Last week’s Judge of the Week (Neil Pendon) chose Raül Rabionet to be featured this week. Raül Rabionet hails from Barcelona, Spain and is a level 3 judge. Raül started playing in 1994 and became a judge in 2003, when he passed his level 1 test at Christmas. Raül’s gaming club had grown in size and a judge was required, so through his interest in the rules he took up the mantle. As for Raül’s best judging experience, here is what he had to say:

“I don’t know if this qualifies as a judging experience, but for Pro Tour Hollywood we went on a pretty fun 5-person road trip with your typical joke party: “a Belgian, a Greek, a Czech, a Panamanian and a Catalan go to rent a car and…”. Thanks to Niko Glik, George T, Jara Karban, and Carlos Ho for one of my best travelling experiences. If “judging experience” means we are actually dressed in judging attire, then Head Judging Spanish Nationals 2008 was neat.”

Favourite Magic format?
On older days I would have gone for EDH because of sheer nerdness. I like to play competitive (Standard specially), but I miss the days when you could build clunky Johnny decks and hold a chance.

Favourite Magic card?
I could as well say one at random… I used to love old, flavorful cards like Shahrazad or Falling Star, but that is not trendy anymore.

What do you do outside of judging?
I play a lot of Magic. Besides playing Magic, I play a lot of other games: I have at least 2 weekly non-Magic-related playing afternoons, one based on a Middle Earth Play By Mail game, and the other one is officially called “Ludomartes” and features a different board game every Tuesday (that’s what the name means). Oh, and I do have a job, which I also pay some attention to every now and then. I work as a private consultant for the public administration, coordinating their technology projects and their adaptation to the use of electronic documents and paper-free management.

Favourite Board Game?
The Republic of Rome. And ancient board game by Avalon Hill that has been re-released recently. Although it is one of the most complex and difficult games I have ever played, it allows endless laughs if each players really takes the challenge of impersonating his senators and stand up to make his voice heard. I dislike video games and online games, because I value highly the interaction with other human beings that gaming allows.

Favorite Magic Set?
Time Spiral and the rest of its block. I am a huge trivia fan and avid collector, so I really enjoyed all the references to past and future cards.

Worst Magic Set?
Probably Saviors of Kamigawa, some others may have sucked more, but did not strike me as hard. I used to play a lot at the time, and could not identify anything that rung to me in the whole set.

If you could play any one game with any one real person – living or dead – what and who would it be?
I could try playing Go against Sun Tzu or chess against Julius Caesar, but they would crush me. There is also a game called “The Pyramid of Love” that I would love to play with/against Scarlett Johansson 😉

Reader Challenge – Two Truths and a Lie
Two of the following are true and one is false! Work it out!

1. I own at least one copy of every single card in the Oracle. For this reason, I often use the nick “Absurd Collector” on the Internet.
2. Although I played my first Pro Tour this year, I was not new to high-level card competition, since I reached the finals of the Spanish Nationals for the Middle Earth Collectible Card Game (the ICE pre-films one) two years in a row.
3. I have decided to quit judging, so unfortunately you won’t be seeing me in a lot of international tournaments in the future.

Note: Unfortunately, Raül did not provide an answer to which statement was false.