April 2018

Greetings, Great Lakes Magic Judges!  April was a month that brought change to our regional Communications and Mentorship projects.  Namely, Jeff Kruchkow has assumed leadership of the Mentorship project, while I assumed leadership of the Communications project.  You can find our project and goal updates here for Mentorship and here for Communications.  David Elden continues to lead the Conferences project.  His quarterly update is located here.

With that being said, what else happened in April?  Glad you asked…

Judge Anniversaries

Celebrating their 5 year Judge-iversary this past month was our very own Patrick Nelson!  The full list of anniversaries is located here.

New Exemplar Foils

Beginning with the Winter 2018 wave of Exemplar nominations (Wave 12), two new cards have been added to the rotation: Commander’s Sphere and Merchant Scroll!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dominaria Updates

There were some major changes to both the rules and policy with the release of Dominaria.  Attacking works slightly different in Two-headed Giant and the Planeswalker redirection rule is now a thing of the past (replaced with lots of errata allowing for direct targeting of Planeswalkers).  Head Judges can now issue proxies for cards that have only ever been printed as foils – looking at you, Kess, Dissident Mage.  Furthermore, lands are now required to be placed closer to the player than non-land permanents at Competitive REL and higher.  Plus, we have a new category of information for things like life totals, counters on players, and continuous effects with no expiration that affect players (City’s Blessing) called Status.

There’s a lot of updates this time around!  I recommend you read up on the full breadth of the changes to the Comprehensive Rules, located here as well as the Policy changes, located here.

New Interim Community Manager

Eric Levine has replaced Sara Mox as the Interim Community Manager while Sara takes Parental Leave until August of this year.  You can read Sara’s message to the community here.

Conferences and Educational Materials

David Elden and the Conferences project have been hard at work running amazing conferences and creating fantastic content!  You can find several workshops and presentations from the Michigan Local Conference last month on Judging FtW’s YouTube page, located here.  Interested in an article written by David on his methodology for leading the Deck Checks Team?  Look no further than right here!

And don’t forget that the application for the Regional Conference is now open, located here!  The event will take place on July 21, 2018 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  The application deadline is June 8, 2018 and space is limited.  Be sure to apply today!

Level 2 Promotion

We would like to extend a hearty congratulations to Fort Wayne’s finest, Dalton Grimes, on his promotion to Level 2!

Closing Remarks

April was certainly a month of change.  From the regional projects to the rules and policy of the game, please be sure to take the time to orient yourself to these updates using the links and resources above.  Look for these communications updates to continue at the start of each month as we move through the year.  And hopefully May will be less turbulent.

Pass turn.