cannibalchrismtg asked: I feel like the Judges of the GDS misread or misunderstood many of the entries. Not to call you out but, for example, you saying a blue creature with flash that untaps permanents should be green since green untaps creatures and has Flash. How do you reconcile the fact that the GDS is an expensive and valuable tool for WOTC, vs the fact that every judge other than Melissa DeTora has made at least one judgement that basically said they didn't actually read the card?

Judging the GDS is a huge undertaking. All of the judges spent many hours reviewing all of the cards of all the designers and giving notes, all on top of our normal responsibilities. I, for example was running Cricket vision design and overseeing Diving exploratory design. One of the weeks (and I think involved the card in question), I was on vacation and was judging in between spending time with my family on a cruise ship.

All the judges took their responsibility very seriously, but we’re human. We misread cards from time to time. Not because we’re not careful, but usually because the designers like to occasional zig where normally we would zag. They’re trying to show that they can change things up when our default instincts are cards are working as they normally do. I know a bunch of my mistakes were reading what I thought they were doing instead of what they were actually doing. And that’s on me. I am frustrated at my own misreadings.

I spent hours upon hours trying to give thoughtful notes and the majority of my feedback is “of course a unicycle can be an Equipment” and “that’s a turtle not a snake”. : )

Obviously, I apologize for any misreadings on my part, but I want to stress that those tiny details were never what led to who did and did not get eliminated. On top of the hours spent judging, we spent many additional hours talking about each challenge and carefully going over the pluses and minuses of each designer.

I’m exciting for Tuesday when the Top Three (Ari, Chris and Jeremy) come to Wizards for the final day. It’s been a long event and I’m excited to finally crown a winner.