MagicFest+ London 2019

| Io Hughto

This weekend in London, we have 3 new judges to Welcome to the fold!

Christophe LE GALL

  • Name: Christophe LE GALL
  • Pronouns He/him/his
  • Level: Level 1
  • Location: Besançon, France
  • Region: France
  • Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 01/1995
  • L1 Certification Date: October 28, 2018
  • Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Commander, deckbuilduing, Limited formats
  • Occupation: Teacher
  • Why did you become a judge?: To help in my local store. To involve myself in organized play..
  • What excites you most about this event?: 3 full days of Magic with an amazing atmosphere
  • What worries you most about this event?: To know about my Schedule, I’m still unassigned 3 days before the beginning of this MagicFest
  • What are you hoping to learn at this event?: Plenty of things, and how to be part of a big structure.
  • Who are your mentors?: Sophie PAGES
  • What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: To be selected in Magic event staff
  • How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: Apply again and again
  • What is the best part about your local Magic community?: We are regular players from all levels, Always a good ambaince in our store.
  • What is your favorite Magic memory?: When I reconnect to Magic with Ravnica:City of guilds, never quit for 15 years…

Helge Stoffregen

  • Name: Helge Stoffregen
  • Pronouns He/him/his
  • Level: Level 2
  • Location: Hannover, Germany
  • Region: German-speaking countries
  • Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 2001
  • L1 Certification Date: May 21, 2016
  • Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Rules and Card interactions, community
  • Occupation: Student (Electrical Engineering)
  • Random fact about yourself: always running late
  • Why did you become a judge?: I had been studying the rules through the MTGSalvation forums and Cranial Insertion for a few years, and had always been fascinated by the complexity and possiblities. A bit later I started attending PreReleases, during one of which, I believe it was Dragons of Tarkir, a local judge (who was also the TO and Judge manager) started a Judge Booth and I blazed through all the 3-Star questions with ease.
    Being visibly impressed he asked me whether I had ever thought about becoming a judge, and offered me a position at their next event. I passed the Rules Advisor test and started judging.
  • What excites you most about this event?: Aside from being my first GP/MF, I am quite happy to have picked one with an MC and full coverage running nearby, as I’d really like to see this from the other side of the screen.
    Also War of the Spark looks amazing 🙂
  • What worries you most about this event?: The sealed pools not being pre-registered offers cheating potential, and the different flights will be tough to manage properly.
  • What are you hoping to learn at this event?: The sheer size and scope of the event will probably mean that a few things must be handled differently than I’m used to, so I can hopefully learn some team and event management.
  • Who are your mentors?: Maximilian Kuntze first got me into judging, Simon Ahrens handled my L2-Mentoring program together with Stefan Ladstädter, and Philip Körte accepted me to judge several events in Frankfurt.
  • What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Always striking a balance between cold, strict rules enforcement and friendly interaction with players is sometimes hard. I constantly second-guess my decisions and attitude (not in front of the players, though).
  • How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: I’ve taken quite a bit of time both during and after events to explain my rulings to players who might not be satisfied with them. This has lead to them trusting my judgement more and more over the years.
  • What is the best part about your local Magic community?: Watching players who played for decades explain the game to newcomers, and seeing that spark in their eyes when they explain stuff they love about the game is very uplifting. It is a very supporting community, but also a very competitive one. No one will pull their punches in a match, but nearly everyone will happily sit down afterwards and discuss the match to help both players get better.
  • What is your favorite Magic memory?: There’s so many…The first time I judged an event, passing my L2 test, my first Judge conference, winning my first FNM, …
    Honestly, I can’t pick one. I’ve been playing Magic for too long and have experienced too many things to point to any one of them being above any of the others.

Gergő Tamás

  • Name: Gergő Tamás
  • Pronouns He/him/his
  • Level: Level 1
  • Location: Cluj-Napoca, Romania
  • Region: Europe – East
  • Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 2014 – right before Born of the Gods
  • L1 Certification Date: July 8, 2018
  • Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: blue
  • Occupation: programmer
  • Why did you become a judge?: I always had a passion to learn and understand the inner workings of a system. Being a Magic player, i became more and more familiar with the rules and also happened to be the person, that other players from our community turned to for rules advice. It was the next step for me, to become a judge, to have more opportunities in the future to test my skills.
  • What excites you most about this event?: I am expecting that all judges will be working overdrive, including myself. Usually i have no problem working under pressure, it helps me to focus, so it will be an interesting challenge for me.
  • What worries you most about this event?: I am mainly worried about software/infrastructure problems.
    From previous experience, the GP teams always seemed operative, focused and ready to handle unexpected situations.
  • What are you hoping to learn at this event?: It will be interesting to see, what goes on on the other side at a GP and how it feels working with such a large team. Hopefully I will improve my time-management skills and learn to handle judge calls better.
  • What is the best part about your local Magic community?: Despite being rather small, they really invest themselves to help the community grow and to make sure the game store, named Checkpoint, can continue to be a gathering place for magic players. It was really nice to see, that everyone, who had time jumped in to help the store owner, when the shop was moving and needed the manpower to carefully carry all the boxes of magic and other board games across town.
  • What is your favorite Magic memory?: The moment i learned how the stack works and learning the existence of counterspells.