End of Year Article: Judge Program 2023
January 1, 2024
2023 was a great year for Flesh and Blood and its judges, and now it has come to an end. With so many new milestones reached, lets look back a bit and reflect before we talk about the future! This article is our yearly wrap-up bulletin, in line with last year’s End of 2022 article. Let’s dig in!
The Events of 2023
The Pro Tour, World Championship, dozens of Callings, Battle Hardeneds, and Nationals (and so many more events) made up an amazing year of organized play for 2023. When we look back we can see a jam-packed year full of opportunities and success for the Judge program. Thank you all for your help in making this year so successful for Flesh and Blood!
As we head into the new year, we are heading into a yet amazing year for organized play. 2024 will be bringing TWO Pro Tours, 18 Callings, and many more Battle Hardeneds, as well as some other sweet thing around the corner. With the step up in OP comes more chances and opportunities for judges, but also challenges that we will all take on together.
Judge Program Development
After another year of growth for the program, the Judge Program is standing on solid ground:
- Over 150 Level 2 judges
- Over 1600 Level 1 judges
- Over 5600 people signed up on Judgehub
- 35 articles and posts have been made on our blog page
- Judges have submitted 2,457 applications to 286 events on the platform
- Candidates have seen 249,330 questions and given 194,460 correct answers across 8,732 exams
- Hosting the first ever Judge Cup at the World Championship weekend in Barcelona
Over the year we implemented some updates, features, and new teams to smooth the way for judges, but the community was what made this possible. Throughout the year, we’re been receiving and collecting feedback through direct messages, email, Judgebooths, and more. We hope to continue to receive this critical feedback so we can continue to improve and adjust the program to fit the needs of our judges.
Judge Community Representatives and JCR Leads
The first rotation of Judge Community Representatives (JCR) has already happened, and the applications for the second rotation are currently being reviewed. For those of you that are new, a Judge Community Representative is your local contact point for a Judge in each region. They are volunteers who lead your local community by helping you with questions, giving advice, and also aiding shops with judging and organized play. Take a look here to see a list of all Judge regions around the world.
To see your own region, just go to your personal profile on Judgehub!
We’ve also reorganized some of the community regions that JCRs are responsible for. We have split Americas and Asia Pacific into each 3 geo regions to adjust better for local needs, especially considering the great distance between some regions. Each of these regions has one Judge Community Representative lead – somebody to help the JCRs and guide each region. Europe will continue to be one geo region, due to the comparably small geographical size, but will get one more JCR lead to match the total of other regions.
With that we now have have 9 total JCR leads around the world. Europe is getting reinforcement by Gwen De Schepper, South East Asia with Gerard Trpin, and North America East with Juan Ortiz.
Asia & Oceania JCR Leads
East Asia: Kai An Tsai
Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan
Southeast Asia: Gerard Trpin
Malaysia and Brunei, Singapore, Southeast Asia
North & South America JCR Leads
North America, East: Juan Ortiz
Canada, USA – East, USA – Great Lakes, USA – Northeast, USA – Southeast
North America, West: Ryan Wood
Pacific Northwest, USA – Great Plains, USA – South Central, USA – West
Latin America: Arick Dickerman
Brazil, Latin America
Europe JCR Leads
Projects and Future Plans
This last year, we started with a small list of projects to cover the essential needs of the Judge Program, and as we mature as a program, this list of projects has been slowly expanding with growth and of the community. The latest addition was Lamberto Franco as conference lead. Moving forward, Lamberto will be taking care of conferences; allowing us to create further opportunities to share knowledge, feedback, and also allow our community to socialize.
With the constant growth we are also evaluating the structure of each of them and how to organize them for the future. Some of our project teams, like Information and Content are now branching out into other avenues outside their original project scope, to better adjust to the needs of the program. We will keep you posted on that!
One final note on the conduct committees. Based on feedback and considering the work that these teams are doing, we have agreed that it would be best for the leads to have the same right to privacy as members of the team. As such, the team leads for both the Player Conduct Committee and Judge Conduct Committee will be rotated and the future leads will not be made public.
Now to the Future!
Our vision for 2024 and beyond involve continuing to grow the Judge Community and develop the tools we have on hand. For that we are looking to pave the way for new projects starting early next year. Some of them will be independent, but others will group with existing matching ones, including:
- Diversity – supporting an inclusive community for all
- Premiere Pictures – organizing staff pictures and profile pictures
- JudgeHub Moderators – organizing and moderating JudgeHub forums
- Mentoring and Feedback – helping Judges to create and give feedback, and organize mentoring
Testing Update
An update was released mid-December featuring a revamp of the testing policies on retakes, study tools, and on-release exams. You can dive into the full article here. This impacts every judge level and new judges alike, have a read to catch up on the update from our Exam team lead, Joe Kavanagh!
Conferences
The options to apply and host conferences has rolled out this year, and we would like to encourage you to apply and take up the chance! Have a read here to see a summary, written by the conference lead, Lamberto Franco. 2024 will also feature conferences at Callings events and above, but we’re always looking for passionate judges to host one for their region too!
Advanced Certifications
We’ve started rolling out our plan for further certifications passed Level 2. You can also take a look at our plans for advanced certifications here, written by our advanced certification lead, Ward Warren. We are also looking into further development in this space, so stay tuned for 2024!
In addition, we are planning to have a dedicated head/support judge application process for Callings and Tier 4 events for events starting the second quarter of 2024. These applications will go live early 2024, and are designed to more accurately evaluate applicant’s suitability to these important leadership roles. Later in the year, the highest position that will be available for regular applications of a Calling or higher event will be Battle Hardened head judge or equivalent.
JudgeHub Update
We are currently also looking into some changes on the Judgehub page to reorder where you can find things and to make the structuring more intuitive, additionally we are looking at revamping the forum functions to adjust better to the current needs of people using it while also offering more regular updates there.
Judge 2023 Survey
We would also like to ask you to fill out the survey for 2023.
You can find the link here or the full URL here:
https://forms.monday.com/forms/7cc4590c631de60ee86e723773552755?r=use1
Combined Season 3 and 4 Judge Packs
We are nearing ourselves to the time of a new Judge pack season. But this time with a twist. Starting in January with the World Premier of Heavy Hitters, you will be able to get both Judge pack 3 and 4 at various occasions.
Season 3 packs have a focus on Bright Lights (with Professor Teklovossen) while season 4 packs have a focus on Heavy Hitters. After some consideration, we’ve decided that we want to offer a mix of these two packs for the next two seasons to enable the themes of the packs being to be aligned with their respective sets, and we want you to be able to play with those shiny cards when it adds up!
This means we will have a longer combined season with both packs 3 and 4, and the total amount of packs given out will be the same as it would be in a normal season. Whenever you would receive an even number of packs, you will get an even split of packs 3 and 4. Whenever you would receive an odd number of packs, you will start off receiving mostly pack 3 earlier in the season, which will later rotate to being mostly pack 4. Then, we will return to our usual seasonal pack cadence starting around the third set release of 2024.
And with that being said, here is a sneak peek of the cards to come in season 3 packs:
Final Words
Thank-you all again for your massive contributions towards the program. Whether it was big or small, its the community that makes the game what it is – judges are an essential part of bringing people together in the Flesh and Blood through the common language of playing great games.
If you are not yet a certified Flesh and Blood Judge, but this article got you interested, head here for an Introductory article of how to become a judge!
From Klaus Lassacher (Judge Program Manager), Joshua Scott (Rules and Policy Manager), and the whole team at LSS, we hope you’ve had a wonderful year and we look forward to continuing this journey alongside you for many more years to come!
