Cutting prey's deck.

ReverendRevolver wrote:

regardless of perceived cheating, intimidating, and/or minor advantages, i truly only see one enormous problem with this issue: Time.

if everyone in scrutinizing their prey's deck/crypt instead of just cutting, its going to make rounds start later than intended. it might sound trivial, and @ a large event (championships, for example) everyone is there to play for a large amount of time. but @ a 2r+final event, it could add an unnecessary amount of time to everything.

.....other than the ash heap (because seeing the actual cards and not just the backs would be public knowledge), i don't see why anyone would need to count or scrutinize, just handle to shuffle or cut.

The time issue cannot be overlooked. You are right. One of the first things I thought about was not only the time it would take to do this for one player who feels there is some real purpose to "counting" someone's cards but also the time it would take to count all the decks when some players say, "OK, lets show this guy what happens when everyone's deck is counted."

If this is truly a thread about what to do if you are a judge in this situation then perhaps you could ask for a card count before the start of the first round. I don't know if this would help. I seem to recall there was some apprehension from some players at a European tournament where the organizer asked for deck lists prior to the start.

TorranceCircle wrote:

If this is truly a thread about what to do if you are a judge in this situation then perhaps you could ask for a card count before the start of the first round. I don't know if this would help. I seem to recall there was some apprehension from some players at a European tournament where the organizer asked for deck lists prior to the start.

My question was mostly meant to apply to the pregame cut, before the round starts. If cutting/shuffling during the game takes too much time a judge should probably be called to add time and/or tell the shuffler/cutter to stop stalling.

The cut I asked about in the first post doesn't necessarily take a lot of time though. Maybe a few seconds more than a "classic" cut.

Henrik, I did understand that you meant before the game starts. I just wonder: if there is one judge (or more) and a tournament of 20 or more players how long would it take to do this. Maybe long enough to be significant? I don't know.


What I took from Reverand Revolver's post was that some tournements are scheduled for a certain amount of time. Some tournaments I've been at have been allocated a certain amount of space for a certain amount of time. When the organizer sets up the tournament with whomever is providing the space, they need to be able to tell the people at the location the time the tournamnet will take. Sometimes this is not an issue, but the last thing a judge and players in a final want is to be told, "you have 50 minutes left before we need the table space."

As to the cut you mentioned in the OP, I wouldn't care if you wanted to do that. For example,"Andy, I want to cut your deck at the tenth card." I wouldn't care and it would take a few seconds and be done. I do believe, IMHO, that there are enough rules lawyers out there who would be uncomfortable with it. Thus, a judge would be asked to do it. This is why I think time is an issue that needs to be looked at.

TorranceCircle wrote:

Henrik, I did understand that you meant before the game starts. I just wonder: if there is one judge (or more) and a tournament of 20 or more players how long would it take to do this. Maybe long enough to be significant? I don't know.

What I took from Reverand Revolver's post was that some tournements are scheduled for a certain amount of time. Some tournaments I've been at have been allocated a certain amount of space for a certain amount of time. When the organizer sets up the tournament with whomever is providing the space, they need to be able to tell the people at the location the time the tournamnet will take. Sometimes this is not an issue, but the last thing a judge and players in a final want is to be told, "you have 50 minutes left before we need the table space."

As to the cut you mentioned in the OP, I wouldn't care if you wanted to do that. For example,"Andy, I want to cut your deck at the tenth card." I wouldn't care and it would take a few seconds and be done. I do believe, IMHO, that there are enough rules lawyers out there who would be uncomfortable with it. Thus, a judge would be asked to do it. This is why I think time is an issue that needs to be looked at.

Sure, if everyone calls for judges for cutting/shuffling (or something else, for that matter) it will consume time. This applies regardless of the answer to my question (if it's legal to consider the card backs when cutting your prey's deck). Just like it would be time consuming if every player called a judge for every minor rollback needed (replacing WwEF during master phase instead of untap phase etc).
Time as an argument could be used against lots of the tournament rules. Disregarding good rules due to an assumed lack of time will probably lead to a bad rulebook. In my opinion, time should rather be something that each judge handles as xe seems fit to the tournament at hand.