JudgeCast

In this episode Bryan, Charles, and Marcos are joined by Brandon Welch, the Head Judge of the recent Regional Championship in Vegas to talk about a topic many HJs care a lot about: “End of Round”. This episode goes deep into the tournament logistics of reducing people’s least favorite part of the tournament: Waiting for the next round to begin.
Turns out a lot more goes into making sure the next round starts as quickly as possible than harassing players to enter their results. But lets be clear, that absolutely *is* part of it.

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Join Bryan, Charles, and Marcos as we talk about attending your first big event. Maybe its a MagicCon, or an SCGCon, or a Regional Championship, or maybe, your first large event isn’t even Magic related. Judges new to these events have a lot of questions, and the JudgeCast crew take a stab at pre-answering many of them, or letting you know where to find the answers. While our background is in Magic Tournaments, many of these questions/answers are common across all game IPs, and as other games are entering the tournament space, we are having more and more folks staffing these events for the first time.

Join Bryan, Charles, and Marcos as we discuss cards and mechanics from the latest MTG Set, Avatar the Last Airbender. We go over important topics like how ‘How does Earthbend work’, ‘Is Firebending a mana ability’, ‘How Waterbending works with additional costs’ and ‘Is a platypus bear more or less weird than a badgermole?’.

Hopefully you are as excited for this set as we are.

The interaction of Continuous effects, commonly known as the Layers, were first immortalized in the forth century when the monk Evagrius Ponticus increased forms of continuous effects from 6 to 7. Since then they have been part of our shared zeitgeist.
We sing about Seven Layers a ‘laying at Christmas. We go on rides at Disney based on Snow White and the Seven Layers. The White Stipes write songs about them. Even the king of comedic counter culture did a bit about the Seven Layers you cant say on TV. My personal favorite is the Akira Kurosawa classic where a town recruits the seven layers to defend them from a bandit gang of state based actions. Armed with nothing but bamboo spears and timestamps, our hearty band of continuous effects are able to fend off the bandit gang in a bittersweet pyrrhic victory.

In this episode, Bryan, Charles, and Marcos talk about the interaction of continuous effects, AKA The Layers, the supposed boogieman of the Magic Rules. Our goal is to help you realize that this Boogieman is more Dog and less John Wick. We talk about what the layers are, how to combine effects both within the layers, and across the layers, then we spend a lot of time going over examples. Too many examples, really. We even help you realize that you’ve been figuring out dependencies all along, you just didnt realize it. So sit back, give us a listen, or give us a watch on YouTube where we can share card images.

Oh, and Bryan spent time thinking about which of the seven deadly sins would map to each layer, so you get to enjoy this rare glimpse into his brain. Do you agree or disagree?

Copy – Lust
Control – Envy
Text – Pride
Type – Wrath
Color – Sloth
Abilities – Greed
Power/Toughness – Gluttony
Everything Else – Acedia

In our JudgeFoundry L1 Essentials videos we go over items that candidates need to know for their L1 exams. However, at the beginning of each episode we say that we go into topics deeper on our podcast. In this episode of JudgeCast, join Bryan, Charles, and Marcos as we take a topic we just covered in our L1 Essentials video and go over the rules in more detail, and cover rules that were left out of the L1 Essentials.

Do you know the difference between a one-shot and a continuous effect? What about the difference between a continuous effect generated by a resolving spell versus a permanent?
This is Part 1 of a 2 part series where we discuss what continuous effects are before we cover the interaction of continuous effects, AKA Layers.

The L1 certification process is relatively straightforward. Mix up some rules, sift in a light dusting of policy, bake for a couple of prereleases weekend at 70% of 25 questions on an exam, and BAM you’re now an L1. But as a new L1, you might be wondering, now what?

Join Bryan, Charles, and Marcos as we discuss a list of things new L1s often ask after they pass their exam, or should ask, but don’t know that they should. We discuss:
– Finding other judges
– How to find other events outside your LGS
– How to apply to those events
– What your responsibility is now to the Magic community
– What is a “purple fox”
– And other topics that your mentor might have forgot to tell you.

Social Media Links
Join JudgeCast on our Discord server! https://discord.gg/hQd48guKFR
JudgeCast: BlueSky – @Judgecast.bsky.social / Twitter: @JudgeCast
Bryan: BlueSky – @Bprill.bluesky.social
Charles: BlueSky – @MTGDad.bsky.social
Marcos: BlueSky – @MJ6Music.bsky.social / Twitter @MJ6Music

Credits
Intro & Outro Music: “Seed” by Carbon Leaf. Used with permission. @carbonleafofficial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxDb4ydae50

Thwip! Is your Peter-tingle tingling? Join Bryan and Marcos as we web-sling across the JudgeCast-verse and bring back former host CJ Shrader for a stroll down his least favorite of all episode types, the Release Notes episode. We spend nearly 90 minutes talking about mechanics and interactions to get you ready for prerelease weekend, while we weave a web of non-sequiturs and references to 10 year old episodes. If you want to know how Spider-ham works, go listen somewhere else, but if you want to understand some of the details of web-slinging or transforming modal double-faced cards, listen up. With great power comes great content.

Release Notes: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/spider-man-release-notes

Join Bryan, Charles, and Marcos as we talk entries in the comprehensive rules, and not just any rule entries. These rule entries support a single unique Magic Card, and there are more of them than you might think. Sure, you might realize that Shahrazad requires unique rules, but did you realize that Zack Fair also does? Did you even know there was a card named Zack Fair? Although I can’t say we fully researched this ourselves. This episode was made possible by the Scryfall tagger project, where folks can tag individual cards based on whatever criteria they want. Scryfall tags are maintained by a community of dedicated fans, and we appreciate their efforts, as it served as a starting point for this episode.
If you have ever read a CR entry and wondered just when and where this rule is used, then this might be the episode for you.

https://tagger.scryfall.com/tags/card/unique-cr-reference

Join Bryan, Charles, and Marcos as we talk about Commander.
But guys, we already know about Commander, there are a billion podcasts and YouTube series focusing on Commander. What do you provide that’s new?
Well, while we do discuss the rules, its not the focus of the episode. Instead we talk about how to foster Commander at your store, things to consider if you want to run a commander event, and even how to seat players in a 4 person pod when your software will only match folks for 1v1. We discuss pitfalls of trying to run a “Bracket 3 Tournament”, and what would happen if you do a bracket 4 tournament. We also talk about cEDH Competitive Rules enforcement tournaments. Come for the tournament logistics, stay for Bryan’s rant about proxies.

Judges, I’m not a Renton serial villain. Do you seriously think I’d post a job application if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.

Join Bryan, Charles, and Marcos as we go over something so small from the outside that caught the Magic Judge Community by surprise: A Hasbro job posting for a Magic Judge Program Manager. We speculate on motivation while we discuss our hopes and fears and work through some anger issues in real time. Will this lead to a renaissance of MTG Judging? Will this be a mutually beneficial relationship, or is it blatant attempt by WotC to seize control? Will the community they abandoned welcome them back as liberators, or will they be ignored? We spend an hour discussing these questions before settling on: “We don’t know”. Join us in our uncertainty.

Hasbro Job Posting: https://jobs.hasbro.com/job/Renton-Manager%2C-Magic-Judge-Program-Wash/1309319400/