Keeping Up
Intro
Let's do a quick experiment. If you work full-time for the DCI judge program, raise your hand.
Andy, you can put your hand down. Andy Heckt, for those of you who don't know, is the fearless head of the judge program and works more-than-full-time to keep things running smoothly. It seems a pretty safe bet, though, that there's nobody else's hand raised right now. [I wouldn't put it past Scott Larabee to be poking around here. -Seamus]
Fundamentally, the judge program is a volunteer organization that involves people giving their time and energy to something they think is worth contributing to and something that they enjoy. This is one of the program's great strengths—everybody involved with judging is doing so because it's something that they want to be doing.
At the same time, it also can be a weakness. For most of us, there are other jobs and other hobbies that take up most of our time, which can make it hard to devote as much time to judging as one might want. Though this most obviously manifests itself in not having the opportunity to judge as many events as one might like, there is a more subtle and insidious side effect that can make those events less than they could be.
One of the unique things about Magic is how frequently things change—from the cards, to the rules, to the policies, and everything in between. As compared to more stagnant games, this means that there is a lot more to keep up with, and it can be easy to fall out of date without even realizing it, the effects of which may fall anywhere between amusing and disastrous.
A Cautionary Tale
The scene here is the Washington State Two-Headed Giant Championships. Other than the fact that this is still a relatively new format, which lead to a higher than usual number of rules interaction questions before the day started, the tournament proceeded rather normally, like most any other relatively large limited tournament. This means, like every other limited tournament, the deck counts during round 1 resulted in some deck registration errors. So far, so good.
You may recall that this year's Two-Headed Giant State Championships happened during the small interim period, between when the new Penalty Guide was released and when it went into effect. This means that, though everybody knew that the DCI was shortly going to be switching to match point penalties for these offenses, this system wasn't in effect yet, so we were bound by the rules of the previous guidelines. Which meant that we were faced with the unenviable task of issuing game losses, which were effectively match losses, given the one-game-match structure, to teams that made registration errors. Doubly unfortunate is the fact that many of them already had read the new guidelines and were even more justified in complaining that these penalties were too harsh.
Of particular note was one irate team who felt particularly strongly about this, and they were quite upset that there wasn't anything that could be done other than to effectively, as they put it, disqualify them from the tournament (and, as it turns out, this game loss did end up taking them out of the running for the final draft). We spent a number of minutes talking about the various philosophies behind why deck registration errors, even seemingly innocuous ones, need to be penalized (the chance for exploitation is relatively high), and that even though it was obvious that everyone, DCI included, felt like a game loss for a one-game-match was too severe for this offense, that the guidelines were the guidelines and that we needed to follow what they said.
This was all well and good, and the right explanation to give, except for the part where it was totally wrong.
Among those of you who remembered that this tournament happened during the transition period between the old and new penalty guidelines, some of you might also recall that there were also supplementary penalty guidelines for Two-Headed Giant during this time, which among other things, changed this specific penalty only to be a warning. [Please note that the recently released Penalty Guide is what all current 2HG events should be run with. -S]
First off, as with any good mea culpa, an apology is order. For any of the teams who were incorrectly slapped with this penalty who happen to read this before we see each other in person, my apologies for getting this wrong.
It's important to spend some time from time to time reflecting on the fallout from your mistakes and how much impact they have, because it's easy to lose sight of how important it is to get these things right. While this may not be high in the list of the mistakes that have ever occurred in a tournament, there were real ramifications. People were knocked out of contention early, ruining the majority of the whole tournament for these players and depriving them of their fair chance to succeed. All of this, simply because I was out of touch with the latest policies.
Temporal Paradox
This leads us to an unfortunate apparent contradiction, however. On the one hand, judging is a volunteer activity and attracts people who don't necessarily have a lot of time to devote. At the same time, the nature of judging is that it requires a commitment to keep up to date with all of the elements that are constantly changing. So how is it that we can reasonably expect this to work?
The answer is, as with so many things, a little bit of compromise. While keeping up to date on every change that happens right at the instant that it happens is certainly a daunting task, there are ways to stay reasonably enough in touch with changes. The goal, after all, is to know the right things to do at tournaments, not necessarily every second of every day, and this can be done without such an extreme commitment. At the same time, even though judging is a volunteer position, there is an expectation that there is a certain level of time commitment such that active judges have enough time to invest the effort to being in sync with current DCI thinking.
If you know where to look and what to do, there are relatively simple things that you can do to help make both sides of this compromise work.
Keeping In Sync
So, you've got a big tournament coming up and you realize that you're a little rusty and that you haven't looked up the latest stuff in a while. What's the best way to get up to speed?
The answer will be a little different for each judge, depending on what you prefer and what you're comfortable with, but there are a few sources of information that are probably your best bets:
- The Magic mailing lists. One of the most important things that happens when you become a Magic Rules Advisor is that you get subscribed to the Magic rules mailing list, which is a mailing list which allows you to ask rules questions that you may have and get them answered by one of Wizards' NetReps, generally high-level judges who either know or can get you the answer to anything you might want to know. Additionally, rules updates and changes will generally be advertised on this list.
If you choose to take the next step and become a Certified Judge, another list opens up to you—the DCI Judge list, which is similar to the rules list except that it focuses on policy and procedure issues and discussion. This list is restricted in its membership because it involves more discussion as well as topics that are more in flux or that involve thinking in progress, so there are things that aren't always ready to go out to the population at large. Once you're on this list, though, it is a great resource for asking and finding out about the latest policies and procedures. Major changes in either will generally be advertised on this list.
Both of these lists can be pretty high in traffic, and while they're well worth keeping up to date on regularly, in the scenario where you're right before a tournament and just looking to catch up, the best thing to do is to be familiar with who the official NetReps are and to focus on the messages that they've recently sent. Currently, the most active NetReps are Scott Marshall and Lee Sharpe, and keeping an eye on what they have to say will help bring you into the loop. If these ever change, it usually is pretty easy to tell after a few minutes of glancing who the current NetReps are.
- The Magic Rules Forums. As a resource, this is similar to the rules list except that it's public to everyone and is a forum rather than a mailing list. Like the mailing list, though, there are NetReps there to answer your questions authoritatively, and while policy isn't as common here as pure rules questions, checking out the announcement threads and other highly trafficked threads can certainly be useful.
- The DCI Judge Certification page. Not to be confused with the DCI Judge Center, the certification page is the central repository for information about getting involved with the program, what certification means, and what it takes to become certified. Additionally, it is the place where judge announcements and articles are made. While some of these articles will be higher level thinking on how to be a more effective judge, a lot of them are often information and elaboration on recent changes in judge policy. It's worthwhile to take a glance at the recent articles and announcements lists here, and to read any that sound like changes to policy that you haven't heard about yet.
The DCI Judge Center, by the way, has a lot of its own usefulness, and it usually links to the latest announcements and articles from the certification page, but isn't the primary source for these resources.
- #mtgjudge on EFNet. We've mentioned this a number of times on Feature Friday and Seamus Campbell has written a great guide to what this is and how to get involved. Like anything else having to do with judging, if it's recent and it's newsworthy, people are probably talking about it on #mtgjudge. And, if it's not recent or if people happen not to be talking about it, there are tons of knowledgeable, well-informed judges that will be happy to start, if you only ask. If you feel comfortable, feel free to jump onto the channel and just ask what you might have missed or things that people think that you should know; the collective body of judges there are typically on the bleeding edge and will be happy to fill you in.
- The Magic Rules Center. The Rules Center has links to the most important documents in a judge's arsenal. The Comprehensive Rules are available here, as is a link to the DCI Document Center, which is the repository for all of the current official policy documents. Though this method is not necessarily for the faint of heart, checking to see which documents have changed since you last looked and reading over them for any differences is one of the best ways to be sure that you're current.
Maintaining the Commitment
These sources are well and good, but what if you just don't have the time right now to get up to date, or if the process of staying in tune with the latest happenings feels too overwhelming every time?
- Ask Other Judges. If you're fortunate enough to judge in an area where there are other strong judges available, use each other as a resource. Maybe one of the judges at your tournament or in your community has more time and is always more current than you and is willing to share their knowledge when you need it. Maybe everyone goes through busy spurts and you can spread the effort around, alternately taking the lead when you have some spare time. No matter how you choose to do it, having other people help you is a good way to reduce the burden, as long as you don't allow this to let you get complacent or lose focus.
- Keep up more constantly. Though this may feel backward, you may find that keeping up to date on a more regular basis makes things less time consuming and more manageable than not. This is because small bits of time are often easier to come by than large ones, and keeping track of small changes can be much easier than internalizing large ones.
- Recognize when you're not prepared. Having the time to be prepared is part of having time to judge a tournament at all. If you're too swamped to spend some time making sure that you're prepared and know everything that you need to for an upcoming tournament, it might be that you're too busy for that tournament. While we don't always have this luxury based on availability of other judges, if you're in the lucky position of having other judges in your area, the right answer to how you're going to get prepared when you have no time might be to defer this tournament to another judge and to jump in later when things are less hectic.
Wrapping Up
Ultimately, there's no magic bullet and no right answer for how to keep up to date, and no matter what you do, it's going to take some time, effort, and diligence on your part. That effort, however, is well spent and you owe it to yourself, your players, and the DCI to spend the time. One of Magic's greatest strengths as a game is its dynamic nature, and how the game is always changing. The same goes for the state of the art in rules, policies, and judging. Figure out what sources and methods work best for you, stick with them, and you'll reap the rewards of judging with confidence and watching your tournaments go smoothly.
Next week: Johanna Virtanen, with the latest from the judge scene in Finland.
Next month: The word "layers" might send chills down many a player's and judge's spines, but they're not just for those dreaded continuous effects. Layering is also an interesting model by which we can describe the way that things are explained and described, and a good understanding of how the things you want to explain to others can be separated into layers can help you to communicate your thoughts more clearly and more efficiently, even when time is at a premium. We'll talk about a layering model for explaining Magic concepts and how it can help you to become a better judge.
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Nicholas J. Fang
DCI Certified Level 3 Judge—Redmond, WA
mtgjudge@gmail.com
Agbaar and Ag|Work on EFnet's #mtgjudge
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