I applied hoping to get into the biggest Magic Fest of the year! From the point I was accepted this event was over every other event. “I AM GOING TO VEGAS!”. The hype is always real for events but really, for Vegas the hype was more than real! My judge mind basically skipped Birmingham since Vegas was the week just after it!

“I am gonna meet many judges and friends I only know from online. I am gonna meet many new people! I am gonna have some of the best german speaking country judges with me on this trip, does this mean I am a good one too? I am gonna make so many experiences! I am gonna learn so much! This is my first time outside of Europe! H E C K I A M E X C I T E D ! ! !”

Passport, ESTA, preparations, travels – everything went smoothly. 21 hour trip, no jet lag, enough sleep on the plane. I was ready! So ready!

Thursday I was just a pile of hype the whole day, my Team Lead was just as hyped too. I honestly think Mani, my team lead, was the best one I have had the honor to work with. I am gonna try to take some of the lessons from him with me for my future as judge.

1. Take your judges serious. Even the tiniest worries, even if they don’t matter for yourself as a person. I often get the feeling that people pretend as if they care. This time I felt like I was just as important as anybody else in the staff which was a very positive experience that got me very motivated.

2. Trust your team. Your team are the people who will make the tournament(s) great. They are there so the best thing you can do is to trust them and reflect this on the way you interact with them. This will motivate them and open more ways of interacting!

3. Work with the team members as individuals. Everyone is different, acknowledging the differences and spotting the motivational spots of the judges as said individuals makes the day much more rewarding for everyone involved!

4. Make your team your priority. I am quoting Mani: “You are here to make the players day – I am here to make your day” ( I had the situation of not having a cash or credit card on me and my break was just before compensation opened, but I couldn’t do my break any later because I was the HJ of a Standard Side Event. Mani organized me some paper money and then send be back to break instead of just having me deal with this small, but for me big, issue.

My Standard tournament had 47 players (if i remember correctly, forgot to take the notes) and itself nothing really interesting happened. I had one situation where I went completely wrong with the fix but only realised after the round was done.

Anna and Nemo are going to be the players names in this article. Anna is always the active player and Nemo the nonactive player.

Anna is playing against Nemo in Round 2. while drawing her opening hand Anna realizes that she forgot to desideboard after the last game.

The situation caught me very off guard but there is no reasoning behind this and I don’t want to minimize this mistake I did. I literally just told her to exchange the cards and shuffle all her cards and the correct ones in to then draw a new opening hand. (As the error was noticed when she drew her third card). YES I really fucked this one up and I have no clue why I told the player such crap but it happened… At REL Regular what we should do is to remove all the cards that are wrong and exchange them with the correct cards, however all cards in game zones other than the library get shuffled into the library instead and Anna is not allowed to draw that number of cards that she had removed from her hand.

I noticed quite some differences from “the Europe way” of doing things.

At the Magic Fests I worked at before Vegas we had result slip entry boxes at the paring boards, in the US in most cases we tell players to bring the result slips directly to the scorekeepers.

The players applauded when I told them I am gonna be the Head Judge of the Standard tournament and altogether they visible show more appreciation of our work as judges. It felt great to get so much recognition from the people we do this for.

When players (and other people) want to thank me they always added ma’am. This is nothing that ever happened to me and over the course of the weekend it really bothered me as I do not identify as female but apparently got recognised by most people as such even though I used my “they/them/theirs pronouns please” badge. This is a very hard thing for trans and nonbinary folks and most likely not only I struggle with this very small choice of words.

My shift ended surprisingly early so I even got to play some modern side event myself. After that day I was even more ready for the next 3 days to come!

Friday started with preparing product. Modern Horizon Product. Product for over 600 people! MH1 Sealed double-ups were, aside from the Main Events, the largest Events! As time came closer to my Sealed Event I noticed that my fanatic players do not have a basket when they should have, I checked in with my TL who checked with the Side Event Stage and then got the answer back that my Sealed Event is actually a 2HG Sealed Event. And yes, this made me even more happy, I love sealed but 2HG is one of the most casual Side Events one could have and that leaves room for easy feeling player interactions!

71 Teams registered, I greeted my players with: “HEY, 2 HEADED GIANTS!”. I had a lot of fun and many 2HG questions came up that are more format specific. We added 3 things to the Head Judge Announcement: BO1, 30 life per team and the free first mulligan each game.

At some point of my tournament I found one player having lost his second head. “He had a very important business call to make but he is away since longer than expected so I am playing for both”. I asked all players if I should take the place as it wasn’t busy at all right now and all players around were very happy with this offer (and also thanked me afterwards) Basically I was just holding the cards and tapping the permanents for things.

While writing this however I came to the conclusion that my behavior might not have been the best decision for the tournament integrity and I won’t do it again even if it seemed the best decision at that moment. We had a lot of fun and my team lost horribly in the end but you know, people still play for something in the end and I should influence that only in a professional way which this solution definitely wasn’t and I do regret this now.

The correct behaviour would have been to give the team a match loss penalty for tardiness, that one player didn’t show up for the rest of the match at all, and educate players to call a judge when they go away from the table. Next time I will do it right!

I had one interesting Rules Situation. Anna controls Grindstone and a her opponent a Rest in Peace. She activates the Grindstone. What happens? Think about it, the answer will be found at the bottom of this article (1.)!

The great judges around me and with all the very great player interactions this has been probably the best day in this event. After Thursday I also stopped my normal habit of counting the judge calls. Sides has been so much fun and so busy even if the number of calls themself were low. Even if it makes me feel good at busy shows I wanted to concentrate more on the “social” part of being a judge than the numbers I am doing. I think this has also had a good impact on the following days.

Saturday I was part of the main event. My team, Stage/Product A, proved to be a very excited pile of humans. There were high expectencies for us (and team B), as we are probably the busiest team during a Grand Prix day. Getting the product out early in the day and later doing the End of Round process of each round.

I started with pre registering 2 pools for players who couldn’t do that themself. That being done I entered the distribution part and helped were I could.

What I really liked was the instructions from our Head Judge. Each Judge in the Main Event got a paper on it that stated the steps we are doing. The Head Judge announced before explaining to the players the step we are in so Judges can look up where we are if it is hard to understand the announcement. It really helped as players in the back, where I was, had problems understanding. We could do it manually and that help the tournament greatly!

During the day and because people dropped from the main event the zone I should be working in stopped existing. We started from a tiny zone with 2 rows to none very fast and I do have regrets to not have spoken up to my team lead as that day I have not once helped really with the process. If I had said something I would probably at least once have been in charge of a zone. Now I just feel like I failed as part of my team.

I helped my fellow zone leads and was jumping from area to area collecting result entry slips, stalking players and collecting a lot of trash! I had a great time doing this, especially with the trash. I always feel like this can build a connection with players, symbolise that we care and let’s face it, noone wants to play in a dirty place!

After Round 4 the Grand Prix felt very overstaffed and I had rounds were my only judge call were tardiness calls. I love to judge competitive but the way we stand towards the players makes the atmosphere different and then just being a bystander and having almost no interaction with the people we work for can lead to a lot of frustration. I had an awesome time because my fellow judges were simply great. My excitement levels were quite high the whole and I made everyone around me dance and have a laugh so at least I felt like I had a positive impact altogether even if I, as a judge, felt I was not needed.

On the other hand I had a quite memorable experience, the one I am most proud of and the one that makes me happy to have been there.

A player lost their deck and they called me to their table at the beginning of the round. I explained that they need to find the deck, they should check lost and found, the main event stage and the place they have last played at. After a few minutes the player returned – without a deck. It is always heartbreaking to give bad news to a player so I had to explain them that because they don’t have a deck they can’t play in this round anymore and if they don’t find it, as they should check lost and found again in some time this round, need to be dropped from the tournament. I explained the situation also to their opponent who was then free to go. A fellow judge did the paperwork at the table and I guided the player to the burgundies to confirm the situation. I felt like this problem was for that player a very negative one so I hoped that the interaction with them would help them to have a good time. They repeated what I said and heartbroken I guided the player away. I offered some sweets, a hug and my friend gamma, my pocket bat, who was loved by them. I am happy that this player could leave the main event with a smile, they might have done so anyways but I would like to think that my interaction with them helped them. I think this is the most important task I had this weekend. Yes, I am there to help players with questions, to enforce rules, but if players leave the tournament, for whatever reason, sad I failed my job.

I have 2 more situations, you can find (2.) and (3.) answers at the bottom of this article

(2.) Anna controls a Gluttonous Slug with a +1/+1 counter on it. She casts a Rank Officer. As Anna wants to create a Zombie token is there a way to put 2 more counter on the Gluttonous Slug ?

(3.) In another Judge Call Anna has also cast a Rank Officer. She discarded a card but forgot to create the Zombie token. This error was only realised after the turn has passed, Nemo has cast a Knight of old Benalia from their hand and attacked Anna with their Man-O-War.

Sunday was Strike day. This is one of my favorite shifts and I enjoy the work just as much as judging. Breaking down an event is an amazing outlet of the energy I pile up during that event. Packing everything, working with friends, doing all that gives the event a very special feeling. We worked hard the days before, we work hard doing the shift. Every nice thing ends at some time but packing the things means that there will be a next time where those things will be needed again. Memories will be made, friends will be gathered, life will happen.

After we did all we could our shift ended at 1:43am I came back to the judge room to collect my things. I am very sad that this great event has ended on my phone bing lost/stolen in/from the staff room. This is the reason I lost around 300€ doing the event. I don’t think someone on staff stole it but rather as the room was unattended for several hours after most staff members finished a random person saw it in/on/next to my backpack which was one out of two left and in the very front. I am very upset that this happened as this made me regret coming to Vegas.

Now, as some time has passed, as I bought a new phone again I am still sad that some of my trust, fun and and enjoyment has been taken from me but even with this happening Vegas was and will be one of my most memorable shows. So many things have happened. So many friends have been made. This was my first show in the USA and I hope it won’t be my last one. I want to come back.

I met some awesome people so have some more of the things that happened to me.

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Now, at the very end, I present you some answers to the questions asked in this article.

(1.) Grindstone doesn’t care were the cards went, just if the cards share the same color, so if they do, even if the “put into graveyard” has been replaced with “put into exile”, the process is repeated!

(2.) As Rank Officer enters the battlefield, both the officer and the Gluttonous Slug trigger. If Anna stacks the triggers in the correct way the Slug trigger is put first on the stack and then the Officers triggered ability. That way the Officer creates the token first which then will trigger the Gluttonous Slug again. That way we will put two +1/+1 counters on it!

(3.) What we have here is a so called Game Rule Violation. Anna did not miss the triggered ability as she acknowledged it and already discarded the card for it. I had to give her a Warning for this infraction just as Nemo receives a Warning for Failure to Maintain Game State. As neither a Simple Backup nor a Partial Fix fit this situation I headed to a L3 judge to confirm the backup which then was approved. I undid the combat, the cast creature, the drawn card and let Anna create her 2/2 Zombie creature token. As the Game went on it followed the same direction as it had before the backup happened.