. They could have just slacked off a bit or not bothered to shadow you on that call, and their own life would have been basically the same. That’s perhaps something that is owed, but it goes a lot further than that.

If that conversation happens on the main, what about the sides folks? If the sides people weren’t doing their job right, then sides burns down, and then the main has to send reinforcements over, so then the main is stretched thin and this hypothetical shadowing can’t happen. So you owe something to the sides lead who did enough planning they were set up for success, and to the sides folks who hustled hard enough to see the plan in action. Then there’s the TO who staffed adequately enough you were able to pause on calls for a moment to discuss this scenario – that’s not free.

How about the mentors of the person who shadowed you? The folks who answered the questions those mentors asked on some forum or other, when they were just starting out? And so on. All of these threads, connecting one judge to another and another. Trying to actually quantify all these threads or assign varying weights of importance to them would be both impossible and meaningless, but they’re still all there, binding us together.

Maybe that’s what it means to be a part of a community.

Frequently, I consider the debts I owe.

Once upon a time, an RC put together a conference in Montana to try to jumpstart a community there. An ex convinced me to go and take the test, maybe get my L1. The LGS owner let us use their space for free. An L3 was kind and patient with my basic questions at FNM, when others made me feel like a burden. Friends convinced me I should get my L2. A TO took a chance on me. A HJ advocated for me to be given a chance. Someone lost some sleep so they could finish writing me a review. A friend came to help me out at a big tournament. Someone started a groupchat.

When we forget what we owe each other, when we lose sight of what the community was before us and what we want it to be after us, we lose something important.

Who do you owe?