Hello, my name is Fortunato (pronounced Four-Two-Knot-Toe) Acosta! For those of you who don’t know me, which is probably most, if not all, people reading this, I’m a fairly new L1 from Merced, California. I was approached to be part of a project that would find and promote some of the most awesome Exemplar reviews by some even more awesome Judges! Woo! So, as you probably already have gathered, there will be more of these spotlight articles coming. Sadly not all of them are going to be by me, bummer–I know!

Today I’m going to introduce an awesome L2 from Canoga Park, California! His name is Christian Aguilar and he’s been playing Magic since 2009! Man, do you remember Magic in 2009? Shards of Alara with its three color archetypes (Jund ‘Em Out!), M10 with the first printing of the card that makes all Dragons and Demons weep: Baneslayer Angel, and our first encounter with the Eldrazi menace on Zendikar. Jeez, what a time to start playing Magic. Yet, out of all those crazy mythics to get our L2’s first Mythic Rare was Jace Beleren. Since then our young Judge has sculpted his mind to be a memory adept, an architect of thought, and some even say he’s a prodigy but was really unbound. Christian adores playing some pretty awesome and awesomely obscure formats like EDH, Supervillain Rumble, Vanguard, Planechase, and Assassin. I’ve played EDH for quite a while and I can tell you that I have no idea what some of those archetypes are exactly. Looks like I’m doing some internet searching after this article–but I digress. Christian joined the Judge program back in November of 2014 and since then he’s always been looking to help others in the program and in the Magic community in any way possible! He wrote this really amazing, and heartwarming Exemplar review to John O’Donnell: another really rad L2!

“John, you have had a colossal impact on me as a judge. The first time I had interacted with you, you had sent my interest in becoming a judge to Angela and sent me the appropriate studying material to make sure I had the resources to understand what I was getting myself into. One of the first Comp level events I had done was a PPTQ you Head Judged and made sure I was getting the appropriate experience by having me take calls pretty aggressively as well as keeping me occupied with questions to gauge my understanding of the rules. Your encyclopedic knowledge of the Rules and Policy has helped me, and others, with the very technical understandings of the documents, and greatly helped me in my advancement towards L2 and helped me greatly with the understanding of the Missed Trigger Policy considering that we had discussed the topic for about 3 months. I know you are a person that others can turn to for a change in perspective, for any scenarios most would not have ever thought about and if it weren’t for your guidance I don’t think I would have ever had my framework for L2. I know I still have a lot to learn and there will always be things I don’t quite understand, but I am glad that you are there to help whenever necessary. Thank you for the lessons you have taught me and the lessons you will continue to teach.”

Now, doesn’t that warm your heart? We’ve all, or at least a lot of us, had a Judge that got us interested into joining the program and that shaped us to be the Judge we are today. I hope you had fun with this article, I know I did! It’s my first and hopefully not last one. Anyway, this is Fortunato signing off and if you want to be featured on one of these articles all you gotta do is be the best in the world at what you do, and what you do is being you.