There has been a lot of talk recently on the topic of time management and slow play. This is not exclusive to the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, and has recently become a hot-button topic with Magic: The Gathering since recent discussions about clock manipulation from Tomoharo Saito, one of the most well known pro players from Japan and a candidate for the 2010 Magic Hall of Fame. I was not at Grand Prix Columbus, the event where this discussion stemmed from, and I do not know Saito personally, so I will refrain from offering my opinion specifically about him in regards to this subject. There are plenty of people who have done that anyway, including some of his friends on the Pro Tour as well as spectators from the event. You can read more up on the Saito story, along with some great debate on the subject of clock manipulation, over at Billy Moreno's blog by clicking here (this is the same blog that was featured here yesterday).
I'm bringing this up for discussion today because it has relevance to the World of Warcraft TCG community. For those of you who followed the Sunday coverage for the World Championship, you most likely know that both of Brad Watson's matches went to time. This is due to the deck that he and Stuart Wright chose to play: The Arcane Mage Spellweaver Jihan. Note: In NO way am I insinuating anything about the players of this match, but rather the situations that arose. If Brad were slow-playing in his quarter-final match, he wouldn't have felt the need to do so in the semi-finals as time would not favor his match-up against Ian Johnson. This is related to the procedure of the clock in the WoW TCG and what slow-playing is, and is not related to the players in the example.
With that warning out of the way, the quarter-finals had an interesting situation arise. In Brad's match versus Niles Rowland, who was piloting Death Wish, he was down a game versus the Warrior. I should note, by the way, that these games were long. You see, Brad's deck of choice was very good at creating a situation where he couldn't lose, thanks to Conjured Cinnamon Roll as well as the Netherbreath Spellblade/Mystic Denial/Slow hard-lock. However, Brad's deck won games primarily on concessions from the opponent. He has pretty close to no way in which to destroy an opposing hero in a reasonable amount of time, and this applies especially to a Solo Warrior which can mitigate all damage a Mage could try to deal thanks to its armors.
This is pretty much what happened during Brad's second game in the semi-finals. After losing a devastating counter-war with Niles in which his own Slow ended up on his own hero thanks to Spell Ricochet, Brad was able to lock down Niles' hero with Hard-Packed Snowball. This bought him enough time to find Flickers from the Past, which Niles no longer had enough interrupts to stop. The 7-cost Mage ability pretty much sealed Niles' shot of winning, as it slammed him with a Slow and another Hard- Snowball, and it also put a Mystic Denial into play to shut off any play he might have on his next turn. Once this was set up, Brad could use Netherbreath Spellblade to keep looping Mystic Denial, giving him the hard-lock needed with the opposing Warrior hero tied up in hard-packed snow every turn.
However, Niles didn't concede. They instead played out the game as how it was expected to go. Niles would draw, play a card that would get interrupted by Mystic Denial, and then end his turn. Brad would skip his draw step to recur the ability, and would play it on the next card that Niles would play. He'd skip his draw phase, returning nothing, and then pass back to Niles, who would get Mystic Denial off of the field by playing another card. This process was repeated until Niles decked out.
Time was called a few turns before Niles ran out of cards, and if it were called just a few seconds earlier, Brad would not have won that game before the end-of-round procedure gave the match to Niles for being up a game. Brad then won the third game in sudden death.
This little incident brings up a lot of questions regarding tournament guidelines, rules, and ethics. Was Niles right to do this? There are no rules that force him to concede if his opponent can't actually 'win' the game. A judge can't 'order' him to concede to save time, because that isn't fair to Niles. In his defense, he played his turns when going through the motions under the hard-lock Brad put him in relatively fast, taking no more than five seconds a turn. One could argue that if he took a little longer for a few of those turns, he would have been the one facing Ian Johnson in the semi-finals. However, would that have been unsportsmanlike conduct? According to people who were watching the match, Niles took less time to play this match than Brad did. Wasn't it his right to take a little more time at points?
This is an obvious moral gray area. If you were in the same situation as Niles, wouldn't you want to slow down your play by a few seconds here and there? Doing so would have given you a shot at $50,000 instead of a quarter-final cash prize. However, would that have been unsportsmanlike conduct? That could be argued as unsportsmanlike conduct, or cheating via stalling the clock.
From my perspective on this, if Niles took a little more time on a few key turns, such as the one where he had an interrupt-war with Brad over a played Slow, it would be in his right. That was, after all, a pivotal turn of the game. Going through his hand, what Brad had in his graveyard, etc. was completely in his right, especially given how many resources each player had at that point.
However, if Niles took more than ten seconds during the turns he was hard-locked, it would look like an obvious attempt at getting the clock to end before he'd deck out. That crosses into the borders of unsportsmanlike conduct. This is because he would start slowing his play in order to win the only way he knows that he's guaranteed to: on time. This would be a clear attempt at stalling in order to win on a technical rule, and is against the policies for this game at a tournament. It wouldn't matter if Brad took up more time during that match. If Niles slowed his play once he realized it was the only way he could win, it would be against the rules.
This also brings up the situation Brad was in. Considering he lost the first game, he'd obviously be interested in getting to game three as soon as possible in order to not risk losing the match during the second game. However, one could also argue that he was not playing at a reasonable pace. Should a judge have enforced the slow play warning here?
This is not the only issue involving slow play that came up during the weekend. However, I felt that this was the most unique story that came up. There's a lot to go off of from this situation. What do you think? In the narrow context, do you feel what Niles did was right? Should Brad have been asked to pick up the pace of his play? What about the idea of taking more time to go over your decisions, knowing that you would be favored if time was called during the second game?
I'd also like to see what your thoughts are on the broader context. What is the line between time management and unsportsmanlike conduct?
I'll post my more opinionated thoughts on this subject tomorrow afternoon. For now, I'll leave what was posted here today as my thoughts, and will go into more detail on them tomorrow.
Like your article, and I like the subject, but yeah - this is something that's very hard to enforce as a judge. I'd like to see some sort of system like Go implemented - each player only has 20 minutes per match that they can bring to the table; if they exceed that time their turns have to take less than 10 seconds per action or something like that.
ReplyDeleteI think Niles should have taken longer, looked through Brad's GY etc. and have pushed things to the limit forcing Brad to call a Judge if he felt it was slow play. If a Mage has no other way of winning other than the opponent conceding or decking out, it deserves to lose on Slow play.
ReplyDeleteThats why Slow mages traditionally had Britalize. It gave them a resaonable clock 2-4 damage a turn once the lock is set up, plus it kills the armor. But since Brad's deck went for the arguably more effective snowball, his deck really cant win.
ReplyDeleteAbout slow play, I think that Niles had every right to play a little slower. A player is expected to be held to a "reasonable pace of play" and 10-20 secs per turn is even rushing it, alot. So I dont see why Niles rushed. Just like how judges rule for slow play when the board is extreamly complicated, and you are just playing normally. Therefore, slow play is completely independant of complexity of board state. Why should judges give slow play warnings when you take a "resonable amount of time" despite the fact that the board state is not complicated at all?
I watched the match on ggslive, and I think Watson was playing way too slowly this game. I understand you had complicate situations, but the games really took forever. I'm not saying he was intentionally slow playing (although he very well could have been), but he was still being too slow, and should have taken a Slow Play infraction that game. His opponent really impressed me because he was playing pretty fast all the game, and he really took care of not slowplaying in that second game, which I'm not sure everybody would have done, especially given the speed at which Watson had played both games.
ReplyDeleteAlso, about the chess/go system : this wouldn't work, as they are way too many priority windows at WoW to work.
ReplyDeleteBrad's deck was designed to abuse the core power cards of control Mage and had no really win condition outside of infinite Simon-says.
ReplyDeleteYour article in on slow play. Even though Brad demonstrated an infinite lock that would lead to his opponent decking, Niles should not be required to conceed his match. I see no morality to be debated here. I probably feel this way because I don't want to see these types of do nothing decks promoted as favorites. It's boring.
I did not see Brad's matches and really don't want to comment on that. At Nats I considered calling a judge on one of my opponents for slow play and decided against doing so. My observation was that my opponent was not stalling, but in fact actually playing slow due to mirade cards impacting the current game state. In the end, I won the match and I believe based on game state that my opponent's slow play cost them the match.
What I think is more important to debate is do we want to have a format where this type of do-nothing mage control deck is a dominant force? Do people consider this deck and it's variants (Varanis) to be top classic decks?
What I heard about the Niles/Brad matchup, was that Brad took significant time playing his turns in the first game, and then started playing his turns in less than 1 second when he realized his only way to win was via decking. Niles, on the other hand, played at a constant speed the entire match.
ReplyDeleteI even heard that at one point that Brad had convinced the judge to force Niles to play faster, even though Brad was playing significantly slower than the current pace in game 1. Since brad was playing at lightning speed, the judge assumed Niles was playing slower than he was in the entire match.
According to the rules, time left in the round should not impact the time it takes for a player to make his plays. I think the two real questions are: Was brad breaking the rules by manipulating time in the match, and was the Judge wrong to force Niles to play faster in game 2?
As a judge, I can say that slow play has been talked about a lot behind the scenes between me and many of the other judges. Slow play is a very hard issue to regulate. Unfortunately, it is completely subjective and there can be no hard fast rule for what is considered slow play. In addition, it is so hard to deal with slow play in large tournaments where there is only 1 judge to 7-10 matches going on in a tournament. We can't watch every single game for slow play. Even though we try.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, the argument that we are in a complex situation, is completely invalid. The situation is only 1 play different from the previous situation. If you were aware of the situation previous to the last play then it should be just a matter of absorbing the information from the last play.
As for this type of deck, IMO, having a deck that has only a decking out win condition with nothing to speed up that process is terrible imo. Unfortunately, R&D has allowed this type of deck to flourish with the amount or permission and recursion cards they have provided to the mage class.
Teproc,
ReplyDeleteI didn't quite consider that. I have a Chess Timer at home that I occasionally use to time games between friends (for serious testing). When a priority window is passed to the other player, we press the button (the opponent's time is then eating away). I would propose using something like that (so that when your opponent is "on the button" it's his time ticking away, not yours, regardless of whose turn it is).
I know it's too complicated to implement. I just wish. :)
I don't think there should be hard time limits in top eight games.
ReplyDeleteI actually had an interesting discussion with a friend involving the addition of a clock of some kind, and generally it always came down to it being far too hard to implement. I'd like to touch on that a little tomorrow as well.
ReplyDeleteAs for the hard time limits on top 8 games, it was far from ideal, but also required as staff etc had to be cleared out of the building at a specified time. They barely got everything done in time.
It's kind of amusing that a slow play warning actually benefits decks with deck out as their only win condition. As we saw with the Brad vs Niles match one more turn can make the difference.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of a deck that can't kill the opponent really bugs me.
ReplyDeleteI think Niles had every right to play the game out, in a timely fashion.
Maybe there could be some kind of rule regarding hard locks.
Like if you're locked, or believe your opponent is, you could call a judge, who knows your deck lists, and they could decide whether there was any chance of getting out of the lock. And a decision could be made from there.
Let's say the aforementioned game had been stopped like this.
I think it would be impossible to fairly judge whether the locked player would deck out or not, before time. But it's equally impossible to fairly judge whether he is slow playing or not.
So after a hard lock is called, the rule could be: "there is no need to play the rest, and to avoid speculations about slow play, the locked player looses". That would favor Slow Mage a lot.
Or you could have a system like Chess, where games can end in Remis.
After a slow lock is called, judges decide whether the locking player has a chance at winning before time. If not, it's a draw.
It's not true that brad can't kill his opponent other than via decking by the way. Spellblade recurring Taste of Arcana would work, or hitting the hero with the Spellblade. It didn't work here because Niles had armor, but Brad's deck had actually a legitimate way to win through damage.
ReplyDeleteI don't like the idea of drawing, seeing how this happens in Magic all the time (people will intentionally draw as soon as they're mathematically locked into top8/day2 if they keep drawing. It may be the last solution , but I don't think it's impossible to actually punish Slow Play hardly enough for players to be careful with it.
I applaud Niles for playing at the speed he did. Yes, had he taken a little more time, he could have won. His display of good sportsmanship is worth much more than the extra money he would have won in my books.
ReplyDeleteBrad has always been known for being a cautious player. I feel the pace at which he plays is in the gray-area more often than not (And his deck choices match this play speed). Not long enough to suffer an infraction but long enough to frustrate his opponent/observers and to bring up discussions like this one.
On the topic of Brad's deck, he chose to make it with an inherent flaw. (Relying on the Netherbreath Spellblade to earn concessions) Yes, he has a legitimate chance to win via Taste of Arcana and attacking with Netherbreath Spellblade. Both of those options were neutralized by Nile's deck.
Two situations:
ReplyDeletePlayer A has Voidfire Wand and Netherbreath Spellblade in play. He has no cards in his graveyard or deck, no cards in his hand, no face up resources, and his hero is face down. He has 1 resource in play. He's declared an intent to attack his opponent with Voidfire Wand every turn. His hero is a mage, he has 24 damage on him.
His opponent is a priest with 1 damage on him. He has 1 face down resource, a face-down hero, no cards in hand, and a Burst of Knowledge and Hand of Edward the Odd in play. On each of his opponents turns, any time he is passed priority, he thinks for between 5 and 10 seconds before passing back or using Burst of Knowledge. Is this stalling?
It's game 3 and there are 12 minutes on the clock. Now is it stalling?
Logically, this situation is equivalent to the one with Niles. The opponent of the Voidfire Wand (Or Netherbreath/Slow/Mystic Denial/2xHPSB) player HAS legal plays to make, but they're completely inconsequential. Brad and the Voidfire player have both stated exactly what they're going to do for the next X turns until the end of the game--in Brad's case: If you play any card, I play Mystic Denial on it. If you throw Snowball at me, I'll throw it at you. If you declare an attack, I'll Snowball you. If I would draw a card, I will skip it, always returning a Mystic Denial if possible and any other card or nothing if not. This is a very simple, mathematical process. Only one thing can happen is response to anything Niles can do, and both players Niles' deck, so they know he can't do anything to stop this logical, mathematical, precise chain of events from occurring until he decks out.
Essentially, once Brad declares what he is going to do, the game is over. Playing it out is really just a technicality.
In my humble opinion the game needs a few cards that can break open these locks from the graveyard
ReplyDeleteexample: an ally or ability that says "remove this card from the graveyard to destroy ability or something "
in this case there would either be an ally that kills the mage or the mage deny's it and it activates the effect of destroy slow or whatever
would be a really good way to stop "you can't win locks " and would enforce the people actually packing 1-2 win conditions in the deck
as for slow playing , people will always play slower if it favors them
I saw if from the local level up to a national level , if you can win by stalling , you do it ... and as long as you don't stall excesively , I think it's a legitimate move , since you can't be expected to rush your moves just so your opponent doesn't loose on time
Neither player did anything wrong in principle.
ReplyDeleteNiles showed defiance in choosing non-concession, a valid strategy especially if the intent was to fluster Brad into potentially making play mistakes in the third game.
If Niles intentionally slow played then he should have been punished. If Brad falsely accused Niles of slow play then Brad should have been punished. Note "should"; proving either would be difficult and probably entirely down to judge discretion.
I used to play another CCG with a friend who is registered blind and, without a photographic memory, took a very long time to read the cards and constantly remember the gamestate. Should they be punished for slow play arising from disability?