Grand Prix Houston 2018 - Welcome to the Fold

The first Grand Prix in Texas this year has nine new judges to Welcome to the Fold.

Brandon Abbott

Name: Brandon Abbott
Level: Level 1
Location: The Colony, Texas
Region: USA – South
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 1994-1995 some time (A.Nights, Antiquites, Ice Age)
L1 Certification Date: May 1, 2014
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Playing Legacy
Occupation: IT Professional
Random fact about yourself: I used to fly remote control helicopters
Why did you become a judge?: Store owner asked me to become his local judge for events
What excites you most about this event?: I think the work will be hard, but really looking forward to the downtime with fellow judges and playing/relaxing/getting to know them.
What worries you most about this event?: Not really anything, since I am on the admin team I don’t expect I will be taking many calls. My weakest area is being a floor judge. I worry about getting a call I don’t know how to handle
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: How the different teams at GPs are run, learning everything that goes into running a big event like a GP.
Who are your mentors?: Josh McCurley & Jim Shuman
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: I really want to become better with the IPG and handling tough calls
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: I am trying to work more of the bigger events to get over my trepidation of taking calls
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: Everyone is very nice and helpful
What is your favorite Magic memory?: Playing kitchen table magic with some of the older cards back in college. I still laugh whenever I ask someone if they took “”Mana Burn”” and they have that confused look like I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Garth Beavers

Name: Garth Beavers
Level: Level 1
Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Region: USA – South

Roberto Herrador

Name: Roberto Herrador
Level: Level 2
Location: Guatemala, Guatemala
Region: Hispanic America – North

Robert Kalvoda

Name: Robert Kalvoda
Level: Level 1
Location: San Angelo, Texas
Region: USA – South
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: February 2014
L1 Certification Date: May 20, 2018
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Aetherworks Marvel
Occupation: Delivery Driver & Full-Time Collee Student
Random fact about yourself: I’ve been playing Piano since I was 4
Why did you become a judge?: To further my knowledge of the rules as well as interact with others like myself.
What excites you most about this event?: The fact that the main event is sealed.
What worries you most about this event?: Possibly giving incorrect rulings.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: How different roles in an event interact.
Who are your mentors?: Phillip Robinson and Robert Milhon
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Honestly, just myself.
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: I’ve talked with others about how game mechanics and rules apply to different areas of a game.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: The diversity we have in players and decks.
What is your favorite Magic memory?: Having lantern control finished.

Scott Larson

Name: Scott Larson
Level: Level 1
Location: Cypress, Texas
Region: USA – South

Danny Mullinax

Name: Danny Mullinax
Level: Level 1
Location: Loudon, Tennessee
Region: USA – Midatlantic
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: May 1999
L1 Certification Date: November 2, 2017
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Slinging spells with friends both casual and competitive.
Occupation: Mitutoyo Metrology Application Engineer
Random fact about yourself: 2004 Georgia State Team Chess Champion
Why did you become a judge?: To help my local community with learning and playing the game (correctly).
What excites you most about this event?: MY FIRST GP! I’m excited to learn as much as I can to take back to my community and future events.
What worries you most about this event?: Standing on concrete for 8+ hours a day…
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: I’m looking to gain confidence in my abilities, specifically regarding policy. Though I’m just judging sides at Regular REL so I’m looking to talk to more judges about scenarios that may come up.
Who are your mentors?: Tim Zimmerman
What is your favorite Magic memory?: 2HG Sealed with my wife during Gatecrash abusing the Extort mechanic.

Wesley Norman

Name: Wesley Norman
Level: Level 1
Location: Maple Ridge, Canada
Region: Canada
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 2004
L1 Certification Date: October 31, 2016
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Playing all 5 colours
Occupation: Retailer
Random fact about yourself: I go back and play through Final Fantasy Tactics about as frequently as new Magic sets are released and have been for going on 20 years now.
Why did you become a judge?: To help out my local magic community
What excites you most about this event?: Getting to meet other judges
What worries you most about this event?: The ever-present threat of mistakes while taking calls on the floor
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: More about judging at Comp.
Who are your mentors?: Tobias Vyseri
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: My memory’s not great, so being able to remember the IPG is difficult. There’s a lot of acronyms and different fixes and exceptions that makes it hard for me to get it to stick
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: I tend to remember parts of the IPG based on common situations, more than what the actual infraction & fixes are.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: New blood constantly entering at about the exact rate the older players end up not having time for the game.
What is your favorite Magic memory?: After the change years ago that Core sets wouldn’t push each other out of standard, a friend remarked at the sheer number of planeswalker cards that would be in the format at once for a short time. So I played a deck that was one-ofs of all of them. One of the players at that Game Day that I beat tilted after losing to what he called “”Planeswalker Aggro”” and it’s kind of become tradition for me to play one-of Planeswalkers in Standard ever since.

Roger Valerio Zuniga

Name: Roger Valerio Zuniga
Level: Level 1
Location: Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Region: Hispanic America – North
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 01/october/2004
L1 Certification Date: July 30, 2016
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: card: Nantuko Husk, Deck: Burn GoP: Judges
Occupation: Game Store Owner
Random fact about yourself: I´m constantly accused od destroying to many lands
Why did you become a judge?: to learn more about magic gameplay
What excites you most about this event?: Be part of the judge team in a huge event
What worries you most about this event?: give a bad rulling
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: learn as much as I can about the GP so I can have the opportunity to continue assisting them
Who are your mentors?: David Jimenez from CR
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: rigth know my bigger challenge is not having a place to take practice exams to become L2
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: reading and reading the ipg, the MTR and selected parts (recomended by my mentor)of the MCR
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: I worked har at my store and for the firs time in Honduras we are going to have the first competitive tornament (PPTQ), wich I hope to be the HJ
What is your favorite Magic memory?: winning a commander 1v1 tournament with a land destruction deck

Andrew Villarrubia

Name: Andrew Villarrubia
Level: Level 2
Location: Richardson, Texas
Region: USA – South
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 1995
L1 Certification Date: February 11, 2017
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: The amount of goofiness, creativity, or self expression you can jam into a deck. Also Chains of Mephistopheles.
Occupation: Software engineer
Random fact about yourself: I used to own a bar.
Why did you become a judge?: I got overly invested in EDH, which made me consider weird rules things. Turns out I really, really like weird rules things.
What excites you most about this event?: First GP, and the opportunity to work with so many judges from outside my region.
What worries you most about this event?: Dropping the ball somewhere along the way.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: Insights and ideas from judges I’ve never met before.
Who are your mentors?: Josh McCurley, Nate Hurley, Matt Hoskins
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: A new job has severely cut into my ability to work events, so it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see other judges and learn in the “”traditional”” way.
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: Remote mentoring a few people, and actively seeking out L1 candidates in my new area to get them started.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: It’s anything you want it to be. There are competitive players for standard, modern, and legacy, and so many shops support thriving EDH scenes.
What is your favorite Magic memory?: Pulling up the oracle text for Mana Drain (mine is Italian), and my friend’s dumbfounded response of “… That’s really stupid. Why?”