{"id":720,"date":"2017-01-11T16:48:36","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T16:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/?p=720"},"modified":"2017-01-11T18:03:54","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T18:03:54","slug":"exemplar-highlights-ryan-koenig-and-joshua-wiitanen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/2017\/01\/11\/exemplar-highlights-ryan-koenig-and-joshua-wiitanen\/","title":{"rendered":"Exemplar Highlights &#8211; Ryan Koenig and Joshua Wiitanen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hello again, it\u2019s Fortunato and I get to be the first Exemplar Highlight of the year, which is super sweet! So, let\u2019s start of the year on a good note with this week\u2019s Highlight by <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/apps.magicjudges.org\/judges\/ScoutsOA\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ryan <\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Koenig<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> on <a href=\"http:\/\/apps.magicjudges.org\/judges\/whitnen\/\">Joshua Wiitanen<\/a>! <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>&#8220;It is an amazing experience judging with you Josh. Being your HJ is almost too easy, you have every point of a tournament locked down and everything runs smoothly. When time is about to be called, you have already generated a list of ongoing games. Each call you take, you present it as a learning experience for the player and make sure everything is understood clearly. You are a role model for judges and I look forward to judging with you in the future.&#8221;<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><div class=\"wp-caption alignleft judgeimg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/apps.magicjudges.org\/judges\/dci\/29922344\"><img src=https:\/\/apps.magicjudges.org\/dci\/avatar?dci=29922344&size=200 alt=\"Ryan Koenig\"><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ryan Koenig<\/p><\/div>Ryan is an L2 from San Marcos, California who adores playing Magic, as we all do, at his local shop: Sky High Comics. He started playing Magic back in Onslaught block, playing Mono Red Ponza, otherwise known as totally everyone\u2019s favorite thing to do: land destruction! Hey, everyone thought a land destruction deck would be great at one time or another! We all <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com\/Morph\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">morph<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> into different players as time goes on. Nonetheless, I had asked Ryan what his favorite Judge call was, it\u2019s a new thing I wanted to add to these pieces this year, and he responded with the fact he\u2019s had a lot of fun as a Flavor Judge. Casting <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/gatherer.wizards.com\/Pages\/Card\/Details.aspx?multiverseid=417649\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Die Young<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> on <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/gatherer.wizards.com\/Pages\/Card\/Details.aspx?multiverseid=417738\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oviya Pashiri<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> just leads him to have a good time questioning how Magic works. It really showed me that even as a veteran player or Judge you can still find joy in the little things. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ryan also wanted to add a follow up about Joshua simply saying \u201cI\u2019m excited to see where he goes, he has the ability to go far.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What caught my attention in this week\u2019s Exemplar Review was Ryan\u2019s appreciation for Joshua\u2019s devotion to the player understanding what\u2019s going on. To not criticize any Judge\u2019s ability to take a call or explain what\u2019s going on in a situation, especially myself since I would never say I\u2019m a great Judge when it comes to rulings, but I do feel some Judges take calls as something they want to get through by saying the least amount of words possible to just answer the players\u2019 question. Improving the knowledge of the playerbase and having them feel like they learned something after every call just always seemed like our main goal but yet some people don\u2019t prioritize it. I can easily see why Ryan added how Joshua is \u201c a role model for Judges(&#8230;)\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I genuinely hope you enjoyed reading this piece, I plan on making this year one of great improvements and some changes to how I write these&#8211;while still keeping what people really enjoy about them! It\u2019s kind of hard to keep something fresh and new while still keeping it fun and familiar. I can see why Wizards must have added a Standard banlist now! Was that too soon? Well, the next time I see you can\u2019t come soon enough, so until next time!<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-caption alignnone judgeimg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/apps.magicjudges.org\/judges\/dci\/6103790232\"><img src=https:\/\/apps.magicjudges.org\/dci\/avatar?dci=6103790232&size=200 alt=\"Written by: Fortunato Acosta\"><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Written by: Fortunato Acosta<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello again, it\u2019s Fortunato and I get to be the first Exemplar Highlight of the year, which is super sweet! So, let\u2019s start of the year on a good note with this week\u2019s Highlight by Ryan Koenig on Joshua Wiitanen! &#8220;It is an amazing experience judging with you Josh. Being your HJ is almost too [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":723,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"language":[],"class_list":["post-720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exemplar-highlights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":726,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions\/726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}