Pro Tour Amsterdam Update
Hello and welcome to this Pro Tour Amsterdam Update!
This update is meant to present you the current ongoing projects and new updates in the Judges of Rathe program. Thank you for checking in. Today the judge program will be covering news in the following topics:
- New Leads & Project Updates
- Information Page & Technology Updates
- Georegion Conferences
- Judge Booster Season 5
- Judge Merchandise
- Future Outlook
Earlier this year we had the selections for four new team leads to help grow the Judges of Rathe program. We had a post about this already, but would like to present them to you here again. Give them a bit of time to get their teams together. We will soon be seeing some exciting new things!
Additionally, we want to introduce you to the new Advanced Certification lead Alfonso Bueno! As well as our thanks to the founding lead of Advanced Certifications, Ward Warren.
And now, some updates from each of our existing teams!
- Exams: Fourth Attempt Exams will be available at the end of Pro Tour Amsterdam and shortly after MST update quizzes.
- Conferences: The next georegion conference is published, check below for details!
- Advanced Certifications: All currently submitted team lead checklists are evaluated and most passes will be able to test before or at Worlds. Submit your checklist now, if interested!
- Policy: Change of the team structure to mostly rely on Premier Head and Support Judges as well as selected additional members.
- Judge Community Representatives: Next application window in August for the following regions: USA Great Lakes, USA South East, United Kingdom & Ireland, Iberia, German-speaking Countries, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea.
- Rules: Further on spearheading us having an amazing set up rules with their help and proofing.
- Content and Information: Providing update quizzes, articles and working on content for the new information page.
Technology wise, we have an exciting year! The card database has already rolled out with its core features and is helping us to have the true text of cards ready at hand for players and judges alike.
Judgehub has also received some updates, or will shorty:
- New roles for staffed event members, reflecting the actual roles more, this includes a distinction between different head and support Judges as well as positions like Admin or Admin Lead
- Renaming “Floor Judge” to “Judge” to reflect the different types of roles Judges can have now at events.
- Highlighting that selected Judges need to also be published
- The possibility for, higher tier, events to be able to disable sending of acceptance emails, for the organizers that use their own email template
- Being able to enable/disable the sponsorship selection for applications
- Moved the “Add Event to Your History” button to be more visible
- New selectable profile roles for “Event Admin” and “Learn to Play”, for judges to indicate their interests
- A feature in testing that allows application windows to be created for events
- A feature in the works to let staffing lists be imported
Last but not least on the technology side: The much-mentioned new information page for judges!
The landing page will be hosted on fabtcg.com for easy accessibility as well as utilizing the style of information presenting. We hope to present you a mockup in August.
This page will be the new door step to the Judges of Rathe program and meant as one of the first interactions interested readers will see. Offering content for new interested candidates, current Judges as well as organizers. The page itself will link to many current resources, like Judgehub, the articles, social media pages and such. Our plan is to get it up and running this year.
You may have already seen the pages for Bali and Vienna; we are happy to share more details for both as well announce the next georegion conference!
South East Asia
Bali, Indonesia – 10. – 11. August
Europe
Vienna, Austria – 31. August to 1. September
North America
Washington DC, USA – 28. – 29. September
All these conference are featuring one extra Judge pack as support as well as the possibility to get different levels of travel support.
We are looking forward to you attending one of these conferences! They are meant to bring education but also a great weekend together with friends and new friends to be. Apply now! (Using the above links)
This is also just the first wave; more conferences will follow!
Now to some spoiler time! We are happy to share details to the next upcoming Judge Booster Season 5, including some changes to the system as well as some card reveals!
The general style and format of Judge Boosters will stay the same, one card booster (plus an added token for more durability), chosen from a selection of 6 cards. The content is changing to the following template each season:
- 4x arena cards
- 1x deck card
- 1x Adjudicator card
All cards will continue to be in cold foil, as before.
Judge Boosters will change how they are distributed to allow for more flexibility. ProQuests and Road to Nationals will receive a change to allow better support for these events. But soon more to that!
And now, spoiler time!
We are working on finding the best items we can offer for merchandise as well as finalizing the system to distribute it. Here we would like to show you some selected prototypes we got so far:
We already have the first three Judges of Rathe-branded items that are rolling out at certain events:
Judges at Pro Tour Amsterdam will receive a set of the pictured items. Different events in the future will also feature items from this selection or more. Stay tuned for other ways and places you will be able to get merch. We will keep you posted on the various ways you can get these in your hands in the future!
Besides the items covered in this article, we are working on many more things!
The Judge Program is growing and evolving, with that come new challenges. The lead conference in Amsterdam has Certifications as topic, to see what the future holds there. The World Championship weekend lead conference will have Education and Mentoring. Those two topics have been identified to relevant for the next steps of the Judges of Rathe program. Stay tuned what’s to follow!
All photos of judges used in this article taken by John Brian McCarthy of the Event Pictures team. All photos of merchandise and enthusiastic models taken by amateurs.
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