Protoaddict said:

It depends on the tournament, quite frankly. It's something you're gonna have to mention beforehand - "This tournament is played under Standard rules, with First Blood tiebreakers."

Honestly, I'm pretty tired of the amount of draws in Swiss but those can be dodged. It's the top 8 draws you have to solve.

Speaking with the Powers that Be - the Top 8 Tie Breakers will officially be documented in the next version of the tournament floor rules as:

1) Furthest away from Maximum Vitality
2) # of cards removed from the game.
3) If any only IF those 2 don't resolve the tiebreak, then we have first blood.

::shrugs:: it is what it is, at least it will be documented.

Antigoth said:

This for Swiss too or for top 8 only?

Antigoth said:

I can't say I feel draws should be eliminated, but I do have an issue with ID's (intentional draws). My issue is that draws, intentional or not, count as wins before tie breakers. Therefore, most you see in tournament reports from people who made it to top 8 involve "we decided to draw so we could both get into top 8".

It happens ALL THE TIME. Not saying everybody does it, but in every top 8 there seems to always be a person with a 2 or 3 win record and 1 or 2 draws, of which at least 1 is intentional. This is utter bullcrap. Play the matches and see who's really better, and stop populating top 8 by backing out of a challenge.

BTW, I'm censoring myself, so replace "backing" in the last sentence with a verb made from the name for a female body part that starts with a "p".

knew_b33 said:

it's not a card. first blood takes effect when two players are tied going in top 8's. whoever deals dmg first wins.

At the first AoP I ran, we had this come up. Note, this was before First Blood existed. The rules on the books said that if there was no vitality loss difference and the same amount of cards in the RFG pile... it's a coin flip. Yup, a coin flip. Well, that was totally not cool in my books. So, on the fly, I came up with Sudden Death round. All players agreed upon it, and we all agreed that it was way more fair. Here's how it'd work with Sudden Death:

• If both players have no Vitality loss difference or a difference in cards in their RFG (removed from game) pile when time is called during Top Cut, and both players have an equal number of games won, it goes into a Sudden Death round.
• Sudden Death is a new round. Both players will return their cards into their decks and shuffle. They may sideboard for this round, if they wish.
• If the match is at 0-0, the player who lost the original coin toss determines turn order. If the match is at 1-1, then the person who lost the last completed round determines turn order.
• A 10 minute timer is set once the first player attempts to play their first form of the match. This timer is hidden from the players and no time warnings are given. Game play is as normal, with the timer ending signifying the last form of the match (not end of turn as per the regular rules).
• Winner is determined the same way as any other round. If no players vitality is turned to 0 or their deck is exhausted, it returns to vitality loss and then cards in RFG pile. If there is still no winner, a coin flip will determine the winner of the match.

This solves the two major issues of which tiebreakers have. First, that in a First Blood situation, Throw = win. Second, it puts a very finite time on the tie breaker match. Adding a total of 15 minutes to figure out a tie in a more fair way is a big win. It also solves the 2 deckout decks vs. each other issue that First Blood also has. Anyone playing deckout would need to know this ahead of time, and probably would want to put some kind of attack in, or a direct way to RFG cards of their opponent within 10 minutes.

If I ever came to a situation where a coin flip would be used to determine the winner of a card game (not relating to who goes first), I'd pick my deck up and walk away. There's no way in hell I'd let that determine the winner/loser of a match.

If the current condition right now is between coin flipping and First Blood, I'll take First Blood 11 times out of 10.

When we're resolving draws, we do:

1) Who's lost the most vitality. (They lose.) If the same, then...

2) Who's got the most cards RFG. (They lose.) If the same, then...

3) Make a control check.

It's faster.

First blood is a good alternative to 3, because it happens so rarely, even if it is weighted towards throws and high-speed attacks.

Alternatively, you can let each player do one full turn, then re-check for a draw state (starting at step 1), just as Antigoth suggested. I think all three are fair. The first two methods (Control check, first blood) are coin flips, but you tied: deal with a coin flip. Dance off is equally acceptable for same reason. Antigoth's suggestion is perhaps a better measure of who has the better deck, but it could take a little while.

I still would like to know what happens when two mill decks play First Blood.

It IS first person to deal damage wins right? Not first one to have more RFG? That'd suck cause you lose if you mulligan

Imperfect system is imperfect.

No, playing out another game is absolutely stupid, and completely discourteous to everyone else playing, and whos there. It just flat out is. Everyone else has had to deal with the time limits all day long. The other people in tops had to deal with them in their games, the people who tied should be held to it as well.

First blood with throws... yup it sucks. So does first blood with CChack. So does first blood with through the defenses. And so on and so forth. First blood is imperfect due to its nature. Theres plenty of 3 diff attacks out there now, some which have off zones. First blood sucks then on first turn if you don't have the right zone block. Loose the round because you didn't draw a low attack and they had a 3 or 4 diff low zone attack on the first turn? Yeah thats just as bad as throws if not worse. People tend to focus on the things that suck when they loose, in this case its throws, and look past all the other crap things that could happen in said situation which make it less than ideal.

I think of First Blood more of the price you play for not being able to get the win. Luck is Luck. You aren't going to get past that. You've already proven at that point that you're both evenly matched and skilled, and all it comes down to is who's luckier.

As for the two mill decks? My vote would be first to remove a card durring play, meaning mulligans not included, would loose.

Eithinis said:

Why isn't it called Last Blood?

Because the first person to draw blood wins.