Card Titan is the Magic card store that runs Eternal Weekend. I applied to judge it this year and was seemingly accepted, being added to a channel called "EW2025 judges" in their discord server and tagged in posts about judging the weekend.

It was a little odd that I didn't get an email, but not that odd; many Tournament Organizers have moved to using discord over the traditional method of forums and emails. I reached out to the two employees in the discord to ask whether I'd been accepted and for more details like what days I was on staff for. One did not respond, the other gave me a vague "you'll find out your schedule later". The event was fast approaching, so I booked my flights.

Then with 7 days to go before Eternal Weekend, I received an email declining me from the event. I confirmed to the person I was talking to on discord that I was declined. Apparently they had assumed I was on staff because I was asking them about roles. I asked about them covering my flights since they had told me I was accepted, and they refused, giving false defenses of their communication like that I had only been given the judge role after I messaged them, and that everyone has access to the judge channels. Luckily I took screenshots in advance and could prove these allegations false.

(Also of note; the original way I found out I had been added to the judge channel on discord was because another judge on staff saw my name there and assumed this meant I had been accepted. So it wasn't just me who interpreted the communication this way.)

After some back and forth where I pointed out that expecting people to wait until 1 week before the event to book flights was ridiculous and they agreed, they said they would "look into it" but cannot promise anything. It's been a few days now and I haven't heard back.

Large Magic TOs are highly oligopsonistic, so it's common for them to violate agreements and screw over judges in even more egregious ways than this. e.g. one time my partner was booked to Head Judge an event across the country, and the TO last-minute moved what city the event was in, didn't tell her that they had done this, then refused to pay for the new flights when she finally found out. Many other judges have similar stories.

Judges usually just eat the loss on this sort of thing, because that TO will ban them from their future events if they complain. (And word gets around, so other TOs might avoid staffing them too.) But I'm pretty annoyed about this one and I've been wanting to do fewer Magic events anyway, so I plan to make a fuss.

This market resolves on vibes, based on whether the outcome feels to me more like a success than a failure. See my Paypal market for a similar case.