MagicFest Dallas 2019

| Io Hughto

This weekend in Dallas-Fort Worth, we have 3 new judges to Welcome to the fold!

Mikey Elwell

  • Name: Mikey Elwell
  • Pronouns He/him/his
  • Level: Level 2
  • Location: Commerce, Texas, United States of America
  • Region: USA – South
  • Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: Sometime in 2011
  • L1 Certification Date: May 6, 2017
  • Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Judging
  • Occupation: Associate Campus Minister
  • Random fact about yourself: I have this secret affinity for mac and cheese that occasionally ruins my life
  • Why did you become a judge?: I became a judge to grow my community and along the way it kind of grew me
  • What excites you most about this event?: Working with some of the most exceptional and wonderful people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting
  • What worries you most about this event?: Not many things worry me, but coming right off of Modern Horizons should be fun.
  • What are you hoping to learn at this event?: My hope is to use this event as a conduit to grow myself further and to just learn everything that I can from this wealth of experience between the judges here.
  • Who are your mentors?: Meg Baum, Erin Leonard, Jarrod Feight, and Nate Hurley
  • What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Mostly my mental health, it’s been a real struggle fighting against myself and being put down internally, but overcoming that is and always will be my greatest goal.
  • How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: Just keep chugging along, and being honest with the rest of my team.
  • What is the best part about your local Magic community?: All the love that people so willingly give out.
  • What is your favorite Magic memory?: At one of my very first big events as an L1, I was pretty down about my work, but everyone around me kept telling me how much of a good job I was doing, and that rallying really has stayed with me and propelled me through this program.

Brittain Porter

  • Name: Brittain Porter
  • Pronouns He/him/his
  • Level: Level 1
  • Location: Norman, Oklahoma, United States of America
  • Region: USA – South
  • Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: April, 27th, 2016
  • L1 Certification Date: August 23, 2018
  • Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: I really enjoy deck building even though I’m really bad at it
  • Occupation: IT Technician
  • Random fact about yourself: Onions are the bane of my existence. Much like a great white shark can detect blood in 1 parts per billion, I can detect onion in my food and I will throw it out. If you ever find yourself needing to figure out if I’m a doppelgänger or not, hand me an onion and see how I react.
  • Why did you become a judge?: Because Gage Robelen is a pushy son of a gun. But real answer, I had moved to Oklahoma the previous year and was finding it difficult to make friends down here and Gage suggested that getting into magic and judging would me build a circle of friends and it turned out he was right.
  • What excites you most about this event?: Meeting new friends from all over the country and the world! I’ve never been part of an event that is as big or wide reaching, so I’m excited to meet all the interesting people it’ll bring in, judges and players alike.
  • What worries you most about this event?: The same thing that worries me for every event; screwing up big time!
  • What are you hoping to learn at this event?: Confidence in my delivery. I find myself sounding uncertain in my answer and since players can smell fear better than a bloodhound, they question my judgement. It’s not that I don’t know the answer, I just get nervous.
  • Who are your mentors?: Gage Robelen, Kade Goforth, Erin Leonard
  • What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Since it’s been only a year since starting to play Magic, I think my hardest challenge as a judge is my own (lack of) experience as a player.
  • How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: Playing Magic and playing a lot of it.
  • What is the best part about your local Magic community?: There are so many players and places to play that it doesn’t really get tiring.
  • What is your favorite Magic memory?: Playing Battlebond with my girlfriend and our pre-release cards were Will and Rowan Kenrith. We still have those cards in a safe place.

Darrin Sisneros

  • Name: Darrin Sisneros
  • Pronouns He/him/his
  • Level: Level 2
  • Location: Midlothian, Texas, United States of America
  • Region: USA – South
  • Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: Feb 2004
  • L1 Certification Date: March 8, 2014
  • Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: The friends I’ve made through Magic
  • Occupation: Teacher
  • Random fact about yourself: I’m younger than my siblings by 10+ years.
  • Why did you become a judge?: To help foster and grow my local community.
  • What excites you most about this event?: It’s my first MF.
  • What are you hoping to learn at this event?: Everything! Specifically, I’d like to learn how the judge teams function and how they interact with one another at large scale events.
  • Who are your mentors?: Mitchell Nitz and John Triut