Hmm, I still wonder why this dicussion comes up, why is someone using more time such a problem? Some decks require more time to play, it happens.
I don't mind someone taking more time because their deck requires more time, but when players deliberately play slowly in the hopes of a getting a draw, that's a problem.
Then call a judge for slow play, you don't need a chess clock for that. I think this just stems from a very american attitude which seems to think draws should never happen.
Not sure why it's an "American" attitude...but no, a draw is not a good result, it just means whoever was going to win the game was unlucky that time ran out. Draws are fine in a game like Chess, where it is a legimate outcome, but 99.9% of magic games wouldn't ever end in a draw if there was enough time. A draw in Magic is like when a baseball game has to be ended early because of the rain. And it's especially bad when the player who was likely to loses gets a draw by playing slow.
And there's a lot of instances were a player can mask slow play by pretending that they're thinking about some important decision. It's not so cut and dry that a judge can easily tell. An objective system would be better, if it were possible to implement.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Current Modern decks BGW Junk / URB Grixis Shadow / RGB Lantern Control / WUBCBant Eldrazi
Current Legacy decks BUG Shardless BUG / UWR Predict Miracles / RUG Canadian Thresh / WRBG 4c Loam UB Reanimator
Also, what about shuffeling? Its your turn, you fetch. your time, right? Its still your turn, and i activate my Soldier of fortune, untap him, use him again. Ok, might open up a new wincondition...
Not really, the judge will just ask what the heck you are doing. And then likely get the Head Judge to disqualify you for stalling. Same thing that is likely to happen if you were to do it now.
Even with a chess clock the time limit is just going to be something to help faciliate the smooth running of the tournament not something to add an extra strategic dimension to the game.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
Also, what about shuffeling? Its your turn, you fetch. your time, right? Its still your turn, and i activate my Soldier of fortune, untap him, use him again. Ok, might open up a new wincondition...
Not really, the judge will just ask what the heck you are doing. And then likely get the Head Judge to disqualify you for stalling. Same thing that is likely to happen if you were to do it now.
Even with a chess clock the time limit is just going to be something to help faciliate the smooth running of the tournament not something to add an extra strategic dimension to the game.
Except, you can't have stalling rules with a chess clock, since the clock itself is meant to punish stalling, but all it does is reward it.
I would think that all you need is a rule that you press the clock only if your opponent doesn't respond to priority query within a second.
You just ask verbally, and if you opponent doesn't immediately answer, you press the clock button. As with anything, if someone abuses anything, you could call a judge. Also, as with normal short cutting rules, someone could say that he has nothing to play for the turn (say, being tapped out, no free spell nor abilities). I think that a few rules would streamline it enough to be usable.
Edit: read the article.
There is a lot of bad faith in the article, IMO. Given that the author professes that he didn't like the idea in the first place, that doesn't surprise me. He didn't go out of his way to find easy answers to the problems he raised.
First, I can guarantee you that you could make a clock that costs 2$ or less in bulk. Just go to your dollarama store and look at all the stuff you can buy for a dollar. half a dozen buttons, two LCD, a few IC should not cost 15$ in bulk. My guess is that chess clocks are required to have some stamp of approval by the FIDE?
Second, he talk about stalling... uh? Stalling, by definition, can only happen when you have priority. So I fail to see how it would be abused.
Third, yes, some spells and actions require action by both players. You can either have both clock or no clock run during those. Simultaneous shuffling is one example.
Finally, and centrally, just likes game state, you have to make the clock state be the responsibility of both players and allow to call judge for clock shenanigans, like not reminding your opponent to press the clock at the end of the turn.
I think with my proposed rules of only switching the clock if your opponent doesn't answer within a second, it would be workable.
First, I can guarantee you that you could make a clock that costs 2$ or less in bulk. Just go to your dollarama store and look at all the stuff you can buy for a dollar. half a dozen buttons, two LCD, a few IC should not cost 15$ in bulk. My guess is that chess clocks are required to have some stamp of approval by the FIDE?
And you would be willing to trust something that was cobbled together from bits bought at radio shack whilst at a tournament? I would presume not at least with a proper chess clock there is going to have to be an official standard that is going to have to be met.
Second, he talk about stalling... uh? Stalling, by definition, can only happen when you have priority. So I fail to see how it would be abused.
Currently stalling can only happen when you have proirity but as Rai says players are adaptable creatures. Some of them are going to find ways of abusing the clock. Take the example of Soldier of fortune, given above. It will only take seconds for your to activate the ability but each of the shuffles is going to burn quite a bit longer off your opponents clock when it comes to resolve, add in someway to untap the soldier multiple times per turn and the issue is going to get worse.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
And in general you will have 1 player that is quick and doesnt need to think too much, while the other might struggle and has to think a lot just to keep alive.
This can easily mean someone will allmost instantly end his turn, untap, draw, play land, attack, end ; takes like 30 seconds max.
While the other has much more going on, untap, draw, play a spell, play a fetch-land, search for land, shuffle, play a spell, attack, etc. Can take way more time.
Its not uncommon that a game will be heavily one-sided in terms of time spend ; but thats OK , yea, its OK.
If time is wasted , thats a major pain. Players should be encouraged to use short-cuts whenever possible.
They have to be aware of these shortcuts to even use them in the first place.
Especially with fetchlands and heavy shuffling involved, its important that players use short-cuts and manage the time better BOTH of them.
Like instead of waiting for a player to find a land, they just announce what land they want and play the card as it would be in play, and can do the searching/shuffling during the opponents turn ; so you play more or less as much in parallel as possible, instead of sequencing everything and waiting for the other.
A game in which players use reasonable shortcuts / out of order plays and do long actions in paralell (like shuffling) , you can save a tremendous amount of time, easily 20 minutes and more in a 50 minutes time.
Combat is similiar.
Some players simply never learned how to calculate damage and how to adress a changing board state.
If you start to calculate every damage every turn, and for each creature ; then decide you cant attack, then think a long time about how potential blockers ; etc etc. that takes AGES and it will take AGES again and again, turn after turn ; THATS STUPID, THATS A WASTE OF TIME.
But people do that as they never learned to play properly, its a shame really.
And this problem becomes even more severly if they play allreaddy slow decks that "force" these situations of board stalemates.
----
50 minutes is plenty of time to finish 3 games, if played at a reasonable speed using all methods to save time and use the time well for both players.
In any pro-level event you will have much less draws due to time, because of this.
In a pre-release you have TONS of draws, if nobody draws a bomb to win, the games can easily become a draw, even a single game draw, a 0-0-1 can happen multiple times in an event, if the players are slow and force these situations.
----
A clock wont help here, players simply have to learn about all these time savers ; learn to properly shuffle in a quick method and properly sequence a turn to make it reasonable fast (not tapping each land individual, tap them all together for the spell you want to cast !).
And yes, the game should make an effort to teach players these "tricks" ; so far the only way to make a player learn to play properly is to keep them around with experienced players ; they wont learn it themself and theres no "Product" that teaches them.
As others said, activating soldier of fortune repeatedly to delay the game is already an offense. Just call a judge. What used to be stalling to create a draw is no longer relevant rule-wise. Causing your opponent to lose time willfully would be the new offense.
As for the clock, I would trust a cheap digital clock 100% of time over a mechanical clock.
Well, I guess lag won't be an issue in real life...but tapping the clock whenever you pass priority would be another thing to keep track of in a games that's already full of stuff to keep track of. MTGO works fine coz you don't have to keep track of starting/stopping the clock.
And of course, if your clock runs down, you lose the match. If you're up 1-0 and swings for the win and your clock runs down in declare blocker phase, you lose the match. Some people really don't like that.
You could use a clock for how long a turn should take instead of using it for each priority (it would kill some style of decks where their combo just take forever and there is a possibility of bricking). Still it's too bothersome for a 16 round tournament. Anyway, the top 8 doesn't have time constraint, so in big games where clocks could be required, it's not a real concern. In a serious tournament, 16 rounds should alleviate this problem. Getting a player who deliberately slow plays should not be that common.
Now FNM and other smaller tournaments, the prize pool isn't big enough to have this setup IMO. They don't even have enough judges to check for slow plays sometimes.
I would think that all you need is a rule that you press the clock only if your opponent doesn't respond to priority query within a second.
You just ask verbally, and if you opponent doesn't immediately answer, you press the clock button. As with anything, if someone abuses anything, you could call a judge. Also, as with normal short cutting rules, someone could say that he has nothing to play for the turn (say, being tapped out, no free spell nor abilities). I think that a few rules would streamline it enough to be usable.
Edit: read the article.
There is a lot of bad faith in the article, IMO. Given that the author professes that he didn't like the idea in the first place, that doesn't surprise me. He didn't go out of his way to find easy answers to the problems he raised.
First, I can guarantee you that you could make a clock that costs 2$ or less in bulk. Just go to your dollarama store and look at all the stuff you can buy for a dollar. half a dozen buttons, two LCD, a few IC should not cost 15$ in bulk. My guess is that chess clocks are required to have some stamp of approval by the FIDE?
Second, he talk about stalling... uh? Stalling, by definition, can only happen when you have priority. So I fail to see how it would be abused.
Third, yes, some spells and actions require action by both players. You can either have both clock or no clock run during those. Simultaneous shuffling is one example.
Finally, and centrally, just likes game state, you have to make the clock state be the responsibility of both players and allow to call judge for clock shenanigans, like not reminding your opponent to press the clock at the end of the turn.
I think with my proposed rules of only switching the clock if your opponent doesn't answer within a second, it would be workable.
The easiest way for people to cheat is to give them opportunity. If you let people bring in clocks of their choosing, then you are at risk of having people modify their clocks. Even if you don't, what do you do when someone's clock goes bad? Do people need to always be keeping track of what times were on the clocks (for digital ones)?
You could use a clock for how long a turn should take instead of using it for each priority (it would kill some style of decks where their combo just take forever and there is a possibility of bricking).
You can't really standardize something like that physically in a game where your turn includes the opponents' actions as well. In a perfect world possibly, but not with the human element.
It works in Chess because your turn is only your moves and MTGO because a computer can handle all of the micro-clocking of priorities.
I would say just how often priority is passed.
Upkeep - Press button, opponent presses button to pass priority back.
Draw - Press, press.
Main Phase - Cast spell, press button. Opponent has no response press button. Spell resolves, press button, press button.
Begin combat, press button press button.
Declare attackers, press button etc.....
Would get very annoying very quickly. I would also find it extremely distracting while trying to focus on the game.
I think the idea would be time clock would start on the current player's turn and when the player interrupts the opponents turn for a series of activities. I don't think time should be clicked if the opponent has a simple response under 5 seconds (although if the opponent is taking longer then the opposing player can press the button). I would also believe time is drawn if you call a judge and time would be given if the argument was in your favor.
Sure this could be debated but I wonder how long the game would be if players stop shuffling the cards in their hands, trying to figure how to attack (block), or just thinking if they should do something at the end of the opponents turn or not.
Interesting article but it's hard not to see the bias in the argument. The writer don't like chess clocks, I get it, but maybe magic needs to design their own 'chess clock' system. This is very important because I do see player 'fart' around in tournaments (either they don't know how to play their deck or they are drawing out the game for a tie). Maybe magic should get rid of the tie (winner is declared by the most damage is done... sure that would suck if you necro yourself down to one life or have a lich in play.)
I do think a special time clock for magic tournaments would be a good thing.
Some game strategies require more time than others (e.g. draw-go). Isn't anyone concerned the implementation of chess clocks would favour some strategies over others?
If running to time is an issue at tournaments we could do one or any multiple of the following:
-Have judges enforce wasting time.
-Ban cards that may be part of legitimate strategies, but take lots of time (e.g. Sensei's Divining Top).
-Ban cards that waste time, but hit all strategies relatively equally (e.g. fetch lands).
-Increase the time allotted for games.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern:UB Taking Turns Modern:URW Madcap Experiment Pauper: MonoU Tempo Delver
Hmm, I still wonder why this dicussion comes up, why is someone using more time such a problem? Some decks require more time to play, it happens.
I don't mind someone taking more time because their deck requires more time, but when players deliberately play slowly in the hopes of a getting a draw, that's a problem.
Then call a judge for slow play, you don't need a chess clock for that. I think this just stems from a very american attitude which seems to think draws should never happen.
This is american...how? Or are you just shoehorning in your agenda where it doesn't belong?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 19 years later.
Happy is the man who has broken the chains that hurt the mind and given up worrying once and for all. Be patient and tough. One day this pain will be useful to you.
Hmm, I still wonder why this dicussion comes up, why is someone using more time such a problem? Some decks require more time to play, it happens.
I don't mind someone taking more time because their deck requires more time, but when players deliberately play slowly in the hopes of a getting a draw, that's a problem.
Then call a judge for slow play, you don't need a chess clock for that. I think this just stems from a very american attitude which seems to think draws should never happen.
This is american...how? Or are you just shoehorning in your agenda where it doesn't belong?
What do you mean how it's american? How most american sports are impossible to draw? or how they don't understand how draws happen in other sports like cricket?
Hmm, I still wonder why this dicussion comes up, why is someone using more time such a problem? Some decks require more time to play, it happens.
I don't mind someone taking more time because their deck requires more time, but when players deliberately play slowly in the hopes of a getting a draw, that's a problem.
Then call a judge for slow play, you don't need a chess clock for that. I think this just stems from a very american attitude which seems to think draws should never happen.
This is american...how? Or are you just shoehorning in your agenda where it doesn't belong?
What do you mean how it's american? How most american sports are impossible to draw? or how they don't understand how draws happen in other sports like cricket?
Most physical sports can't draw because they play until a winner is declared(extra innings,whatever,etc). Last time I checked those sports don't need to play 100+ games in a day so they can afford to go over time. Cricket is an exception because it's almost never played past the alloted playtime. Keep up the agenda-shoehorning tho.
Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 19 years later.
Happy is the man who has broken the chains that hurt the mind and given up worrying once and for all. Be patient and tough. One day this pain will be useful to you.
There's also the matter of physical sports being spectator events.
They can't draw because people would riot.
MTG has coverage, but they can exist without the coverage. Pro football and pro basketball cannot.
Why would people riot due to a draw? Association football is the most popular sport in the world and draws are possible there. While I have obviously heard of brawling and riots in connection to football games, I have never heard of those happening due to draws.
That said, I think not wanting draws being an American thing is rather silly.
So let's say a cheap chess clock is $10. The cheapest I can find on Amazon is $20 but we're buying in bulk. So at a 4000-player grand prix, organizers need to add $20k worth of clocks just to start. But every round, some fail due to the crap batteries. Every round, some fail due to the shoddy build quality. Every round, some are probably stolen because anything not nailed down at a GP seems to get stolen, and you're looking at additional hardware and installation labor costs if you want to add security to every clock. Every round, judges are running around setting up replacement clocks instead of settling ruling disputes or watching for foul play. Aside from considerations of how it would work with Magic game rules, the logistical implications of buying, storing, shipping, setting up, and operating the clocks would be a deal-breaker.
I do think there should be a general time allowance per turn that if over exceeded a judge would be summoned.
You can already do this if you're worried about slow play. It's usually considered polite to first nicely ask your opponent to play faster, but by all means call a judge and ensure that the game proceeds at a reasonable pace. I've heard from judges that on average a difficult decision should be made within roughly 20 seconds, and in general most decisions should be quite a bit speedier, so you could use that as a rough guideline. Slow play is like obscenity: it's hard to nail down in specific rules but you know it when you see it.
There are Magic tournaments with clocks. It's called MODO. If you want a clock, play that.
If your games are going too slow, play a fast deck. Fast Modern decks include Burn, Affinity, Grishoalbrand, and Infect. There are many fast Legacy decks, such as the combo decks Belcher, Oops All Spells, and Tin Fins, along with aggro decks like Burn and Infect.
These days, some wizards are finding they have a little too much deck left at the end of their $$$.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
Magic can never have clocks due to passing priority.
This is the important bit.
Tournament chess has about 50 moves in the course of two hours. Tournament Magic passes priority very frequently (even allowing for typical shortcuts) so keeping track will be a lot harder.
Association football is the most popular sport in the world and draws are possible there.
Not in tournament games. If the teams are tied after 90 minutes, they play another 30 minutes. If they're tied after those extra 30 minutes, they do a best-of-five shootout. If they're tied after the best-of-five, they do a sudden death shootout.
Not sure why it's an "American" attitude...but no, a draw is not a good result, it just means whoever was going to win the game was unlucky that time ran out. Draws are fine in a game like Chess, where it is a legimate outcome, but 99.9% of magic games wouldn't ever end in a draw if there was enough time. A draw in Magic is like when a baseball game has to be ended early because of the rain. And it's especially bad when the player who was likely to loses gets a draw by playing slow.
And there's a lot of instances were a player can mask slow play by pretending that they're thinking about some important decision. It's not so cut and dry that a judge can easily tell. An objective system would be better, if it were possible to implement.
BGW Junk / URB Grixis Shadow / RGB Lantern Control / WUBCBant Eldrazi
Current Legacy decks
BUG Shardless BUG / UWR Predict Miracles / RUG Canadian Thresh / WRBG 4c Loam
UB Reanimator
Not really, the judge will just ask what the heck you are doing. And then likely get the Head Judge to disqualify you for stalling. Same thing that is likely to happen if you were to do it now.
Even with a chess clock the time limit is just going to be something to help faciliate the smooth running of the tournament not something to add an extra strategic dimension to the game.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
Except, you can't have stalling rules with a chess clock, since the clock itself is meant to punish stalling, but all it does is reward it.
You just ask verbally, and if you opponent doesn't immediately answer, you press the clock button. As with anything, if someone abuses anything, you could call a judge. Also, as with normal short cutting rules, someone could say that he has nothing to play for the turn (say, being tapped out, no free spell nor abilities). I think that a few rules would streamline it enough to be usable.
Edit: read the article.
There is a lot of bad faith in the article, IMO. Given that the author professes that he didn't like the idea in the first place, that doesn't surprise me. He didn't go out of his way to find easy answers to the problems he raised.
First, I can guarantee you that you could make a clock that costs 2$ or less in bulk. Just go to your dollarama store and look at all the stuff you can buy for a dollar. half a dozen buttons, two LCD, a few IC should not cost 15$ in bulk. My guess is that chess clocks are required to have some stamp of approval by the FIDE?
Second, he talk about stalling... uh? Stalling, by definition, can only happen when you have priority. So I fail to see how it would be abused.
Third, yes, some spells and actions require action by both players. You can either have both clock or no clock run during those. Simultaneous shuffling is one example.
Finally, and centrally, just likes game state, you have to make the clock state be the responsibility of both players and allow to call judge for clock shenanigans, like not reminding your opponent to press the clock at the end of the turn.
I think with my proposed rules of only switching the clock if your opponent doesn't answer within a second, it would be workable.
And you would be willing to trust something that was cobbled together from bits bought at radio shack whilst at a tournament? I would presume not at least with a proper chess clock there is going to have to be an official standard that is going to have to be met.
Currently stalling can only happen when you have proirity but as Rai says players are adaptable creatures. Some of them are going to find ways of abusing the clock. Take the example of Soldier of fortune, given above. It will only take seconds for your to activate the ability but each of the shuffles is going to burn quite a bit longer off your opponents clock when it comes to resolve, add in someway to untap the soldier multiple times per turn and the issue is going to get worse.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
In real life magic its non-sence.
And in general you will have 1 player that is quick and doesnt need to think too much, while the other might struggle and has to think a lot just to keep alive.
This can easily mean someone will allmost instantly end his turn, untap, draw, play land, attack, end ; takes like 30 seconds max.
While the other has much more going on, untap, draw, play a spell, play a fetch-land, search for land, shuffle, play a spell, attack, etc. Can take way more time.
Its not uncommon that a game will be heavily one-sided in terms of time spend ; but thats OK , yea, its OK.
If time is wasted , thats a major pain. Players should be encouraged to use short-cuts whenever possible.
They have to be aware of these shortcuts to even use them in the first place.
Especially with fetchlands and heavy shuffling involved, its important that players use short-cuts and manage the time better BOTH of them.
Like instead of waiting for a player to find a land, they just announce what land they want and play the card as it would be in play, and can do the searching/shuffling during the opponents turn ; so you play more or less as much in parallel as possible, instead of sequencing everything and waiting for the other.
A game in which players use reasonable shortcuts / out of order plays and do long actions in paralell (like shuffling) , you can save a tremendous amount of time, easily 20 minutes and more in a 50 minutes time.
Combat is similiar.
Some players simply never learned how to calculate damage and how to adress a changing board state.
If you start to calculate every damage every turn, and for each creature ; then decide you cant attack, then think a long time about how potential blockers ; etc etc. that takes AGES and it will take AGES again and again, turn after turn ; THATS STUPID, THATS A WASTE OF TIME.
But people do that as they never learned to play properly, its a shame really.
And this problem becomes even more severly if they play allreaddy slow decks that "force" these situations of board stalemates.
----
50 minutes is plenty of time to finish 3 games, if played at a reasonable speed using all methods to save time and use the time well for both players.
In any pro-level event you will have much less draws due to time, because of this.
In a pre-release you have TONS of draws, if nobody draws a bomb to win, the games can easily become a draw, even a single game draw, a 0-0-1 can happen multiple times in an event, if the players are slow and force these situations.
----
A clock wont help here, players simply have to learn about all these time savers ; learn to properly shuffle in a quick method and properly sequence a turn to make it reasonable fast (not tapping each land individual, tap them all together for the spell you want to cast !).
And yes, the game should make an effort to teach players these "tricks" ; so far the only way to make a player learn to play properly is to keep them around with experienced players ; they wont learn it themself and theres no "Product" that teaches them.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
As for the clock, I would trust a cheap digital clock 100% of time over a mechanical clock.
And of course, if your clock runs down, you lose the match. If you're up 1-0 and swings for the win and your clock runs down in declare blocker phase, you lose the match. Some people really don't like that.
Now FNM and other smaller tournaments, the prize pool isn't big enough to have this setup IMO. They don't even have enough judges to check for slow plays sometimes.
The easiest way for people to cheat is to give them opportunity. If you let people bring in clocks of their choosing, then you are at risk of having people modify their clocks. Even if you don't, what do you do when someone's clock goes bad? Do people need to always be keeping track of what times were on the clocks (for digital ones)?
Blue players would just love this...
It works in Chess because your turn is only your moves and MTGO because a computer can handle all of the micro-clocking of priorities.
I think the idea would be time clock would start on the current player's turn and when the player interrupts the opponents turn for a series of activities. I don't think time should be clicked if the opponent has a simple response under 5 seconds (although if the opponent is taking longer then the opposing player can press the button). I would also believe time is drawn if you call a judge and time would be given if the argument was in your favor.
Sure this could be debated but I wonder how long the game would be if players stop shuffling the cards in their hands, trying to figure how to attack (block), or just thinking if they should do something at the end of the opponents turn or not.
Interesting article but it's hard not to see the bias in the argument. The writer don't like chess clocks, I get it, but maybe magic needs to design their own 'chess clock' system. This is very important because I do see player 'fart' around in tournaments (either they don't know how to play their deck or they are drawing out the game for a tie). Maybe magic should get rid of the tie (winner is declared by the most damage is done... sure that would suck if you necro yourself down to one life or have a lich in play.)
I do think a special time clock for magic tournaments would be a good thing.
In his Second 100 days - Yawgmoth's Bargain is unrestricted in Vintage.
What is going to happen in the Next 100 days!!!
If running to time is an issue at tournaments we could do one or any multiple of the following:
-Have judges enforce wasting time.
-Ban cards that may be part of legitimate strategies, but take lots of time (e.g. Sensei's Divining Top).
-Ban cards that waste time, but hit all strategies relatively equally (e.g. fetch lands).
-Increase the time allotted for games.
Modern: URW Madcap Experiment
Pauper: MonoU Tempo Delver
My EDH Commanders:
Aminatou, The Fateshifter UBW
Azami, Lady of Scrolls U
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed B
Edric, Spymaster of Trest UG
Glissa, the Traitor BG
Arcum Dagsson U
This is american...how? Or are you just shoehorning in your agenda where it doesn't belong?
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 19 years later.
Happy is the man who has broken the chains that hurt the mind and given up worrying once and for all. Be patient and tough. One day this pain will be useful to you.
What do you mean how it's american? How most american sports are impossible to draw? or how they don't understand how draws happen in other sports like cricket?
Most physical sports can't draw because they play until a winner is declared(extra innings,whatever,etc). Last time I checked those sports don't need to play 100+ games in a day so they can afford to go over time. Cricket is an exception because it's almost never played past the alloted playtime. Keep up the agenda-shoehorning tho.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 19 years later.
Happy is the man who has broken the chains that hurt the mind and given up worrying once and for all. Be patient and tough. One day this pain will be useful to you.
They can't draw because people would riot.
MTG has coverage, but they can exist without the coverage. Pro football and pro basketball cannot.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Why would people riot due to a draw? Association football is the most popular sport in the world and draws are possible there. While I have obviously heard of brawling and riots in connection to football games, I have never heard of those happening due to draws.
That said, I think not wanting draws being an American thing is rather silly.
It is really annoying when you see players take ages just to lay a damn land or something.
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy.
Check out the Shop Thread
You can already do this if you're worried about slow play. It's usually considered polite to first nicely ask your opponent to play faster, but by all means call a judge and ensure that the game proceeds at a reasonable pace. I've heard from judges that on average a difficult decision should be made within roughly 20 seconds, and in general most decisions should be quite a bit speedier, so you could use that as a rough guideline. Slow play is like obscenity: it's hard to nail down in specific rules but you know it when you see it.
2) Use the right number of each card.
3) Know your probabilities.
4) Print your deck lists; make yourself and your judges happier.
If your games are going too slow, play a fast deck. Fast Modern decks include Burn, Affinity, Grishoalbrand, and Infect. There are many fast Legacy decks, such as the combo decks Belcher, Oops All Spells, and Tin Fins, along with aggro decks like Burn and Infect.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
This is the important bit.
Tournament chess has about 50 moves in the course of two hours. Tournament Magic passes priority very frequently (even allowing for typical shortcuts) so keeping track will be a lot harder.
And since we're talking about tournament Magic...
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)