Grand Prix Birmingham 2018 - Welcome to the Fold

At the double GP this weekend, we have seven new judges to Welcome to the Fold!

Dan Brown

Name: Dan Brown
Level: Level 1
Location: Taunton, United Kingdom
Region: United Kingdom, Ireland, and South Africa
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: may 1999 on again off again
L1 Certification Date: August 12, 2017
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: My Local playgroup 🙂
Occupation: IT Technician
Random fact about yourself: I really like dinosaurs!
Why did you become a judge?: To help out in the community and answer questions at our local store!
What excites you most about this event?: It will be my first time experiencing a GP from the “”working”” side and I’ll get to meet a bunch of new people
What worries you most about this event?: Making mistakes, as it is my first GP. Also the dreaded GP plague.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: How the judge half of a GP functions, and hopefully improve my customer service side of judging.
Who are your mentors?: Amy Jo Tanner, Phil Akers, Steve Ford, Rhys Bainbridge, Ru Fitzpatrick
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Figuring out the best steps to work on towards becoming level 2 or when/if I want to do them
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: Still in progress, I’m afraid.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: I love our local store and how community focused they are, and I guess our local group of players are pretty okay too.
What is your favorite Magic memory?: Topdecking Omniscience with unexpected results…Twice!

Bradley de Freitas

Name: Bradley de Freitas
Level: Level 2
Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
Region: United Kingdom, Ireland, and South Africa
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: May 2012
L1 Certification Date: January 29, 2014
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: My favourite card is Serra Ascendant. My favourite thing is the way you can make friends with a group of people just by playing a few games. I have made some amazing friends since I started playing EDH last year.
Occupation: Chartered Accountant
Why did you become a judge?: I became a judge to help teach in my community and help run events. There are a very small number of L2+ judges in the south african community which provided me with additional motivation to help the community.
What excites you most about this event?: The opportunity to learn many things from judges much more experienced than I am. I have never attended an event this large, so I am sure there is plenty to learn.
What worries you most about this event?: Im worried that my nerves will get the best of me due to the size of the event. I have never been around that many magic players before and I am worried that it will affect my calls.
Who are your mentors?: Findlay Matheson. Without his motivation, I would never have travelled the route to become an L2 judge.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: We recently lost one of our most successful LGS’. Its amazing how our community has stuck together in this time while we found a new venue to call home.

Phillip Donald

Name: Phillip Donald
Level: Level 1
Location: Winchester, United Kingdom
Region: United Kingdom, Ireland, and South Africa

Joe Hardy

Name: Joe Hardy
Level: Level 1
Location: Hednesford, United Kingdom
Region: United Kingdom, Ireland, and South Africa
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: November 2016
L1 Certification Date: December 27, 2017
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Creatureless Decks
Occupation: It Professional
Random fact about yourself: I had a fear of toilets until the age of 16
Why did you become a judge?: To help my LGS as they had no Judges
What excites you most about this event?: Meeting new people, helping players out
What worries you most about this event?: Never supported at a GP before, I don’t want anything to go wrong
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: how to help others more effectively
Who are your mentors?: Thomas Sukaitis
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Informational challenges, getting the information you need without having to search for days/weeks
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: ask the judges ive met over the last 6 months
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: Theyre kind, friendly, and hilarious
What is your favorite Magic memory?: Ixalan draft, cycled my whole deck using sunbirds invocation to dig for a Rivers rebuke that was my only win con. and did it.

Morgan Mcgowan

Name: Morgan Mcgowan
Level: Level 1
Location: Leeds, United Kingdom
Region: United Kingdom, Ireland, and South Africa
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: Early 2012, around the time of the release of Dark Ascension
L1 Certification Date: July 2, 2016
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: My favourite thing about Magic is the community, I have made many friends within the magic community and I have found the community we are in to be full of supportive and helpful people which is great.
Random fact about yourself: The Kamigawa sets are my favourite sets in Magic and I try to include at least 1 Kamigawa card in any deck I ever build.
Why did you become a judge?: I very much enjoy helping others where possible and judging allows me to help others whilst being a part of something I very much enjoy. Judging has had a positive impact on my life since I became a judge back in July 2016 and I have developed some skills that I lacked in and developed as a person which has allowed me to be a better person and overall allowed me to be a better judge.
What excites you most about this event?: I am excited to work with other judges around the world, it will be a valuable experience for me both as a person and as a judge.
What worries you most about this event?: I’m a bit nervous that I will get some things wrong at this event, but I know that I will have support of fellow judges so that helps remove some of the nerves and I know any mistake I make I can improve on aswell.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: I am hoping to learn how to become a better judge overall, working with various judges from around the world will allow me to see how other judges do tasks or tackle problems, and that insight I will gain from that could be used to help improve my skills as a judge and maybe even as a person.
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Confidence is one of my issues and things I am working on at the moment, I sometimes doubt myself too much when making a ruling or am a bit hesitant at times but it has been improving.
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: I have been working at various events and whether with a fellow judge or not I have tried to answer rulings alone unless I am really uncertain, doing it alone has allowed me to doubt myself less as I am more reliant on myself rather than other people and as a result my confidence has grown but still requires more growth for me to be an even better judge.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: My local community is full of helpful and supportive people and the friends I have made in my local community are ones I will likely be friends with for a long time.

Natalia Ruiz Estepa

Name: Natalia Ruiz Estepa
Level: Level 2
Location: Sevilla, Spain
Region: Iberia

Benjamin Stephen

Name: Benjamin Stephen
Level: Level 1
Location: Perth, United Kingdom
Region: United Kingdom, Ireland, and South Africa
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: June 2016
L1 Certification Date: July 21, 2017
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Card draw. Lots and lots of card draw…
Random fact about yourself: The first time I drafted I managed to make an illegal deck.
Why did you become a judge?: I started to learn about strange rules interactions when playing Commander and quickly found I quite enjoyed looking at how different cards interact in strange ways. Not long after I started listening to JudgeCast to learn more about the rules. Then one thing lead to another and I decided that because I loved the rules I should apply to become a judge.
What excites you most about this event?: The chance to meet other judges and learn how things happen at large scale events.
What worries you most about this event?: Largely the travel but also the chance I could do something obviously stupid and make a fool out if myself on my first outing.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: This will be the only event I’ve been at larger than 20 people so I’m really hoping to learn about the workings of large scale events and if all goes well I plan to try and attend more events at large scale.
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: A really large challenge for me is my location as it’s a rather long bus journey for me to get to my LGS and my job also means I can’t always get to FNM. This restricts a lot of my ability to judge as if I just can’t get there/back I’m not able to judge at events.
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: A lot of it has been through trying hard this year to be far more proactive in seeking opportunities to judge, this event being the largest step I’ve taken to becoming a better judge so far but I hope to continue to progress and maybe eventually feel comfortable trying to go for L2.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: I sit between two different stores which I go to for different reasons. I will often go to Perth for a laugh with people I know well and play some commander or occasionally draft with but then I go to Dundee for a more competitive playerbase who will really let me stress-test decks I’ve built in a more competitive environment. So I guess my favourite thing is the flexibility in playgroups I have locally.
What is your favorite Magic memory?: As silly as it sounds, it’s quite a recent memory. I was trying some legacy decks to help somebody learn their deck and I was playing Manaless Dredge which is a deck I knew by name and vague game plan being “”Dredge deck, make zombies, flashback.”” but the thing that makes it so memorable is the point where I learned what Balustrade Spy does. I started milling myself, looking for a land when my opponent asked “”So you do have land’s then?”” this was the point where I got confused and said that I thought I just lost next turn then. I then realised that it let me win by flashing back Dread Returns, leading to the most fun win I think I’ve had for a very long time.