Level One - Lesson 15
Taking a Judge Call
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Hello there and welcome back to the Judge Program for Star Wars™: Unlimited - Level One certification track lessons.
As always, I’m your host Jonah, and in this lesson, we leave the textbooks behind. Where we’re going, there are no rules! Let me paint a picture for you - you’re at your friendly local game store’s prerelease for the upcoming set. You’ve completed your lessons, you have your judge certification complete. You reviewed the policy changes, and have been following spoilers since the first cards were announced. You just spent a few minutes rereading the changes to the Comprehensive Rules that cover the cool new mechanic you’re bound to get questions on.
Players have just started their first round of play, and the excited buzz of the room has turned to the chatter of players going back and forth, playing the game. And then you hear it - the call! “JUDGE!” You head to the table in question, you see the player who has called you to aid them! They look to you “Hey, I need to go the bathroom real quick. I’ll be back in a moment.”
Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the call you were imagining, with the complex game state, and the possibility of cheating where you have to unearth clues and determine innocence and exonerate a player.
Handling judge calls is the most important part of judging - it’s how we make sure that the rules are enforced and players are playing fair, correct, and fun games of Unlimited.
This lesson doesn’t have rules you have to follow - there’s no book you can read that can tell you exactly how to handle any given situation. However, there are better and worse ways to take a call and this lesson will cover some philosophies and things to think about.
My goal isn’t to make an army of clones of me, answering judge calls - my style works for me, and it may not work for you or your community. Over time you’ll find what works for you.
The Approach
Every judge call starts the same way (well, okay, not all of them, but most of them), with a player’s hand shooting into the air, and them calling out “Judge!”.
If your players don’t do this, encourage them! A great way to do this is in your opening announcements saying something along the lines of “And if you have any questions, comments or concerns, please call for a judge. Just raise your hand into the air, keep it raised, and shout “Judge!” let’s do it together... Three... two... one... Judge!”
At your local store many players will likely begin to call you by name - this isn’t necessarily a problem, but if a new player joins the community, they won’t know who you are, and so the other players demonstrably knowing you better than them may instill an (unnecessary) fear of bias. It also helps you triage situations. If one player comes up to me and says “Hey Jonah, I have a question” and another player shouts “Judge!” from the other end of the room, I can assume that the latter is a call that needs attention while the former is not from an ongoing match. Having these boundaries and lines can help you perform your duties better.
So you’ve heard the call, and their hand is raised (and hopefully stays raised) while you go to answer it. At your local store, it’s probably less of an issue, but at a crowded prerelease or even at a Planetary Qualifier in your store, there may be more new faces - marking where they are, particularly in a larger crowd - means that you’ll be able to find them if the hand goes down (which it will, more often than you’d like).
As you approach the players, try to let them know that you’re aware of them and making your way to them. I do this by raising my hand and either waving or pointing in their direction as I move toward them. Again, this is more useful at larger events where they may be looking around for one of several judges, but it still lets them know that their call for help has been answered.
As I’ve mentioned, judging is a customer service role, and what people look for isn’t the amount of time it takes for their issue to be resolved, but how long it takes for them to be recognized and to have someone start helping them. If you can catch their attention nonverbally, they’ll be able to begin to relax.
At larger events, raising your hand and indicating the table can also help communicate to other judges that you’re on your way to that call, and they don’t need to hurdle over tables to get there quickly, as someone is handling it.
Speaking of hurdling tables... don’t. Don’t run, either - walk quickly, and with purpose, but don’t run the risk of crashing into someone or tripping.
Now, we’ve already made contact with the players, we’re on our way there, and there are still two more things to do before we make hard contact (Republic Commandos reference!).
First, take a quick glance at the clock - you don’t know if this is going to be a quick five-second call where you say “Yes” and then leave, or if it’s going to be more involved. Knowing how much time you have left in the round gives you some context - it’s pertinent information for various infractions including tardiness and slow play, but it’s also critical information to determine the final time extension you’ll be issuing.
Then, as you get within vocal range of the players, grab their attention vocally - I usually go with the classic “Howdy folks” (which makes me sound like I’m from a part of the United States that I’m not, and I have no idea where I picked it up, but it’s part of my vernacular, so I’m stuck with it). This gets their attention focused on you, and makes spectators in the aisle aware of your presence, so they can move out of your way. You arrive at the table and now we can begin the call.
Evaluating the Atmosphere
We can talk about the rules, right?
Nope! There’s still a lot to do, and you can do most of it before even asking a single question or before the players can even begin to talk.
I recognize that I’m laying out a lot of steps and things to do, but don’t worry - most of this is ways to make a judge call exceptional - we’ll have a quick primer at the end of the lesson that summarizes it into what you need for a functional judge call - functional is what you need to get started, and you can grow from there. Heck, I forget to look at the clock until halfway into half the calls I take, and I’ve been doing this for a while.
Anyway, the first thing you’re going to want to do when you get to the table is read the mood. There are four broad categories that a call can fall into empirical, cooperative, contentious, and combative. Let’s go through these one at a time.
First up an Empirical call is one that’s just fact-based, with no tension or mystery involved. Questions like “If I play a second Colonel Yularen while I already have one in play, what happens?” are empirical. The players are seeking facts, and there’s no problem to resolve.
Cooperative calls are ones where the players recognize that something has gone wrong and are working together to try to fix the situation. This can be a situation like “Hey judge, on my last turn my Hylobon Enforcer died, and I forgot to remind my opponent to draw a card.”
Both players agree on what happened and are working together to find a solution.
Contentious calls are ones where the players disagree about something and are not working collaboratively to reach a conclusion. This could be something like the first player saying “Judge, my opponent says they said pass, but I’m confident they claimed the initiative” and the second insisting that they said pass.
Finally, you have Combative calls - these are calls where the players are displaying hostility toward each other and may be encroaching on unsporting conduct behavior. “Judge, my opponent just played Darth Vader for only six resources - they’re cheating!”
Figuring out what kind of call you have quickly is important, and changes your behavior as you start the call. If the players are combative, you’re going to want to separate them as quickly as possible so you can begin to calm them down. If it’s contentious, you’re going to want to make sure that the players feel specifically heard. If it’s empirical, you don’t need to spend much time on any formalities.
If the players are being combative, quickly make your presence known, and let the players know that they should focus on you, and not on their opponent. Ask one player to step away from the table, so that you can speak with each of them one at a time. Ideally, you ask another judge or a store employee to stand with the player who steps away from the match, but you’re not always able to accommodate this.
This is also a time to alter both your body language and the words you use. If you need to impose authority on the players, remaining standing can help cement your power, but in most situations either kneeling or sitting in an adjacent chair (if one is available) brings you to the same level as the players and makes you less intimidating (and we generally don’t want to be intimidating).
This is where we start the call, and we begin to ask questions. Every call is an investigation - you’re trying to figure out what the player wants, and then, if there’s an issue, how to remedy it. I’m making a distinction between an “investigation” with a lowercase “i” and a Cheating Investigation, with its capital letters.
I usually start with “What can I do for you folks?” - this is one of those places where you can min-max your language for small gains. Coming to a table and saying “what’s wrong?” can set the players on the backfoot, and maybe feel bad for calling you and wasting your time, especially if they’re not sure if something is actually wrong, or if they just wanted to confirm the text on a card. However, this is where experience and reading the atmosphere of the match can come into play. I’ve definitely had calls at a match where I’ve been called three times already and each one has been messy and complicated, and I’ve come up to those calls with a deep sigh, and a “What did y’all screw up this time” - but with a smile on my face.
Sometimes when players are more contentious, I lean more into the match, to physically separate the two players, and to make it harder for them to engage with each other, to force them to focus on me.
A tactic that can help bring things to a more personal level is by doing a quick round of introductions. This isn’t necessary for every call - asking both players for their names, and giving yours when the question is “How much does Viper Probe Droid cost?” is a bit superfluous. However, if you realize this is going to go back and forth and if you’re likely to issue a penalty, ask both players their names. That way, instead of saying “Okay, you, what happened?” you can say “Okay, Alex, tell me what happened”. Addressing people by their names helps them feel respected on an instinctual level, and it slows down the call a bit, humanizes the other player, and focuses attention on you. Plus, should you need to enter a penalty at the end of the call, you won’t need to come back to the table and say “sorry, what’s your name? I need to know who to give the penalty to.”
As the call progresses, you should change your demeanor appropriately. Judges are expected to remain professional, but that doesn’t mean you need to be stoic and unemotional - you’re allowed to have fun. However, if the call takes a turn for the less fortunate - if you have to issue a penalty or you do end up feeling the need to start investigating for cheating, adjust how you’re engaging with the players.
Sometimes, either at the onset of the call or later in the call, the player may have a question about hidden information, or may seem hesitant to speak - you can always ask if the player wants to speak away from the table so as to not provide strategic information to their opponent.
At this point, one of the players should be giving you information - if both are providing information (which happens frequently) and you’re not able to process what they’re saying, it’s more than okay to ask one player to recount their side of things, and while you’re doing so let the other player know that you’ll get to them in a moment.
Understanding the Question
At this point, the player is asking their question or posing the conundrum. The tricky part here is that players are not judges, and so they don’t know what’s important or how to convey the information in a format that’s useful to you - the latter is a really hard skill that I’m still working on mastering myself.
This means that the player is going to present their story in a unique sequence, and you may not know what they have a concern about until they get to the end of it, and which point you may need to ask them to repeat the information now that you have context.
It is absolutely okay to intervene and ask for clarification. If a player is recounting the entire round like... “Okay, so at the start of the round, my opponent defeated a resource for their Han trigger, then played Bodhi Rook, making me discard K-2SO. I deployed Sabine next, I think? Or maybe I, yeah, I played Fleet Lieutenant, attacked with R2-D2 killing their Gammorrean Guards...” feel free to interrupt with “Before you go through all that detail, what are you concerned about?”
As quickly as possible, get to the heart of the issue, and see what the question is actually about. Then, listen to what they’re saying. While players may offer extraneous information, interrupting them usually slows down the call, unless it’s egregious. Also, they’ll frequently mislabel game terms - calling an ability an action or a replacement effect a trigger - as long as you understand what’s happening, you don’t need to correct these minor miscommunications - in fact, for a lot of players, doing so will set them against you, because it feels unnecessary to them. You can just use the correct terms when you respond and hope they pick up on them. (They won’t, it’s okay.)
Once one player has presented their side, ask the other player if they have anything they’d like to add - most of the time they don’t, or they say they do and they repeat the same information - it’s important to allow the player the opportunity to speak, so that they feel heard, and treated with respect. Telling a player “I already know that” when they haven’t yet spoken doesn’t make them inclined to trust you.
Now you can start to ask some questions. The exact nature of the questions is dependent on the exact nature of the call, and beyond the scope of this lesson, but we’ll go over some basics.
Sometimes, you need more information on the exact sequencing that occurred - a player might say “I played these three cards this turn...” but for you to be able to understand the whole situation, you need to know the order the cards were played.
Sometimes you need clarification on communication. If a player had a unit Boba and a leader Boba, and their opponent said “Attack Boba” - was there a gesture toward the one they intended? Did they indicate if it would die or not? Did they mark how much damage the attacker took? Did they specify “leader”? How have the two cards been distinguished previously in the game or match?
Sometimes you need information on the game state. What were the HP totals when the error occurred? Who noticed it? When did they notice it? Why didn’t they notice it earlier? What are they trying to do? What is their understanding of the applicable rules?
Once you understand what they’re asking or what the general scenario is, you can start to move into actually managing the call.
Providing Excellent Service
As you move forward, it’s a great time to re-evaluate the atmosphere of the call. Oftentimes, with the right temperament, and listening to both players and working with them, you can turn a contentious call into a cooperative one, or take a combative call down to contentious or even cooperative - often when a player gets some space from their opponent and don’t have a direct stressor, they realize they’ve overstepped want to apologize.
On the other hand, sometimes during your questions, the players realize that they disagree on a fundamental part of the game, and their communication has gotten worse - rather than relaxing, you may need to intensify your position in the call, and potentially separate the players.
You may want to talk with the players more, and sometimes you want to talk to them about strategic information - sometimes to figure out what happened before, you’ll want to know what the player’s plan was for the round. I recommend asking one player to step away from the table, and taking their seat. This allows you to literally put yourself in their position, so you can look at their hand, the board state, and talk to their opponent from a place closer to being in the game.
If you’re considering a rewind, or trying to figure out if a unit has the correct amount of damage marked on it, and you need to determine past actions, you may need to figure out what happened previously. Making sure to not reveal any information from the player’s opponent, ask the player you have in front of you what they were thinking about when they made their decisions this round. Working backwards is usually the most effective, as it’s easier to remember the last thing you did than the first.
You can ask them what cards they were thinking about playing around, or what cards they were hoping to draw that may have changed their line of play. These questions can help them recall exactly what they did.
In cooperative situations and even some contentious ones, you can have both players at the table and work with you through the situation, but if there is a disagreement between them, it’s up to you to use your judgment to determine what reality is, which can be hard. Using firmer evidence of “I definitely didn’t use Rival’s Fall on Sabine, because I have Takedown in hand, and I would have used that” can help you collect evidence you can’t expose before the opponent.
Any opportunity you give to one player to express their side of events, you should offer to the other, even if you don’t believe you’ll gain any information from it. Sometimes you’ll be wrong and get an important piece of information, and sometimes you’ll be right, but it will make the player more comfortable with you and judges in general.
After your questions, you should have the information you need, whether it be for a rules question, a gameplay disruption, or a more serious Investigation, and it’s time to make your ruling.
If you’re explaining a card interaction, explain it concisely, but offer or be prepared to offer a longer explanation. Sometimes players want to understand exactly how multiple replacement effects work and what that means for Boba Fett’s Armor, and sometimes they just want to know “No, Krayt Dragon will still trigger.”
If you’re giving a ruling, you’re going to want to break it down into a few parts. First, go over the error in your own words, and confirm with both players that your narration sounds accurate to them - this is one last chance for them to say “Oh, wait, you played Force Lightning on it so it didn’t have any abilities” or something like that.
Then, explain what infraction you’ll be issuing, if any, and why you’re issuing it. “This is a gameplay disruption, because, well, you disrupted the game by underpaying for Superlaser Blast”
Then, if there’s a penalty associated with that, let them know, and let them know the context - “This comes with a warning, but it’s nothing to worry about unless you make a habit out of this.”
The infraction and penalty are the hardest part - a player can feel judged (which, to be fair, you are doing), and can feel embarrassed about their mistake, and even more, if they’re not familiar with tournament procedures could be worried about harsher penalties. This applies more to competitive events, where penalty points are going to generally be issued, but let them know it’s not a game loss, and certainly not a disqualification. Make sure that the player understands this.
Finally, explain how you’re going to remedy the situation - and tell the players that you’re going to go over the fix before they do anything. That way, if they disagree with it, they have the opportunity to ask questions, provide additional information, or appeal the ruling before anything happens.
Wrapping It Up
Speaking of appeals, sometimes a player won’t be happy with your ruling. If you’ve not yet completed your ruling and they ask to speak to another judge or to the head judge, firmly tell them that you need to complete your ruling before they can appeal it. However, a player doesn’t have to say the magic word “appeal” to actually appeal. If you can tell they’re not satisfied, ask if they’d like to speak to the head judge.
As a floor judge, take a moment to understand their concern - maybe they expected a longer time extension, or they believe that your understanding of the rules is incorrect, or maybe they’re worried about a penalty point they got from a different tournament upgrading.
Once you hear them out, you can potentially mitigate their concern. You can explain that penalty points don’t carry over from event to event, or show them the Comprehensive Rules entry that backs up your ruling. Sometimes players will accept this. Other times they really just need to hear it from a second person. Sometimes they’ll be the one to point out a line in the comprehensive rules, or a card-specific ruling that you missed!
If you’re the Head Judge, or the only judge at the event, you can do your best to quell their concerns with the above strategies, but if those don’t work, tell the player that your ruling is final and that they need to continue playing their match. However, genuinely listen to the player - they maybe are applying the rules of a different set of mechanics to these, or maybe they have some knowledge or understanding that you don’t.
It’s also frequently a good idea, especially in contentious or complicated calls to let the players know that they can find you after the match, and you can continue the discussion so that they can understand your perspective and ruling. Again, a lot of the time upset players just need to feel heard, so listening to their concerns a second time can greatly improve their experience.
Also, being appealed doesn’t mean that you’re a bad judge. Maybe the player felt like they heard a lack of confidence in your voice. Maybe some online simulation of the game functions differently (and incorrectly). And sometimes a player thinks you’re right, but if you are, they lose the game and really are hoping that you’re wrong - players have actually appealed me for this reason!
If there aren’t any concerns and the players are happy with your ruling, if there’s a fix, execute it. Stay with the players as they execute the fix - especially if there’s a rewind or hidden information is revealed. These can be complicated and you don’t want the players to make a mistake due to your ruling.
As you wrap up the call, ask if the players have any other questions or concerns. Sometimes there will be another card or interaction that they have questions about. Sometimes the call was so in-depth and the players so focused on helping you solve it that they forget whose turn it was and they need your help to sort it out.
Then, make sure to issue an appropriate time extension, and let the players know that they have that time. As we mentioned earlier, you should have looked at the clock as the call was starting. If you realize you didn’t, and are part way into the call, just check then, and add a couple minutes - it’s okay to be a little generous. The vast majority of time extensions are never used, and only the last match out extends the length of your tournament. If you realize you haven’t checked at all, you can ask the players if they had an eye on the clock, or use your best judgment, and strive for perfection next time. Even if a call takes less than a minute, giving the players a minute time extension is good customer service and makes their experience better. If you answer multiple ten-second calls, you don’t need to issue a minute for each of them, but making sure the players feel taken care of is hugely impactful to their experience, and doesn’t move the needle on the way the event plays out.
If there’s a penalty that needs to be issued, track it appropriately, using the scorekeeping software or writing it down in a notebook to be entered later if you don’t have data access. Ideally, you’ve gotten the players’ names, so you can record the penalty without having to ask now, but it’s something that I frequently forget about until the end of the call, so it’s something to strive for.
And that’s it!
To summarize:
- Figure out where the call is, and make them aware of your approach
- Check the time on the clock, so you can issue an appropriate extension later
- Evaluate the atmosphere and engage appropriately
- Consider introductions, especially if you think you’ll be issuing a penalty
- Listen to both players (as necessary)
- Ask clarifying questions (as necessary)
- Work through the situation with the players
- Issue your ruling
- For gameplay disruptions present your ruling to the players with the following steps:
- What the error/situation is
- What the infraction is (if applicable)
- What the penalty is (if applicable)
- What the fix is (if applicable)
- See if the players have any further questions or would like to appeal your ruling
- Apply the fix (if applicable)
- Issue time extension
- Record the penalty (if applicable)
Hopefully, your call took less time than it took for me to go over all of that! Of course, you’re not going to need to go through all of these steps for every call - there still will be plenty of calls from players who need to use the restroom or just want to know if Chirrut dies (he doesn’t).
There are two important closing thoughts - first, this is what works for me. I have a relaxed but professional attitude when it comes to judging, and I bring that to judge calls. You may work better with a more direct and stoic approach, or you may just be judging at your store where everyone knows you, and so you’re more relaxed. Judging is a form of personal expression and there isn’t one right way to do it.
And even if this lesson did outline “the way” to take a judge call, even I don’t hit all of these marks in all of my calls. Sometimes I forget the time, or don’t get players' names, or make assumptions... nobody is perfect, but thinking about all the small parts of a call and how you can make the player’s experience better... in the long run that will make you a better judge. I’ll see you next time as we dive into scorekeeping software! As always, if you have any questions, comments, or insights, be sure to join the Judge Community Discord and make your voice heard. Until next time, good luck and have fun!