Judging

DCI Reporter V3 still needs a little work…

Yesterday I judged my first ever Magic Vintage event, the Star City Games Power 9 Series, Boston. (Vintage is the format where almost every card ever printed is legal, but several overly-powerful cards are restricted to 1 per deck. This particular event allowed up to 10 proxies.) We had 116 players (I think), and the prizes were the the top 8 players drafting a set of the “Power 9” cards, which are 9 old cards with a total secondary market value on the order of about $3,000. There’s nothing quite like deckchecking a $1,000+ deck. It was a fun experience, and while I don’t anticipate getting into the Vintage scene much, I’m very glad I went. There were all sorts of fun old cards and interesting interactions and interesting decks.

Today, I received notification that I’ve been officially promoted to Magic DCI Area (Level 2) Judge. (I passed the test a month ago, but now the “paperwork”‘s gone through to make it official.)

Today is also our third wedding anniversary. I still love you, Jessi!

On Friday, my wife and I were elected to become our church’s new Sunday School Superintendents for the next 3 years. We were kinda asked at the last minute, but I think that it’ll be a good experience for us. I’m looking forward to it.

Yesterday, I passed my DCI level 2 judge test with flying colors, and am now unofficially a level 2 judge. (In order to be official, the testing judge needs to submit his review of me, and that review needs to get approved, but those shouldn’t be problems.) It appears that I will be the head judge of the Connecticut Limited State Championship on June 24 (although the link is still about the prior Champs for now), which should be a good time and good experience. (I’m also running a Junior Super Series challenge on June 3, but that’s a much smaller event and I doubt any readers of this are eligable to play.)

So, our question of how much interest there would be if we ran a tournament at WPI has been answered.

43 people showed up.

For the first time in about a couple years at least, I no longer possess any unopened Magic packs.

Wow.

I just received confirmation that I’ve been accepted as a volunteer to judge at Pro Tour Charleston in mid-June. Likely I’ll just be working the side events, but I may work some on the main event, especially if I achieve level 2 as planned at Regionals in May.

And don’t forget my WPI SFS-subsidized Magic event two Saturdays from today.

I’ve been getting more involved lately in the Magic judging community. A couple weeks ago I judged at another Pro Tour Qualifier, this coming weekend I’ll be judging at the Connecticut Two-headed Giant Limited State Championship (which people really ought to go to the one in their state if they can, as it’s a really fun format), and the following weekend I’ll be working at a Team Standard Pro Tour Qualifier. Basically I’m working at premiere events once or twice a month, although March is particularly busy. I may be testing for level 2 in the summer, although I’m not sure about that yet.

On Saturday, we went to the North American Challenge finals at Milford, which Jessi had qualified for on Wednesday. Luckily, they took me on as a judge that day so I had something to do there. Jessi didn’t fare so well, unfortunately. They had brought in Sheldon Menery, a level 5 (“Professional level”) judge from the Maryland/Virginia area, as the Head Judge. We were ridiculously overstaffed, as there were 8 of us for a 90 player tournament, but that helped everything go relatively smoothly.

“You know, if it weren’t for the rules, you might be winning by now.” — Jessi, to the player who ended up taking second place at the tournament I ran last night.

I am tired, sore, and exhausted from judging Grand Prix Boston over the weekend. I now have the back of my head and my name up on Wizards’ site. (The picture is from the beginning of the day Saturday, despite the time of the entry they have, and I had not yet been issued my Judge shirt.) It was very fun and a good experience.