Has it occurred to anyone that Saito actively cultivated an aura of 'slow methodical player' to make it abusable at the right time?*
Certainly if I wanted to be a pro player, I'd be looking to bend every possible rule to gain advantage, whether its clock abuse, shuffling abuse, intimidation etc.
The number of pros who do that crap with the cards in hand (cycling through them) while 'thinking' is huge. They use it to distract, but from my experience also think it somehow makes them look like they are doing something when they aren't, so often get suprised when judges call them on slow play. Annoys the hell out of me.
Anyway, the rules state that you must play at a reasonable pace. This is an area wide open for discussion and interpretation, but it boils down to 'There's a clock. Your own rate of play must not be detrimental to your opponent playing his own game.'
As an example of the problems that face us, as judges, here's an example to make you think about where our job starts to stop stalling, but could affect the game result:
Player A is playing mono blue with lots of counterspells. He has a bit of a bad run of luck and now has 4 lands in hand. Player B wishes to play something, and wary of counterspells, always checks with his opponent to see if something resolves. Now, every time B casts something, A looks at his hand and thinks. He doesn't want to give away the fact he's counterless, but he's clearly wasting time.
What does the judge do?
* Not that I'm saying he has done this, but its certainly worthy of thought.
This sounds like a system that could potentially go horribly wrong. If a player gets DQ'd as a result of cumulative error on the tournament staff's part, and the player then states (correctly) that he did nothing wrong, then he will get a much harsher penalty. Admit to the thing you didn't do and you get off lightly, but be branded a cheater anyway, or maintain your innocence and get punished for it? Not really a good choice either way.
The thing is, if someone got DQ'ed as a result of cumulative errors by the staff, once the thing gets to the DCI panel, they are going to side with the player and not issue a ban. Obviously there's no way to retro-actively insert the player into the tournament, so some damage has been done, but it won't go any further than that, and I'd be highly suprised if the staff who issued the DQ didn't get a friendly chat to see what they were doing.
I've never seen evidence that the DCI backs up the judges 'just because'. If we make mistakes (and we do, we are human after all) then other judges tell us. I've made mistakes, and undoubtedly will do so again in the future. All we can do is apologise and be better in the future. Judges can get a lot of help from the DCI, but its not in the form of blind back-up. If we screw up, they (they being other judges) will do their best to help us learn from them.
However, none of the above is relevant to this particular case
DCI must not persecute people considered as cheaters, they should just punish the action of cheating in tournaments. Otherwise this becomes a witch hunt. Maybe you guys would like that, I wouldn't, there will be no real justice in that case.
The DCI does not persecute people 'considered' cheaters. Possibly I worded my original post wrong, but when the DCI looks in the history of a player under investigation, I am referring to penalties issued in previous tournaments, not rumour and hearsay! You know how when you screw up in a tournament, and the judge writes out the penalty on that slip? These get stuck into a big database that certain judges can pull out, and see ALL of the infractions that player has committed in his entire magic-playing past.
THIS is what I'm referring to by 'history', nothing else. I'd hardly say that this amounts to persecuting.
Also, the mere fact that someone makes a lot of mistakes doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion he's cheating. Any infraction in a game of magic that is not classed as cheating is deemed to have been accidental / unintentional, so I doubt they'd be used as leverage to up someone's ban for cheating. Don't ignore the part where I originally wrote that its highly likely that previous form is far less important than you'd think.
FunkyMo made a very good point - stalling is one of the hardest cheats to catch and is very insidious. I've been in plenty of borderline cases and generally would simply have to give the player the benefit of the doubt.
Stalling is one of the hardest calls for any judge, and no-one simply walks up to a table and goes 'Stalling!' - read the notes earlier in this thread for how the judges came to their decision.
But, there are plenty of players who do use the clock to their advantage, and they should beware!
Sadly, cheaters can get away with cheating occasionally, but, if you get caught, the punishment will be severe.
They have credibility? Since when? I wasn't notified of this.
I'd be curious to know why you don't think of the DCI as a trust-worthy bunch? Obviously I don't know every judge individually, but I've had the opportunity to get to know judges from all over the world. Different people and areas have different styles of judging, but they all aim to uphold the rules as best they can, and ensure a fair and even playing field within tournaments. I don't always see eye-to-eye with every judge, nor agree with 100% of DCI policy, and I know many judges feel this way. What we SHOULDN'T do is handle rules differently whether we agree with them or not.
Rules and policy are constantly discussed and occasionally changed, to help us to provide you guys with the best tournaments we can. When I see a player who doesn't trust judges or the DCI, I'm always eager to know why, and potentially help resolve things if its within my grasp.
I'm an active L2 judge, and hopefully I can clear up some misconceptions here. Note though these still are my own opinions (but based upon first hand evidence of investigations etc). I also know the HJ for the GP and his integrity is beyond question (judges in general don't have an axe to grind anyway!).
1) Saito's ban being longer than others for more serious offences.
Firstly, the judges of the event are not responsible for determining the ban. All they do is investigate this offence, DQ if necessary and do the paperwork (yes there is some!).
The DCI has an independant panel of high level judges who determine if and for how long a player gets banned. Factors are:
- Severity of offence (bear in mind stalling is CHEATING. He was not bending the rules, he was breaking them).
- History (but muuuuuuuch less so than you'd think).
- Reports (both from the judges in question and the player [EDIT] and witnesses if relevant [/EDIT]).
This last one is important. If a player shows no remorse for his actions, and much worse doesn't accept he did anything wrong, then he's going to get a longer ban than if he genuinely accepted the errors of his ways. Having read his CF mail, I imagine this is his problem and led to the 'harshness' of the penalty.
2) Players being 'targeted' by judges.
Judges have very clear instructions to never look at the history of a player outside a given tournament when looking at rules violations. We just don't have the information to track players and it wouldn't be fair. The only people who can impose penalties based on accumulation of infractions over multiple tournaments is the DCI panel, and they do it incredibly rarely, and if memory serves me, only when yet another penalty prompts it (IE no-one receives a ban 'out of nowhere'.)
3) Judges been in awe of pro-players and are lenient.
I can't state definitively this, but I'd be highly suprised. Why? Judges are lovers of the *GAME* not individuals. For those of us lucky enough to work high level events, its simply not in our interests to be biased, it questions tournament integrity etc. etc. That's not to say we can't respect them as players, but that's a seperate issue.
I've been to 3 PTs as a judge and my own personal point of view is I couldn't give a rat's arse about the pro-players. Many push the rules to the limits (because its in their interests) and a few break those rules and, if caught, are punished appropriately. I personally have no qualms about issuing penalties to pro players, and in fact even merited a personal complaint from one in his twitter feed the next day because he felt hard done by for getting one (I don't follow it myself but another judge who had been at my side when I gave the penalty does). It made me laugh
On a related note, sometimes you'd be suprised at how shockingly bad the pro-players can be in the game. Seriously. Just downright terrible. So don't assume that pro-players function at 100% super-human ability all the time.
Chile! HURRAH!
Can't wait - I love that place. And this time when I visit I'm going to the glaciar just down the road, instead of doing bugger all waiting for my knee to heal after a motorbike accident in Peru
Wall of Omens is almost single-handedly responsable for turning my losing streak against Boss Naya to a 6-0 record. As it happens, seemingly everyone changed to aggro here post-RoE so I'm laughing
Hard to believe the only artifact that adds more than 1 coloured mana is the gem.
Wherefore art though, oh signets? Which of course has now got me thinking about this deck in extended - at least we'd have tutors for that enchantment...
Of all the finishers, the Eldrazi wins by cool, but frankly Banefire is probably the way to go, at least until people start to side in redirection effects
I would also back Mind Spring, particularly if running the Chalice. If you 'combo' without the gem in play, you'd still likely be drawing 6+ cards on turn 5 which is fairly epic. Also, it allows 'chaining' / ramping, again, to help you without the full combo (I do this occasionally in UW, and frankly I end up with 15+ mana in play quite often - so now of course I'm eyeing up the Eldrazi! Must... resist...).
Collectors will pay more for collector items but will not pay beyond the market value for that particular card. If a card is being sold for $30 as a reprint the older versions will gravitate much more towards that $30 value regardless of the sway of collectors and as a result they will not be paying as much for those collector items as they were previously because theyre not worth as much.
As an example, what happened with Berserk in FTV: Exiled and the other variants?
A quick look at ABU shows Exiled version is roughly $45, while unlimited is around $80. This might be an indicator, but it's still not clear cut - if I recall Berserk was unrestricted only recently, so prices might be inflated artificially from people converting their 1 of's to a playset.
I also am not aware of what happened to the relevant prices just before and just after FTV:E came out - perhaps someone with more knowledge than I could chime in?
Another thing you aren't thinking about is leveller helpers.
Imagine a creature with one of the following:
- All creatures with a level counter gain shround.
- When ~this~ comes into play, put a level counter on each creature you control.
- Tap, put a level counter on target creature.
- At the beginning of the end step, if ~this~ was dealt damage, put a level counter on ~this~
- Whenever ~this~ attacks, put a level counter on target creature.
etc. Or variatons there-of.
Or, something like:
W instant - put 2 level counters on target creature.
W instant more expensive - put a level counter on each creature you control.
There's tons of ways of helping them along - bypassing costs is a classic way of helping a mechanic, as are alternative helpers.
Let's not forget that this is a stand-alone set, so they have to put in all the variations they have to do with leveller here. I wouldn't be suprised if something like my instant above gets spoiled at some point.
Oh, and of course, Maro will want to put in some sort of counter-doubling effect
It seems faster than the standard Junk list, slower than Zvi's, but more able to deal with opposing threats. I'm not sure if I like it or not yet.
I was HJ of a standard tournament at San Diego that Zvi won. His deck ran 4 Cobras, 4 Heirarchs and 4 birds. I can't say if this was a change from the PT, but it certainly could have explosive starts. On the other hand I saw a few games where he had 3-4 birds in play and nothing to ramp into. Of course sometimes those birds were heirarchs and things went a bit smoother.
All I can say is the deck looked fun, and Zvi himself said it was one of the more enjoyable decks he's played recently.
Personally I don't think that walking atlas is an error.
I thin it's actually part of a careful plan.
It seems to me that yes, it does signify that either RotE or the next block will feature a lot of colourless non-artifact cards, and that in all likelihood they are here to stay (because they open up a new design space).
For whichever expansion / block it'll be a major theme, DO expect to see a different frame. This card is just to alert us to the changes to come, and it's only a single card that in all honesty won't see much play outside of limited, and is unique enough (precisely because it's just one card) that players will quick enough pick up on it.
The new border in the relevant expansion will be much heralded by Wizards - why would they introduce it now on a single card and so limit their ability to hype it when it's a fully fledged theme?
It reminds me of Path to Exile - it was EXACTLY that, since next expansion - oh look! - remove from the game is now exile
I got to purchase all the "Holy Grails" of Magic from my teenage years. I don't plan on ever getting rid of any of this stuff. So now I just purchase a few specific cards here and there that I want to play with or that are necessary to stay competitive.
I'm slowly working on that myself, trying to round out my mox collection (green to go!).
But I generally don't buy singles, I love opening packs too much so I buy in lots of boxes, which means I have a biiiiig collection with lots of rubbish I don't seem to have the heart to get rid of.
I also gets lots of judge foils, and generally end up with some booster boxes from the big tournaments I work at.
As for how I pay them, I have a job
Just to clear up some more misconceptions, 'landfall' is an ability word. It has no meaning in and of itself. In other words, when you read any card with landfall on it, you can ignore the landfall itself, since it will always spell out what happens.
So, to summerise - 'landfall' on an instant or sorcery is NOT a trigger, it's simply a reminder that this card has *something* to do with lands. The bit that comes after the ability word will say exactly what you have to do.
If landfall worked the way some of you think it does, it'd be a triggered ability that only exists while on the stack. I'm wracking my brains but I can't think of any card like that that exists. There's a few with activated abilities only on the stack, but triggered? Help me out someone I don't dare say 'it doesn't exist' because there's just too many cards in existance to make an uneducated blanket statement like that!
Certainly if I wanted to be a pro player, I'd be looking to bend every possible rule to gain advantage, whether its clock abuse, shuffling abuse, intimidation etc.
The number of pros who do that crap with the cards in hand (cycling through them) while 'thinking' is huge. They use it to distract, but from my experience also think it somehow makes them look like they are doing something when they aren't, so often get suprised when judges call them on slow play. Annoys the hell out of me.
Anyway, the rules state that you must play at a reasonable pace. This is an area wide open for discussion and interpretation, but it boils down to 'There's a clock. Your own rate of play must not be detrimental to your opponent playing his own game.'
As an example of the problems that face us, as judges, here's an example to make you think about where our job starts to stop stalling, but could affect the game result:
Player A is playing mono blue with lots of counterspells. He has a bit of a bad run of luck and now has 4 lands in hand.
Player B wishes to play something, and wary of counterspells, always checks with his opponent to see if something resolves.
Now, every time B casts something, A looks at his hand and thinks. He doesn't want to give away the fact he's counterless, but he's clearly wasting time.
What does the judge do?
* Not that I'm saying he has done this, but its certainly worthy of thought.
I've never seen evidence that the DCI backs up the judges 'just because'. If we make mistakes (and we do, we are human after all) then other judges tell us. I've made mistakes, and undoubtedly will do so again in the future. All we can do is apologise and be better in the future. Judges can get a lot of help from the DCI, but its not in the form of blind back-up. If we screw up, they (they being other judges) will do their best to help us learn from them.
However, none of the above is relevant to this particular case
The DCI does not persecute people 'considered' cheaters. Possibly I worded my original post wrong, but when the DCI looks in the history of a player under investigation, I am referring to penalties issued in previous tournaments, not rumour and hearsay! You know how when you screw up in a tournament, and the judge writes out the penalty on that slip? These get stuck into a big database that certain judges can pull out, and see ALL of the infractions that player has committed in his entire magic-playing past.
THIS is what I'm referring to by 'history', nothing else. I'd hardly say that this amounts to persecuting.
Also, the mere fact that someone makes a lot of mistakes doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion he's cheating. Any infraction in a game of magic that is not classed as cheating is deemed to have been accidental / unintentional, so I doubt they'd be used as leverage to up someone's ban for cheating. Don't ignore the part where I originally wrote that its highly likely that previous form is far less important than you'd think.
FunkyMo made a very good point - stalling is one of the hardest cheats to catch and is very insidious. I've been in plenty of borderline cases and generally would simply have to give the player the benefit of the doubt.
Stalling is one of the hardest calls for any judge, and no-one simply walks up to a table and goes 'Stalling!' - read the notes earlier in this thread for how the judges came to their decision.
But, there are plenty of players who do use the clock to their advantage, and they should beware!
Sadly, cheaters can get away with cheating occasionally, but, if you get caught, the punishment will be severe.
I'd be curious to know why you don't think of the DCI as a trust-worthy bunch? Obviously I don't know every judge individually, but I've had the opportunity to get to know judges from all over the world. Different people and areas have different styles of judging, but they all aim to uphold the rules as best they can, and ensure a fair and even playing field within tournaments. I don't always see eye-to-eye with every judge, nor agree with 100% of DCI policy, and I know many judges feel this way. What we SHOULDN'T do is handle rules differently whether we agree with them or not.
Rules and policy are constantly discussed and occasionally changed, to help us to provide you guys with the best tournaments we can. When I see a player who doesn't trust judges or the DCI, I'm always eager to know why, and potentially help resolve things if its within my grasp.
1) Saito's ban being longer than others for more serious offences.
Firstly, the judges of the event are not responsible for determining the ban. All they do is investigate this offence, DQ if necessary and do the paperwork (yes there is some!).
The DCI has an independant panel of high level judges who determine if and for how long a player gets banned. Factors are:
- Severity of offence (bear in mind stalling is CHEATING. He was not bending the rules, he was breaking them).
- History (but muuuuuuuch less so than you'd think).
- Reports (both from the judges in question and the player [EDIT] and witnesses if relevant [/EDIT]).
This last one is important. If a player shows no remorse for his actions, and much worse doesn't accept he did anything wrong, then he's going to get a longer ban than if he genuinely accepted the errors of his ways. Having read his CF mail, I imagine this is his problem and led to the 'harshness' of the penalty.
2) Players being 'targeted' by judges.
Judges have very clear instructions to never look at the history of a player outside a given tournament when looking at rules violations. We just don't have the information to track players and it wouldn't be fair. The only people who can impose penalties based on accumulation of infractions over multiple tournaments is the DCI panel, and they do it incredibly rarely, and if memory serves me, only when yet another penalty prompts it (IE no-one receives a ban 'out of nowhere'.)
3) Judges been in awe of pro-players and are lenient.
I can't state definitively this, but I'd be highly suprised. Why? Judges are lovers of the *GAME* not individuals. For those of us lucky enough to work high level events, its simply not in our interests to be biased, it questions tournament integrity etc. etc. That's not to say we can't respect them as players, but that's a seperate issue.
I've been to 3 PTs as a judge and my own personal point of view is I couldn't give a rat's arse about the pro-players. Many push the rules to the limits (because its in their interests) and a few break those rules and, if caught, are punished appropriately. I personally have no qualms about issuing penalties to pro players, and in fact even merited a personal complaint from one in his twitter feed the next day because he felt hard done by for getting one (I don't follow it myself but another judge who had been at my side when I gave the penalty does). It made me laugh
On a related note, sometimes you'd be suprised at how shockingly bad the pro-players can be in the game. Seriously. Just downright terrible. So don't assume that pro-players function at 100% super-human ability all the time.
Can't wait - I love that place. And this time when I visit I'm going to the glaciar just down the road, instead of doing bugger all waiting for my knee to heal after a motorbike accident in Peru
Play this, bring back greaves, equip, attack, enjoy
Wherefore art though, oh signets? Which of course has now got me thinking about this deck in extended - at least we'd have tutors for that enchantment...
BTW legacy weapon isn't in standard.
Of all the finishers, the Eldrazi wins by cool, but frankly Banefire is probably the way to go, at least until people start to side in redirection effects
I would also back Mind Spring, particularly if running the Chalice. If you 'combo' without the gem in play, you'd still likely be drawing 6+ cards on turn 5 which is fairly epic. Also, it allows 'chaining' / ramping, again, to help you without the full combo (I do this occasionally in UW, and frankly I end up with 15+ mana in play quite often - so now of course I'm eyeing up the Eldrazi! Must... resist...).
A quick look at ABU shows Exiled version is roughly $45, while unlimited is around $80. This might be an indicator, but it's still not clear cut - if I recall Berserk was unrestricted only recently, so prices might be inflated artificially from people converting their 1 of's to a playset.
I also am not aware of what happened to the relevant prices just before and just after FTV:E came out - perhaps someone with more knowledge than I could chime in?
Got thinking about it as a means of accelerating level up.
Imagine a creature with one of the following:
- All creatures with a level counter gain shround.
- When ~this~ comes into play, put a level counter on each creature you control.
- Tap, put a level counter on target creature.
- At the beginning of the end step, if ~this~ was dealt damage, put a level counter on ~this~
- Whenever ~this~ attacks, put a level counter on target creature.
etc. Or variatons there-of.
Or, something like:
W instant - put 2 level counters on target creature.
W instant more expensive - put a level counter on each creature you control.
There's tons of ways of helping them along - bypassing costs is a classic way of helping a mechanic, as are alternative helpers.
Let's not forget that this is a stand-alone set, so they have to put in all the variations they have to do with leveller here. I wouldn't be suprised if something like my instant above gets spoiled at some point.
Oh, and of course, Maro will want to put in some sort of counter-doubling effect
All I can say is the deck looked fun, and Zvi himself said it was one of the more enjoyable decks he's played recently.
I thin it's actually part of a careful plan.
It seems to me that yes, it does signify that either RotE or the next block will feature a lot of colourless non-artifact cards, and that in all likelihood they are here to stay (because they open up a new design space).
For whichever expansion / block it'll be a major theme, DO expect to see a different frame. This card is just to alert us to the changes to come, and it's only a single card that in all honesty won't see much play outside of limited, and is unique enough (precisely because it's just one card) that players will quick enough pick up on it.
The new border in the relevant expansion will be much heralded by Wizards - why would they introduce it now on a single card and so limit their ability to hype it when it's a fully fledged theme?
It reminds me of Path to Exile - it was EXACTLY that, since next expansion - oh look! - remove from the game is now exile
But I generally don't buy singles, I love opening packs too much so I buy in lots of boxes, which means I have a biiiiig collection with lots of rubbish I don't seem to have the heart to get rid of.
I also gets lots of judge foils, and generally end up with some booster boxes from the big tournaments I work at.
As for how I pay them, I have a job
Play this at end of your opponent's turn (granted pay full price), exile their BSA, and then attack with your token in your turn
So, to summerise - 'landfall' on an instant or sorcery is NOT a trigger, it's simply a reminder that this card has *something* to do with lands. The bit that comes after the ability word will say exactly what you have to do.
If landfall worked the way some of you think it does, it'd be a triggered ability that only exists while on the stack. I'm wracking my brains but I can't think of any card like that that exists. There's a few with activated abilities only on the stack, but triggered? Help me out someone