Pro Tour London Update
8 marzo 2025
Dear Judges!
Welcome to this year’s first post-Pro Tour article. Pro Tour London is in the books, showcasing some of the largest Pro Tour and Calling events ever. We’re excited to look forward to some more great events to come, including the World Championship 2025 in Philadelphia.
But first, some news regarding the Judges of Rathe judge program. We’ll be going over some new Judge resources, an evolution of community projects, and other various updates. Let’s get started!
The time has finally come, and we have our new landing page on fabtcg.com! This is only the first version, with more to be added later. All of this is meant to help us better achieve the goals of the program:
To create, educate, and certify a community of judges around the world for the game of Flesh and Blood.
To facilitate bringing people together in the flesh and blood through the common language of playing great games.
The page is meant to create a centerpiece for new and old judges alike to make communication easier than ever. Here is a summary of the current content:
- Judges of Rathe overview
- Becoming a Judge
- Official Rules and Policy articles (Rules Reprise and Back Alley Oracle)
- A partially reorganized Rules & Policy Center
- Link to Articles by Judges for Judges
- Links to social media and the Judges of Rathe Discord server.
In the future, you will be able to find:
- An overview of the community teams
- Details for the Judge Community Representatives
- Descriptions of the advanced roles, like team lead or Learn to Play certifications
- And much more!
We expect the page to get more content, such as summaries of official articles and resources. Articles by Judges for Judges will continue to stay on the Blog, as we are planning a bit of a restructure for the site in 2025. JudgeHub will also stay as the cornerstone it is today for testing, staffing and more.
A lot of things have changed since we began the Flesh and Blood judge program. Early on, it was a loose group that formed to support Josh, with the start of JudgeHub following close behind. Projects were formed on JudgeHub, and the Judge Community Representative system was founded. If you are interested how we came to our current structure, take a look at the End of Year of 2022 article.
The game and the program have grown a lot since then. The amount of events, projects and population size have put strain on many of the ideas and concepts of yesteryear. Simple ideas – for example, “all projects are the same”, “all leads will be invited to meetings”, and such worked great at the start, but with more and more things added to this, it has reached its limit. So we are restructuring the system in a way we hope is better suited for this challenge, to better set expectations and make information flow more easily!
With that, we present to you the evolution of community projects to Community spheres, groups and teams.
In short, projects have become teams; teams can be part of a group; and every team and group falls under a specific sphere.
A big factor for us was how we could improve communication and interconnectivity between teams. Our approach here goes with grouping every team into 3 overall spheres. These build the foundation for this new approach:
- Connection
- Advancement
- Community
In the short to midterm, there will be three leads helping structure the spheres and working on cooperation, with two of the leads who sharing Connection and Advancement, as well as one lead for Community. We decided for this setup to enable cooperation while acknowledging that the Community aspect is deeply regionally rooted.
Here you can have a rough draft (tentative) of how these spheres will be organized:
The goal of this structure is to create a bridge between the old projects and either similar new teams or to adopt a more flexible approach, allowing for the splitting of former projects or for them to become a single group now. Some teams will also have an overlap between spheres, especially community, with shared responsibility and interconnectivity, especially regarding more regional teams.
With this new setup, we hope to achieve a more flexible sandbox for new and old teams alike and facilitate interested judges’ contributions to the program in a way that is personally meaningful to them. We hope that this system also facilitates inter-project communication, without overburdening the system with too many extra layers of bureaucracy. Of course, nothing is perfect, and we expect changes and some fine-tuning – but if you never try, you will never succeed!
In the next weeks and months, you will see some new community team leads in old and new projects alike. It will not be in one go, in order to avoid rushing anything and are able to have teams settle into their new environments a bit more naturally. An additional article explaining the reorganization of the projects in detail will be published at a later date.
As we had some questions surrounding this, we want to cover the baseline here as well as some minor updates. The shows this applies to are World Tours with a Calling, Pro Tour or Worlds event. You can find additional details about most of the following on application pages as well.
| Position | Requirements |
|---|---|
| Battle Hardened Floor Judge | Level 1 or Level 2 |
| Battle Hardened Team Lead/Head Judge | Level 2 |
| Calling Floor Judge | Level 2* |
| Calling Team Lead | Level 2 |
| Pro Tour/Worlds Floor Judge | Level 2 |
| Pro Tour/Worlds Team Lead | Level 2 + Team Lead Certification |
| Schedule (Side) Event Floor Judge | Level 1 |
| Scheduled (Side) Event Team Lead | Level 2 |
| Learn to Play | Level 0 + Learn to Play Certification |
* A Level 1 can be a Floor Judge on a Calling event if they have all checklist items fulfilled and are only missing a Level 2 recommendation that is planned to be obtained during that event.
Team Lead Certification
Going forward, you can expect the TLC to be more and more required. Starting with Pro Tour Singapore, it will be necessary to serve as a team lead at Pro Tour and World Championship events themselves. The next step will be to require the TLC on day one of Calling events during World Tour weekends featuring a Pro Tour, World Championship or World Premiere event. We will announce this year when this will start being in effect.
Exceptions to the rules
Some exceptions can happen to the above rules, for example, due to language requirements or other logistical limitations, but overall, they will apply to a vast majority of cases.
Non-Judge event roles
The above applies to roles related to judging the event. If you are looking at applying for one of those shows in different roles, for example, as admin or scorekeeper, you are not required to have any of the above levels, but the vast majority of staff in those roles will be Level 1 or above.
Additionally, we would like to advertise that all World Tour events that have a Calling offer a sponsorship option to apply for (in the case of Europe, for non-Europeans). We want to enable Judges and staff to be able to go to different regions to maintain a global judge program and have a lived exchange around the world. No matter if this sponsorship helps you with travel or factors relevant to your application. If you are applying for any judging roles outside your georegion (Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific) we strongly recommend having a Level 2 when you apply – here also expectations will exist for various reasons like visa requirements or similar.
We are working to get this year’s run ready for you all! Last year, you gave us valuable feedback, and we want to adjust to that. So here are some changes we’ve made for Georegion conferences this year:
- All georegion conferences will be announced 3+ months in advance.
- First wave of announcements will include a North American, European, and Southeast Asian georegion conference.
- All events will be free to attend for judges. (Hotel, transportation and food will not be provided.)
- Each event will feature one full and one half day of seminars, workshops and surrounding social events to grow together and learn as a community.
- Support for 2025 will be two Judge Packs of the current season, and in addition, one pack of Judge Pack Season 1!
We are happy to announce that we will rerun the Judges of Rathe merch catalog from early this year again this summer, for pickup at World Tours Singapore, Auckland, Kansas and Copenhagen; as well as another wave of orders for pickup later this year around Worlds. The item range will remain unchanged, with the addition of both a plastic and a metal version of the Judges of Rathe water bottle. Additionally, we are now able to facilitate a fully online payment system for all shows to make the process smoother for everybody.
A separate announcement for the webshop will be posted shortly, alongside an update to this section with the link.
The decklist tool has been released and put into practice for the World Tour weekend in London. Haven’t seen it yet? Check it out here! We are currently fixing some known bugs and usability issues, so if you see any, report them qui.. This tool is meant for usage at any event that requires decklists, like Pro Quests, Road to Nationals, Callings and more, as long as it’s a constructed format.
In the coming weeks, you will also see more documentation for judges and organizers around this tool. With this rollout, the usage of the role features also becomes more prominent.
Current features that are already live for Judges:
- Head Judge view: similar to Scorekeeper view, allows most actions like edit and manage decklists, assign fixed seating, edit matches, etc.
- Team Lead view: able to edit decklists, view decklists, and access player management.
- Floor Judge view: able to see players and decklists, and mark them as reviewed.
In the future, more functions will be built around this, like Pro Quest judge tracking and other quality of life features for judges at the events.
- La Learn to Play – Basic Certification already has at least 650+ individuals certified! Check out the article if you are interested in teaching others Flesh and Blood!
- First wave of maintenance has been completed. Around 900 Judges were demoted to a lower level. Maintenance helps Judges stay up to date with the rules and policy, as well as making it easier for organizers to find active Judges.
- The next Head and Support Judge evaluation will be in the summer. Requirements will be slightly changed since the last wave of evaluations, with the biggest change being that the Team Lead Certification will be required.
- Starting with World Tour Montreal, shows with a Calling or above will change their compensation scheme, with the shift to mostly monetary compensation. One box per weekend worked will remain part of the compensation package.
- A new policy is in place for Judge shirt etiquette. Orange Judge shirts will only be used for Calling and higher Head and Support Judges. This change is the result of a change in size of Battle Hardened events as well as logistical issues.
- We are currently reviewing applications for a new wave of Community Representatives, to be announced in the coming weeks.
- We are currently working on a Japanese translation for the Comprehensive Rules. Additionally, we are currently laying the groundwork for more translations in the future.
- We are currently in the process of hiring additional personnel to support Judges of Rathe at LSS. Stay tuned for more news soon!
A new season is on the horizon, and we want to formally announce the spoilers for Judge Pack Season 7, straight from London! The following cards will be found in Judge Pack Season 7, with the double-sided Hyper Driver token included in every pack! The rest of the spoilers will be revealed in Taipei – and there is a Marvel among them!
Italian 
English 
Japanese 
German 
Korean 
French 
Spanish 
Chinese 
Portuguese