Barcelona has been a big event that I have been excited about for months. As it came closer and closer my excitement just grew as I had several outbursts of excitement the days before it happened that actually left me unable to do things because I was so overwhelmed with joy for this.

My personal goal for this event was to get my excitement under control. It is loved by many but sometimes just very out of place, overwhelming the people around me moving them too far out of their comfort zones. 

I have struggled with mental health since I was 13 years old for almost 7 years. That is a lot of time. It was a hell of a time. I am very glad that this time is over. What kept me alive was the love of my family and knowing that life can actually be good, that I just can’t experience it because I was ill.

I always say that judging had been the best decision in my life and that magic is my drug. I don’t think people understand how much I mean those words. I started to get better when I was a very new player to the game. One day I thought that maybe I could be a great judge, I could actually see myself in that role doing it good. This was the first time in my life that I actively wanted to archive something for myself, this was the first time I was excited about the future. I passed my L1 test a few months after this decision receiving great support from judges around me. At this time I already also counted myself as depression free, medication did great for me and was not in use anymore.

Magic has been a big part of my recovery. Judging has given me an outlook on life that I would not have otherwise. I am part of a great community, I made so many friends, I learned so many things and I feel as if I finally found my place somewhere. I do belong here. The best thing is that there is so much to learn, so much to do and so many people to meet. I am currently having the best year of my life and I hope I will get some more.

My mental state has never been better and because of my past I value every moment, every opportunity, every second of doing what I love doing more than I would otherwise. The bad times are the reason I am me, why I am right here and I wouldn’t change that for anything.

I want everyone to know that my excitement is not because I am solely happy, no, it is the realest sign of me being alive, of me being proud of every bad moment, of me living the best live I can right now.

So, I have this utterly positive emotion which has negative side effects for my surroundings but also myself. As I do work very hard on myself I noticed all the negative things it brings. Emotional exhaustion after events, extreme need to keep my body moving, concentration issues, … just to name a few. My goal is not to make the excitement go away, my goal is it instead of having emotional outbursts being able to control my emotions to a point where I can use this for others, for judges, for players, for a positive tournament and community experience. This is a long term goal, 1 big event won’t fix that and it is going to be a very hard road as this issue feels out of control in most situations I find myself in. But addressing this seems like a step on my road I want to do and a step I believe that will bring me forward as a person and judge.

I don’t want to stay „exited Eser“, I don’t want to be the „small hyperactive german judge“, the „bouncy ball“. I want to turn this energy into reason – into true passion. I want to bring the people around me forward.

And that can only be the case when I am able to have this reasonable under control.

Friday has been a very interesting day. I was part of the trials team. Due to difficulties with communication half of our trials got cut at Thursday before so there was some people switching around and it was not possible to give us judges much information beforehand. As the shift started at 9:30 and the first trial starting at 11:45 the team had quite much time to fill. We spent the first hour doing the judge briefing and talking. Now, don’t get me wrong, but after this long time not doing things and just sitting my exitment out it was getting mixed with anxiety. Tournment anxiety. Not doing things, not being busy, not being able to prove myself makes me an anxious mess. I need to be active to stop my head from thinking too much. At 11 we helped with the first round of the MCQ until 12 when I headed back to get to start my 12:45 Last Chance Trial (which had 28 players). I had another trial at 15:45 with 56 players.

I feel like I have 2 main states when I am judging. One where I feel like I am an outstander, a spectator and one where I feel like I am actively part of the tournament. The second one is the goal and could be described as “being in the flow”. When I am in this emotional state I am able to enjoy every part of the tournament and have a great tournament experience myself just as the way I interact with players and other judges feel very natural for me. The first one makes me not feel accomplished and I am not able to work in a way where things go easily but rather than that I have to think about everything I do which feels very clunky.

I struggled a lot with reaching the state of being in the flow as it took me several hours. As I was aware of this I tried adjusting my body language as activel procceeding to have a body language that brings positivity in the way one interacts with others. After being focused in some intense situations and having very positive player interactions I could feel the shift in my tournament experience and from that point on I was having a very positive day.

I have had players to come to me and talk to me, friends and strangers, the spark of magic did its thing and soon I had the excitment again which I now needed to be aware of. As I had to work the other way round in the first half in the morning I feel like using this positivity in the way I want it to was rather easy calming myself down with short breath meditation in situations where I felt it to become overwhelming soon.

But now enough of this! I have had a few very interesting situations that stuck with me that day and which i want to share. I introduce you to my friends Antoni as active player and Newton as nonactive player for the rest of this Article.

“Judge! My opponent wants to suspend their Search for Tomorrow with Teferi, Time Revelers +1 ability in my turn. Does that work?”

My gut feeling said no but I doublechecked with a fellow judge. The special action says that you can suspend the card at any time you could cast that card. Teferi allows you to cast sorceries as instants and therefore Newton can actually suspend their Search For Tomorrow. Something new was learned!
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Newton has a Karn, the Great Creator on their battlefield. Antoni taps their Mox Opal and another land for mana to cast their Assassin’s Trophy onto the Karn. Newton searches their Library for a forest and then casts a Natures Claim onto Antonis Thopter Foundry, in reaction to that Antoni activates A fetchland and is searching their library as they realize that they could never have activated the Mox Opal.

So this is now a new double GRV as it stands in the book as the Karns ability has changed the game rules and neither player showed awareness for that, Antoni as they illegally activated their ability and Newton as they have let Antoni activate it and controlling the source of the rules change. I decided that I wanted to do a backup as neither player knew any position of cards in their library before they searched it, I went to confirm the backup with another more experienced judge and came to the conclusion that this is doable because even if the library was searched in the process, because no cards were drawn undoing the searches is not a problem and does not add a random element to the situation.

This was a very intense situation for me because there was so much information to process I kind of forgot to investigate as I should have done, but I am happy that the situation resolved this way and I feel after watching the game going on the situation was well fixed with the backup. I think I have learned something with this judge call!
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As trials are a single elimination tournament we determine a winner, when the game would normally be a draw because of extra turns, with the sudden death rule. The player with the higher life total wins the match, if they are the same the first life total change decides. If players go into their third game after time has been called the first life total change of the game will decide the outcome for a match.

This has led to some very intense situations with frustrated players.

Players have called me after they finished their second match in the extra turns and were 1-1 now. After I explained the situation to them and I almost had to give one player a warning for Unsporting Conduct Minor, if they would have done anything more to show their frustration it would have been too much. ( One could see in the way thay have put their library on the battlefield and the way they spoke that they are very unhappy with the situation.) Their opponent played burn and they a simic control/flash deck which had no chance to win with this new state based action in the game. Their opponent procceeded to Mulligan to 3 until they had their turn 1 bolt.

In another similar situation where a new game was about to start adn the first life total change would create a winner. I was called to the table because a floor judge of my trial needed help to solve a communication issue.

Antoni called a Judge because their opponent did not proceed to scoop. “Newton said they would scoop if I reveal my Bolt!”. So I tried to clarify the situation. The information I have gotten was that after Antoni said they would keep their opening hand Newton asked them if they have a turn 1 bolt, because if they have they would scoop as there was nothing newton could have done if that was the case, otherwhise they would try to mulligan several times and try to find their turn 1 combo that would end the game. Antoni revealed a bolt and a land that produces red but comes into play tapped.

I spoke to both players away from the table alone and came to the conclusion that Netwons intention was to scoop if they would be dead turn 1 anyways. The opponent got confused and thought that Newton was cheating them. I delivered my ruling explaining to them that this situation is caused by communication problems and that they should keep on playing. As Antoni was very unhappy I decided to tell that even though I was the HJ I want to give them the ability to appeal to my TL. They did so and I came back with a L3 judge my TL has delegated the task to. So this discusion opened all again and after some time passed I stepped in explaining very clearly: “In this situation there are two players involved. You would not have needed to show cards in your hand and reveal information.”, I looked to the L3 judge making clear I want the players to play again and with that they upheld my ruling with the same philosophy that I had. Even though this took a few minutes longer I think getting a L3 judge involved, and with that another opinion, was necesarry to keep up good customer service. I strongly believe that otherwhise the situation would have escalted.

As the tournaments got smaller and smaller it also got calmer and I had time to have quite some positive interactions with players. You know you make something right when a player comes to you saying “thanks for the tournament, judge”.

Saturday was Main Event for me as I was in the stage team, meaning I am taking part in the End of Round process as Zone Leader.

As my phone can’t handle the new version of Purplefox (our End of Round Program) I got a tablet from the Side Event Stage and I felt from the first minute very comfortable in my role as part of the tournament. I was very excited for this as my team and my lead were all awesome judges with who I either have worked already or wanted to work with and literally everyone in my team was either an L3 judge or an aspiring L3 candidate!

I want to point to a few very stressfull situations that have arisen.

In round 3 the first judges went to have their break, as result for that the floor was very empty at the beginning of the round. I was the only judge in block B which was a quite large middle block with ~350+ players (guessed) in it.

My team lead passed by and I explained to him that I need more judges here, one of the result entry slip distribution judges passed me and gave me a bunch of slips of which none were in my zone (but i couldn’t leave to the correct one).

I was running from one call to the other and at some point got appealed because I gave the players to less extra time ( I gave them 3 minutes as my clock said 2 1/2 minutes passed since I took the call). One player said they have waited longer and I explained to them that I stopped the time and this is the extra time they get.

Then I had a very intersting judgecall:
Antoni has cast a Manamorphose, as they tried to draw the card the card below the drawn card flipped in a way that only their opponent could have possibly seen the card.

I investigated and let the players show me how it happened. After thinking about Looking at extra cards and half delivering my ruling I told the players to please wait as this does not really fit. I went to 2 burgundy Judges and explained the situation, telling them it does not really fit the ipg and that I just would suffle the card back into the library without giving a penalty. I explained that I felt that was neccessary as no player should know a position of a card in the library they were not supposed to know and that is not the case. The reaction baffled me and even with talking afterwards to one of those judges I still don’t understand the ruling. “leave it on top” was what I was supposed to do. After another try thinking I might now have been able to explain it well and they not changing the answer I gave up, delivered that ruling and saw 3 people involved within the situation getting a bad memory out of it.

Antoni pulled me aside after I gave my ruling and they finished drawing the card from Manamorphose. ” I feel very bad about this situation. I had a serum visions in hand and now drew a thought scour. My opponent told me what was on top of the library and because of that my game plan changed from instead casting the serum visions casting the thought scour because I do not want the card on top of my library. Now I get a game advantage I would not have gotten.

I explained to them that they could appeal and I would talk to the Appeals Judge and they procceeded to ask their opponent explaining the situation. They were frustrated saying “it doesn’t matter anymore, it is my fault for telling you what was on top of the library.” So no appeal (which I would have hoped for) and 3 people feeling negative towards this situation. However I think I did everything I could for it and that it was correct to get a burgundy judge involved because of my doubts of this fitting the IPG. I also know now why it is important to explain your reasonings behind your rulings as a leader because otherwhise it can create a lot of frustration inside the involved people, expecially if your ruling is different from what they intended to do. Make sure the other person understands the “why” behind the “do”.

As soon as that had resolved the End Of Round process started and I went to my Zone which was a block with even more players. I was not able to find any judges available as 3 were involved in an investigation. I stressed my team lead to send me more judges and we, late, got to do the End of Round which then worked quite well. Round 3 was just very understaffed and that was very very stressfull.

My one hour lunchbreak after that could not compensate for that stress of round 3

in round 6 I was part of an investigation and were only able to start the End of Round process fairly late (7 mins. left in round). When I arrived to get my tablet it was not there anymore and I needed to find anouther one plus start purplefox on it so I arrived in my Zone only with 4 minutes left in the round. As I was starting marking things the programm stopped working on my tablet and I went to proceed to the good old paper method. Lukckily I had enough judges around that helped me to prevent a lot of chaos from happening so this very stressfull situation resolved rather calm.

Saturday was very stressfull alltogether for everyone in the Mainevent. Even though I enjoyed every minute in it. We were burning but I was busy the whole time and I was able to learn a few things!

Sunday I was part of the strike team. After a morning of sightseeing I had a blast doing the physical work. I ended up mainly re-organizing the product in the back of the prize Wall and I wrapped so many pallets that I lost the count. The team was truly amazing, working with friends is incredible fun.

Takeaways

1. Being aware of my emotional state and my energy levels and either moving them actively up or down has helped me having a great experience. I won’t say it was perfect or worked great but I made first steps to a point where I was feeling in control and still have people telling me I am very excited. One of my fears was that people might perceive me as unhappy because I am not bouncing as much as usual but that luckily was not the case.
   
   I felt that I was able to focus much more and longer and the small meditations plus the help from the judges around me adressing this issue helped me a lot that weekend. I was suprised about how concentrated I was even in round 9 of the Mainevent! I am definitly going to work more on this as this has already increased my performance with slight adaptations.
   
2. At the judge party I always realise how unable I am to socially interact with other humans outside of the Magic context. I was feeling very awful because I didn’t want to disturb other conversations and ruin them with my awkwardness. When I said my goodbyes and friends I got very overwhelmed by them. I am very lucky to have so many great loving people around me. Yes, I am awkward but I should not be scared to interact with people. I created myself a negative situation and I can’t expect others to help me out of it if i don’t tell anyone that I am not feeling well. Communication people, communication is important.
   
3. Selfcare is very important. Sunday night I was so exhausted that it made several people very worried. My eating habits at Magic Fests are pretty bad (as I usually only live off of the staff food) and 6-7 hours sleep is definitly not enough to keep up with all that is happenening. I drank “enough” water but with all the heat that was probably still not enough. I already tried to add more selfcare to this event but I kind of failed. I definitly need to plan this more and be stricter with myself in that area to avoid this situation in the future.
   

Alltogether this was probably the best Magic Fest I attended. I had so much to do, so many opportunities to learn and recived great support from my team leads and team members just as other judges in my events. Our community is strong. We have so many great people. The Judge Community is unique in the way we interact with each other. I hope we can take this internal support onto the new evolutionary stage of the judge program with us. Change is ahead and my hopes are high as I give my trust in some of the most awesome people I know or will get to know in the future. Lets be optimistic, we have withstood a lot in the past and we’ll manage the future too.