In preparation for our midnight pre-release tonight, I put together some rough speaking notes for my judge announcements. These are a lot more verbose than what I would normally use, but I figured why not share them with everyone.

Comments, critiques, and plagiarism are all welcome.

One note… this is a lot of material, I'm going to do some research before the event to see what issues people are having and focus on those, so I'm not expecting to read this verbatim. However, I wanted to have all the notes ready just in case.


Theros Speaking Notes

11:30 - Start seating players and distribute product. Remind players not to open anything.

Welcome
Welcome everyone to the Theros Midnight Pre-release hosted by X.
My name is X and I will be your head-judge for tonight.
Also joining me are Y and Z who will be assisting with judging.
We have about X minutes until midnight, so I'll take a few minutes to go through some of the rules of this set.
You don't have to remember all of this, if you have any questions call a judge. That's what we're here for.

Legendary/Planeswallker Rule
Lots of legends in this set
Each player may have a copy of the same legend
If a player has more than one copy of the same legend he or she chooses one and moves it to the graveyard. There is no opportunity to do anything before one leaves the battlefield.

Heroic
Whenever YOU cast a spell that targets YOUR creature this triggers.
Casting spells on your opponent's creatures won't trigger it.
Targeted abilities will not trigger it, only spells.
The ability resolves before the spell does.

Monstrosity
“If this creature isn't monstrous, put X +1/+1 counters on it and it becomes monstrous”
Just because a lot of these have fancy triggered abilities when they become monstrous, don't forget to add the counters!
You can only use this ability once. Even if it loses it's counters somehow, it will always be monstrous.

Devotion
“Each mana symbols in the mana costs of permanents you control counts toward your devotion to the colour.”
That includes the permanent with the devotion ability
That does not include anything in the text box, just the symbols in the corner.

Bestow (here's the tricky one)
“If you cast this card for its bestow cost, it's an…” oh forget it.
Bestow lets you cast enchantment creatures as auras by paying their bestow cost.
If you choose to cast it with bestow, it is no longer a creature, it is an enchantment - aura. You can't Essence Scatter it on the stack, and you can't doom blade it while it's enchanting a creature.
If it's not attached to a creature, it becomes a creature. i.e.
If the creature its enchanting dies
If the creature gains protection from that colour
Even if the creature it's targeting dies while it's not he stack. It still becomes a creature.
When it becomes a creature if it was on the battlefield at the beginning of your turn it doesn't have summoning sickness.
It doesn't tap when the creature it's attached to is tapped. So if it falls off it will be untapped.

Judge Calls
That's a lot of stuff to digest, and I don't expect you to remember it all.
The most important thing to remember is that if you have a question about anything, put your hand up and shout “JUDGE!” and keep your hand up.
That's what I'm here for. To help you. Help me. Help you…

Open boxes
Go ahead and open your pre-release boxes… Do not open the packs!
Once again. Do not open your packs!
Inside there is a hero card. There are 5 hero cards available this weekend, one for each colour. There are also more to collect next weekend.
The hero cards will be used on Game Day, so tuck those away in a safe place.
Also in your box will be a Promo card. YES you may use it in your deck!

Assuming it is now midnight
Tonights event will be 5 rounds run at Regular Rules Enforcement Level
You will construct a deck of a minimum of 40 cards out of the packs you open and the land station over there.
You have 30 minutes to build your deck. Ladies and gentlemen open your packs!

Once players are seated for round 1
Before we begin, one reminder. We are at regular REL so there are only 3 reaaaaaaly bad things you can do to get you kicked out.
One don't cheat!
Two don't roll a die or anything else to determine a winner. Play magic!
Three don't offer anyone anything to get them to concede, drop, etc…
The winner of each round will report to the scorekeeper over there.
Please don't forget to report so we can keep the tournament moving along.
Most importantly, everyone have fun tonight!
You have 50 minutes. Begin!

Edited Adam Zakreski (Sept. 21, 2013 09:01:57 AM)

Not to belittle the work that you've put into this, however, I find it extremely unlikely that players will absorb anything past your name and the floor judges' names. If you have a bunch of players sitting, chatting, with a box of new boosters in front of them, the announcements past that will be largely ineffective.

Splitting it into two blocks (before opening, and while sat for round one) is a great idea, but relevant information for the time, along with supplementary announcements through the deckbuilding process (for example, 20 minutes in, announcing where the land stations are), is probably beneficial. If you can cut out all of the specific interaction announcements, and instead stress that the players should call a judge at any point where they're even minutely confused, I feel like this would have much the same end result.

That being said, posting this on a local Facebook group or forum, or even handing it out to new players, could be an idea for other judges' local stores!

Jack Doyle
L2, London, UK

I agree completely Jack.

This started off as me studying the rules, then turned into speaking notes, then grew into a mini FAQish… When I completed it I realized it'd blown up way beyond what I'd intended. I wouldn't recommend anyone try to actually read all this whole thing aloud.

For the record, when I actually did my announcement, I did cut out the rules review in its entirety. However, I regret not having gone over Bestow, as that caused many many problems over the course of the evening.

I very much like the idea of posting this to the local Facebook group too. Thanks!

Edited Adam Zakreski (Sept. 21, 2013 09:21:31 PM)

Maybe print it out? Then you can post it and distribute it to players.

On Sat, Sep 21, 2013 at 9:51 PM, Jack Doyle
<forum-6069-8c7e@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> along with supplementary announcements through the deckbuilding process (for
> example, 20 minutes in, announcing where the land stations are), is probably
> beneficial.

This doesn't work very well, very few players will take note of
announcements when they are busy.

An alternative is to gather every new players (especially the ones you had to create a DCI number for) in a corner of the room 10 minutes before the start of the event so you can explain to them how the event is going to work, like information about sealed deck, Swiss round, continuous construction, etc, so you only have to speak to a portion of the audience, won't bore to death veterans and have to deal with their chatters, and make it easier for players to ask you direct questions.

Depending of the size of your event and the manpower you have, you may also want to sit them in the same area for construction (their friends being welcome!) so you can dedicate a judge to actively answer any rule question they may have with the cards they opened.

Taking such direct approaches is far more efficient than reading really long announcements about every rule or procedure minutiae, which is more suited for an article or a facebook, forum post, or print out displayed in the store.

Edited Emilien Wild (Sept. 23, 2013 04:42:04 PM)