Grand Prix Vancouver 2018 - Welcome to the Fold

This weekend in Vancouver, we have 14 new judges to Welcome to the fold!

Francis Ayalde

Name: Francis Ayalde
Level: Level 1
Location: Richmond, Canada
Region: Canada
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 10/09/2009
L1 Certification Date: March 10, 2015
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: It brings people together
Occupation: Student
Random fact about yourself: I like flat coke
Why did you become a judge?: Helping players with questions or rulings and their grattitude is pretty satisfying.
What excites you most about this event?: Being around people who are equally or more excited about magic than I am.
What worries you most about this event?: How fast paced and chaotic it may become.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: How different judges may approach difficult situations.
Who are your mentors?: Max Knowlan and Niko Skartvedt
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: When to investigate beyond what’s in front of you. Sometimes there’s more to situation than what’s obviously apparent.
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: Learning from others and asking questions.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: It’s very quick to welcome and accept new players.
What is your favorite Magic memory?: Too many to count! Maybe saving up lunch money to split my first booster box (NPH) with a friend.

Joaquin Azcarate

Name: Joaquin Azcarate
Pronouns He/him/his
Level: Level 1
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Region: Hispanic America – South
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: September 2014
L1 Certification Date: September 28, 2016
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Counterspells.
Occupation: Software engineer
Random fact about yourself: I can’t grow a beard.
Why did you become a judge?: Because I suckd at playing the game ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What excites you most about this event?: *Maple syrup!!*
What worries you most about this event?: As one Ru Paul said: To fuck it up, and sashay away.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: The inner workings of a show of this magnitude.
Who are your mentors?: Julio Sosa and Janit Mindis
What is your favorite Magic memory?: Realizing I played 21 lands on a deck I had always tested with 23 lands. And winning a GP Trial because of it!

Zachary Barnett

Name: Zachary Barnett
Pronouns He/him/his
Level: Level 1
Location: Evansville, Indiana, United States of America
Region: USA – Great Lakes
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: June 2004
L1 Certification Date: August 17, 2018
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: I love meeting new people it is what makes our community great!
Occupation: Student/Service Coordinator at Meijer Grociers
Random fact about yourself: I am an eagle scout and have devoted several thousand hours to my scouting adventure!
Why did you become a judge?: The community near me hadn’t had a consistent judge, and I took it upon myself to help it out and am currently helping some others who aspire to judge
What excites you most about this event?: I have never been to Canada (legally) before!
What worries you most about this event?: Just that my nerves will get to me.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: I just want the experience under my belt!
Who are your mentors?: As far as a judge my mentor is Dalton Grimes. With magic as a whole that goes to Tannon Grace and Brad Carpenter
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Just wanting to make our community more tight knit and stronger
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: Teaching judge classes and helping get interest from others
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: Everyone is super nice to everyone and it makes it super awesome to work events!
What is your favorite Magic memory?: Beating Tannon Grace in a best of one game with a legacy deck I had only played once (manaless dredge)

Erik Brewer

Name: Erik Brewer
Level: Level 1
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, United States of America
Region: USA – Southwest

Jeremy Christensen

Name: Jeremy Christensen
Level: Level 1
Location: Saint John’s, Canada
Region: Canada

Jovy Eramela

Name: Jovy Eramela
Pronouns He/him/his
Level: Level 1
Location: Burnaby, Canada
Region: Canada
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: September 2012
L1 Certification Date: April 29, 2017
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Lightning Bolt
Occupation: IT Support Analyst
Random fact about yourself: I am a trained Tesla coil operator
Why did you become a judge?: I wanted to teach people about common rules problems, and to help grow the local community
What excites you most about this event?: It’s going to be my first big event!
Who are your mentors?: David Poon, Tobias Vyseri, Michael Nixon, Niko Skartvedt, Gurmukh Sachdev — a lot of the local L2+ judges have taught me things
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: I typically don’t exude an air of authority, so it’s sometimes harder for me to be taken seriously at Competitive REL events.

Colin Gardener

Name: Colin Gardener
Pronouns He/him/his
Level: Level 1
Location: Delta, Canada
Region: Canada
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 2011
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Interacting with others through Magic
Occupation: Composer / Student of Music + Chemistry
Random fact about yourself: I’m trying to learn Japanese
Why did you become a judge?: I always wanted to know all the rules and being a Judge gave me a useful outlet for doing that.
What excites you most about this event?: Being the first event at such a large scale that I’ve judged. I’m extremely excited to get to do something this big.
What worries you most about this event?: Being the first event at such a large scale that I’ve judged. I’m worried about getting things wrong because I don’t have as much experience at GPs.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: I’m hoping to learn a lot about how judging tends to work at events of this size. I have a decent understanding of how judging works at smaller scales and even a couple hundred people tends to follow the same sort of guidelines, but a lot of what works at a PPTQ wouldn’t seem to work for a field of more than a thousand people.
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Most of my challenges come from working these new large events that I’ve not done before. A while back it was a PPTQ as my first competitive REL event, then it was a Face to Face open, and now it’s a GP.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: I get along with most of the people and the others aren’t exceptionally bad. I’ve never had to DQ someone, nor have I ever had to worry about getting involved with Unsporting Conduct.
What is your favorite Magic memory?: I was playing an EDH game a while back with a mono-blue control deck that I designed to fit an RPG character. After three turns of being at one life and desperately struggling to not die, I finally found time to put the latter half of Commit to Memory on the stack. Aloud, I said that if I drew my combo pieces I had enough mana to win on the spot. Once Memory resolved, I drew into two of my three pieces (Archaeomancer and Capture of Jingzhou) and proceeded to take some amount of extra turns so I could locate my remaining piece, all while staying at one life.

Colby Kitchur

Name: Colby Kitchur
Level: Level 1
Location: Winnipeg, Canada
Region: Canada

Ian Kniel

Name: Ian Kniel
Pronouns He/him/his
Level: Level 1
Location: Edmonton, Canada
Region: Canada
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 2012, Return to Ravnica
L1 Certification Date: June 10, 2018
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Colour-Pie Philosophy
Occupation: Musican, Programmer
Why did you become a judge?: To support my burgeoning local game store and its community.
What excites you most about this event?: Seeing distant friends again.
What worries you most about this event?: Bigger crowds than any magic event I’ve attended before.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: Asking more effective questions & knowing when to ask for help.

Jason Lawyer

Name: Jason Lawyer
Pronouns He/him/his
Level: Level 1
Location: Prince George, Canada
Region: Canada
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: March 2012
L1 Certification Date: September 24, 2018
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Player to player interactions
Occupation: Event Coordinator
Random fact about yourself: Currently a Judge for 3 different TCGs
Why did you become a judge?: I became a Judge to help my community grow, and spread the love of the game to people so they can enjoy it as much as I do.
What excites you most about this event?: This is my first large scale event. I am excited to see tons of people and see what ideas they have come up with and how they play. I am also excited to learn more about Magic. There’s always more to learn.
What worries you most about this event?: Being a newer level one Judge, I’m worried about people asking overly complex questions. Though I feel confident in my ability to give clarity, there might be some that I just can’t answer completely.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: I am hoping to learn more about the Structure of large events and better understanding of the IPG.
Who are your mentors?: Jonathan Wilson, Austin Toews
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: My biggest challenge is the IPG and issuing the correct penalty as some are really close to others.
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: I have been practicing at my local store during FNM and Showdown when I’m called over and I look into the IPG and been increasing my speed on finding the correct Infraction if I don’t currently know what it would be on the spot.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: Best part is I see players of all ages and skill levels. Seeing a lot of younger people means that the game is expanding and will keep going for awhile.
What is your favorite Magic memory?: My favourite memory is when I saw a card I really like (Liliana of the Veil), picked it up and built a deck around it myself. Later on I heard about 8-rack and found that the deck I built on my own was already super close to the deck. It’s my favourite due to knowing that I almost built a competitive deck with limit knowledge and card access. Showed that I was growing as a player.

Nathan Lipetz

Name: Nathan Lipetz
Level: Level 1
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Region: Canada

Taylor Metz

Name: Taylor Metz
Pronouns He/him/his
Level: Level 1
Location: Kelowna, Canada
Region: Canada
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: March 2009
L1 Certification Date: August 11, 2018
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: My community!!
Occupation: Work at my LGS, Also a Barista
Random fact about yourself: I’m a direct descendant of Rob Roy MacGregor
Why did you become a judge?: I became a judge because I love knowing how everything works in the game and how to resolve complicated interactions. In addition I love my community and want to be a pillar to help it grow and get new players interested.
What excites you most about this event?: I’m so excited to meet other judges and work my first GP!
What worries you most about this event?: I’m worried I’m going to mess something up
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: I’m hoping to learn from my peers the workings of a GP. I really want to get experience and be able to apply to more GPs with confidence.
Who are your mentors?: Aaron Maclean, David Poon
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: My largest challenge is getting competitive judging experience. I work at my local game store and run events multiple nights a week and I’m comfortable judging at regular REL but I’m struggling to find events i can work at to get competitive experience.
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: I’ve applied to everything i can reasonably get to, I’ve been to two judge conferences since I got certified and applied for a F2F open and several GPs.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: How friendly everyone is and how no matter who’s playing who, I never have to worry about fights or arguments.
What is your favorite Magic memory?: When I first started playing magic my friends and I all piled into my friends VW Westfalia and headed on down to our local game store, I had never been there and was blown away, Alara reborn had just come out and we all got fat packs and threw decks together, did some trading and just had a blast.

Derek Schofield

Name: Derek Schofield
Level: Level 1
Location: Delta, Canada
Region: Canada

Gaetan Zell

Name: Gaetan Zell
Pronouns He/him/his
Level: Level 0
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Region: Canada
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 1995
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Brainstorm
Occupation: Account manager
Random fact about yourself: Cannot spend a day without a watch at my wrist!
Why did you become a judge?: In order to be closer to the magic community by helping event happening well and in peace. Also what to be a rule reference for the community and to help new player to improve their playing skills.
What excites you most about this event?: I Love GPs when i was there playing them. I like the size of the event and the fact that player come from every countries to gather around the game. The atmosphere is just awesome!
What worries you most about this event?: Worry about what?! I just going to adapt myself to all situation.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: First GP that I will work for, so I will gather as many insight and experience from different experienced judge in order to improve my skills.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: They are welcoming, have strong knowledge and every format are very well represented!
What is your favorite Magic memory?: When I was playing the 5th edition with my brother in the street without sleeves! And everywhere!