Hello Judges, welcome to the newest Knowledge Pool. This one is an open ended discussion topic and I hope to see some great activity on this thread! (The blog post is here!)

You find out you are the head judge of the Dragon’s Maze prerelease at your local store, problem is, you’ve never given head judge announcements before!

What are some of the things we want to include or avoid when doing HJ announcements at Regular REL?

I look forward to hearing some responses!

I think (in no particular order) you may want to state what the rel of the tournament is, how many people you have attending,how many rounds you'll be doing, a brief overview of any recent rules changes, thanking the TO for the tournament, tell the players of any parking restrictions, introduce yourself to the players, explain to the players how to make a judge call, where to turn in the match slips (if any), and then give them permission to start opening their guild packs. That's everything I can think of for now, feel free to add more!

What Joel said, plus a brief explanation of how the new mechanics work.

Adding to that, brief overview on what a sealed event entails, specifically reminders about not being able to trade cards out of your pool, and that the promo card for DGM is NOT playable in the deck unlike GTC and RTR. Where washrooms are.

Good Luck

Have Fun

I like to see if there are any people new to sealed and give a brief overview of what sealed deck is and what continuous construction means.

One thing you may considere if you have the time and manpower for it: make an optional pre-announcement 15 minutes before the player meeting and advertise it during registration. During this pre-announcement, explain how sealed deck, swiss rounds, and the new mechanics work. Explain the big DO and DON'T of organize play. Explain who you are and how players could use you to have an even greater day.
Then answer your player's questions.

It's far easier to convey those concepts to small groups than to your whole flight, and experienced players tend to don't really need those informations anyway (and could even be disruptive because they are bored). This allows you to go to the bases and to expand on them without wasting a long time for everybody (most of your players want to crack open their booster and discover the new cards they spent weeks to talk about, not listen to you!). This also allows you to answer your new players questions in a less intimidating setting.

This way, you can keep your “real” HJ announcement as short as possible (as they should be).

First off, I write down everything I want to cover - it's easy to forget something as you're trying to blaze through a lot of information as quickly as possible.

Common wisdom has taught me that, especially for a prerelease, it's prudent to go over a lot of things that may otherwise seem fundamental - even if you're among a lot of familiar faces, there may be some number of people who are brand new or don't play sanctioned games often/at all and will need the refresher.

Going down my checklist from GTC, and in the context of DGM, I would want to cover the following, roughly in this order:

- Tournament Information: number of rounds, length of rounds, format for the tournament, prize distribution information

- Sealed Prerelease Information: deck construction rules, reminder to return store lands when done, you CAN'T use your prerelease promo, specific odd corner cases that have come up before (you don't have to build your guild colors, etc)

- 2 Headed Giant (if applicable): Can combine card pools, format specific play rules (life totals, 1 game/match, etc)

- Set-specific mechanics overview, if possible (if DGM adds 10 new ones, this could get lengthy so might be skipped; for GTC it was basic reminders like how evolve works, can't counter bloodrush, etc)

- Play etiquette and habits: Calling a judge, “bad stuff” that I don't want to have to DQ you for, player communication, mulligans and tracking life totals (local effort to improve player education for larger/competitive events)

If the TO hasn't addressed the players yet for store-specific rules or info, I'll turn it over to them, otherwise I'll pause for any immediate questions and then go straight to opening packs if none, informing the players of their time limit to construct decks.

Usually this takes about 4-6 minutes in total, which is about the usual limit of attention spans for this kind of general assembly announcement for most people.

About attention span: it could vary a lot based on demographic and culture. Try to feel what is appropriate for your local community and your prerelease population. It's difficult to give any hard rule on this point, and what is the amount of things you can realiticaly fit in your announcement.

Also, because of this attention span problem, be sure that you structure your speech in a such way that your most important items are also your first ones in your announcement. Use the first sentence to welcome players and introduce yourself (the first sentence is most likely to be missed because most players are not “ready” to listen yet, and using the burst of your judge voice will likely make people shut up and start to listen) and then go directly to the most important things.

An additional point worth telling them is: “At a prerelease, we encourage you to ask your neighbours for help - especially if they're your guildies!”

This has multiple benefits:
- encourages interaction between new players and older players (more fun)
- ensures minimal numbers of players starting with 60 card decks and 15 lands (more fun)
- guild comraderie (more fun)
- more experienced players know where they stand when someone asks questions about their pool ("Am I giving outside assistance?!)
- less calls for judges during deck construction (easier for you later on)

Slightly off topic, but I thought I'd throw in my 2c about using your Judge Voice (TM):

1. Attention: Start by grabbing the players' attention. Most commonly I see the judge start with, “Magic players!”, which is usually recognizable signal that an announcement is coming from the judge.

2. Take your position: The ideal location to make your announcement is in an elevated position with your back to a hard surface. By standing on a chair/table it ensures everyone can see you and your voice has direct line to everyone's ears rather than being absorbed by the first few rows of people. By putting your back against a wall (or better yet a corner), you get a natural amplification from reflected sound. Also needless to say, you'll have fewer people behind you.

3. Face your audience: This one should be obvious but, but I've seen many judges with their heads tilted down at the floor looking at their notes, or facing one group of people off to the side. Choose your direction into the crowd and project that way. In larger audiences some people will have a tendency to look back and forth as if “painting” the crowd with your announcement. All this does is ensures that everyone only got half of what you said. Focus on one direction and let people move to where they can hear you. The people who didn't hear will come find you after.

4. Stand up straight: This has two benefits. First, it projects the confidence and authority judges are meant to represent. Secondly, it promotes optimal airflow to your lungs to project the biggest judge voice you can.

5. Pump up the volume: There are four registers to the human voice, but the one to focus on here is the “modal register”. The modal register (also known as “chest voice”) is the range of pitches at which your vocal cords resonate at their optimal frequency. This is the range where you find your natural, comfortable speaking voice. To amplify your voice, stay at this comfortable pitch but change two things: 1) take a deep breath and push more air and 2) open your mouth a little wider. Both of these should be natural extensions of what you're comfortable with. If it's uncomfortable dial it back a notch. You're not yelling, you're projecting.

6. Don't tilt your head back: This projects your sound in the wrong direction while tightening your vocal cords.

7. Relax: When people are under stress their larynx tightens restricting airflow and raising the pitch. When this happens you'll feel the sound moving from your chest/diaphragm up to your head. Relax and you'll feel your pitch drop and the sound move back down where it belongs.

8. Practice.

9. Smile: Not only are you supposed to be having fun, it makes a big difference to how you sound!


One last note, if you're using a some sort of Public Announcement system for your announcements. Be sure to test and tune before the event. Things you need to check:

- How to turn the mic on and off and, if wireless, how long it takes to reconnect.
- How far to hold the mic from your face.
- How loudly to speak into the mic.
- Set the correct volume. (Aim high if you're setting this before people arrive).
- Tune the mixer to maximize voice and minimize echo.

I like to quiet the group before I start talking. Usually something like “Attention Magic Players!” and then silence while they quiet down. If people can't hear me it sometimes helps to flick the lights off and on.

I break my announcements into two groups:

1. Before deck construction and
2. Before round 1

This cuts in half the amount of time players have to stay quiet and listen.

Before Deck Construction:



Introduce the TO who may have announcements about parking, outside food and drink, etc.

HJ announcements
-welcome, intro self
-40 card deck including lands plus the contents of the packs
-where to find lands
-whether you are allowed to include the Prerelease Card in your deck
-“please raise you hand if this is your first sanctioned tournament, don't be shy” - visit them after announcements to make sure they know rounds are best 2 of 3, swiss means they may play every round, etc.
-Continuous Construction- special tournament allowing rebuilding your deck using this card pool.
-watch your stuff
-do not give or request assistance in building your deck
-amount of time for deck construction

Before Round 1:
-REL
-#players
-#rounds
-introduce the judge staff
-how to call a judge
-how to fill out a results slip
-Please do not randomly determine the winner of a match - no dice rolls or arm wrestling, you will be removed from the tournament.
-50 minute round, please begin

Originally posted by Martha Lufkin:

-do not give or request assistance in building your deck

Actualy, this is doesn't apply for events using Continuous Construction rules. MTR states that:

2.7 Deck Registration

Players in individual Limited tournaments using decklists must refrain from communicating with, or revealing hidden information to, any players or spectators until after they hand in their decklists.

And for RTR-block prereleases, you could go even more far, sitting your players by guilds and encouraging them to build their decks together, fitting the spirit of the event and adding a layer of fun and involvement. As a side effet, it will make product distribution easier.

make sure to announce to new players that they are not allowed to add cards to their pool, or trade cards for their deck with their friends. Although this concept of ‘sealed’ deck is clear to most people, there are some that think the ‘trading cards’ part overrides this, and it could save you some DQs.

Seating players by guild has the immense benefit that even if people think they can trade cards, they still won't since they're playing the same colors. That might not be the case for Dragons Maze, though, since the guild packs will be different. It's still a good idea, since everyone will have new friends around her, and that helps to make the prerelease a great experience.

For announcements: Keep them as brief as possible. Although many good points are mentioned above, not all points are valid for all locations. If you have a large regular crowd, and few new players, it's more efficient to brief those seperately, and keep the general announcements to a minimum. Mentioning all points listed in this thread WILL bore most players, new and experienced ;)

For our midnight prerelease, where all players are regulars and played the FNM, the whole announcement could be: ‘It’s midnight, let's open those packs and have fun! May the Best Gruul deck win!'

Ok thanks for all of the replies on this topic. There's no clear solution here, so it's going to be a “Greatest Hits” of the thread!

First off, we have an article on the wiki about announcements to get some ideas, http://wiki.internationalmagicjudges.net/index.php?title=Tournament_Announcements

Now, props to Joel Bouzaglou for being the first to reply with some of the great basics we want to include. Things like, well, his post!

“I think (in no particular order) you may want to state what the rel of the tournament is, how many people you have attending,how many rounds you'll be doing, a brief overview of any recent rules changes, thanking the TO for the tournament, tell the players of any parking restrictions, introduce yourself to the players, explain to the players how to make a judge call, where to turn in the match slips (if any), and then give them permission to start opening their guild packs. That's everything I can think of for now, feel free to add more! ”

Additional Props to Josh Skura for the reminder that the DGM prerelease promo is NOT playable in the prerelease, that will be an important reminder at your events!

Emilien Wild came up with this pre-announcement idea that I've never heard of, but would be interested in seeing how it works. I like how it gives the new players a time to come and learn about the tournament structure without having to make your announcements for all of the players needlessly long.

Mark McGovern has a great idea here, something that adds fun to the deckbuilding process:

“At a prerelease, we encourage you to ask your neighbours for help - especially if they're your guildies!”

This highlights one of the MOST IMPORTANT aspects of head judge announcements at regular REL, especially a prerelease. Keep them FUN! The whole point of a prerelease is that it should be the most laid back and fun event for players both new and old and Mark's idea hits that on the head, bravo!

Martha Lufkin has another great idea and this is something I do at my events, cutting the announcements into 2 sections. Players are eager to bust packs and get to griping about bad rares or high fiving about mythics, so keep your initial announcements short and let them get to it! Talk about the more mundane stuff after they've built their decks and are ready to play. This keeps the players engaged and lets them do what they came to do, bust packs and have fun!

Finally Jasper has a really good reminder, especially if you have a lot of new players. It's easy to see that with encouraging players to help each other build their decks that they might think they can trade cards. Make it pretty clear that this is not cool and do so before deck construction.

In summation, this was a great topic with some great replies. I don't have much to add to the wisdom already shared in here except to keep it brief and keep it fun! Stay tuned for the next scenario from the Knowledge Pool!