Admittedly, it requires the stars to align, since I\u2019m not home super often, but when they do, I don\u2019t mind helping my Local Game Store whenever no other judge is available.<\/p>\n
It hasn\u2019t been a rough day, far from it: 36 players, the store employee is also an L1 and the evening before, a common friend of us who just certified asked whether he could judge for the first time.<\/p>\n
Nothing was chaotic, we started registration on time at a comfortable 10:00, rounds lasted 60 minutes average, we were out to the restaurant by 19:00, cleaning included.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, I really felt like I didn\u2019t do a good job. What did I miss? The player\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Head Judging a GP<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n As you may expect, I\u2019m used to HJ GPs. I\u2019m used to super large halls with often super\u2026 let\u2019s say questionable acoustics, super large crowds with super\u2026 let\u2019s say arguable attention. This means that I need to reduce my announcements to the bare minimum.<\/p>\n Indeed, when acoustics is bad, an announcement is very hard to understand and therefore close to, if not entirely, useless. In the same way, at a GP, the inertia of the mass makes the tournament intrinsically slow, hence I don\u2019t want to speak for too long: Players came to play.<\/p>\n I instinctively followed this reasoning that Sunday… and it failed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some facts<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A social interaction<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In Round 1, a neighbor asks a player who just lost game 1: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you turn your Fleecemane Lion monstrous the turn before?\u201d The opponent calls me over to express displeasure at what could very easily turn into a strategic advice.<\/p>\n After talking to all parties, I was 100% certain this was only a question, but it suggested very strongly the player made a mistake, and I identified Outside Assistance.<\/p>\n Which is a Match Loss.<\/p>\n Which felt super harsh to a player who just wanted to have social interactions.<\/p>\n But this was competitive REL, and rules need to be enforced so as to be fair with every player in the tournament.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Where\u2019s your sideboard?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n At the beginning of round 2, a player comes to me to tell me he may have an issue with his list, since he has likely not registered his sideboard.<\/p>\n I\u2019m asking a few more questions and I realize in the discussion he doesn\u2019t make a difference between Main Deck and Sideboard, but a difference between \u201cCards\u201d and \u201cLands\u201d. I\u2019m a bit confused about the situation and pull out the decklist. The player listed in one column 55 \u201ccards\u201d and in the other column 20 \u201clands\u201d.<\/p>\n I ask him what his sideboard is. He tells me they\u2019re the last 15 cards in the first column. Counting from the bottom, I indeed find the last 8 lines add up to 15 cards and they\u2019re reasonable Sideboard cards, which makes me exclude shadiness.<\/p>\n Because the player came by himself and we didn\u2019t need to modify anything on his decklist (besides clearly marking what\u2019s SB and what\u2019s MD), I did not issue a penalty but explained to him the importance of a clean decklist, mentioning decklists errors can be penalized with a GL.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Autopsy of a failure<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This tournament wasn\u2019t a PPTQ, but it was a fairly similar audience.<\/p>\n I made sure to mention to players that the REL was competitive but totally failed to explain what it changed compared to the FNMs\/Pre-releases they were mostly used to.<\/p>\n After all, the \u201cadvice\u201d wasn\u2019t too strong and I\u2019m not even sure an opponent would have noticed during a FNM.<\/p>\n Players aren\u2019t used to decklists anymore. Right now, it\u2019s fairly rare to actually find a tournament where decklists are used.<\/p>\n It could have been worse, as I\u2019ve had a small Missed Trigger issue that I resolved without a problem (although the player could barely understand why his mandatory trigger could be missed, since the card says it\u2019s mandatory)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Making a good speech<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A good speech isn\u2019t long. It goes to the point and allows players to play as fast as possible. What you should tackle is:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Putting all of this in a single speech IS too long. The longer you speak at once, the less people will listen to you. Therefore, it\u2019s great to spread these elements throughout the day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n During the Seat All Players<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Beginning of round 1<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Beginning of round 2<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Making the speech understandable<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019ve just juxtaposed a bunch of words that have technical meanings but reality is that most players have no way to know what they mean. A speech aims at being informative.<\/p>\n Therefore, how to explain clearly and quickly what they refer to?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Missed Triggers<\/em><\/p>\n At Competitive events, you are responsible for remembering your own triggers, even if the card says the trigger is mandatory. Your opponent doesn\u2019t need to remind you they exist. And if you forget about them, they may not apply so be careful!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Outside Assistance<\/em><\/p>\n You should not intervene in any game that\u2019s being played. If you notice something wrong, let a judge know, especially if that\u2019s about triggers!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Improperly Determining a Winner<\/em><\/p>\n You can\u2019t roll a die, flip a coin or look at the top cards of your library if the game is a draw. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The switch from Regular to Competitive can be fairly difficult for players, especially as PPTQs nowadays happen at the exact same place as PRs\/FNMs. The difference between these kind of events is crucial to judges but isn\u2019t instinctive to players and the consequences of mistakes done vastly differs. Therefore, informing players in a way that’s useful to them is important to help them take the best out of the day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kevin Desprez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Admittedly, it requires the stars to align, since I\u2019m not home super often, but when they do, I don\u2019t mind helping my Local Game Store whenever no other judge is available. It hasn\u2019t been a rough day, far from it: 36 players, the store employee is also an L1 and the evening before, a common […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"language":[14],"class_list":["post-644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tournament-reports","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/whatsupdocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/whatsupdocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/whatsupdocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/whatsupdocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/whatsupdocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/whatsupdocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":648,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/whatsupdocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/whatsupdocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/whatsupdocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/whatsupdocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/whatsupdocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nThis is a touchy topic, therefore you should try to bring it on a light tone so as to clearly state what they can’t do but without making a huge deal of it. It’s meant to be informative, not threatening.<\/p>\n