Hey, all! November News and Updates are below!
As usual, I (Nicolette) will be around for Office Hours tomorrow in the JA Discord from 9am-10am Pacific and from 4pm-5pm Pacific. To see these times in your local time zones, follow the links below:
Website Updates: Over the next few weeks, you’ll start to see the redesigns and new features go live on the Judge Academy website. If you come across any issues with a new aspect of the site, please feel free to reach out via the Contact Us Form.
As you become reintroduced to the site, please take a moment to verify that your privacy settings are set to your liking/comfort. Due to various data/privacy laws, PRIVACY SETTINGS DEFAULT TO PRIVATE. This means any data that you want shared OR searchable should be marked to display.
A note on privacy here – while you always have the right to make any and all data private from other users, please note that having some critical information hidden (your profile, name, level, email, or region) will make it much harder to be accepted to events or conferences, or be contacted by potential employers for work.
Membership Renewals:
While judges originally certified in 2021 will have a subscription end date 1 year from when they certified, the large majority of judges (all 2019 and 2020 members) have a listed expiration date of December 31st, 2021 due to the waiving of renewal fees for 2021.
To facilitate an easy transition into 2022, we will be opening up renewals on November 15th. We’ve also added a small grace period, meaning although those memberships expire on December 31st, 2021, members will not lose any of their current certifications until February 1st 2022. All renewals made on memberships with a December 31st, 2021 expiration date will be set to expire on December 31st, 2022. If you renew early, your receipt/membership may show a different expiration date initially, but rest assured these will be automatically corrected when the grace period window for subscriptions closes on February 1st, 2022.
Please note that if your expiration date is December 31st, 2021, and you wait until January 15th to renew, your new expiration date will still be December 31st, 2022, and you will still have access to all your benefits during the grace period.
MTG Champions: Thanks to everyone who applied for the various Champion jobs. We are still in the process of finalizing hiring decisions, so we’ll wait for the full roster of new employees before introducing them officially.
Conferences:
To help clarify and set expectations around promos, for the month of November, as much as possible, conferences around the world will receive Grand Arbiter Augustin IV and Sterling Grove as their 2 “Old-Wave” slots in the sponsorship packs, meaning each pack will be:
- Morophon, the Boundless (NEW)
- Zacama, Primal Calamity (NEW)
- Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
- Sterling Grove
Why clarify “as much as possible”? The promos are an extremely limited resource compared to other printings and, towards the end of a card’s rotation, it’s possible that we might run out of a particular promo from an older wave, or not have enough of that specific card to cover a larger conference. This is especially true for cards that were released in 2021 as we have done our best to approve as many conferences as possible in order to facilitate community connection and education during this time of isolation.
We are constantly monitoring allocations and inventory, and don’t expect this to be a common issue, but if it does happen, we’ll be in contact with the organizer/distributor to inform them of any substitution. THIS WILL NOT OCCUR FOR CURRENT WAVE (NEW) CARDS.
End of Year Celebration Reminders:
Requirements/Restrictions for attendees
- Promotional Support for these conferences is region-locked by default, and limited to one pack per attendee. This means that while organizers may choose to open up their conference to out-of-region attendees, those judges will not be eligible to receive promotional support for attending an out-of-region event.
- Any exceptions to the above can only be made ahead of time at the discretion and with the permission/coordination of the organizers in both your region and the region you wish to attend, and may not result in an attendee receiving multiple sets of attendee support.
For example:
Judge Joan cannot attend her region’s scheduled conference. She sends an email to her region’s organizer (Abe) and the organizer of another conference (Betty). Betty has space for Joan, so together, the 3 of them work out which organizer will distribute Joan’s support.
- Joan will only receive 1 attendee support pack, even if she somehow ends up attending both.
- Only the organizer who distributes/mails Joan’s support will count Joan in their final attendance numbers to Judge Academy.
Thanks,
The Judge Academy Team