Category Archives: Uncategorized

GP San Antonio Playmat

Greetings all,

We finally have a playmat for GP San Antonio.  Daarken did an awesome job on this mat, it has been totally worth the wait.  Click the thumbnail for a much larger and sweeter version of the image.

Every single competitor in the main event of GP San Antonio will receive a copy of this playmat.  Preregistration for GP San Antonio opens October 28th, and there is a discount for early preregistration.

 

Oh, and I’m just gonna leave this here:

GP-Omaha-playmat-teaser

 

 

GP San Antonio flyer clarification

Earlier this week flyers began to appear at stores in the area surrounding San Antonio. Unfortunately an editing error led the flyer to say the format for the gp is modern.

GP San Antonio is Standard Constructed Format. We have sent new flyers to all the stores along with a letter exposing the mixup and asking them to replace the incorrect flyer with the new one.

We apologize for any confusion it may have caused the players who saw the old, incorrect flyer.

Again GP San Antonio is Standard constructed.

Stay tuned for pictures of the completed playmat very soon! The final has been approved and we’re heading to press. We are printing playmats for every player who comes to GP San Antonio. We’ll have plenty on hand and in the unlikely event we run out due to a giant surge, we will print and mail additional Playmats to anyone who doesn’t get one on site!

Steve

GP Judge Compensation Changes for Legion Events

Greetings all, Rob here.

As you may be aware, judges will no longer be receiving foils at Grand Prix events starting with the 2015 season. As a result, Legion Events is making a change to how we handle judge compensation at Grand Prix events at Grand Prix Omaha and afterwords. Our plan is a little complicated, so you will have to bear with me for a moment while I go over the numbers we are using and what the difference in compensation actually means.

In the future, judges will receive pay based on level according to the following for working both Saturday and Sunday:
  • Level 3+
    • $598
    • 3 boxes of current set product
    • One GP judge playmat
  • Level 2
    • $400
    • 2 boxes of current set product
    • One GP judge playmat
  • Level 1
    • $200
    • 2 boxes of current set product
    • One GP judge playmat
There will also be a bonus attached to the event for Saturday and Sunday judges if we end up with significantly higher attendance than planned.  I don’t want to get into too heavy of math in this post, but the bonus structure for our GPs will be in the GP event posting on JudgeApps.  (You can see the one for Omaha here: http://apps.magicjudges.org/events/1795/ )  In addition to all of that, there is additional pay for Friday, slightly increased from Friday numbers.  Again, I did not want to put all that info here, but it is called out in each event solicitation for judges.
Things to note:
This money includes what was the prior Legion stipend, and takes the place of any room or food stipend.  It is expected to cover all costs for your travel, lodging, and food for the weekend.  The Friday cash is expected to fully cover a night of hotel, because you are assumed to be working Saturday and Sunday and have that pay covering your travel.
Every judge will be expected to fill out either a W-9 or W-8ben as applicable.  One of these must be on file with us for each calendar year you work Legion GPs.  If you receive $600 or more in a year in pay from us, we will issue you a 1099 as a contractor.

We reserve the right to increase pay on a per-event basis, provide other promotional items, or provide other inducements on a per-person or per-event basis.  These compensation levels are minimums, not maximums.

 

What does this mean for players?

Event costs will be increasing.  Grand Prix Omaha will cost $60.  We will be providing preregistration discounts for GP Omaha that will give you the opportunity to pay as little as $50 for the event, but the price of events has to increase, because we are shouldering additional costs of compensating the fairly large and skilled judge staff necessary for hosting a Grand Prix.

 

What does this mean for event quality?

The number of judges needed for a Grand Prix is not going down, but the number of applicants may decrease – for many judges the draw of a Grand Prix was judge foils.  We have always had significantly more quality applicants for a Grand Prix than we were able to accept, so this should not significantly impact the quality of our Grand Prix staff.  If it does, we will re-evaluate compensation for future events.

 

EDIT:
Due to a misunderstanding on my part, I posted slightly incorrect pay numbers for L3+ judges.  The goal was to pay an amount per day that put them under the 1099 limit, but my understanding of the 1099 requirements was not clear.  I have adjusted the L3+ payment slightly (It is now based on $299 a day) in order to avoid having to 1099 an L3 that works only one event for Legion.  My apologies for the mistake.

 

Christine Sprankle added to GP San Antonio

elspeth2Greetings all, Rob here.

We have confirmed in Christine Sprankle, cosplayer extraordinaire, for GP San Antonio.

Christine will be on site all three days taking photos with fans, chatting about Magic, and generally being awesome.

Christine will also be part of our VIP dinner on Saturday (you can win the ability to go to this dinner by playing in our special Friday VIP Dinner event), and we are setting aside special VIP time for our VIP players to get photos and time with Christine on Sunday.  (Exact schedule to be determined, but it will be on Sunday afternoon in the VIP lounge.)

You can check out Christine’s great cosplay on her Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/CSprankleCosplay

Changes to the judge program for GP events

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

Thank You! #gpminn

GP Minneapolis is all wrapped, events have been reported and (most of) my paperwork is done. Thanks to all 1680ish of you for coming out on a holiday weekend. I got to take my wife out for a slightly delayed Mothers Day dinner tonight after a day of wrap up work.

This was the largest single event my team has run by about 400 players and I feel like we withstood the test very well:

Thanks to the judges for their dedication and hard work.

Thanks to the standby judges who were activated to help us deal with the surge.

Thanks to the vendors who kept you all in cards

Thanks to the artists for mixing it up with all of us fans.

Thanks to the GGs and coverage crews for bringing us great stories all weekend.

Special thanks to Adrian Sullivan for working up the Planes Talkers panel, it was fun to watch and we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback. I can’t wait to do it again in San Antonio!

Thanks to my ops crew for stepping up as they always do! You all inspire me every event!

And thanks to Wizards of the Coast for the game we all love, and personally for the opportunity to do a job I love so much!

The next stop for team Legion is Pro Tour Atlanta where we’re setting up retail space for the pros and observers. Come say hi to Amanda, and Ross, and me!

Thank you all again for a great GP experience, Magic Grand Prix events are really an amazing time made up of so many pieces, not the least of which are my fellow magic fans!

Draft?

Steve

GP Minneapolis Online Preregistration is at 1000 players – another contest prize! #GPMINN

Greetings all,

Our online preregistrations have passed 1000 players, so we return again to prize time!

Martin Chazi has been chosen as the random winner of the free entry into GP Minneapolis plus $40 in free side events.  Give him a high five for me if you see him.

The next milepost is 1500 players preregistered.  Some stuff from the contest post follows:

At 1500 online preregistrations, a  third randomly chosen player will have the cost of their entry refunded, and will get a booster box of Journey into Nyx.  Like the side event coupons, this can be picked up on-site with your playmat and foil.

If we get to 2000 online preregistrations, a fourth player will get their entry refunded, will receive a booster box of Journey into Nyx, and will receive a free VIP upgrade – we are currently sold out of VIP slots, so the only way to get VIP now is to either be the 2000th online preregistration or win the VIP Dinner “Standard” Sealed.

You can preregister for GP Minneapolis through our preregistration site.

See you at GP Minneapolis!


Rob McKenzie
Event Manager, Legion Events
www.legionevents.com

GP Minneapolis Preregistration Currently Offline #GPMINN

Greetings all,

The site we use for preregistration, Constant Contact, is currently experiencing issues preventing people from registering.

They are working on resolving the issue, and expect it will be resolved quickly.

I will update this post once we have more info or it is fixed, whichever comes first.

Edit 2:16pm:

It looks like this is fixed now, so you should be able to register again.

Rob McKenzie
Event Manager, Legion Events
www.legionevents.com