Hey everyone! Adam, FLG Head judge and TFG Radio host, here to talk about some lessons from judging the recent Bay Area Open.
Well, another BAO in the books and although it was a little bit of a struggle for me this year, thanks to the help of Kicker, Mike, Keith, and everyone else I was able to help out. That being said the tournament itself was relatively subdued affair. I attribute this to the end of the edition and everyone already know what things to look out for in this current edition. Even so, there are still thing to take from the event for both players and judges.
Don’t be afraid to borrow other people’s ideas
I was recently asked to help the judges at Adepticon this year and was happy to do it. One of the things I noticed was that when the paint judges went around to judge the armies for their paint score they would leave a piece of paper with the Adepticon logo and note that the army had been judged for painting. I thought this was a good idea as it lets the player know that they can put their display away since the judging was done and it let the judges know that the army was judged so that they wouldn’t have to guess if the army had already been judged. As far as I can tell the system seemed to work well when we used it at BAO so we will be using this system going forward.
Read the Packet
Gone are the days that we print out the player packet for our tournaments. In all honesty it was a lot of paper wasted as most players either didn’t bother to look at it at all or just ignored it. The move to an online player packet that you find online saves a lot of tree. What else it does is make the packet available to you at anytime no matter how many times you “lose” it. The issue is that many people don’t bother looking at the packet when asking simple questions about the event. When attend a FLG event you should make sure to download the packet and have it ready at your phone for when it is needed.
Get Your Army Paint Judged
I know it sometimes it seems like a pain to get your army judged for paint but I always suggest you do it. I know most of us are not near the running for the best painted awards but hear me out. You should get your army paint judged in order to have a chance at Hobby Paragon. I don’t that you do this at just our events but at every event. You may think that you have no chance for Paragon but that isn’t true. There were plenty of players that ended the tournament at x-1 or x-2 with very nicely painted armies but they didn’t win because they did not get their army paint judged. There have been a few instances where I won awards in relations to painting because I got my army paint judged and happen to do well. So get your army paint judged and play games for your chance at the Hobby Paragon award.
I hope you found this article helpful. Next week we will talk about reminders for the upcoming Bay Area Open. In the meantime don’t forget to buy your tickets for our events.
Also, if you happen to be in the Southern California area in August, sign up for my 40K tournament and try your hand at winning a Golden Ticket for GW’s World Championship in November.