Baltimore, Maryland
Role: Scheduled Sides Lead
Time: Friday July 26th - Sunday July 28th, 2024


Everyone Has a First Time
For Baltimore, it was my first time being sides lead. In the past I'd done a cornucopia of positions for SCG, including team leading on the main event multiple times, being 5K HJ and being Comp REL lead, but I'd never lead Regular REL side events before. It was a little daunting because SCG is one of the larger organizers and leading scheduled sides was a big responsibility. I wanted to make sure I didn't set anything on fire. It was also kinda scary because I honestly can't remember the last time I've worked sides at an SCG as a floor judge, so I barely even know their system.

Prep-nanza
I'm constantly being needled about my lack of preparation, so it's a skill I'm really working on. Before the event I asked a lot of questions, such as whether I needed to put a judge in the Command Zone, and how ODEs and prize tickets were going to work. I ensured that I had the event and break schedule out the Tuesday before the event and that my judges knew what they were to be doing at all times. For reference, the bolt italic names are the Keystone judges, people that are paid a little extra and are generally more experienced and stay longer at the end of the day. Unfortunately, somehow between finding out that I needed to have someone in the Command Zone and someone responsible for ODEs and making my schedule, I ended up forgetting to, you know, actually assign someone to these tasks. None of this would've been a huge issue, except that on Thursday afternoon, After doing a degenerate overnight flight, I passed out in a grocery store and was trapped in a hospital until Friday afternoon, leaving my mess of a schedule to be sorted out by the judge SCG cajoled into covering for me. Getting a judge already assigned to events to also keep an eye on ODEs wasn't a huge deal, since ODEs generally aren't busy enough on Friday to need a dedicated judge. On Saturday however, they did require a dedicated judge and some schedule fanangling needed to happen. SCGs system is weirdly archaic, the ODE judge just has a very visible red clipboard with all the draft brackets on it, and players call that judge to be prized out as they get knocked out of the draft.

A Structured Opinion
I have done a bunch of sides leading in the past little while, and every time an event comes up I tell myself I'm going to try the other method of sides leading. "What other method" you might be asking yourself. Well, in the current era there are two main schools of thought regarding the execution of side events at medium-large events. For reference, "medium-large" events are things like Coolstuff Commandfests, Face to Face RCs and SCG weekends. Basically anything that has a 200-400 person main event and launches around 15+ side events per day, which usually clock in at 10-30 players each.

The method is the "task structure". Here judges have specific tasks like "round turnover", "kickstart" and "floor". My main issue with this is that round turnover is always crazy busy, since they're effectively babysitting round end times and prize tix for 4-7 simultaneous events, while floor team is bored out of their mind. To compound this issue, adding additional people to a round turnover team doesn't actually increase its effectiveness, since that usually just necessitates the need for more coordination between the judges on the team, regarding who is watching what. Kickstart is actually a reasonable team to have, since events don't usually launch simultaneously, so every half hour, or hour kickstart launches an event and then gets on prepping for the next event.

The other method is the "event structure", this is where judges are assigned to keep track of a few events, and are effectively "all the teams" but for their own events. The issues with this is if a round needs to turnover at the same time they're launching an event things can get hectic. It also means each individual judge has to be overall more well rounded and will need to be taught all the aspects of running a side event.

In general I like the "event structure" better because it means each judge feels more ownership over their assigned events and this means they'll be generally more responsible for their event. In the "task structure" I've seen round turnovers missed and events lost more than I'd like to.

You'll notice that I've got quite a few events assigned to one of my judges on Saturday, simply because I didn't have a ton of bodies to watch events. Side events at this scale are always a little awkward, because after they launch, each event requires very little judge attention, due to the small player counts. As events scale up (such as in the Grand Prix era) side events could often each have their own, dedicated judge because often they'd be big enough to merit a single judge even after they start.

One of the big lessons I learned from Dreamhack Atlanta was that if you do have judges watching over multiple events, it's incredibly important that those events are adjacent to each other. Otherwise the entire experience is very frustrating for the judge. To facilitate this, for Saturday, I chose a starting table number for the BLB Prerelease, then had Pioneer start at the number that event ended at, then I could start the Modern and Legacy next to the Pioneer, and have the BLB 2HG prerelease after all of those. This resulted in all three constructed events being next to each other.

Dominant Play
AP says "Necrodominance for 17", NAP says "okay". While AP is counting out their cards face down in front of them they realize they only have 16 cards and want to change their activation to be for 16 instead, so they call a judge. I think while AP did gain new information, they gained it themselves, and it wasn't from their opponent, which in general we allow for reversing decisions. This is definitely borderline, and if NAP could potentially do something to interact with the Necrodominance, I'm very inclined to not back up (potentially Tishana's Tidebinder or the like). But if NAP was tapped out and their acknowledgement of the ability's resolution didn't give AP any potential information, I don't see a good reason to prevent a backup. (MTR 4.8)

...In Conclusion
You might notice that this report is very short, and that's for a variety of reasons. One reason is that I was only present for about 85% of this event. The other reason is that I just didn't find much at this event very interesting or novel. For the past little while I've been noticing the average enjoyment from each event degrading, to an awkward place where halfway through Saturday I often find myself wondering why I'm doing this job. I think there might be a variety of reasons this is happening, but the most likely one is a bit of burnout. I've been getting a lot of leadership opportunities lately, and while that is very exciting and I'm incredibly grateful, it might be a little emotionally unsustainable. I also think that event logistics and people management aren't really the most enjoyable tasks for me. I started out as a judge answering rules questions and helping players, and I think those are the parts I really enjoy about this, and I barely get to answer player questions anymore! I also think I've been a circuit judge for a long time, and while living out of a suitcase is super fun and fuels my need for adventure, I don't have much of a life outside of judging. I can't commit to many weekly activities because most people want to do those on the weekends. I spend more time away from my bird and partner than I'd like, and on event weekends I barely get any drawing done. I'm going to spend the next few events trying to sort out what my future in judging looks like, and what is going to be the most healthy for me. Perhaps it's a simple fix of cutting back on events and booking slightly less horrible flights.