{"id":314,"date":"2019-04-18T15:54:26","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T15:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/?p=314"},"modified":"2019-04-18T15:54:26","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T15:54:26","slug":"magicfest-niagara-falls-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/2019\/04\/18\/magicfest-niagara-falls-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"MagicFest Niagara Falls 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend in Niagara Falls, we have 2 new judges to Welcome to the fold!<\/p>\n<h2>Ashley Kurtz<\/h2>\n<div class=\"wp-caption alignleft judgeimg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/apps.magicjudges.org\/judges\/dci\/7113570674\"><img src=https:\/\/apps.magicjudges.org\/dci\/avatar?dci=7113570674&size=200 alt=\"\"><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><\/p><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Name:<\/strong> Ashley Kurtz<\/li>\n<li><strong>Pronouns<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/pronoun.is\/she\">She\/her\/hers<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Level:<\/strong> Level 0<\/li>\n<li><strong>Location:<\/strong> Carlisle, Pennsylvania, United States of America<\/li>\n<li><strong>Region:<\/strong> USA &#8211; Northeast <\/li>\n<li><strong>Approximate date\/month\/year you started playing Magic:<\/strong> I learned how to play sometime in 2014 or 2015, but I hadn&#8217;t played with any regularity (or skill) until Arena launched.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic:<\/strong> I love playing decks with big creatures and a lot of interaction and synergy.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Occupation:<\/strong> I&#8217;m a Marketing Manager in the tourism industry.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Random fact about yourself:<\/strong> I performed during the halftime show of the Citrus Bowl in 2005.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Why did you become a judge?:<\/strong> I&#8217;m not actually a judge yet. I&#8217;ve been studying and doing a lot of reading, and hope to take my L1 exam this summer.<\/li>\n<li><strong>What excites you most about this event?:<\/strong> This will be the first time I&#8217;ve worked in any capacity at a MTG event! I&#8217;m excited to meet new people, learn how a large-scale event comes together and help the players have a great time.<\/li>\n<li><strong>What worries you most about this event?:<\/strong> This will be the first time I&#8217;ve worked in any capacity at a MTG event! I want to make sure I do a great job!<\/li>\n<li><strong>What are you hoping to learn at this event?:<\/strong> I&#8217;m curious about how things work, so I&#8217;m hoping to learn how all the pieces come together to support the event and the industry. <\/li>\n<li><strong>What is your favorite Magic memory?:<\/strong> Learning how to play Magic from my boyfriend is definitely my favorite MTG memory. He&#8217;s very involved in the community and an avid player, so it was fun and rewarding to have him share his passion with me. A close runner up is when I blow him out of the water when we play against each other!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Jacob Manelius<\/h2>\n<div class=\"wp-caption alignleft judgeimg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/apps.magicjudges.org\/judges\/dci\/2081056362\"><img src=https:\/\/apps.magicjudges.org\/dci\/avatar?dci=2081056362&size=200 alt=\"\"><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><\/p><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Name:<\/strong> Jacob Manelius<\/li>\n<li><strong>Pronouns<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/pronoun.is\/he\">He\/him\/his<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Level:<\/strong> Level 1<\/li>\n<li><strong>Location:<\/strong> Victor, New York, United States of America<\/li>\n<li><strong>Region:<\/strong> USA &#8211; Northeast <\/li>\n<li><strong>Approximate date\/month\/year you started playing Magic:<\/strong> January 25th, 2013<\/li>\n<li><strong>L1 Certification Date:<\/strong> September 17, 2015<\/li>\n<li><strong>Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic:<\/strong> My local playgroup at Just Games<\/li>\n<li><strong>Occupation:<\/strong> College student<\/li>\n<li><strong>Random fact about yourself:<\/strong> I&#8217;m working on being a swing dance instructor at the club on my college campus.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Why did you become a judge?:<\/strong> I wanted to be able to answer questions we&#8217;ve always had about the game as well as provide an opportunity to get more involved in the community.<\/li>\n<li><strong>What excites you most about this event?:<\/strong> I&#8217;m looking forward to being at my first event of this size.<\/li>\n<li><strong>What worries you most about this event?:<\/strong> The size of the event and keeping everything running smoothly. <\/li>\n<li><strong>What are you hoping to learn at this event?:<\/strong> How to maintain a consistent flow despite a huge number of people and responsibilities.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Who are your mentors?:<\/strong> Michael Bauman and Tom Davis<\/li>\n<li><strong>What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?:<\/strong> Explaining complex interactions in a way that the average player understands how it works and can feel like they learned something rather than just accepting that it works that way because I said so.<\/li>\n<li><strong>How have you worked to overcome those challenges?:<\/strong> Practice, practice, practice. I kept explaining different concepts to people at my LGS and got steadily better, though there&#8217;s still room for improvement.<\/li>\n<li><strong>What is the best part about your local Magic community?:<\/strong> How kind and accepting they all are, they don&#8217;t make anyone feel like an outsider.<\/li>\n<li><strong>What is your favorite Magic memory?:<\/strong> My first prerelease (Gatecrash) where I did extremely well on the back of Aurelia, assemble the legion, firemane avenger, and legion loyalist. I had to be talked out of splashing unexpected results because, hey, it could be any card in my deck! Even Aurelia! <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend in Niagara Falls, we have 2 new judges to Welcome to the fold! Ashley Kurtz Name: Ashley Kurtz Pronouns She\/her\/hers Level: Level 0 Location: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, United States of America Region: USA &#8211; Northeast Approximate date\/month\/year you started playing Magic: I learned how to play sometime in 2014 or 2015, but I hadn&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"language":[],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions\/315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}