Road to L2: Go Before You Feel Ready
Natalie Birch did not plan to become an L2.
She had been playing FAB competitively for a while when the spark started going quiet. When Calling Seattle landed on the calendar, she made a small decision: instead of registering as a player, she applied to be a judge. She got in, had one of the best weekends she had had with the game in years, and by the end of it a judge she had worked alongside offered her a recommendation.
No carefully constructed timeline had preceded any of this.
Just a door she noticed was open.
What made walking through it possible was everything she had done before. She had become an L1 with support from Yichin, a judge in the NorCal community, and judged PQs and RTNs alongside a group that pushed her into situations she wasn’t sure she was ready for. By the time she walked into Calling Seattle, the foundation was there.
The Calling gave her the environment that made it click: real calls under real pressure, experienced judges around her, and the discovery that the situations that feel biggest from a distance become manageable once you are inside them.
Rodrigo Saavedra‘s path looked nothing like that.
He had stepped away from TCGs entirely for about a decade before FAB pulled him back in. When he returned, he became a judge not because he was looking for a new role, but because his community in Mexico City needed one. Without local judges, organized play was not coming. Someone had to step up. He did.
By the time he sat his L2 exam, he had been building toward it deliberately, as one of the leading figures for FAB in his country and as the person local players had been encouraging to formalize that role. The moment that crystallized it was organizing an international competitive event and standing on the other side of it, watching everything come together, thinking:
I want more people to get to experience this.
When he passed, he became the first L2 in Mexico.
A player he had mentored along the way eventually became an L1. That judge found him afterward and said: “Thank you. You inspired me to become a judge.”
He doesn’t make much of being first. That moment is what he carries.
What both paths share is more useful than what separates them.
Neither Natalie nor Rodrigo arrived at L2 because they felt ready in the way the level can seem to demand from the outside. Natalie had built more than she realized before the door opened. Rodrigo had a community counting on him before he had the formal credential to match. The readiness came from showing up to things that were bigger than their current level, not from waiting until the level felt earned.
If you are an L1 sitting with the question, that is the thing worth taking from both of their stories. Natalie’s answer is the most direct: get to a Calling. Find a Tier 3 or Tier 4 event, apply to judge it, and let the environment teach you what studying alone cannot. The tools are there. The judges at those events are friendlier than they look from the outside. The situations that feel most intimidating from a distance become manageable once you are inside them.
Rodrigo’s answer runs alongside it: the first step is the hardest one to take and the most necessary. There are already people on the other side of it who can help. The community that feels distant from where you are standing is more reachable than it appears.
Both of them found that out by going.
So go.
What you’ll find on the other side isn’t just sharper rules knowledge or more confident calls. It’s the realization that you were already capable of more than you thought. More influence over how someone experiences this game, more care for the people around you than you knew you had to offer. That doesn’t show up from the outside. It only becomes visible once you’re in it.
Road to L2 is an ongoing series profiling judges from across the FAB community. Produced by the FAB Judge Program’s Info and Content team. Featured image original art by Jessketchin.
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