Rules Team Rulings - 02-DEC-2014

WhileJames' concern is certainly valid and something more or less according to the lines he described is bound to happen sooner or later, the experiences we had while testing these timeout rules in Helsinki between EC 2013 and 2014 show the opposite. And not just because of Finnish Politics TM...

Tijme added to each game/round is MINISCULE in overwhelmingly majority of games. The extra seconds very seldom go into double digits, let alone change into minutes.

Also, during the year I never once heard a player complain about the system. Plenty of players did comment that this was a definite improvement.

Here is some data from Helsinki Experiment


13 tournaments (from 9 to 52 players)
206 players (15,8 players/tournament)
144 games
56 timeouts (between 0 and 33 sec)

time added:
0 sec 29 instances
1 sec 6 -"-
2 sec 8 -"-
3 sec 2 -"-
5 sec 2 -"-
10 sec 3 -"-
15 sec 2 -"-
20 sec 1 -"-
30 sec 2 -"-
33 sec 1 -"-

Total time:
+3 min 31 sec
+16,23 sec per tournament *
+3,77 sec per timeout
+1,47 sec per game

* actually less tournament time since some of the timeouts took place during the same rounds.


Minion Phase
39 timeouts (13 of which combat)

Untap Phase
5 timeouts

Master Phase
3 timeouts

Infl. Phase
1 timeout

Discard Phase
1 timeout

? phase (not marked which phase...)
7 timeouts


There was one instance where a Game Win would've been scored if the combat which was played to the end woun't have been ended with Strike: Combat End.

(There was one tournament finals where, if ruled in different way, there would've been +7 secs extra time instead of +0 and this would've resulted in Game Win going to a different player.)

I like the experiment as such & data that has been collected. Nicely done!

Ashur wrote:

Maybe write something official about the reasons behind the changes?

Sure.
The change regarding the end of the action/phase was motivated by a feedback by a fair amount of players and some experience at watching games (which I do quite a lot during National Championships).
The last minute is usually quite tense (especially if players know how much time is left). I have often read or heard people complain or ask me "But if I announce a bleed, they don't block, they're on 1 pool, with no Deflection, how can they not be ousted?" (and this happened quite some times).


Here's also the French Nationals 2014's Finals sum-up:
Florian (first seed) > Orian > Mehdi > P2 > Pierre.

It's Florian's turn, there is less than 2 mins to play. He plays his turn in a regular speed. If the game times, he wins. His turn ends, Orian starts his turn.
Orian is playing a swarm deck, his plan is to swarm bleed Mehdi and oust him. Mehdi, on the other side, is playing a tons-of-wakes Goratrix deck. Mehdi might survive Orian's turn. If he does so, his prey is quite low and would be ousted with Mehdi's actions.
If Orian ousts Mehdi, and P2 gets a turn, P2 might oust Pierre (and P2 has a higher ranking than Orian, which means P2 would win over Orian if they both had 1.5 VPs at time limit).
Pierre has no chance of ousting anyone, but he might be playing a Life Boon that, if Time was called, would be enough to give him the win.

So Florian ends his turn.
Orian launches all his bleeds. The final bleed is not blocked. Pierre declines to play Life Boon. Mehdi burns his pool. And 1 second after that, the time limit is called.

I don't think it would have been fair to deny an action's forced resolution not to happen.

Regarding phases, it seems safe enough to end the current phase.

For future references: maybe a different split could be considered. It could be "finish action, or reach start of minion phase, or finish turn". Or "finish turn, whatever you were doing."
If some playgroups want to test any of these, be my guest! I would recommend the last one. Please send me any feedback (extra time spent, number of ousted players during that extra time).


Regarding the second change - lowering the minimum number of players from 10 to 8 to qualify the winner to a CC: it's been a feedback from the National Coordinators that countries / places where gathering a good share of players is difficult that only few people qualify.
Promoting "small" playgroups (or event smaller) being one way of promoting the game, we shouldn't close the door on that one.


If you have any suggestion, you are free to send them to me!

Pascal wrote:

For future references: maybe a different split could be considered. It could be "finish action, or reach start of minion phase, or finish turn". Or "finish turn, whatever you were doing."

I have a gut feeling that finishing the whole turn would be a too big a change.
Might be fair but plenty of things could happen during the whole turn.
AND it could way more easily take quite a long time to finnish the last turn.

Not aboslutely opposed but extremely dubious