Timeouts in Finals: Do they happen too often?

nc-italy wrote:

KevinM wrote:

It is interesting that you cutoff my quote in the middle. Everything after what you cutoff answers your concerns, unless you have weak judges that are unwilling to enforce proper play -- and since you yourself have agreed with me and defined 5 minutes of Ashur'ing as slow, then we have no issues. Find strong judges.

You can't rely on judge in the very moment an effect makes to select *13* cards and also to choose one to put back in hand, as there's no rule forcing a player to select those 13 in advance or being specially quicker with such consistent selection decision, general point was another:
in the respect of timeouts (so pool gain *and* lenghty decisions) some effects, also one without table interaction as AT, just make typical slow play even more slower, and this is very true especially with AT which just made the master phase so boring slow nowadays

I guess you should have called a judge over after the 2nd Ashur was put onto the table. I would've, if I'd have had the issues that you've seemed to have had.

If you have finals and the judge is enot watching it or in immediate vicinity, something in wrong IMHO...

as such as 13 card retrival from ash heap

You are VASTLY overestimating the amount of decision-making it takes to dig up 13 cards. And if it's not, you're not ready to play Ashur decks which should give a judge even more incentive to tell you to move on instead of making everyone else wait.

Even in final a judge can't force a player to set aside his cards in advance for a future AT

A jugde can *certainly* force a player to complete his Ashur cycle in ~90 seconds. If that means said player needs to start earlier, then so be it.

I just don't understand why most VTES players are so protective of disruptively slow play. I'd guess it's because judges are afraid to piss off players and end up with even less turnup in tournaments.

Anecdotal, this weekend I was watching the M:TG Return to Ravnica pro-tour events. Obviously, it being the pro-tour there is a lot more at stake than an entry in Jeff's TWDA and some boosters you don't really need.

There was a French player who was playing a rather technical deck and was facing a fairly complicated situation where he had some tough decisions to make. The guy was *genuinly* considering his options and trying to make the best play given the situation, but it was taking ages.

BAM! Without warning, a judge comes in, gives him his (second) slowplay warning of the day and with it a loss in that game. In game five (of a best of five) he gets ANOTHER warning and it took the head judge to not transform that into another game loss.

I mean, sure, that might be on the harsh side but that's what good judges should be doing. I don't agree with Kevin a lot, but here he's 100% spot-on: get better judges.

Izaak wrote:

I mean, sure, that might be on the harsh side but that's what good judges should be doing. I don't agree with Kevin a lot, but here he's 100% spot-on: get better judges.

It's a question of what tournament are for. If you believe that the focus is on player skill (like in MTG big tournament), it's perfectly fine. If you believe that the tournament are a way to meet up and play, then it's not.