The Future of Advanced Certifications
Hello Judges of Rathe, I would like to tell you about the future of Advanced Certifications in the Flesh and Blood Judge Program.
First, let me introduce myself: I’m Alfonso Bueno, L2 judge and Premier event HJ, and I was appointed as Advanced Certifications Lead at PT Amsterdam two months ago. My experience in Flesh and Blood started with Monarch and I have had the honor to be the head judge of several Callings, some Pro Tours, and Worlds 2023. Aside from FAB, I had a long history of involvement with the judge program of another game, that has provided me the experience and knowledge necessary to take care of this new responsibility.
The first Advanced Certification event in Flesh and Blood was the Team Leader Certification (Thanks to Ward Warren for creating and implementing it). Since I took the lead of the Adv Cert project, a few minor changes have been made on this certification, mostly clarifications and adding some context. If you haven’t read this article in the last few days, I suggest you have a look into it if you’re interested in obtaining a TLC.
That said, let’s talk about the future! What’s coming next in Advanced Certifications?
Mentoring Certification
We want to recognize, motivate and empower the greatest mentors amongst our judges. The creation of this certification does not imply that there weren’t great mentors before (in the same way that there were great Team Leaders before the creation of the TLC).
We expect to release this certification at the end of 2024 and start testing judges in 2025.
The goal of this certification is recognizing those judges with an extraordinary devotion to mentoring and training other judges, as well as providing them with tools and mechanisms to train other judges even better.
This certification will be available to any L2 judge and will require the candidate to demonstrate previous mentoring activities, participation in training of other judges and a deep knowledge of the hard and soft skills a Judge of Rathe should have.
Learn to Play (L2P) Certification
This is a slightly unusual certification, but probably one of the top important certifications for our game in the long run. For our beloved game to succeed even more, we need it to keep growing in its number of fans… and how FaB fans are created? Teaching them who to play it!
This certification is aimed to recognize those judges with special interest and skills to teach the game to other people. Those skills include knowing how to play the game, having a friendly and approachable attitude and marketing skills to sell the game.
This certification will be available for any L0 or higher judge and we expect to have it ready and out in the next few weeks.
So, this is the plan for the rest of the year. What do you think? What should we focus on next year? If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to reach out to me at alfonsojudge@gmail.com.
If you would like to suggest a new advance certification, please bear in mind it should result in beneficial output for the community, encouraging positive behaviors and role models. A certification for cooking great spaghetti won’t fit here (but I want to meet you), but a certification for rules guru may have a spot.
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