Hello guys, especially Dnemiller.

After the revelation of the new rule, which awards victory on time limit only 2 points, many players came with opinion that this rule can be abused easily.

Player A is going to lose the game, but he wants his friend C, playing on the second table, to have better position than his opponent B. So he lurks his units and slows the game until the time is up.

How should we avoid this? Can you force opponent to give up, when his loss is inevitable? Shall we set up a time limit for a turn? Then what would be a reasonable time? Please help

That would be considered stalling, and you need to call the judge over. A lot of this will be up to the judges discretion, and just try to remember, calling the judge is NOT a bad thing.

I think there tends to be a stigma against calling the judge over, especially with local groups, that needs to be overcome.

If you don't have a judge, then you aren't playing DCI, so this is not a real concern to you.

And it is always a judgement call for the judge. That is why the judge needs to watch the game. Most times, that will speed up a player because they know they are being watched. Fairly certain a judge is allowed to make them play an extra round as well, don't know if it is in the SW floor rules, or just the general DCI rules.

Yes we do have a person identified as a judge, but here are not enough players to let one stand aside and not play (weekly tournaments and monthly one bigger). We use DCI reporter and report the results. I just consider DCI rules reasonable, but than I guess I have no way to set up this rule, if we don´t call somebody to observe.

Can you at least advise time limit for a turn? not binding by DCI, but advised by you (sithborg, Lobostele...) it still will have an impact

I go by rounds, rather than a strict time limit per turn. The reason being is that a player is not allowed any additional time because they brought 18 activations vs if they had brought 6. They have roughly 30 minutes allotted to them, but they are also not free to do with that 30 minutes as they like either. They are required by the slow play and stalling rules to play at a pace that offers a reasonable possibility for the game to be completed by the time limit.

So for a basic groundwork. 4 rounds of play in an hour is not enough. 6 rounds is the absolute minimum, however, I consider that slow play on someone's part as well. Generally, 8-10 rounds of play is the fairest requirement. Usually, one player or the other will be a clear winner by the end of 8-10 rounds, so your goal from the outset should be to get that far (IMHO).

That means you have about 6 minutes per round between the two of you. Understand, that some rounds will inevitably be much longer than others, but you can use this as a benchmark. For example, some "slow players" will do things like take 12 minutes to decide on their set up locations, measuring every los, counting out first movements, etc. That is not allowed. If you get to the 15 minute mark, and you are still in round 1, you generally know right then and there that your game has 0 chance of being played to completion, and one or both players are violating the slow play rules.

Round 1 should never take much more than 3-4 minutes, excluding a few minutes of set up (some tournaments require all set up done before the clock starts - which I am a fan of). Some maps can make this take longer, but in most cases, especially on the restricted map list (the one that will be used at events where the new scoring system actually has the power to change the rankings) this is not an issue. Rounds 2-4 can either take minimal time, or a lot, depending on when the action starts. Once the action starts, unless you are stalling, the rounds go quite quickly as pieces die, the choices per round are lessened, and there is simply less to do overall. So generally, if you are in round 4 by 30 minutes, you are likely playing fast enough to complete. If you are not, you need to watch for slow play. Usually, the last 2-3 rounds of a game are very fast, and often don't need to be played at all (concessions when it's clearly over and you don't want to go commander chasing).

So in my measuring system, I look at the following benchmarks to tell me if a player is slow playing or not. (Understand I am a fast player, so in my case any slow downs are almost always entirely the fault of my opponents).

End of round 1 - 10 minutes in (less if set up time was not included).
15 minute mark - starting round 3
30 minute mark - starting round 4
45 minute mark - Rounds 6-8
60 minute mark (understand this is more of a marker for players to become self aware, as you need to call the judge well before this point in order to deal with slow play) - 6 rounds completed minimum. And I do not consider a game that has completed 5 rounds, where init is rolled and time is called to fit this minimum. There is no excuse for playing only 6 rounds (against me). It is always slow play if we haven't reached that point in the game. Usually, if we are in round 6 at this point, the total time of play is something like 45 minutes to 15 minutes in favor of my opponent.

This is true, but that is not what he is saying. He is saying that their "judge" PLAYS in their tournaments. That is a problem. The reason why they have this situation is because of any lack of an authority figure as judge.

To be fair, at our local venue, the T.O. and the Judge are the same person, and it's the people who run the store. In all honesty, they know very little about the SWMs game, and we basically just judge ourselves. But if there's ever any dispute about the rules, there are 3-4 people in the group that are viewed as 'in charge' more or less. If the dispute really gets out of hand, then we just consult all 3-4 of those guys, and get them all to weigh in, and then we come to a decision together.

I know it's not ideal, and to some degree, it skirts the rules a little bit, but it's tough (to nearly impossible) to find someone who's knowledgeable enough about the game to be a proper judge, and is also willing to sit out from playing at the same time.

Sounds to me like in this situation, there's just a couple people who are spoil-sports, and are playing more to win, rather than playing to have fun. IMO, they'll do more damage to the LGS group with that kind of attitude in the long run, that it's more important to focus on that root of the problem, rather than the symptom that they are trying to abuse the new system.

In any case, the new scoring rules don't go into effect officially until DCI updates their software (if that ever happens, lol). So, if people are trying to abuse it right now, then just don't use the new scoring format.

Such as what? There is now a clear rule on what dictates slow play in the floor rules (it was moved from the Universal rules to the SW because people like you complained about it supposedly not being defined in the rules).

There is only one clear rule that can be defined about it, which is what we have. We've looked at this for years and no one to date has come up with anything better.

The rule is, "both players must play at a speed to allow the game to realistically complete in the time limit". Sure, a judge has to rule it. Big deal, they've always had to. Because this has always been the rule.

I'm pretty sure I just wrote up the guidelines I've used when judging a few posts above. As to anything "official", well you may remember, I talked about doing just that months ago, and was basically told by the community that they did not want anything like that in the floor rules. I agree, it would be nice, but there is really no need for an "official guideline" anyways - since I trust you can see that would be a bit of a paradox. :)

I think people focus on the points way too much, without doing any math whatsoever, and without looking at it realistically.

Cybit, you are claiming that it will matter a great deal in events with 16+ players.

That is BS. Here's why.

4 round event.
4-0 0 Full Win = 8pts
4-0 1 FW = 9pts
4-0 1 FW = 9pts
3-1 3 FW = 9pts

In a four round event, 4-0 player must not finish a single game in time, and the 3-1 must finish every win in time. You should not feel sorry for the 4-0 player, in fact, they get exactly what they deserve in this case. The rules say, that you should be playing at a speed that allows the game to complete. If they are incapable of finishing even a single game, then they are violating the rules consistently. That is slow play. I understand judges haven't called it often enough in the past, and this is one way to deal with it. But further, think about how rare this occasion would really be. With just one game

Now we go to 5 rounds. Which requires an event of 17+ players. Only regionals conventions generally fall into this place, but let's see the actual likely effects anyways.

5-0 0FWs = 10pts
5-0 1FW = 11
5-0 2FW = 12
4-1 4FWs = 12
4-1 3FWs = 11
4-1 2FWs = 10

As you can see, even here, the 5-0 needs to win 1 game under the time limit. And when you have had 5 chances, and have still failed to do it even once, then by all means, you are slow playing and the rules should not award you the win. With 2 of his 5 games not going to time, the 5-0 ensures first place. Not that it should even matter, because the odds of a 4-1 completing all 4 games under the time limit are not great.

As to the concern of abuse of the system, well you need to actually sit down, and prove it can in fact be done. The odds of a single player even having an effect like that, without being caught, is pretty slim. In fact, it actually would take a group of 4-5 players all colluding against 1 player to even have a chance at succeeding. Of course that's a bannable offense from any tournament and from DCI.

I'm not disputing anything said by Klecser or Lobostele earlier, but I did want to respond to your question directly.

What you are describing is illegal, and if done intentionally, it merits a DQ for that player from the tournament. But I understand the difficulty of not having a real judge in determining either of those. The deal is, you should talk to your players about how you want to solve it. The DCI floor rules are designed to be run according to all the DCI rules (which includes having a non-player judge who knows the rules well). When you take liberties with one part of the system (which I have no problem with locally), you have to understand that there will be potential problems occurring. So you as a group together need to determine what to do about it. It isn't a problem with the rules at all. In reality, the level of abuse of the new rules is not even in the same ballpark as the level of abuse under the old system.

And again, I come back to this from a math perspective. The only way your scenario works, is if player A, has already allowed it to happen, by not finishing his/her earlier games (or later games should this been an early game). Player B's effect on the tournament is 0 not matter what they do in a 9 or less person tournament. It's probably less than 1% in a 10-16, and likely the same even in a 17+ event. One game does not make that big of a difference, unless you as player A have set yourself up for that possibility by playing slow the rest of the event.

But even if given that there is some possibility of abuse, compare that to the current system. Where a slow player can not only slow a game down, but actually steal wins from another player without any consequences. Further, while the top level players are generally immune, we are not totally. I've lost due to slow play before. But it's the lower levels of play that are most affected by slow play. The newer, younger players don't know how to deal with a slow player, and frequently lose to the tactic. They then learn the lesson that slow play is what wins, and it feeds on itself. This is so much more of the issue, than any possible abusive situation that to me, it isn't worth worrying about.

What I suggest is talk to your group about it, and come up with your own plan of what will work.

I highlighted the the main fault of your concern in bold.

The points are concerned with finishing a game or not in the time limit. In order to qualify for a full win when that has not occurred, a judge must have been called much earlier in the round. However, your concern is actually more in play under the old system anyways, than it is under this. In the old system, you needed a judge to understand (and interpret) the slow play rules correctly (which I would bet well over 50% did not do so because of the ambiguities to it). And you had to call them long before the end of a round. And considering that the non-slow player would often prefer to allow it than to call a judge, we had something like 80% of all games going to time at many tournaments. I believe your venue was one who reported something like that at on time.

This system is pretty cut and dry compared to the old one. In the new one, you either get a full win worth 3 or a tie breaker win worth 2. There really isn't much for the judge to do at the end of the game, aside from the occasional (my opponent spent the last round running to prevent my kill) kinds of questions. But those are pretty easy for the judge to look at the board and determine, compared to the difficulty of identifying slow play (especially when most judges confuse slow play with stalling).

And as to the issue of an opponent running in the last round to prevent the full win, I've got no problem with judges using their own discretion. Some will be liberal with awarding the full win, and some will be conservative. Either is fine, provided they are relatively consistent throughout the tournament, and communicate with their players (same thing they had to do with slow play and stalling before, accept now in a much less important scenario). In the old system, it was either change the outcome of the game or not. Under this, the questions are around 2pts or 3pts, much less about changing outcomes for a game played unfairly. Of course that point is still there to a degree, but that's part of the psychological factor of this change. Most players will inadvertently play faster with this motivation. Which actually makes abusive slow play easier for judges to spot and stop.