Level One - Lesson 17

Running Your First Event

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Below is the full script of the lesson, if you learn or process material better through the written word!

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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’re going to focus on the practicalities of running an event! We’ve given you a lot of tools and knowledge, and now it’s time to put that to use!

We’re going to start off by talking about some strategies to find an event to work, how to prepare for the event, then how to actually get the event started. Once it’s up and running, you’re past the most difficult part - all you have to do is end rounds, flip them into the next, and close out the tournament!

It’s going to be intimidating until you have the opportunity to do it a handful of times, and it’s best if you can have some oversight on your first few attempts - whether it be an experienced store employee, a judge from another game, or even some players who you trust to give you measured feedback based on their experience with other events.

Finding an Event

Before you can work an event, you actually have to be staffed for one - and this can be the hardest part.

There are a couple of ways that you can do this - occasionally large Tournament Organizers will post solicitations for events on the Judge Program discord or in local community groups online. Nexus is also working on developing tools that will allow organizers to post solicitations that any judge can apply to. If you are friends with a judge, and particularly if you have a mentor, you can talk to them, and they can also help you get started.

But those won’t work for everyone, so the most reliable method is going to your Friendly Local Game Store and asking if you can provide your services. This also won’t always work out. Sometimes they don’t have events and sometimes they already have folks they use as a judge for their events.

Establishing relationships with an LGS could be an entire lesson (and it will be), but the short version is:

  1. Put yourself out there. It’s the hardest part, and you may have to face rejection, but if you don’t ask, they won’t offer.
  2. Start small. Ask to judge their prereleases or store showdowns. These are likely some of their largest SWU events, and they’re not very frequent, so it’s not a huge additional burden on the store, like judging all of their weekly events.
  3. Get Compensated. Okay... this might be the hardest part. You need to make sure from the beginning that you’re being reasonably compensated for your time, effort, and skill. If you’re not, that makes it that much harder for you or anyone else to get the appropriate compensation down the line.

The number one thing that I hear from store owners about hiring judges it that they want to hire somebody that they trust. Judges are able to have an incredible impact on the play experience, and can cause players to bring their friends... but can also cause them to quit the game or abandon the store. Plus, judges often have some degree of additional access, whether it be to help register players, access to a store computer to run events, or access to product and promos for events - and that sort of risk can raise concerns for a store owner.

One of the best things you can do to improve your value as a judge is to be a part of the local community. Go to weekly play, be a part of drafts, talk with the other players, help new players with deck construction at prerelease... in short, be somebody who makes your community better.

Pre-event Preparation

Before you run an event, you want to make sure that you’re adequately prepared for it. As you gain more experience, you can figure out what you need to do and what you don’t need to do for your own systems, but there’s a lot to be aware of.

First and foremost is being familiar with the event and the venue - knowing what the prize structure is, how many rounds, where you can (or should) post pairings, where restrooms are if players ask and a lot of other basic details can really shape your experience with the event. While a lot of these questions are things that can be answered in under a minute, if you have ten of them, that starts to add up. However, this is another point in favor of becoming a regular at the store you’re going to be working for in advance - that way you already know the answers, because you’ve experienced them.

This list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a good start:

  1. What time is the event scheduled to start?
  2. What time will the event actually start? Do players register until the deadline or even come a little late?
  3. Who manages player registration?
  4. What format is the event?
  5. How many players do you expect for the event? How big is the player cap?
  6. How many rounds will the event be?
  7. Are the rounds best-of-one or best-of-three?
  8. Is there a top cut?
  9. Who manages the scorekeeping software?
  10. Do players expect paper pairings or just digital?
  11. How are you going to do your announcements? How are the acoustics in the venue?
  12. Are the tables already set up? Will they have table numbers or will players just shout their opponent's name and play wherever?
  13. Is there a round clock that players can see?
  14. Are there any portions of the venue that are hidden in a nook so it’s hard to see judge calls?
  15. Are there any players who frequently have judge calls?
  16. Are there any cards or interactions that you expect to come up frequently?
  17. Where’s the restroom if players ask? Are there snacks or drinks available? If a player needs sleeves, where can they get them?
  18. What’s the prize structure? How are prizes distributed? Who distributes them?
  19. Are there any additional prizes? Participation promos? Raffles?
  20. Are there any upcoming events the organizer would like you to announce for SWU or other games?
  21. Who should you speak to if you need to escalate an issue to the organizer?

You’re not going to be able to have the answers to all the questions before you begin - in fact, you probably won’t have all the questions before you begin, but being adaptable, flexible, and ready to learn is a hallmark trait of a quality judge.

Your Judge Gear

Of course, you’ll also want to prepare your knowledge by reviewing any updates to rules and policy that happened since the last time you judged, or even just brush up if it’s been a while. You can do this by cracking open the rules and reading them, or just playing a few games, and keeping your attention on rules interactions and how you would fix errors that come up.

Finally, there’s the judges kit. As you judge more, you’ll figure out what works for you, but there are some items that you’ll want to carry around with you.

There are a lot of other accessories - some judges have a particular judge uniform - many large organizers request or require black pants or skirt, so judges wear those along with their shirt, even at local events. Having a boxcutter to be able to open product if you’re running a sealed event can be handy, but in a pinch, a pen will do.

Comfortable shoes, water bottles, snacks, and even a fidget toy can make your experience better. Some judges also like to have access to a tablet, so they can better manage the event using scorekeeping tools, simply due to the larger screen.

At The Event

You can also bring a deck along! Judges aren’t allowed to participate in events that they’re judging - there can be concerns of bias, even with low prize pools and it splits your attention. Having to get up to answer judge calls is disruptive and not respectful to your opponent, and can bog down the tournament if you have to end up giving your match significant amounts of extra time. However, what you can do is bring a deck to play against someone who has the bye or their opponent leaves without dropping. This way, you can still play the game, and someone who wouldn’t be playing gets the opportunity to play as well - but there are no stakes, so it’s okay if you don’t actually finish your match!

Of course, judging an event isn’t just playing the game! Once all the players are registered, you’ll want to make sure pairings are available. With melee, most players should have access on their phones, but printing out a copy that players can refer to, or having that information pulled up at the scorekeeping station at the start of the round is very helpful for that. Keep an eye on player traffic flow. If the pairings are also right next to the register, it might get crowded if a customer is trying to check out at the same time - so maybe you move the pairings somewhere else.

With pairings out, you can wait for the players to get seated for round one, and then you’re going to want to issue some opening announcements before they begin play.

These can generally be pretty brief, but there are a few key things that it’s important to touch on, particularly if you have newer players.

There’s always more you can add to your announcements, but you probably lose about half your audience fifteen seconds in, and lose another half every ten seconds after that, so you want to keep your announcements brief. These numbers are made up, but the attention span of players is short.

For example, you might have your announcements be something like “Hey folks! I’m Jonah and I’ll be your judge today. If at any point you have a question about how any cards work or think something may have gone wrong in your game, please don’t hesitate to raise your hand and shout judge to get my attention! If you want to debate which Legends Canon books are the best, I’m also more than happy to offer my final rulings on that. Today is the week before our Store Showdown, so we’re running four rounds with Best-of-three matches! Please don’t forget to report your match results in melee when you’re done. If you don’t have service down here, just let me or a member of the store staff know, and we can take care of that. With that being said, you have fifty-five minutes - please begin!”

Now we wait! Once players have started their games, it’s time for us to wait for any judge calls. At a casual-tier event, there aren’t any specific tasks that need to be done at this time, so it’s just keeping an ear out for calls. If you’re not playing against the player with the bye, I strongly encourage you to watch some Unlimited being played.

If you’re someone who ends up judging more frequently than playing, watching folks play will help you better understand their strategy and decision-making. And even if you do play frequently, there’s always something you can learn. Plus, if you’re watching a game, maybe you can catch an error as it happens, and keep the game on track.

If you notice something going wrong in the game, and it’s something you’d have to apply a remedy for, you should be comfortable asking the players to pause the game, and confirming that whatever action you just saw actually did occur. Sometimes someone will say “No, I have a General Veers in play, so it shouldn’t have died” and you’ll feel silly, but most of the time, the players will realize as you point it out, and they’ll be thankful for you helping them remedy the situation before it got out of hand.

As always, when interacting with players, make sure that you’re diplomatic. Telling players “Hey, you did that wrong!” is not going to be received as “Hey, unless I’m missing something, doesn’t that have lethal damage on it?”

With these interjections make sure that you’re not reminding a player of an optional trigger with “you may”, as they are allowed to miss those.

Also, keep in mind the philosophy of casual-tier play. These interruptions generally shouldn’t come with penalties or infractions, especially if you catch them as they are occurring, because the players might not have had a chance to catch the errors themselves.

End Of Round

As the round starts to come to a close, keep an eye out for any “ghosts” or matches that are no longer playing, aren’t at their table and haven’t submitted a match result. You can check this easily by using the filter function on Melee to show only matches that haven’t submitted results. If you identify a ghost, see if you can spot the players and ask them to submit, or if you don’t see them or don’t recognize them, make an announcement to the hall asking them to submit their results.

When time has elapsed, make an announcement letting players know that the time has ended. This is, of course, very helpful for the players still in game, and if possible, you should take a moment to speak with the remaining matches and make sure that they’re aware that they’re about to start their final rounds.

However, it’s also helpful for other players. Sometimes somebody will finish a match early and then start playing games with their friends, or go explore the games on the other side of the store or otherwise be distracted. This end-of-round announcement serves as a reminder to everyone in the event that pairings for the next round will be coming soon-ish.

Check in with any matches that have a time extension and make sure that they go into their extra rounds of play at the appropriate time. This is also a great time to remind your players that they should be playing their games to their natural conclusion.

If any tables have had particularly contentious or complicated calls, and everyone else is in their final rounds, go ahead and focus on that match. That way, if another issue arises, you’re already there and have been watching the game for a while, and so you have context. This can make resolution of these issues smoother.

Once the round has ended, get players paired and started into the next one! From here on out, it’s rinse and repeat.

Wrapping Things Up

Of course, there will be some calls, but the details on how to handle them have been covered in previous lessons - whether it’s a rules question or a policy question, you have the knowledge you need to run an event!

As the final round wraps up, make sure to assist in prize distribution if that’s a responsibility expected of you, but otherwise, thank the players, let them know about other upcoming events, and start to wrap up your evening!

The most challenging part of any event is getting it started - it’s the most logistically intense part of the event (and doubled for limited events where you have to distribute product and manage deck construction). Once players are seated and actually playing the game... that’s the easy part. At your local game store, you likely won’t get a ton of questions, especially to begin with, but as players get to know you better and become more comfortable, they’ll start to see you first as a resource, and then as a challenge - and while they’ll probably just ask pertinent questions during their matches, between them they might come up with “Hey judge... if I take these six cards and I...” trying to stump you... or maybe they’re also excited by the rules and want to learn more and would make a great judge candidate.

Speaking of judge candidates, that’s a great segue into our next lesson - Giving and Receiving Feedback. This lesson is the last that you need to gain the basic knowledge for running an event, but next week’s lesson is one of the most critical for your success as a judge overall.

Nobody is perfect, and the ability to accept critical feedback and learn from it is huge in being able to grow and provide truly excellent experiences for your players. It’s something that’s very important to me, and I hope to encourage an environment of mentorship and personal growth here in the Star Wars: Unlimited Judge Program. 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!

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