Hey all!

Just like you, I am SO ready for the time when I can gather with my friends again. One of my favorite parts of any event is giving and receiving feedback with my fellow judges. While events may be postponed or moved online for the time being, we want to look forward to when we WILL be able to help run events again. So later this year, we’ll be bringing back “Flash Feedback Tokens”. For those of you who have not used them before, Flash Feedback cards are tokens that judges can use to give other judges feedback at an event or conference. The token generally has spaces to write the feedback, as well as information like what event and who gave it so that judges can reflect on the feedback later. So what image should be put on the token? Well! You’ll read about that a little later in this post!

So, we briefly talked about the Token part. What about the Tournament part??

Well, it’s been a while since most of us have connected with our Judge Family, and with large events (and most in-store events) cancelled for the next few months, we want to help fill that hole! Starting this weekend, we want to host weekly Arena tournaments for the Judge Academy Community. Each weekend between now and the end of June, we will be hosting 2 tournaments for Judges. These are 4 round events, and are mostly casual get-togethers with a slight competitive flare! What do we mean by that? Well, for each region, we will be tracking a leaderboard for Judge Academy Members in that region. At the end of those 8 weeks, the top 8 (or tied with 8th) judges in each region who are eligible for the July mailing will get a few additional Swag items included in their package, and of those players, the top 4 (or tied for 4th) from each region will participate in a Judge Academy League Championship that will happen in July (date TBD depending on world and event stuff). The winner of THAT will be transformed into the token of their choice, and that image will be used on the first wave of our Flash Feedback cards! Additionally, each event there will be some small digital prizes for used door prizes, games, etc.

To start, we’ll be using MTGA and melee.gg as our platforms, Standard Format best of 3 matches, and will start with the following times:

While we believe these times do the best job of giving everyone a reasonable time to play around the globe, we are also open to adjusting times as we go based on feedback. Additionally, while there are two events to play in each weekend, and we always encourage people to hop into our discord and hang out, only your best finish will count towards the leaderboard, as we don’t want to punish or favor one group or timezone over another, especially for those regions that span multiple timezones.

SO! How do you sign up to play in the Judge Academy – Magic Arena Judge League (I like calling it “Magil” :p) To start, you’ll need MTG Arena and a Melee.gg account. Make sure your melee.gg (MTG Melee) account has your Arena Screenname attached, and once you’ve done that, you can sign up!