End of Year Article: Judges of Rathe 2024
Time flies by and another year has passed! Welcome to 2025 and a new summary article of what is going on in the Judges of Rathe Judge Program. After a full year of tournaments, conferences, memories and more; the program is growing, aging and adapting as well.
Here is what you can find in this article:
- Learn to Play Certification
- Level Maintenance
- Judge Community Representative updates
- Restructuring of Projects and Community Role
- Diversity and Providing a Safe Space
- General Updates
- Miscellaneous Updates
We also have a new End of Year survey. You can find it here, as well as with some additional information at the end of the article. Help us to improve Judges of Rathe!
Thank you for having a read and being a part of this great community! Let’s dive right into it!
Our newest certification is now live! The Learn to Play (L2P) test and certification resources aim to provide you with the best resources to host L2P for new players, no matter if for a shop, at a convention, or other occasion.
Take a look at the introduction article here.
Starting later this year some events may require you to have the certification to be on staff. A big thank you to Emilien Wild for taking the lead on this with the help of the Advanced Certification Lead Alfonso Bueno. Besides the introduction article, you will also find three more content article with learning material for L2P on the blog.
As announced previously, we have introduced maintenance requirements for judge levels. We know that taking tests and having requirements is not always fun (we swear we try to make it as little as needed!) but it’s also there to keep us all up to date and to continue enjoying judging. Introducing these requirements is meant to establish a baseline activeness and awareness of new rules and policy. Feel free to ask any questions you have in the Judgehub Discord!
We are doing our first round of maintenance checks with the release of The Hunted on January 31st! What is required of you depends on your level and the date you certified for your current level. If you have not completed these requirements yet, then in the coming days you’ll get an email from JudgeHub to remind you to complete them.
Here is a overview of what this means for you:
Level 1 Judges
The following only affects you if you have certified prior to January 1st, 2024. If you certified after January 1st, do not worry! This is not relevant for you currently.
For Level 1 Judges, we require you to complete half (rounded up) of the release exams each year. If you do not complete this process, you will be returned to Level 0 and have to retake the Level 1 exam to return to Level 1.
Level 2 Judges
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Level 2 Advancement Date
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Requirement
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|---|---|
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Feb 1st, 2024 or earlier
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Heavy Hitters, Part the Mistveil, and Rosetta Release Exams
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Feb 2nd, 2024 to May 30th, 2024
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Part the Mistveil and Rosetta Release Exams
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May 31st, 2024 to Sept 19th, 2024
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Rosetta Release Exam
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Sept 20th, 2024 or later
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No Requirement at this time
|
If you do not complete your required maintenance by January 31st, you will be returned to Level 1 with a chance to regain your level via a rapid return path through the release of Set 15 later in 2025. After the release of Set 15, if you haven’t completed this requirement, you will need to re-complete your checklist to return to Level 2.
Starting with The Hunted, we will be doing these checks on a per-set basis. The next round of maintenance checks for L2s will be conducted with the launch of Set 15 in mid-2025.
The JCR (Judge Community Representative) system has been with us for a while now, and some minor tweaks have happened over time. Want to read up on some details about JCRs? Head here! In summary, JCRs are local community judges representing our judge regions and individual judges around the world, as volunteers. Contacting somebody halfway around the world about the program can be daunting; JCRs are your local conduit to the judge community at large!
We want to make some adjustments to adapt the JCR system to best serve the community as a whole, and local judges (such as you) especially. Some new regions have been created as the game is growing around the world, several rotations of JCRs have already happened to ensure that judges always have someone to reach out to.
The adjustments are as follows:
- JCR terms go from 12 to 18 months, offering more continuity and less strain on too frequent selections.
- An active overlap period has been established between outgoing and incoming JCRs, to enable a smoother transition and better mentorship.
- Adjustments to non-North America regions:
- Australia is back to one single region.
- Europe South East will merge with Europe Central & East.
- Evaluating regions in Asia later this year.
- Adjustments to North America regions:
- Splitting Canada into 2 regions, East and West.
- Redrawing United States regions and changing from 8 to 5 total regions.
- Details on those changes will follow in the next month.
Some of these changes are already impacting the current JCR selections, speaking of! Here is the link to apply, until the 14th of January, for the following regions: Australia, South East Asia, Japan, Benelux, Nordics & Baltics and Poland.
Additionally, we would like to announce a switch with one of the Americas Judge Community Representative Leads. Brandon Welch will take over from Ryan Wood! Big thanks to Ryan for having started and carried many efforts with the founding of the JCRs in the Americas and welcome Brandon! To other two, continuing leads for the Americas are Juan Ortiz and Arick Dickerman.
Many judges around the world are contributing to different volunteer judge projects. Some examples are the Rules, Policy, Exams, or Conference projects, the JCRs are also a part of this structure. They have been around since the start of the Program. Over the years, several have projects also been added. But the original structure for how projects are managed does not suit the needs of the program anymore, as it does not allow much flexibility.
We are currently revisiting the structure and aim to create something that can be scaled to different needs and differentiate between different types of teams as well as projects. This will have a fairly big impact on how this part of Judges of Rathe will work, and we want to get it right!
Additionally, we are also working to implement more rotation with the current project leads, but as it goes together with restructuring, we will announce it at a later point.
The plan is to share updates on this latest with Pro Tour London, but we hope to have something before that date.
The Flesh and Blood Community offers a safe space for people to enjoy this great game together. We as judges play a crucial role in this, we are role models for players as well as the arbiters for having a fair game and an enjoyable event. Some issues require resolving from the event organizers or LSS, but we are in the middle of this.
Players, judges, store owners, spectators and whoever else that wants to enjoy this great game should have a safe space in this community, if they are willing to participate by sticking to the rules of the game as well as the outlines of what our community is. An open and tolerant space that wants to enable as many people from as many different backgrounds to enjoy this amazing game. No matter what diverse background, representation matters.
Help us to keep the community an open and tolerant place, without tolerating unacceptable behavior, this can take many approaches, but one for example is harassment against minorities, gender, nationality, skin color, religion and similar.
2025 will also bring some additional efforts to sustain this, with the introduction of a new staff role at Callings, Pro Tours and Worlds event, the Attendee Experience Coordinator and the non-event based volunteer roles of the Diversity team.
Both of these two new additions are meant to help facilitate feedback but also address problems when they arise, in addition to the already established channels. These roles themselves have limited possibilities for solving issues themself, but LSS and our organizers are committed to provide a safe space and will work together with the community to make all needed efforts happen!
- The Attendee Experience Coordinators will be an event based role at every Calling, Pro Tour and Worlds show. It is a new position for staff members working as judges or admins to be also a more approachable and visible contact point for any concerns arising at these events, for example harassment or discrimination. They will be around to listen and involve the relevant people to address the situation. These positions are in addition to the already established channels via the tournament organizers staff.
- The Judge Diversity Team will be on the community, non-event, based side of this approach. A team of volunteer judges around that world that can be reached out to for sharing issues and concerns. Same as the other role, they will often work as a more approachable communication point and will then reach out to the relevant people to address the issue, with the needed discretion. Members of this team will be judges from the community, not hired by any organizer or LSS. Selections for this team are currently ongoing.
Additionally, you can now select pronouns in your Judgehub profile page. These are visible in your profiles as well as event overview pages and similar places on Judgehub. Using this is fully optional.
- New Judgehub features
- Import function for applications
- Welcome letter function
- New roles
- Cleaned up Calling application pages
- More details on the Calling application pages
- Minor functionality updates
- Working on the last details for the new Judge Information page on fabtcg.com we spoiled previously is in, it will be released soon(™)!
- Judge uniform and merch
- Details for new orders for March and later will be released soon.
- The Yellow Jacket is part of the judge uniform and will be treated as such when worn.
- The judge happi from Worlds 2024 is no longer allowed as judge uniform; it has taken its spot as memorabilia!
- Judge Requirements for Tier 2 Events
- We are still working on the details for judge levels for Road to Nationals and Proquest events
- Any changes will be announced with a 6+ month lead time
- Georegion conferences will return in 2025
- Implementing feedback from 2024
- Finding venues for 2025!
- Road to Nationals online seminars are also back!
- End of January/Start of February!
- Head here to take a look at the dates and more details.
Feedback is not only super relevant for judges but also for us as a judge program. As last year we again have a feedback form to share with you. Make your opinion and voice count!
This is fully voluntary but helps us greatly with getting in some metrics as well as input for ongoing things as well as being able to see new exiting ideas we have not thought about yet! Feel free to fill out as much or as little as you like.
You may head here to fill out the form.
This form will be regularly checked until end of January.
Thank you very much!
That was our End of Year 2024 update article! It was an amazing year and with this, we are looking forward to an amazing year 2025 in the world of the Judges of Rathe! Let’s make it another great year. Come together on the various online platforms we have for our judge community, as well as in the Flesh and Blood at many events over the coming year.
Greetings from your Judges, Rules and Policy team at LSS!
Josh – Rules and Policy Manager
Klaus – Judge Program Manager
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