Timeouts in Finals: Do they happen too often?

Lemminkäinen wrote:

KevinM wrote:

I know half a dozen serious Imbued players and none of them play slowly. In fact, they play faster than when they are playing with vampires.

This is sounding more and more like a local issue for you and nothing that the game or the community needs to address.

Eh, I think that it is pretty obvious that some deck types and some cards are slower than others. If an Imbued player has 40 cards on the table with some moving around, some getting tapped, some hopping to and fro from the ash heap it will certainly take me more time to assess the situation and decide on an optimal course of play.

I've just told you that my experience is that it doesn't. If in your experience it does, tell your players to play faster, and help them find ways to do so if they aren't creative enough to figure things out for themselves. Making two ash heaps as an Imbued player, continually reordering your ash heap on other player's turns as an Ashur player, playing your deck over and over on JOL, etc. Figuring out how to play faster leads to one thing and one thing only -- more VPs.

You could also institute what my old board gaming club did -- no initiating an out-of-game conversation when it is your turn; you can answer all questions but you cannot start a conversation. Believe me, that speeds things up when you make a rule that says "Shut up and play".

Anyway, this thread is about finals. This whole discussion about slow cards vs slow players is very interesting, but it fails to address the difference between finals and round games.

Non-existant user wrote:

it fails to address the difference between finals and round games.

Part of the explanation may be that people are more stressed on the final, and a lot of people are less efficient and less concentrated when stressed.

Another one is that on the final you have less pression to go get a game win, so peoples are more likely to stall or turtle than to try to lunge.

(on round, you more or less need to get at least one GW to go to the final, and failing completely a game can still be salvaged on further round. On final, you only need to gave the most VP, and if you fail at a lunge and are ousted, you are out. It's common sense, but it does explain why people are less aggressive at finals)

Plus, let's not forget that people are often very tired in finals (at least i know i am)

4-6 hours of tense play in the 3 rounds that precede finals can and do take a toll on players. With that factor, and a pressure of finals, many players take that extra time to think things through, and make sure they are not forgetting something.

Aside from judges giving out slow-play warnings is there anything that can be done to give players incentive to play faster?

I can't think of any except the passive threat that they can't win if they don't earn a certain amount of VPs.

Aside from judges giving out slow-play warnings is there anything that can be done to give players incentive to play faster?

No, not really. Which is exactly why this is being discussed. Tournaments are simply too small for that and there is basically nothing at stake. I mean, over half the tournament reports on this site are about tournaments with 10-15 people where out of five finalists only 3 actually had a gamewin.

At bigger tournaments you see people generally play faster (especially in round 1 and 2) because you need at least a GW to make the finals. On EC Day 1, for example, the cutoff for day 2 is usually around 1GW4VP so people have more incentive to move on.

Also, at the EC in Paris the organization did a GREAT job at providing extra incentives to get gamewins in the form of boosters and starters for whomever got the gamewin and promo's for VP's. It worked pretty well on tables where I played. Especially for people that come mostly for fun and are not really interested in winning the whole thing, little extra's gives them a reason to try harder.

In Poland lasy year the price support was terrible, even for the finalist of the daily events and as a result the play attitude of a lot of people that I personally played with/against was different, especially in round 3. Some people, if they go 0-0 in the first two rounds they really can't be fucked anymore and start dicking around which may influence the results and chances of people who are, for example, 1GW2,5 and really need to score to move on.

On Day 2 of NAC/EC level events there is no chance to make the finals without a GW, although last year I believe 1GW4 was enough as there were TONS of timeouts in the prelims and Enrico and myself were the only ones with 2 GW. That at least provides some incentive to move on as long as you don't have a GW.

I'd be all for making surviving until time worth zero VP and removing the the VP you get for being sole survivor. Then remove GWs from tables that timed and the result will be that less shit times. As a bonus, you'd get rid of the ridiculous situation where a wall deck basically cannot lose a 4-player table (as at worst it gets a 2-2 split) and people that get 2 VP at a 4-player table can actually get a gamewin.

Izaak wrote:

Also, at the EC in Paris the organization did a GREAT job at providing extra incentives to get gamewins in the form of boosters and starters for whomever got the gamewin and promo's for VP's. It worked pretty well on tables where I played. Especially for people that come mostly for fun and are not really interested in winning the whole thing, little extra's gives them a reason to try harder.

I'm sure it worked fine but is appeal to greed really a great way for speeding up the game?

Izaak wrote:

I'd be all for making surviving until time worth zero VP and removing the the VP you get for being sole survivor. Then remove GWs from tables that timed and the result will be that less shit times. As a bonus, you'd get rid of the ridiculous situation where a wall deck basically cannot lose a 4-player table (as at worst it gets a 2-2 split) and people that get 2 VP at a 4-player table can actually get a gamewin.

And in the final? It is easy to decide that everyone loses in the preliminary games. In the final, someone must win, or so it seems, even when the table times out.

Ye finals are still a problem in that case.

Maybe there should be a similar rule for the finals as their is in the prelims: with 1,5 VP you don't get the GW. So the scenario where everyone jockeys for position to get the only VP at the table with 3 minutes to spare gets thrown out of the window. If nobody manages to get the GW, tough luck - the guy with highest seed wins by virtue of better prelims.

(Note that this is significantly different from the current situation where *everyone* can play the finals for 1 VP + timeout)

If you want to win, you have to oust people.