This weekend in Toronto, we have 4 new judges to Welcome to the fold!
Brandon Fung
- Name: Brandon Fung
- Pronouns He/him/his
- Level: Level 1
- Location: Richmond hill, Canada
- Region: Canada
- Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 14/09/2004
- L1 Certification Date: August 30, 2016
- Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: everything minus commander
- Occupation: Research Assistant
- Random fact about yourself: Nothing
- Why did you become a judge?: Wanted to help the community and contribute to my local and foreign magic community.
- What excites you most about this event?: Huge event, lots of people
- What worries you most about this event?: Huge event, lots of people
- What are you hoping to learn at this event?: Working in smaller teams of a huge team
- Who are your mentors?: Micheal Hill
- What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Being asked questions by protour level players that probably know the rules better than me, understanding complicated rulings and interaction
- How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: Judged more
- What is the best part about your local Magic community?: Lots of judges and events that one can judge.
- What is your favorite Magic memory?: receiving a champions of kamigawa pack as a door prize when i was 10
Freyja Keogh
- Name: Freyja Keogh
- Pronouns She/her/hers
- Level: Level 1
- Location: Toronto, Canada
- Region: Canada
- Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: Sometime around Lorwyn?
- L1 Certification Date: April 29, 2018
- Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Cube (with friends)
- Occupation: Student
- Random fact about yourself: I love building edh decks and playing them about twice
- Why did you become a judge?: I really enjoy teaching, and being a judge allows me to combine that with my favourite pastime.
- What excites you most about this event?: As this is my first time working at a GP, I’m really looking forward to help make the event happen, as I know everyone gets really excited for it.
- What worries you most about this event?: There’s a lot more pressure to do everything properly since it’s such a big event… (!!!) I’m mostly just worried about screwing up, as usual, just more than normal.
- What are you hoping to learn at this event?: I have never worked in an ops position before, so I’m hoping to use the opportunity to work on my customer service skills.
- Who are your mentors?: Michael Hill, and to a lesser extent Graham Kirkpatrick
- What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: I have had some difficulty in being confident in delivering rulings.
- How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: I have been doing my best to not second guess myself while talking to the players, and working on my ability to deliver rulings without double checking every time.
- What is the best part about your local Magic community?: I really love that everyone is super friendly and willing to talk/play with anyone who wants to.
- What is your favorite Magic memory?: I went through a pretty rough time mentally a number of years ago, and Magic helped me tremendously during that period. It gave me something to really enjoy, as well as a great group of friends who I still cherish.
Daniel Neville
- Name: Daniel Neville
- Pronouns He/him/his
- Level: Level 1
- Location: Dublin, Ireland
- Region: United Kingdom, Ireland, and South Africa
- Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: Sometime in 2004/2005
- L1 Certification Date: February 21, 2017
- Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: I’ve made so many friends through magic, at college, at work and event at events!
- Occupation: Student
- Random fact about yourself: I’ve spent 5 years judging card events waiting for the day I get an Irish language judge call!
- Why did you become a judge?: To support my local store, and also to grow closer to Magic.
- What excites you most about this event?: This is my first EVER GP, so quite excited in that regard!
- What worries you most about this event?: The weather will be colder than I’m anticipating. (We Irish are good with rain, but rather terrible when it comes to snow).
- What are you hoping to learn at this event?: I’m looking forward to learning about how such a developed judge program performs!
- Who are your mentors?: Luke and Zach both helped so much getting my L1, Niels, Jergen and Robin all pushed me to apply for GPs. All of them have really helped me so much in growing as a magic judge.
- What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Time is my main challenge, working, studying and travelling for events means I’ve not gotten around to sitting my L2 so far.
- How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: This event is a good step, I also try to spend more time organising large events locally, as these challenge me to improve for my players.
- What is the best part about your local Magic community?: So many things, everyone is so lovely and supportive of each other!
- What is your favorite Magic memory?: Learning to play the game as a child with my older brother, the old 8th edition cards felt so magical. The art was stunning, Mirrodin was like nothing I’d ever seen before and the flavour text of the cards was so cool!
Aaron Orians
- Name: Aaron Orians
- Pronouns He/him/his
- Level: Level 1
- Location: Mississauga, Canada
- Region: Canada
- Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: April 1995
- L1 Certification Date: April 14, 2018
- Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Helping beginner/intermediate players become advanced players
- Occupation: Mathematician
- Random fact about yourself: Dad and step-dad to seven kids, most of whom also play magic.
- Why did you become a judge?: I was already acting in a ‘trusted trainer’s capacity at LGS’s, and this was a way I could be certain of my knowledge and learn more skills and have more opportunities to pass it along.
- What excites you most about this event?: The volume of people – I like to keep busy and look forward to always having something to do.
- What worries you most about this event?: Not meeting as many people there as I would like
- What are you hoping to learn at this event?: I think I’m on the operations side, so additional logistics would be great
- Who are your mentors?: Kris Burningham and Michael Hill have been fantastic mentors
- What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Improving my rules knowledge and IPG knowledge, aiming to become an L2
- How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: Working 1-2 events a month, starting with Canada Nationals last July, and studying guides in my free time
- What is the best part about your local Magic community?: The fantastic people, especially the large number of new folks coming in
- What is your favorite Magic memory?: My first prerelease tournament – urza’s legacy and the sweet beast of burden promo card. It was at a hotel in Ohio and was more people playing magic at once than I had ever seen before