March 2021 Judge Academy News and Updates

FREE Arena Judge Event:

We have been tapped to explore Facebook Gaming’s software around digital tournaments. This is all new for us, and we are excited to dive into this new event tool with you all. With that in mind, Facebook is sponsoring 2 free JA Magic Arena tournaments for Judges, each with a prize pool of $1,000 USD. 

They will be Arena – Standard Bo3, 256 player single elimination brackets, with prizes for Top-8. Judges participating must have a Magic Arena account and Standard deck, and use their full ArenaName#### as their Gamer Tag when signing up. Registration Links below:

Those events will take place at 9am PDT on:  

Website: The look of our site has continued to grow and improve over the last month!

Completed Features/Updates:

  • Staff list view changes – The staff list for Judges at an event will now display the role they performed, as defined by the organizer. 
  • Event category is now a mandatory field to avoid events slipping through notification setting cracks.
  • Implementation of searchable and sortable tables on ‘My Applications’ screen
  • Fixes and patches related to bugs or inconsistencies
  • If you are organizing an event and receive an application, the automatic email will now link directly to the application

Coming this week!:

  • Badge Changes – We know that gamers like to collect badges and trophies. With that in mind, you will soon be able to choose to display ALL of your badges if you’d like to, not just the highest level you have achieved.
  • To avoid confusion with events occurring for people in different time zones, events will soon show the related times in both your local time zone, and of the organizer.
  • Tailored view of the Events listing optimized for mobile devices.
  • The Application close dates will now become highlighted in red when the dates close in the next two weeks to increase clarity and help applicants keep track of closings.

New Modules:

  • Presenting at a Digital Conference – Presenting digitally can make it hard to keep your audience engaged. Find out what makes presenting at a Digital Conference unique.
  • Organizing a Judge Academy Conference – If you want to organize a digital conference, or are interested in learning what all goes into the amazing Digital Conference you might attend on the weekends, check out our new module on Organizing a Conference.

Judge Shirts:

Thanks to Steve and the MTG Pro Shop, we are finally able to open orders for Judge Academy branded shirts and other items. The link for initial orders will be updated in the next few days, so keep an eye out!

https://mtgproshop.com/judge-academy/

Conference Promos: 

We are still dealing with some issues around promo distribution overseas getting through customs and to organizers. In order to combat some of those delays, we will begin distributing to most European conference organizers from a European Hub as opposed to directly from Judge Academy in the US. Thank you to those who informed us of those struggles and frustrations. We are hoping this change removes a large portion of delays and unequal arrival times, and customs logistical issues for conference support.

In addition to our normal announcements and updates, we have our first peek at the new Judge Promos! Conference promo packs May-Aug will include Grand Arbiter Augustin IV and Karlov of the Ghost Council!

If you did not get a chance to get a The Gitrog Monster or Nicol Bolas, the Ravager in Jan-April, you are still in luck! Your conference pack will also contain 1 Jan-April card, as well as 1 card from our July 2020 Mailing.