Judging

Some background for those unfamiliar but might find this interesting anyway: The basic timing system in Magic is that when a player has “priority”, they can choose to (a) take an action, or (b) pass. If both players pass in a row, then (a) if there’s something on the stack (waiting to resolve), the top item on the stack resolves and active player get priority again, or (b) if there’s nothing on the stack, the current phase or step ends and the game moves on to the next phase. Usually, this formal description of timing is shortcutted quickly by the players, and most actual players wouldn’t be able to describe the details of how this timing system works.

I’ve now reserved hotel rooms for our trip to Magic Nationals in July and Gen Con Indy in August. While we’re out West, we’re going to stop at the new Creation Museum for a day on the way back.

Anybody want to join us for any of these trips?

Check out the, er, “champion” in the 10k coverage!

UPDATE 11:50am: Oh, yeah, I’m also in one of the pictures showing me judging the Round 2 feature match. That’s not as interesting, though.

I realized I never stated on here that I judged at Grand Prix Massachusetts, which was a lot of fun, and quite challenging, as the format was new to many players and many of the judges.

Coming up this weekend I have the Dreamblade Hartford 10K, which will be very nice as there have been no big Dreamblade events in the area. People with even a remote interest in a miniatures strategy game should learn the game, put together a warband, and come. There are cash prizes being given out to top 32, and booster pack prizes given to top 64, and I doubt we’ll break 100 players. I’ll be judging and Jessi will be playing. On Sunday, there will be a slightly smaller 1k event, which is Sealed Box, so you don’t even need to put together a warband ahead of time.

I’m continuing to run weekly FNM events at Rising Phoenix Games.

March 30 through April 1, I’m going to be judging at Grand Prix Massachusetts in Fitchburg. They’re actually putting me up in a hotel room while I’m there.

April 21, I’ll be judging at the Connecticut Future Sight Prerelease.

May 5 & 6, I’ll be judging at the University of Hartford Dreamblade 10K event. Also that weekend I’m supposed to run a Future Sight release event at Rising Phoenix Games, so I’m not sure how that’s going to work right now.

So last night I decided to stop by the new gaming store in “Worcester”, Rising Phoenix Games.

Starting next Friday we’ll be starting the Friday Night Magic program there, with me as the Tournament Organizer and Judge.

Another completely random thing that I wanted to mention is that I’ve written some test questions for use on Magic and Dreamblade judge tests (they solicit questions from all judges to continually improve their question database), and while it’s taken them a while, not only are a couple of my questions actually being used on tests now, some of them have been translated into some other languages. It’s just kind of neat to see a question I wrote in Italian, Chinese, and Portugese, as I can’t read it but I know what it says, since I wrote it in the first place.

• 1/3/07: Judged Magic City Champs season Standard event at Wonderland Comics.
• 1/10/07: Tried to judge at Magic City Champs season booster draft event at Wonderland Comics, but not enough players showed up.
• 1/13/07: Judged Magic Scholarship Series event at TJ Collectibles.
• 1/20/07: Will judge Magic Planar Chaos prerelease at University of Hartford for TJ Collectibles.
• 1/21/07: Will play at that Planar Chaos prerelease in the afternoon.
• 1/27/07: Will play at Dreamblade Chrysotic Plague release event.
• 1/27/07: May play at Magic City Champs season booster draft event at Wonderland Comics.
• 1/31/07: Will judge at Magic City Champs season Standard event at Wonderland Comics.
• 2/3/07: Will play Magic Planar Chaos release event at TJ Collectibles.
• 2/10/07: Will judge Magic Extended Pro Tour Qualifier for Pro Tour Yokohama at the Gamingetc Tournament Center for TJ Collectibles.
• 2/11/07: Will organize and judge WPI Planar Chaos event for the WPI Science Fiction Society.
• 2/17/07: Will head judge a Magic 2 headed giant Sealed Deck event at Templecon, as well as likely work with other events (drafts, Dreamblade) there. (I’m particularly looking forward to this, as it’ll be my first REL3/32k head judging event.)
• 2/25/07: May play in a Dreamblade 1k at Your Move Games.
• 3/30/07–4/1/07: Will judge at Magic Grand Prix Massachusetts in Fitchburg.
• 4/21/07–4/22/07: Will judge and/or play at the Magic Future Sight prerelease.
• 5/5/07–5/6/07: Will judge at Dreamblade 10k Hartford.
• 7/26/07–7/29/07: May judge at Magic U.S. National Championship in Baltimore.
• 12/6/07–12/9/07: May judge at Magic World Championship in New York City.

And that’s just what’s on my calendar so far… I expect it to fill up more as the year continues.

• My brother moved out to Palmer a couple weeks ago to be closer to his job. With the house came a pinball machine in the basement. It’s a Williams Earthshaker, from 1989. It seems to mostly work, although the score display on it doesn’t seem to work right now. It looks like the current plan is to transport the machine to our house next weekend, and I’m going to take on the hobby of pinball machine restoring. I’m looking forward to it.
• This weekend, I’m going to judging a Magic Grand Prix Trial and Dreamblade $1k at TJ Collectibles.
• Jessi and I are working on filling out an adoption application. Hopefully this will accelerate our plans for growing our family.