Today an announcement came down from HQ introducing the Exemplar Program as the new method of distributing foils to judges in the DCI judge program. The most immediate effect of the foil “policy” change is that judges at GP events will no longer receive foils from WotC as gifts for their efforts.  (As of 2015 event year which starts December 2014)

In the long term it means compensation for judges at GPs will be shifting and will be directly on the back of the Organizer. I feel ultimately this is a good shift and will help bring the judge organization in line with comparable organizations.

In the short term it will mean some changes to how judges are compensated and that’s going to take a little time to figure out and optimize. We (PTOs) knew this was coming for a little while, but not the extent of changes. So we’ve been waiting just like you.

My staff and I are working on our comp levels and will hopefully have something put together soon so people will be able to make intelligent choices when determining where they apply to GPs moving into 2015. We’ve had a few discussions about it already and now that we know more we’ll get that info worked out and publicized by the end of this week.

Steve