Grand Prix Detroit 2018

This weekend in the Motor City, we have three new judges to Welcome to the Fold!

Tyler Boonstra

  • Name: Tyler Boonstra
  • Pronouns He/him/his
  • Level: Level 1
  • Location: Grand Blanc, Michigan, United States of America
  • Region: USA – Great Lakes
  • Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: July 2007
  • L1 Certification Date: June 10, 2017
  • Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: The people that love the game and tezzeret
  • Occupation: Sales
  • Random fact about yourself: I own a gamestore up in flint and have a 7 year old son
  • Why did you become a judge?: To help grow our gaming community plus i just love the game
  • What excites you most about this event?: My first grand prix
  • What worries you most about this event?: Messing up
  • What are you hoping to learn at this event?: Seeing how sides should and can smoothly be ran at a large scale event
  • Who are your mentors?: Andrew Thompson, Alex Smith, Joe Crawford
  • What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Time management to go to bigger events
  • How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: Tried to set time aside to judge which I’ve been able to well these past couple months
  • What is the best part about your local Magic community?: The friends I’ve made along the way. They are pretty much my second family
  • What is your favorite Magic memory?: When i got to FaceTime with Terese Nielsen

Trey Smith

  • Name: Trey Smith
  • Pronouns He/him/his
  • Level: Level 1
  • Location: Lansing, Michigan, United States of America
  • Region: USA – Great Lakes
  • Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: Whenever Khans of Tarkir came out
  • L1 Certification Date: November 29, 2018
  • Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Watching my players and fellow Judges grow and become better within the game and as people.
  • Occupation: Judge and TCGPlayer inventory Specialist
  • Random fact about yourself: I was a competitive Ballroom Dance in college
  • Why did you become a judge?: I wanted to help my community grow and become a pillar people could look up to within the community
  • What excites you most about this event?: Meeting new people and players, as well as being able to interact with players and Judges I’ve met from my travels.
  • What worries you most about this event?: No real worries. Those come up as things go wrong but we’re all gonna make sure that hopefully doesn’t happen.
  • What are you hoping to learn at this event?: How the inner workings of GP’s function so that I can help find the best slot to fill for future GP’s.
  • Who are your mentors?: Scott Markwart, Zach Delaudurante (oops), Patrick Cobley
  • What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Learning the more intricate parts of rules knowledge and putting policy knowledge into practice.
  • How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: Forcing myself into unknown situations to figure out the best way I can handle them and continuously asking for advice and feedback from fellow Judges.
  • What is the best part about your local Magic community?: We have an incredibly diverse group with players of all skill levels yet we manage to find a home for all of them to grow in at their own pace.
  • What is your favorite Magic memory?: My first GP ever as a player was GP Detroit a few years back and it was Origins Team Limited. I had no idea what I was doing and built a janky Esper Enchantment deck with Sphinxs Tutledge and Starfield of Nyx. Only ran two creatures! It caught the attention of Corbin Hosler who interviewed me after my round.

    https://magic.wizards.com/de/node/522501

Brent Yard

  • Name: Brent Yard
  • Level: Level 1
  • Location: Sycamore Hills, Missouri, United States of America
  • Region: USA – Central