So last night night I went to my weekly legacy even which is pretty dam small most of the time it's only 8 players meaning you have to go 2-1-0 to even have a shot at finals for packs. This week I was on RUG delver and was 2-0 at the point when I hear the other match ended up tieing meaning that not only could my round 3 opponent not tie into finals with me, if I lost to the guy that tied I would go up against and the other one won his match I would be bumped out.
So I end up getting paired off with the tie opponent that was playing nic-fit, and on turn two he literally shredded my hand apart with cabal therapy's and hymn to tourach at this point I knew I could not win in top deck mode but I played it out anyways and didn't die until something like turn 14. During this time I just tried to play control as much as I could and spent 30 seconds at the very most contemplating a decision, when I would do so would be in complicated gamestates where if I didn't order the cards right with ponder/sensei's divining top/brainstorm I would lost the next turn. Again these interactions each one I would spend about 30 seconds on but it would save me for another turn.
Well game two rolls around and it ends up being a long game where I'm mostly playing control and only beating him down with a small threat. Alot of the same stuff ends up happening with me topping every turn and eating up on a non difficult top 15 seconds, 30 on when order wasn't as obvious with him in this game using tops just as often and eating as much time as myself. Admitedly I caused some delays in the game because that game I was trying to speed up and made a few misplays on interpreting the stack, for example I brainstormed at end of turn, he cracks his fetch, I say I'm going to submurge his scavenging ooze to shuffle it. He does so then I realize I screwed up the stack order there so he has to spend about 45 seconds finding it and reshuffling. Admitedly yes my mistake and I did 1 or 2 other errors in a rush that made a delay or two but not on purpose.
Game 3 get's around and I have him at 14 with two delvers out on turn 3 after time has ran out. He just raises his hands and declares tie (even though I know this is wrong I just accepted it as it really didn't matter for my standings so long as I didn't lose). At this point I probably could've eeked the win out, his only removal in hand was a dismember and at end of turn I was brainstorming a 4/5 goyf into my hand and bolt. But again I don't say anything. Game 3 was super quick on both sides but none of us took more then two seconds for a play so there was many misplays.
As the guy is leaving he says something to me, now understand we have no judges where we play so we don't have anyone that can observe slowplay, and I also understand that this is based on my account so things even if I don't want them to have a slight bias. The guy says to me "Try not to slowplay next time." Admittedly at the start of the match I told myself I probably couldn't beat him but if I can mechanically (not playtime wise) draw out a game as long as I can I should, hence me not conceding in game one when it was obvious I lost. So what I'm curious about for the MTG community here based on if my account is correct here was I in the wrong? Again we have no judges here to actually make sure of it but it's bugging me that in my attempt to have a smoother game I might actually be slow playing.
now understand we have no judges where we play so we don't have anyone that can observe slowplay,
If you're playing in a sanctioned tournament, there MUST be a judge on record. The DCI won't allow an event to be reported without a head judge. That person may not necessarily be a DCI certified judge, but there is someone at that tournament whose responsibility it is to deal with situations like this.
Admittedly at the start of the match I told myself I probably couldn't beat him but if I can mechanically (not playtime wise) draw out a game as long as I can I should, hence me not conceding in game one when it was obvious I lost.
Refusing to concede a game you can't win is fine, at least as far as the tournament rules are concerned. It's your opponent's responsibility to make sure he can win the game; you're not obligated to help him in that respect. (Strategically it may not be advisable, but that's really not something I'd care to go into.)
The bigger concern is whether you were taking too long to make decisions during the match (which would constitute slow play), and whether you were doing so deliberately to take time off the clock (which then promotes it to stalling, which is punishable by disqualification). Only having one side of the story, I'm not going to make a judgment on that.
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Binary that judge is usually running the counter and not watching the tournament. No tournament organizer/head judge for a no-judge event is going to stop working to watch a whole match for slow play.
If your opponent was asking you to hurry up and play faster throughout the match, then I would definitely say you were in the wrong. You went in with the intent to slow the game down and when you are describing your behavior in the amount of time you're spending in each phase then you're definitely aware and playing to the clock.
The guy was pretty nice about it, but especially in these situations where there isn't a judge to watch for intentional slow play I think it's a dick move to try to stretch the game out.
Binary that judge is usually running the counter and not watching the tournament. No tournament organizer/head judge for a no-judge event is going to stop working to watch a whole match for slow play.
Then I would recommend talking to the store owner about finding someone to assist with tournaments who can devote their attention to properly running the tournament.
If your opponent was asking you to hurry up and play faster throughout the match, then I would definitely say you were in the wrong.
It's not necessarily slow play just because the opponent thinks it is. I've seen some players get impatient when another player was taking five seconds to make a decision. Hence why I said in my first post that I wasn't going to make a judgment about it one way or the other just based on one side of the story.
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Taking 30 seconds for a top/ponder when you're trying to survive the turn is a little long, but probably ok in most cases. Taking 15 seconds for an EOT 'non-difficult' top is slow-playing, because in most cases you just saw two of those cards and as you said its an easy decision.
In most cases, if you're thinking about the clock at all during your turn, you're probably slow playing. Any energy your focusing on things outside the game in front of you are going to slow you down anyway, but you were eating up more time than necessary with your top, especially in game 2.
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It was obviously incorrect strategically, since you would have won the third game. What advantage were you hoping to gain from drawing it out? Seeing more of his cards/his strategy? That could be decent, but compared to leaving enough time in the round to actually win, I feel like it's not as important.
It's hard to really know if you were actually slow-playing without observing it since as it is slow-play is already a fairly subjective infraction. In anycase what Binary says is correct - you are never forced to concede a game, even if for example your opponent has removed all your win conditions from your deck. That being said if you felt that you had no chance of winning then it was most likely in your best interest to save time and just go to game 2 so you actually have a chance to take the match.
I would have packed in game 1, knowing I am playing Top - that eats up time. If you knew your opponent was playing Top at any point in game 1, I would have scooped to game 2. Theres a reason they banned it in Modern, and part of that is they didn't want games being dragged on by Top activations.
That being said, I'm not quite sure how "complicated" a board state can be if you are in topdeck mode like you said in game 2.
The above post makes no sense. Playing a game you don't think you can win is in no way against the rules nor something that should be penalized. What is up for question here is whether the time to do actions in game 2 were too long and whether they can be considered slow play. Really, if you were slow playing, you would know it.
There is nothing wrong playing for a draw as long as you make your decisions in a reasonable amount of time. There is no rule that says you have to scoop a game that you dont think you can win. It is the judge's call to make if he thinks you are slow playing or not.
However in all situations the only person who really knows if you were cheating or not is you. If you honestly never took longer to make a decision than you had to than you're fine.
You were totally slow-playing and should have got a match loss. If you can't win, pack it up.
A player is never under any obligation to conceed a game, whether they feel they have a chance of winning or not. Just as if a combo player is playing out some combo of theirs and asks if they want me to conceed, I would always make them play it out. Mistakes happen, misplays happen, if you are going to kill me, you are going to actually kill me yourself, I wouldnt make it easy for you, and I wont help you.
If the opponant thought he was slow playing he should have called for the judge. Its the responsibility of whomever is acting as the judge for the tournament to come and deal with issues if they come up. I am the judge for our shop's tournaments and whether im in the middle of helping a customer or not, if someone hollars for a judge, Ill be over there within a few seconds to take care of things. If a store running a sanctioned tournament has their only judge unwilling to do their job, then the situation needs to be reported to the owner/tournament organizer, if both are one in the same, then the store needs to be reported to the DCI.
If the board state is complicated, then taking 30 seconds to make a decision isnt unreasonable. However if the person is purposefully taking longer than needed to make decisions on the hope of drawing out the game for as long as possible and taking up as much time as possible, then that is something that needs to be called on, and dealt with by a judge accordingly. Playing slowly enough to not skip important things, or to avoid making mistakes, is fine.
You were totally slow-playing and should have got a match loss. If you can't win, pack it up.
A match loss is not the appropriate penalty for either slow play or stalling, at any REL.
Even at Competitive and Professional REL, the penalty for Slow Play should only be a Warning unless the slow play has "significantly altered the result of the match," in which case the next step up would be a game loss.
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Then I would recommend talking to the store owner about finding someone to assist with tournaments who can devote their attention to properly running the tournament.
This is a great idea if you live in an area where your tournament is more than 8 people, but the OP specified that it's a very small attendance tournament. There's only so far you can push the ideal.
The penalty for slow play is a warning, but the penalty for stalling is DQ as it's cheating, and the real question here is whether the OP was stalling or not, which is something anyone can't really make a legit judgment on, having not been there.
My suspicion is that he was intentionally playing slowly, but trying to play slowly without appearing to do so, hence him justifying that he never took more than X time - when you're paying attention to the clock like that you're definitely playing to it.
Sorry I should've clarified this (just woke up), when I said I was taking 15 seconds for a non-complicated top I am including the time it took me to physically pick up the cards, rearrange (and pretty much 9/10 tops I was atleast putting bottom card on top) and putting them back.
As for the one asking the question on the submerge stack, I brainstormed he cracked fetch in response, the submerge was in the cards I got with brainstorm that's why it's wrong.
As for everyone asking, I don't think any of my decisions took up too much time, I think I did maybe one too many triggers of stuff that might not have been in hindsight necessary such as cracking fetches when I was beyond flooded at that point. But I don't think I took too long for any one individual action, especially in game 2 which some people have been asserting as I knew I could win that one but it would be a slow win. As for the complex game state in top deck mode that probably wasn't the right descriptor the right one was having to use twenty million cards to survive that turn, for instance in response to his grave titan I topped and saw blue card+force in there, then I activated the brainstorm in my hand and put a fetch and the 3rd card on top just to force the titan, or another example where I needed to kill something that turn or I died, top revealed nothing so I cracked a fetch, still nothing, crack another finally see snapcaster to flashback chain lightning.
Stalling does not equal slow play. You can be guilty of stalling without being guilty of slow play. The question is this: did you intentionally play slower in order to take advantage of the time limit?
Did you pause and consider that getting the match to go to a draw do to time was what you wanted to happen?
When you started losing the game, if you slowed down the pace of play in order to eat out time on the clock, then thats stalling.
stalling is a DQ, slow play is generally a warning at comp or pro rel.
For the first question no, second yes, third I never slowed down how fast I would normally play but as I stated I did some actions that could be classified as unnecessary such as cracking fetches when not needed. But again, I played at a rate that I would normally play at the only difference is game one I just didn't concede when it was obvious I wasn't winning, I was still trying to win but at the same time I recognized there wasn't a single card in my deck that could do so.
This is a great idea if you live in an area where your tournament is more than 8 people, but the OP specified that it's a very small attendance tournament. There's only so far you can push the ideal.
Well, wouldn't it be worth trying talking to the store owner? This is not a situation that's going to get better if nobody voices a concern.
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Your opponent should have been happy about the slow play. If you didn't play slowly, it sounds like you would have won the match.
That said, you didn't do anything wrong anyway. You're allowed to play the game until it's over, as long as you don't take an excessively long time making any decisions.
You were totally slow-playing and should have got a match loss. If you can't win, pack it up.
No, there is no reason that you are obligated to concede if you have no chance to win.]
That said, 30 seconds is a long time, heck 15 seconds is kinda long for your easy decisions. Seriously, pick up 5 cards then draw one, then sit their quietly for a full 30 seconds. That is a loooooonnnnngggg time to take for decisions, and that is magnified astronomically if you are needing to make multiple 30 second decisions per turn. Compound that will multiple 15 second periods and the fact that you had made a decision to try for a draw during game one, and you were blatantly slow playing.
I am by no means a fast player- as a matter of fact that is one of the things I hate the most about other players, but I think I would be seriously irritated at someone taking that long. The guy was way more polite than a lot of players would have been, so you got off easy, but I think you should apologize if you see that guy again.
It is very possible that your guess of 30 seconds was way off, and you just made a bad estimate when you typed this up. I suggest you find out for yourself just how long that is by timing some fake hands/plays.
Maybe my estimates were off on times but I never sat and looked at my cards and just stared. Whenever priority was on me I was always moving cards around (and not tap land untap repeat ad naseum, looking at my graveyard 3 times in a turn or any shennanigans like that) except for maybe a 5 second pause here or there (not too often mind you). Perhaps doing practice hands something I should do to check timing but atm already procrastinating a paper I should be writing.
As for apologies already did as I tend to be pretty submissive and apology a lot of times (not this time mind you) for no reason.
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So I end up getting paired off with the tie opponent that was playing nic-fit, and on turn two he literally shredded my hand apart with cabal therapy's and hymn to tourach at this point I knew I could not win in top deck mode but I played it out anyways and didn't die until something like turn 14. During this time I just tried to play control as much as I could and spent 30 seconds at the very most contemplating a decision, when I would do so would be in complicated gamestates where if I didn't order the cards right with ponder/sensei's divining top/brainstorm I would lost the next turn. Again these interactions each one I would spend about 30 seconds on but it would save me for another turn.
Well game two rolls around and it ends up being a long game where I'm mostly playing control and only beating him down with a small threat. Alot of the same stuff ends up happening with me topping every turn and eating up on a non difficult top 15 seconds, 30 on when order wasn't as obvious with him in this game using tops just as often and eating as much time as myself. Admitedly I caused some delays in the game because that game I was trying to speed up and made a few misplays on interpreting the stack, for example I brainstormed at end of turn, he cracks his fetch, I say I'm going to submurge his scavenging ooze to shuffle it. He does so then I realize I screwed up the stack order there so he has to spend about 45 seconds finding it and reshuffling. Admitedly yes my mistake and I did 1 or 2 other errors in a rush that made a delay or two but not on purpose.
Game 3 get's around and I have him at 14 with two delvers out on turn 3 after time has ran out. He just raises his hands and declares tie (even though I know this is wrong I just accepted it as it really didn't matter for my standings so long as I didn't lose). At this point I probably could've eeked the win out, his only removal in hand was a dismember and at end of turn I was brainstorming a 4/5 goyf into my hand and bolt. But again I don't say anything. Game 3 was super quick on both sides but none of us took more then two seconds for a play so there was many misplays.
As the guy is leaving he says something to me, now understand we have no judges where we play so we don't have anyone that can observe slowplay, and I also understand that this is based on my account so things even if I don't want them to have a slight bias. The guy says to me "Try not to slowplay next time." Admittedly at the start of the match I told myself I probably couldn't beat him but if I can mechanically (not playtime wise) draw out a game as long as I can I should, hence me not conceding in game one when it was obvious I lost. So what I'm curious about for the MTG community here based on if my account is correct here was I in the wrong? Again we have no judges here to actually make sure of it but it's bugging me that in my attempt to have a smoother game I might actually be slow playing.
If you're playing in a sanctioned tournament, there MUST be a judge on record. The DCI won't allow an event to be reported without a head judge. That person may not necessarily be a DCI certified judge, but there is someone at that tournament whose responsibility it is to deal with situations like this.
Refusing to concede a game you can't win is fine, at least as far as the tournament rules are concerned. It's your opponent's responsibility to make sure he can win the game; you're not obligated to help him in that respect. (Strategically it may not be advisable, but that's really not something I'd care to go into.)
The bigger concern is whether you were taking too long to make decisions during the match (which would constitute slow play), and whether you were doing so deliberately to take time off the clock (which then promotes it to stalling, which is punishable by disqualification). Only having one side of the story, I'm not going to make a judgment on that.
If your opponent was asking you to hurry up and play faster throughout the match, then I would definitely say you were in the wrong. You went in with the intent to slow the game down and when you are describing your behavior in the amount of time you're spending in each phase then you're definitely aware and playing to the clock.
The guy was pretty nice about it, but especially in these situations where there isn't a judge to watch for intentional slow play I think it's a dick move to try to stretch the game out.
Then I would recommend talking to the store owner about finding someone to assist with tournaments who can devote their attention to properly running the tournament.
It's not necessarily slow play just because the opponent thinks it is. I've seen some players get impatient when another player was taking five seconds to make a decision. Hence why I said in my first post that I wasn't going to make a judgment about it one way or the other just based on one side of the story.
In most cases, if you're thinking about the clock at all during your turn, you're probably slow playing. Any energy your focusing on things outside the game in front of you are going to slow you down anyway, but you were eating up more time than necessary with your top, especially in game 2.
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That being said, I'm not quite sure how "complicated" a board state can be if you are in topdeck mode like you said in game 2.
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However in all situations the only person who really knows if you were cheating or not is you. If you honestly never took longer to make a decision than you had to than you're fine.
A player is never under any obligation to conceed a game, whether they feel they have a chance of winning or not. Just as if a combo player is playing out some combo of theirs and asks if they want me to conceed, I would always make them play it out. Mistakes happen, misplays happen, if you are going to kill me, you are going to actually kill me yourself, I wouldnt make it easy for you, and I wont help you.
If the opponant thought he was slow playing he should have called for the judge. Its the responsibility of whomever is acting as the judge for the tournament to come and deal with issues if they come up. I am the judge for our shop's tournaments and whether im in the middle of helping a customer or not, if someone hollars for a judge, Ill be over there within a few seconds to take care of things. If a store running a sanctioned tournament has their only judge unwilling to do their job, then the situation needs to be reported to the owner/tournament organizer, if both are one in the same, then the store needs to be reported to the DCI.
If the board state is complicated, then taking 30 seconds to make a decision isnt unreasonable. However if the person is purposefully taking longer than needed to make decisions on the hope of drawing out the game for as long as possible and taking up as much time as possible, then that is something that needs to be called on, and dealt with by a judge accordingly. Playing slowly enough to not skip important things, or to avoid making mistakes, is fine.
A match loss is not the appropriate penalty for either slow play or stalling, at any REL.
Even at Competitive and Professional REL, the penalty for Slow Play should only be a Warning unless the slow play has "significantly altered the result of the match," in which case the next step up would be a game loss.
This is a great idea if you live in an area where your tournament is more than 8 people, but the OP specified that it's a very small attendance tournament. There's only so far you can push the ideal.
The penalty for slow play is a warning, but the penalty for stalling is DQ as it's cheating, and the real question here is whether the OP was stalling or not, which is something anyone can't really make a legit judgment on, having not been there.
My suspicion is that he was intentionally playing slowly, but trying to play slowly without appearing to do so, hence him justifying that he never took more than X time - when you're paying attention to the clock like that you're definitely playing to it.
As for the one asking the question on the submerge stack, I brainstormed he cracked fetch in response, the submerge was in the cards I got with brainstorm that's why it's wrong.
As for everyone asking, I don't think any of my decisions took up too much time, I think I did maybe one too many triggers of stuff that might not have been in hindsight necessary such as cracking fetches when I was beyond flooded at that point. But I don't think I took too long for any one individual action, especially in game 2 which some people have been asserting as I knew I could win that one but it would be a slow win. As for the complex game state in top deck mode that probably wasn't the right descriptor the right one was having to use twenty million cards to survive that turn, for instance in response to his grave titan I topped and saw blue card+force in there, then I activated the brainstorm in my hand and put a fetch and the 3rd card on top just to force the titan, or another example where I needed to kill something that turn or I died, top revealed nothing so I cracked a fetch, still nothing, crack another finally see snapcaster to flashback chain lightning.
Did you pause and consider that getting the match to go to a draw do to time was what you wanted to happen?
When you started losing the game, if you slowed down the pace of play in order to eat out time on the clock, then thats stalling.
stalling is a DQ, slow play is generally a warning at comp or pro rel.
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Well, wouldn't it be worth trying talking to the store owner? This is not a situation that's going to get better if nobody voices a concern.
That said, you didn't do anything wrong anyway. You're allowed to play the game until it's over, as long as you don't take an excessively long time making any decisions.
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That said, 30 seconds is a long time, heck 15 seconds is kinda long for your easy decisions. Seriously, pick up 5 cards then draw one, then sit their quietly for a full 30 seconds. That is a loooooonnnnngggg time to take for decisions, and that is magnified astronomically if you are needing to make multiple 30 second decisions per turn. Compound that will multiple 15 second periods and the fact that you had made a decision to try for a draw during game one, and you were blatantly slow playing.
I am by no means a fast player- as a matter of fact that is one of the things I hate the most about other players, but I think I would be seriously irritated at someone taking that long. The guy was way more polite than a lot of players would have been, so you got off easy, but I think you should apologize if you see that guy again.
It is very possible that your guess of 30 seconds was way off, and you just made a bad estimate when you typed this up. I suggest you find out for yourself just how long that is by timing some fake hands/plays.
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As for apologies already did as I tend to be pretty submissive and apology a lot of times (not this time mind you) for no reason.