Hi everyone!

We've got another big weekend ahead of us, so I thought it prudent to take a moment to talk about what is and isn't allowed at Regular REL.

At the Prerelease, players may;
Give each other advice during deck construction
Build any deck from their 85 card pool for any game of the event (6 boosters + Prerelease Card) {This is sometimes referred to Continuous Construction}

Players may NOT;
Give advice during games or matches
Add cards to their pool, or trade with other people
Offer incentive to, or coerce, another player to change a match result
Randomly determine a match result – no dice rolling!

One of the best ways to avoid these issues cropping up is to get ahead of the message - make some announcements! Make them fun, throw in a few jokes and people will listen to you - especially if you make announcements before giving product. Players are keen for their cards, and they'll give you two or three minutes before getting restless. Pinpointing difficult interactions can be great too, as it gives you a chance to let players know how you'll be treating them.

On the topic of decklists - please only use them if your players insist on it. And if they do, please don't make them register a deck - registering the card pool should be sufficient, and allows them the freedom of the second point above, Continuous Construction.

For those of you that feel a deck swap is needed, may I suggest an idea presented to me (and my sincere apologies for not remembering by who!) - swap left once, then right once :D

I'm sure some of you have some great suggestions too - what do you do to make your tournament into an Event?

I hope you all have fun this weekend, playing, judging or hopefully both!! I plan to play the 2HG with my wife - Boros/Gruul, right? :D

Some of my suggestions fall more on the TO end than judging, but some of us pull double duty in smaller spaces, so:

Plan early how you're going to hand out the guild packs. People -will- want to change guilds at the last minute. As long as you have the supplies (and they haven't opened their packs already), you should try to accommodate everyone.

Have a batch of announcements ready before deck construction and after. There are a lot of new Gatecrash mechanics; going over them at the start may drag on. Let the players look at the new cards, answer questions as they come up, make a note of popular ones and go over them in your announcements before round 1. Recruit your experienced players to help the newer ones.

Have some fun with the achievement cards. Find something small to reward players for completing them, or the first player to complete one per event. However you decide to use them, make sure to announce it before round 1 starts.

Going excessively long with head judge announcements can be tedious, tiring, and boring for the players. I always try and keep them to following three things:
1) Tournament structure
2) New Keywords
3) Have fun

I mention the tournament structure because every shop will have new players (to them), and they may do things differently than that person's game shop. (ie: at my lgs, we do 4 rounds and award prize based on points no matter how many players show).

Out of those 3 though, #3 is always the most important to stress though. And that goes for us judges as well.

In a lot of cases, I would recommend posting “Event FAQs” in common spots of the room. That way your announcements could be…

(1) If you are a new player, please raise your hand. (Note players.) Alright, I will be with you in a moment to give you a bit further information.
(2) If you are an experienced player, I've placed signs on the sides of the room to remind you about today's event: So, you can read up on the mechanics, as well as have a refresher on how today will work.
(3) If you have more specific questions, please call me or another member of the staff. We'll do our best to help you.
(4) Now that you're going to build your decks, remember its a 40-card minimum, and there are basic lands available. Please don't talk to each other while building, and we'll post R1 pairings near those signs. You have 30 minutes to build!

…so that keeps it short and to the point. (Saving your voice, and keeping the players from getting too restless.) Plus it also helps direct your efforts to the people who need the most help.

Any “Event FAQ” can cover a few things…

(1) Number of rounds in the event, and match structure.
(2) Number of minutes in each round.
(3) Brief description of “continuous construction” and only using the cards you were given. (No trading just yet!)
(4) Things to avoid: Rolling a die to determine match winner, offering prize for a win, etc.
(5) Entries on the keywords introduced in this set.

…or whatever is necessary to educate players, depending on your local environment.

Originally posted by Brian Schenck:

Please don't talk to each other while building

James Mackay
At the Prerelease, players may … give each other advice during deck construction

Just to clear that up - James is correct re: Regular REL; Brian is correct re: Competitive or Professional REL.

Other than that, I really like Brian's suggestions. I'd even add “Experienced players, please help me help the newer players find their way around; you can't help them play or give advice during a game, but you can explain things like pairings; how you can keep playing, win or lose; how that new card or mechanic works (and if it's good or not).”

d:^D

Do we have a link to such a suggested FAQ on the wiki?

From: Scott Marshall
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 8:32 AM
To: Heckt, Andy
Subject: Re: Prerelease reminders and suggestions (Regular REL)

Brian Schenck
Please don't talk to each other while building
James Mackay
At the Prerelease, players may … give each other advice during deck construction

Just to clear that up - James is correct re: Regular REL; Brian is correct re: Competitive or Professional REL.

Other than that, I really like Brian's suggestions. I'd even add “Experienced players, please help me help the newer players find their way around; you can't help them play or give advice during a game, but you can explain things like pairings; how you can keep playing, win or lose; how that new card or mechanic works (and if it's good or not).”

d:^D




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On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 6:05 PM, Andrew Heckt <
forum-2626@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

> Do we have a link to such a suggested FAQ on the wiki?


Ask and you shall receive!

http://wiki.internationalmagicjudges.net/index.php?title=Reminders_and_suggestions_for_players_at_Prereleases

I only added James' suggestions, please let me know what would be the final
text for this page.

Two suggestions I'll add…

1) Get your computer up and running and logged in very early. With all of the events going on simultaneously, I've had situations where WER takes a good 15 minutes just to get started and synchronized.

2) Assign seating for deck building. In large pre-releases I've had situations where a group of friends who are sitting together, all seem to end up with strangely powerful decks with an odd number of on colour rares. Now this can be a coincidence, but if people are spread out randomly, it lessens the opportunity for swapping cards between pools. If you want to take this to the next level, ask players to lay out their pools, then quickly run around and snap photos of each one. This doesn't mean you'll deck check, but if someone complains that their opponent had 3 Pack Rats (or whatever GTC version is), you can flip through and confirm that he just got really really lucky.

I really like the idea of randomly seating people while building their decks. We have multiple kinds of games going on during Prereleases (like D&D and Yugi-Oh!) and players sit all over the room. We have wondered about certain friends ending up with those on-color rares and mythics. I'll suggest this to our T.O.

I'm planning on segregating all the guilds to foster a kind of “brothers-in-arms” spirit. When I announce “You may give advice with deck construction”, I'm planning on adding, “in fact, I *encourage* experienced players to help out the rest of their guild!” I don't think that violates a pre-release tournament etiquette, does it?

Originally posted by Huw Morris:

I'm planning on segregating all the guilds to foster a kind of “brothers-in-arms” spirit. When I announce “You may give advice with deck construction”, I'm planning on adding, “in fact, I *encourage* experienced players to help out the rest of their guild!” I don't think that violates a pre-release tournament etiquette, does it?

That actually sounds like loads of fun!

I like this, just throw them a little reminder about not trading cards in
their pool just to make sure that things don't become unfun for them and
you. :)

-George FitzGerald
L2, Sarasota, FL

You could take this to the next level and ask people who pre-register for their guilds then come in costume (prizing?). Or appoint Guild Leaders and sponsor them to go all out in guild garb. SO much opportunity for fun!

Maybe this should really be a new thread for pre-release shenanigans.

That sounds cool! If it's not too late, maybe you can use the guild banners
to designate a seating area?

That what we did for RtR, the players liked it (blurry pic, but you get the idea). We'll do it tomorrow as well :)
Maybe it's a good idea to bring a bunch of pens, there's always someone who forgets theirs.
And extra trash cans, we'll definitely need them, haha.

Hehe, I love Adam's idea of shenanigans- we were thinking of throwing a costume-guild party, best costume gets somekinda prize, but I don't think there will be enough people :( Only 1 guy feels like dressing up as Orzhov priests.

Have a wonderful weekend! :)