Katie Neal<\/p><\/div>I got in on Monday, and was part of the product crew. \u00a0We pre-opened and noted down the cards from 3000 limited pools between Monday and Tuesday. \u00a0(That is 18000 booster packs, which works out to 750 boxes, which is 187.5 cases of Modern Masters 2015. \u00a0That is about two pallets.) \u00a0This was a grind and the days were mostly just a very samey blur to me, not least because I was still tired from working an Open weekend in Worcester. \u00a0Katie Neal<\/a> Angela Schabauer<\/p><\/div>Angela Schabauer<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wednesday I was on room setup, and ended up stumbling into control of a group of people because I was the one shouting at them to do stuff. \u00a0The size varied, but it was between 20 and 100 at different times. \u00a0We put down all the tablecloths in the room, setup a lot of tables and chairs, and (most awesomely) tore into and rebuilt four pallets of basic land packs in about 20 minutes.<\/p>\n I don’t have a specific callout from Wednesday, in large part because the team was so effective that we actually spent like two hours just sitting and waiting for new tasks due to getting done with what we were doing faster than planned. \u00a0If you were on my setup crew on Wednesday, thank you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thursday I was handed a list of 30 people with no other organization and told “this is your team, you are responsible for running Last Chance Trial events from 3pm to hall close at midnight.\u201d \u00a0From what I can tell, this is the largest event team anyone headed with no designated sub-leaders all week. \u00a0Other teams were on the order of 5-10. \u00a0I cut up the roles, put good people in good places, and we ran a huge amount of events.<\/p>\n My three point people were Brandon Arsenault<\/a> Brandon Arsenault<\/p><\/div> Michael Arrowsmith<\/p><\/div> Chris McGuire<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Friday I was early shift Minimasters into Last Chance Trials lead, with a much smaller team, just 6 other people. \u00a0This was the tightest knit team of the weekend for me, and it was so fun to have a day where we stuck (mostly) together and got to bond as a group. \u00a0We ran a bunch of events really well, even though about 8 hours into our shift I was mentally checked out due to the second seizure in a week happening 4 feet in front of me. \u00a0(Seriously. \u00a0The Worcester Open had one, then one of our events we covered had one.) \u00a0I was already tired when it happened, and once the situation was sorted out, I was in a daze until shift ended.<\/p>\n I want to give huge props to Brian Denmark<\/a> Brian Denmark<\/p><\/div> Noel Clauson<\/p><\/div> Darren Gamble<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n Bryan Spellman<\/p><\/div>Saturday I was Logistics lead on one of the 8 splits in the main event. \u00a0The structure of people and events was amazing – we had two sets of “feeder” events that qualified people into one of two new events on Sunday. \u00a0Every feeder event had a head judge, and each set of those had another head judge working to coordinate them. \u00a0Every event had a full set of teams and judges, and was a full Grand Prix on its own, basically.<\/p>\n Logistics lead on a Limited Grand Prix is in my opinion both the most fun and the hardest job out of any Team Lead role. \u00a0Limited means that the cards you can play with are limited to the cards you get from just a few booster packs, and the Logistics lead is responsible for getting those packs to players, solving problems with unusual collation within the packs, and doing anything related to the tournament space.<\/p>\n Eric Cheung<\/p><\/div>One of the big challenges of this event was something called Sleep-in Special. \u00a0Normally you have to open and note every card in a pool of boosters, then pass that to someone else to build a deck with. \u00a0(That way another person has seen the pool and you can check with them if it is suspected that you added cards to it.) \u00a0Sleep-in Special is an upgrade you can pay for where the tournament staff registers that pool for you, and gives you one with the cards already listed. \u00a0Because the set we were using had a lot of valuable cards, quite a few people opted for Sleep-in Special so that nobody else got the chance to see their pool and either elect to drop from the event with it or steal the cards. \u00a0This is where those 3000 pools we registered on Monday and Tuesday come into play.<\/p>\n Our split from the main event had ~850 players, and ~350 of them had Sleep-in Special. \u00a0When I divided up my team, I put Bryan Spellman<\/a> Eric Cheung<\/a> Nicholas Sabin<\/p><\/div>The head judge of our event was Nicholas Sabin<\/a> Earlier in the week, once we knew our GP split and who our head judge was, Joe Hugtho<\/a> I would be remiss if I did not point out that I did not keep our event on track alone. \u00a0Joe and John and Carlos were amazing. \u00a0I’ve had events where I worried about things I was not responsible for, because I was not sure they were getting done. \u00a0This was so far from the case on our GP that I can’t even imagine being concerned. \u00a0Guys, our Saturday might have been the smoothest Saturday I’ve ever worked on a Limited GP. \u00a0Thank you. Joe Hugtho<\/p><\/div> John Shannon<\/p><\/div> Carlos Rada<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sunday was the major leagues. \u00a0I was once again main event Team Lead for the Logistics team. \u00a0Sunday Logsistics makes Saturday Logistics look easy. \u00a0On Sunday of a Grand Prix, you have to setup two drafts with special stamped product, make sure that defective product gets replaced, and manage a draft event where someone “calls” the draft, giving every player instructions on what they should be doing at every point in the process. \u00a0There are a ton of moving parts, and lots of failure modes. \u00a0Sundays are run in a mode we call “Professional”, and we expect a high quality of performance from staff on a Professional level event.<\/p>\n This was the largest Professional draft ever run. \u00a0I don’t have exact numbers for the players that drafted, but we had 369 and 395 players going into Sunday. \u00a0The next largest was the prior monster GP Las Vegas, with ~420 players. \u00a0We nearly doubled that.<\/p>\n I was very excited when Chris Richter<\/a> Jeph Foster<\/p><\/div> Steven Briggs<\/p><\/div> Ashton Chapman<\/p><\/div> To give you an idea of the scale of the product we had to go through, think about this:<\/p>\n This is a titanic, unbelievable amount of stamped product. \u00a0Someone hand-stamped all this at Wizards of the Coast. \u00a0I don’t know who they are, but they get my most sincere and heartfelt thanks.<\/p>\n Jeph Foster and I share a love for stamped product from events. \u00a0We were seriously the kids guarding the candy store when we got handed this much product. \u00a0As Jeph said “If I were to go out from the judge program in a blaze of glory, now would be it.” \u00a0He did not.<\/p>\n Jeph also called both drafts on Sunday. \u00a0He made one error during the calling…which considering he had been working 12 hour days since Tuesday is very remarkable. \u00a0He also volunteered for Top 8 coverage. \u00a0Jeph, what the hell, man. \u00a0I don’t have enough thanks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Steven Briggs<\/p><\/div>My other standouts on my team were Steven Briggs and John Brian McCarthy. \u00a0Briggs was a rock, making sure when I did things like forget to assign judges to help with the event coverage it was just magically done. \u00a0He was ill for part of the day, and trucked on, because he would be damned if he stopped during the home stretch.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n John Brian and I just met at GP Cleveland a couple of months ago. \u00a0After this weekend, I am asking myself how I did not know someone this excellent. \u00a0John Brian was in a role on Saturday called “Communications”. \u00a0Basically he was a special special projects guy. \u00a0He ran a group that registered even more Sleep-in Special pools (because 3000 was not enough!) communicated with 8 different events to make sure things were going well, and solved problems nobody else ever saw. \u00a0On Sunday he and I prepped product for the second draft together, and he was aggressive on floor coverage and taking calls at a time when everyone else was dragging and just not at 100% due to exhaustion.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n My other team members were Edna Murcia<\/a><\/span><\/span> made my Tuesday a ton better. \u00a0She sorted pools and I registered them for about half the day on Tuesday. \u00a0I greatly prefer reg to sorting, so this made my Tuesday a lot less miserable.
\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>
<\/span><\/span> was also unbelievable. \u00a0On Tuesday we were told \u201cif you register 35 pools, you get a bonus box of Khans of Tarkir\u201d. \u00a0Her question was \u201cis that for each<\/i> 35 pools we register?\u201d \u00a0When she got the affirmative, she started pushing her speed up. \u00a0She stayed a bit late, and did 70 pools in about 9.5 hours of work. \u00a0Crazy.<\/p>\n
Wednesday<\/h2>\n
![\"Shamelessly](\"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/robbit\/files\/2015\/06\/G3mR2m0-300x200.jpg\")
<\/a>Thursday<\/h2>\n
<\/span><\/span>, Michael Arrowsmith<\/a>
<\/span><\/span>, and Chris McGuire<\/a>
<\/span><\/span>. \u00a0Guys, you were essentially leads without titles on the schedule, and you did not have a lot of warning for these jobs. \u00a0You all did great, and without you those players and events and judges would have been very unhappy. \u00a0Thank you.<\/p>\n
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
Friday<\/h2>\n
<\/span><\/span> for being a trooper and working on a broken foot. \u00a0Not a single word of complaint from him all day. \u00a0Noel Clauson<\/a>
<\/span><\/span> and Darren Gamble<\/a>
<\/span><\/span>, you did a great job connecting with the L1 judge buddies I gave you, and they had a great event in large part due to your showing them the ropes.
\n<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
Saturday<\/h2>\n
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/span><\/span> in charge of Sleep-in Specials, and he did a fantastic job. \u00a0His sub-team got people seated, building, and solved all their problems with no major hiccups. \u00a0(There was one customer service issue with a late player, but that only impacted that one player out of our whole event.)<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/span> was my other assigned Lieutenant, and he was my “crap, this needs doing” lead. \u00a0I tend to give general tasks, and check back on their status pretty aggressively. \u00a0Anything I gave Eric just vanished. \u00a0He wrangled a lot of people during normal product deployment, buffered scorekeeper issues after seating, and his sub-team seemed pretty well coordinated from my view. \u00a0Eric and Bryan, you made me look good by being so stellar. \u00a0Thank you.<\/p>\n
<\/a>
<\/span><\/span>. \u00a0Nicholas is a great friend of mine, a mentor, and someone I hold in high esteem. \u00a0He and I have worked together a lot, so his instructions to me consisted of “You are very good at this, and professional. \u00a0Be as good and professional as I know you are.” My goals were to not let him down, to not ever make our event the source of delays in our 4-way split (all 4 of our events were on a single clock), and when the time came to give him a memento of the event.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/span> suggested doing something special for Nicholas. \u00a0Nicolas had posted on Tuesday about how special this event was to him, as he had never really thought he would head judge a Grand Prix, and how excited he was for the event. \u00a0Joe was another one of the team leads, and he contacted myself, John Shannon<\/a>
<\/span><\/span>, and Carlos Rada<\/a>
<\/span><\/span> and suggested we put together something. \u00a0I consulted with Steven Zwanger<\/a>
<\/span><\/span> and Jared Sylva<\/a>
<\/span><\/span> to get ideas, and from their ideas plus discussion with the team leads, our conferring came up with a custom playmat of Nicholas illustrated as his favorite Magic art, Gorilla Titan.<\/p>\n
![\"received_10152916303688870\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/robbit\/files\/2015\/06\/received_10152916303688870-300x225.jpeg\")
<\/a>I spoke to artist Drew Baker<\/a>, and commissioned a custom playmat from him. \u00a0He knocked it out of the park. \u00a0We presented this to Nicolas during a all-hands meeting while our judges were being awesome and waiting for the other events, because we were consistently ahead of the others every round. \u00a0Nicholas can comment more on the playmat if he wants – I just wanted to give credit to all the people that made this come together so well.<\/p>\n
\n<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
Sunday<\/h2>\n
<\/span><\/span> (the overall head judge of our split) picked me as Logistics Team Lead for this event. \u00a0His philosophy on Limited Grand Prix events is to figure out his Logistics lead and team first, then fill in the other teams from there. \u00a0I am very honored that he believed me the best choice for the job.
\n<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
\nMy callouts from the day start with Jeph Foster<\/a><\/span><\/span>. \u00a0Jeph and I got together on Saturday evening and pulled all the product for both splits, confirmed it existed, and confirmed it was not egregiously damaged. \u00a0I got done with my shift, and Jeph continued to work with it, prepping boxes with 3 8-player draft pods each in them, with clear labeling. \u00a0When we got in Sunday morning, the first draft was all set to go – we just had to do table layout and drop product for the drafts, which is a lot less work than having to do that and also prep all the product. \u00a0(I would be remiss if I did not mention that our prep team included Steven Briggs<\/a>
<\/span><\/span> and Ashton Chapman<\/a>
<\/span><\/span> doing confirmation and error checking on Saturday.)<\/p>\n
\n
<\/a>
<\/span><\/span> and Gregory De Bonis<\/a>
<\/span><\/span>, who were each awesome in their own way.<\/p>\n