The Big Purple R and You – Version 4.1.1.317

Have you met the big purple R? Over the course of this article, you'll learn how to do pretty much anything you want to do in Wizards Event Reporter. Follow the bouncing Memnite as we explore the shiny new world of Wizards Event Reporter! (Disclaimer: There is no bouncing Memnite.) This guide has been updated for Version 4.1.1.317 of Wizards Event Reporter!

1. Starting up 2. Sanctioning a. Ordering WPN Materials b. Sanctioning Future Events 3. Starting an Event a. Creating an Event b. Sanctioning Your Event c. Adding Judges d. Adding Players e. Searching the DCI Database f. The Local Player Database 4. Running an Event a. Creating Pods b. Creating Matches c. Entering Results d. Standings e. Dropping, DQing, or Editing Players Between Rounds f. Creating a New Round g. Ending and Uploading Your Event 5. Advanced Functions in WER a. The Options Menu b. Batch Uploading, Backing Up, and Loading Events and Databases c. Advanced Local Players Database Functions d. Pre-Enrollment e. Seatings Tab f. Adding a Late Player/Manually Podding and Pairing g. Penalties h. Timers i. Playoffs j. Prizes Screen k. Multi-Print l. Team Events m. Combining Events 6. Other Sources of Help

1: Starting Up When you open WER after you log in with your DCI number and password, you'll see the following screen:

This screen shows you the events you've sanctioned.

The three check boxes at the top control what you see: “Future” events that have not yet occurred, “Reported/Completed” events, and “Cancelled/Invalid” events that you've canceled or were returned as invalid.

From this screen, you can double-click on an event to open it or click “Cancel” to cancel it.

Using the buttons at the top of the screen, by clicking the button, you can order DCI Membership Cards, Gateway and Store Support Kits, and other promotional WPN items like Buy-A-Box Promos (where available). The button allows you to create a new event, sanction it if you want to, and run it later or on the spot. Finally, the

button lets you easily sanction future events, saving you time, as you won’t need to switch to the web interface to schedule Friday Night Magic, GPTs, D&D Encounters, or any other events.

You’ll also see a tutorial screen, which will look something like this:

You can read through the tutorial by clicking , or if you’re done with it, click . The tutorial will continue to pop up in future parts of WER until you check the

“Hide this tutorial” box. It’s a good idea to leave the tutorial on until you’re comfortable with WER.

2. Sanctioning This section will show how to order materials and sanction events for the WPN just like you would through the web interface, and how WER can make those processes easier for you and your store.

a. Ordering WPN Materials

Let’s take a look at the interface for ordering WPN materials. Click on that button and you’ll see this:

At the top, you’ll see a drop-down menu under the word “Organization.” For those affiliated with only one organization that sanctions events with the WPN, this should just show that location. For those of you working with multiple organizations, this menu will show all of the organizations you’re affiliated with, allowing you to painlessly select which one you’d like to order materials for. Once you’ve selected your organization, click next to any materials you’d like to order. For example, to order more DCI Membership Cards, just click next to “Membership Card Request.” After doing that, you’ll see this:

If you have multiple different materials to order, click next to anything you want to order.

Once you’ve done that, click and you’ll see this:

This box will automatically fill with the email and phone number for your venue. You can change them if necessary. You are required to have an email and phone number filled in here; if you don’t, you’ll see these lovely red exclamation points and the boxes will be colored red. Once you’ve confirmed that the email and phone number in the box are right, click

to finish ordering your WPN materials.

b. Sanctioning Future Events

One of the fantastic things about the new version of WER is that you can now much more easily use it to sanction future events. Premier events, like Prereleases, Launch Parties, Friday Night Magic, D&D Encounters, and so on, have to be scheduled in advance, so you’ll want to get started on this right away. How do you start? It’s simple. Just click the button to get started and you’ll see this:

So here, you’ll see the “Organization” menu again, where you can select which organization you’d like to sanction an event for. The “Game” menu allows you to choose whether you’d like to sanction a Magic event, a D&D event, or an event for another game that’s part of the WPN. Once you’ve selected a location and a game, you’ll need to select a Sanction Rule. What does that mean? Well, when you click the arrow next to “Select a Rule…”, you’ll see a menu like this:

As you can see, you have a lot of choices! You can select from a number of different Premier events that might be available to you, as well as default choices like Magic and Casual Non-Rated. Select the sanctioning rule you like, and more choices will open up! To show how the system works, I’ll select “Prerelease – M12.” The screen will then look like this:

Whoa! A date popped up! In fact, if you click on the arrow next to that date, it’ll show you all of the dates on which you’re allowed to sanction the event type you selected – in this case, 2011-07-09 and 2011-07-10. If you’ve already sanctioned as many events as you can of the type you selected, no dates will be shown. Select whatever date on which you’d like to run the event.

Next to the word “Event,” type whatever you want to call your event so that you can find it later in the WER main screen. In the “Play Location” menu, you can select which location you’d like to run the event at. Some organizations run events at different locations, but most just run them in one place, so this menu should be self-explanatory. Next to “Format,” select what format your event will be. Not all formats will be available for all events – for example, this M12 prerelease can only be Sealed Deck or 2HG Sealed Deck. Under “Pairing Method,” you can select different tournament structures. Most likely, your event is either Single Elimination or Swiss.

Once you’ve made all your selections, confirm the contact information – email address and phone number – and a URL where more information can be found about your events, if applicable. Once you’ve confirmed everything is right, click . In the case of certain Premier events, like the prerelease, you might be asked a series of questions about your distributor. Once you get through those, you’ll see a little confirmation screen that looks like this:

If everything’s right, click to sanction your event! It should now show up in the main WER screen. You can sanction as many events as you’d like this way, so if you’d like to get started on sanctioning your future tournaments, WER is a great way to take care of that.

3. Starting an Event This section will detail how WER can be used to create events, sanction the events you create on the spot, and add judges and players to those events.

a. Creating an Event

What if we just want to run an event right now? Well, let’s do it! Click the button to get started! You’ll see this screen:

Here, you can fill in all the pertinent details about your event – name, date, game, format, head judge, etcetera. If you're running a sanctioned event, you can even sanction the event from this screen! Note that if you’re running a team event, like Two-Headed Giant or a Trios event, you’ll need to check the “Team” box. If your event has more than one judge, don't worry; you'll have an opportunity to enter those judges later. If you’re going to run an unsanctioned event, fill in the details and click . If you’d like to run a sanctioned event and sanction it immediately, click .

b. Sanctioning Your Event

For this tutorial, let's make a Magic draft and sanction it. After filling in the details and clicking , you'll see this dialog box:

Once again, you’ll need to select the organization you’ll be running the event for and the type of event you’ll be sanctioning. You’ll also need to confirm at which location you’ll be running the event. As usual, you’ll need to confirm the email, phone number, and URL associated you’re your organization. For my regular old draft, I’m just going to select “Magic” for my Sanction Rule. Once everything's right, click . You’ll get a Sanctioning Summary, just like you did when you were sanctioning future events earlier. If everything’s right, click

. Once you do that, WER will automatically create a sanctioning number for the event and fill it in on the event page.

Note that some fields are grayed out now. Once you sanction the event, you can’t change the date, the game, the format, the sanctioning number, or the tournament organizer. If you’ve made a mistake, you’ll need to cancel the event.

c. Adding Judges

You can also see above that dialog box that the “More Judges” button has appeared! This only appears once you try to sanction your event because WER only cares who the judge was if the event is sanctioned. You can see that I’ve already typed myself in as the head judge. If you click that button, you get this:

Type in a judge's DCI number on the right, and his or her name will pop up below. Click

to add them to the event. If you don’t know the DCI number of one of your judges, you can look it up using the button. We’ll go over how to use that interface later. You can remove a judge from the event by clicking on them in the pane on the left and then clicking

. Once you're done adding judges to your event, click .

d. Adding Players

It's time to add players to your event! Click the tab up top.

This is the screen where you can add players to your event. Type a player’s DCI number in and click Enter. If they're in the worldwide database, their name and country code will pop up. If not, you'll see a short message saying “DCI Number Not Found.” If that happens, just type in their name. You cannot enter a player without entering a DCI number – JOE001 is a thing of the past! Either way, once all the information is filled in, click .

Some players have been suspended from the DCI for cheating or misconduct. WER is connected to the DCI database, and if you try to add a suspended player to your event, putting in his or her DCI number will make the word “Suspended” pop up as you see above. Don’t put this player in your event!

e. Searching the DCI Database

Of course, not every player will know their DCI number. When you need to look up a number, click on . You’ll see this screen:

Note that this will only work in online mode. If you’ve already typed in a name on the Players screen, the name will be imported directly into the Find Player screen. The only required field is the player's last name, but enter as much information as you can to narrow your results. Once you’ve put in as much information as you know, click . If you’ve got things right, you’ll see some results, like this:

Partial searches do not work; if you type in “Levin” for last name, you won't find the last name Levine. Click on the player you want to enroll and click . The selected player's name and DCI number will be in the entry fields. Then click .

f. The Local Player Database

You know what’s a drag? Typing in the same DCI numbers day after day, week after week. Well, not really, because that means you have regular players, but the typing part can be avoided! Wizards Event Reporter stores the names and DCI numbers of all players that have participated in your events in its “Local Players” database automatically. Best of all, this database is stored on your computer, so you can use it while WER is in offline mode! Click on the tab at the top to access it.

Players who have judged events for you show up in bold, while players currently suspended from participating in DCI events show up in red. To enroll players, click the check box next to the names of the players you want to enroll and click at the bottom. You can enter a first or last name (partial searches work here) in the Search bar at the top, and the database shows you players whose names contain your search string. You can also use the four radio buttons at the top to look at smaller parts of the database – you can select All to see the whole thing, Enrolled to see just the players already in the tournament, Unenrolled to see those not in the event, and Judges to see all judges in your database.

Make sure not to move away from this screen before clicking or your selections will be cleared. (WER gives you a warning if you try to do so.) Clicking will kick you back to the Players tab, with all the players you checked now enrolled.

4. Running an Event Now that we've got all our players enrolled, click . You'll then see this:

The recommended rounds are straight from the Magic Tournament Rules, so in most cases, they'll be right. Note that WER will not let you run a tournament with fewer than three rounds. Click OK, and you get sent over to the now-visible tab.

a. Creating Pods

In a constructed tournament, you could just make pairings right now by clicking , but this is a draft, so you need to click the button. Unless you have

a good reason to create pods manually, click . WER is much better than previous versions of Reporter at making sensible draft pod sizes – no longer do you get six pods of seven when forty-two players show up to draft. With our twelve players, we should get two pods of six.

Now you have our draft pods. To print the pods and seat players, click the Players tab, then go to Print → Print Pods → Print Pods by Pod Number.

That prints out a list of each pod and the players in them, allowing you to seat them.

b. Creating Matches Once your players are ready to play, you'll want to create some pairings. Click and click

. This will match players automatically according to the usual Swiss pairing algorithm, pairing players with similar records with one another. When you run a draft event, WER will only pair players within their own pods.

You’ll need to let the players know where they’re sitting or who they’re playing, most likely by printing pairings. You can do so by following this menu chain:

“Print Pairings by Name” will print out a list of each player, what table they’re at, and who they’re playing against, sorted by name so that the players can find themselves easily.

c. Entering Results

The new results entry screen looks like this:

You can do a lot of work from this screen. The buttons at the bottom allow you to enter match results based on the number of games a player won, and you can change their wins or draws with the fields next to their names. You can also drop players from the tournament with the check

boxes on the right. To select a different match, click on a match in that middle area. Any match with results entered will disappear. If you wish to change an entered result, you can un-check the “outstanding results” box in the upper left to show all match results. You can search for a particular player's match or table number using the fields up top. Note that this screen will not show you who has the bye – you'll have to print pairings to see that.

d. Standings

Once you’ve entered all of your match results, WER will send you to the tab.

If you’d like to print standings, go to the Print menu and do this:

e. Dropping, DQing, or Editing Players Between Rounds

Now that you've entered all the results, someone decides they'd like to drop from the tournament before the next round. No problem! Head over to the tab.

Click on the player and click . In the unfortunate event that you need to disqualify someone, click on them and click . If you've misspelled someone's name or incorrectly

entered their DCI number, you can fix it here by clicking on them, changing the information on the left, and clicking .

The area on the right is set to show only active players. You can change that setting to show all players or only inactive (dropped/DQed) players with the radio buttons above.

f. Creating a New Round

Once you've done everything you need to do, head back to .

Up near the tabs, next to the round number, you can see a button marked . Click that, and you’ll be sent back to where we were when we first created matches… only you’ll be doing so for round 2! Click and you’ll be on your way to running yet another round of your tournament.

g. Ending and Uploading Your Event

But what happens when you complete your tournament?

Once you’ve run through all of your Swiss, this message shows up. It's time to click the tab to end your event and report it.

Click to end the event. Once you end the event, it'll look like this:

You can now click to report your event. Once you do, make sure you click to see if the event was received. If it was, the upload status under that

button will change to “Reported.”

5. Advanced Functions in WER a. The Options Menu While Wizards Event Reporter is fairly streamlined, there are a few things you might want to turn on or off to improve your experience with the program. On the main event selection screen, click up at the top. You’ll now see this screen:

In the upper area, there are drop-down menus for changing your language and country, and a

button that allows you to change the DCI number that you log into WER with. Then, there are various checkboxes. “Auto-Backup Database” turns on and off the

automatic backup function in WER that saves an extra copy of your tournament database should it become corrupted. “Show Inline Help” turns on and off the little icons next to various items that you can mouse over for more information. “Show Tutorial” turns the tutorial on and off. “Use Short Cut Keys” turns on and off the ability to quickly enter results in the results screen by clicking various keys on your keyboard. Turning on “Show Event Drop Down” will add a drop-down menu to each of your event screens that allows you to quickly switch between multiple events. Finally, “Show Prizes” turns on the Prizes tab, which we’ll cover later. Below the line that says “Confirm,” there are lots of checkboxes. If a box is checked, that means that whenever you try to do the action described next to the box, WER will give you a confirmation screen asking you if you really want to do that. For example, if “End Event” is checked, then when you try to end your event, a box will pop up asking you if you really want to end your event. Unchecking these boxes will disable those confirmation screens. That covers the tab. Let’s move on to the tab.

On this screen, you can change the hotkeys used for results entry. The default ones are good because they allow you to use a number pad to do results entry quickly, a skill that can help a large event run well. If you’d like to change any of the hotkeys, click on the one you’d like to change and then click the button you’d like to use. Remember that all of these hotkeys must be unique – “Drop Player 1” and “Enter Result 0-2” can’t have the same hotkey! If you’d like to return to the default hotkeys, use the drop-down menu at the top and select “Hot Keys.” If you have created a custom hotkey layout, it will show up as “Custom.” Finally, let’s check out the tab.

Here, just like in the tab, you can change various keyboard shortcuts within WER to your liking. There are two default layouts for keyboard shortcuts: DCI v 3.0, which mirrors shortcuts from DCI Reporter, and WER 4.0, which has its own separate layout. You can choose between those and your own custom layout in the drop-down menu at the top. b. Batch Uploading, Backing Up, and Loading Events and Databases If you run lots of events, uploading them one at a time can be a pain, especially if you run multiple events in one day. Luckily, Wizards Event Reporter has a function called “Batch Upload” that allows you to upload multiple events at a time. On the main event screen, follow this menu path:

You’ll then see a screen that looks something like this:

All sanctioned events that have been ended but not yet reported will be shown on this screen. If you do not see an event on this screen that you want to upload, go back to it and click

. Check the box next to each event that you wish to upload. Once you’ve done that, press to upload the events you’ve selected. Likewise, if you’d like to save multiple events, either to back them up or to move them over to an internet-ready computer for uploading, you can do that as well. Go to the main event selection screen and follow this menu chain:

You’ll see a screen very similar to the Batch Upload screen.

Only events that have been ended will show up here. Simply check the events you wish to save and click . You’ll be prompted to choose a location in which to save the tournaments you’ve selected. The last thing you can do in this menu is backup your WER database manually. To do this, follow this menu chain:

You’ll be prompted to select a location to save your database.

You can restore your database or import a saved tournament by clicking and selecting Restore Backup or Import Event. You will be prompted to select the location of the event or database you are trying to load. c. Advanced Local Players Database Functions

There are many more things you can do here than simply enroll players. If your event has preregistration, then you can check all the players that preregistered and click . Once you’ve done that, all of the players you checked will be pre-enrolled for the event. You can add those players in the tab or remove them if they don’t show up – this will be covered later. You can set a player as a potential judge by checking them and clicking . In the unlikely event that you wish to delete someone from your database, check them and click

. Finally, if you wish to add a player to your database manually, click , or if you wish to edit an entry, select that entry and click . For example, Toby Elliott is in our database, but he’s not listed as a judge! Let’s fix that. We could do it by clicking , but we can also do it this way:

You would also see this same screen if you were adding a new player manually. The starred fields are the required fields. Here, we’re simply going to check the “Is Judge” box, since he’s a judge, and click . Problem solved. If there were typos in his name or DCI number, we could fix those here too. Back on the Local Players screen, you can also back up your Local Players database by clicking

. You’ll be prompted to save your database somewhere. You can add players from a saved database to your Local Players database by clicking . d. Pre-Enrollment Once you’ve pre-enrolled players from the tab, go to the tab. You won’t see the players you pre-enrolled, so click the tab on the right side. You’ll see this:

There they are! For the players that pre-enroll and show up, you can click on him or her and click to put them in the event. If a pre-enrolled player doesn’t show, you can click on that player and click .

e. Seatings Tab After you’ve started your event, you might like to make seatings – say, for deckbuilding in a Sealed event or a player meeting for a Constructed event. Go to the tab and click the

button. You’ll see this:

From here, you can create three kinds of seatings - will seat the players randomly, two to a table, will seat players alphabetically by last name, two to a table, and seats players randomly, one to a table.

Here we have a Random Seating. If you want to search the seating by name or table number, you can do that, and if you clicked the wrong kind of seating, you can go back by clicking

. If you want to select a random table – for a door prize, for instance – you can click . You can print these seatings by switching to the tab, going to Print, and following this path:

f. Adding a Late Player / Manually Podding and Pairing There will be situations where you will need to add a player late once pods or pairings have already been made. You can enter the player from the tab or the tab, either of which will work. You’ll see this:

Click OK. If you need to add this player to a pod, then go back to → .

If you had chosen , you’d be seeing this interface as well, so anything you learn here can be applied to that.

If you need to add someone to a whole new pod, check them and click . If you’d like to drop an unpodded player, check them and click .

On the left, there are buttons you can use to change the status of players in pods or even the pods themselves. Click on a player in a pod and click to delete their pod. This will put all of the players into the pool of free players on the right. The button will simply move the selected player out of their pod and into the pool of free players. Finally, the

button will delete these pods and let you start all over.

All we need to do here, however, is add Luis to a pod. Once you've randomly selected which pod Luis should be added to, click on the appropriate table number on the left side, click on the check box to the left of the player’s name on the right side, and then click the button at the bottom. This will add him to the appropriate pod.

You can also select a random player or table (for a deck check, for example) with the “Random Player” and “Random Table” buttons. If you’ve already paired, then go to and click . You’ll see this screen, which you would also see if you were to .

On the right, you’ll see all the players that aren’t currently matched, and on the left, you’ll see the players that are and who they’re paired against. will allow you to destroy the current pairings and do a total re-pair. In this case, what we need to do is free up the player who currently has the bye by selecting that player and clicking . (This would also work on two players who are paired.) Once we’ve done that, we can check the boxes next to the two players we want to pair against one another and then click . If you’d like to drop a player or multiple players, click

after checking the boxes next to them. Finally, to grant a player a bye, check them and click . g. Penalties

If you're running a Competitive REL event, or if something goes seriously wrong at Regular REL, you might need to enter penalties. To do this, you'll need to head to the Tab.

As you can see, you can change the REL of your tournament in the upper right – if we are at Regular, we usually don’t assess penalties. To create a penalty, click .

Select the round, player, judge, infraction and penalty, then add notes at the bottom. Every option you need is represented in the drop-down menus. If a penalty has been given by a judge you haven’t added yet, or if you haven’t added any judges, click to go to the same screen that you can access from the Players tab that lets you add judges. You can confine your options to active players by checking the “Active Players Only” box in the upper right. When you're done, click . The penalty you’ve created will now show up on the Penalties tab.

You can also edit and delete penalties by clicking on those penalties and clicking or . If you have a large event and need to search for a player to see what penalties they

have accumulated, you can search for them in the Search bar.

In the tab, you can select a player and click to see what penalties they’ve accumulated over the course of the event. h. Timers

If you haven't got a physical timer that you already use, WER can run a timer for you. Click the tab.

Over on the right, you can input a timer name, a “Main time” (the amount of time you want it to run for), and a “Warning” time (when you want to hear a warning sound). A sound also plays when a timer runs out. (You may recognize these sounds from Magic Online!) Click

, and your new timer will show up in that middle window.

You can click the on the left to remove a timer from your list, or to start a timer, which creates the timer box you see above. Click to stop your timer. If you do, two new buttons will appear: , which starts your timer back up again, and , which sets it back to its full value. When a timer runs out, it flashes red and continues to count down into negative time – quite nice for helping to track time extensions.

i. Playoffs

Some tournaments, instead of ending after the Swiss rounds, cut to a single-elimination playoff. WER can do this for you! When your event ends, you’ll see a button marked next to the round number. Click that, and this dialog box will pop up:

The numbers of players WER defaults to for a cut are top 2, top 4, and top 8, but you can cut to whatever number you want. (Note that cutting to something weird like Top 11 will produce extremely strange results.) At this point, things are fairly easy, as WER treats playoff rounds like extra rounds in your tournament. It’ll create a new round, where you can either

or as normal. Once you do, you’ll see the normal Matches screen. You can view the Playoff Bracket by clicking , which appears on the Rounds tab to the right of the button.

You can print the playoff brackets by following this menu chain:

but BEWARE! The brackets you see here do not connect up in the way you might think they do. The brackets for top 8, for example, are displayed in the following order:

1 vs 8

2 vs 7

3 vs 6

4 vs 5

(All these numbers are Swiss standings.)

This might lead you to believe that the winner of 1 vs 8 will be paired against the winner of 2 vs 7. This is not the case! The winner of 1 vs 8 will be paired, by default, against the winner of 4 vs 5. If you cut to top 8, this means that the winners of the two outer brackets will be paired and the winners of the two inner brackets will be paired for the semifinals. Don't be fooled! Once again, cutting to something weird like Top 11 will produce unpredictable results. Plus, who cuts to Top 11 anyway?

Once your single-elimination playoff is over you can end your event as normal.

j. Prizes Screen

For some events, you may need to track what prizes are given to what players. For that, there’s the Prizes screen, which must be turned on within the Options menu as described in section 5a.

You can click to bring up this dialog:

Click on a player and select a prize from the drop-down menu to assign the prize to that player. While this is not likely useful at this time, it may become necessary in the future as more and more tournaments are run with WER. Click to confirm the prize.

You can click to change the prize assigned to the selected player (or the player assigned to the selected prize) or to delete it entirely.

k. Multi-Print

If you have a large event, you may wish to print lots of items at the same time. For this, we have Multi-Print. Follow this menu chain to access Multi-Print:

Once you click Multi-Print, you’ll see this:

Click to add an item on the left to the print queue, or click to take an item on the right out of the print queue. You can only add any given item to the queue once – if you need to print something twice, you’ll just have to do so manually. Once you are done adding items to the queue, click .

l. Team Events

Team events, like 2HG and 3-Player Team, have a few differences in player entry. Let’s take a look at how to create a team event:

To create a team event, check the Team box, and then select Two Headed Giant or Three Player Teams, as appropriate, from the drop-down menu. Once you create the event, head to the tab and you’ll see this:

It’s really just like the Players tab, only instead of entering one player, you’ll need to enter two (or three) and a team name. But what happens if you just enter players from the Local Players tab? Well, they’ll show up in the tab on the right, like this:

Double-click on a player on the right to add them to the first open spot in the current team, or click on a player and click to remove them from the event, just like with pre-enrollment.

m. Combining Events

WER can combine two events into one. This can be done from the tab.

Click to combine your current event with another. You’ll see this screen:

Click on the event you wish to combine your current event with and click . You’ll see this dialog:

Select the bits of each event that you’d like to incorporate into your new amalgamated event and click . Once you do, the two events will be merged into one with the details you’ve selected.

6. Other Sources of Help There is a lot of help available within WER by clicking on the Help button or big question marks that show up. If you can't find something within this document or within the in-program help, head over to the DCI Reporter Software board in the Wizards Community forums. There is a list of known bugs as well as helpful posters that may be able to assist you.

I hope this document has been of help to you. If you have further questions that are not addressed by the document, the inline help, the online help, or the forum, feel free to email me at ericlevine@channelfireball.com. To report a bug, please go to http://wizards.custhelp.com.