I played him again in a tournament this past Friday & again he was slow as ever. In a 60 minute game, 30 minutes went by & we hadn't even had two rounds of combat.

He ended up getting a modified win, but I still won the tournament with him being my only "loss".

I ran tie swarm & he ran a Decimator along with 3 Tie fighters.

Without giving a full bat rep, he basically played keep away & with asteroid placement & his ties interfering I couldn't get to his decimator quick enough. I killed all of his ties & put some damage on the Decimator but I also loss 3 ships & it was a 5 point difference. had I gotten just two more turns I would've crushed his last ship.

But like I said, I won anyway so I was happy, plus he didn't get a very good margin so that hurt him in the longrun.

The first thing he said when we got matched up was "this is a horrible matchup for me." As usual he took forever making up his mind on movements, but it was ok with me because I had a gameplan this time. Plus it was the first game of the day, not the finale like last time.

I appreciate all the advice & comments you've all given.

If you really think someone is intentionally stalling, ask a TO to watch and have them decide. Seems like you've played this guy on more than one occasion, maybe next time it happens, make that request.

Not having a time limit seems really silly for tournament games, if the game itself is on a time limit.

My input:

Caveat I'm new to this game, and haven't played yet. But I have previous experience as a miniatures judge in the D&D mini's environment.

I was a judge for the D&D Mini's game for just over 2 years having been a player for 4 years total until WoTC stopped support for the game. We had multiple people who would complain of stalling, including one high ranked player that everyone thought was stalling. So in one major tournament they put me to make sure that he wasn't stalling. my points are this:

• In a tournament there should be a time limit. it even says so in the tournament guidelines for this game
• There will never be a hard and fast "definitive time limit" this is done so that there is leeway for situations that may honestly require some additional thought. (Although your statement of 30 minutes having gone by with only 2 rounds of play) is to me unacceptable.
• The community as a whole can help by stating what they think was a reasonable timeframe to plan their movement.
• If you suspect the player is stalling call the TO immediately.

What happened in that tournament was that I stood with a stopwatch and if the player took more time than what I thought was necessary, i gave him a warning. I had to do this in a couple of matches. I even talked to him before the tournament to reinforce what the head judge said (I mad sure HE talked about stalling in the introduction) and that we were going to be harsh about it.

I think I once had to penalize him. After that we had no other problems.

Below is the article. I've quoted text from the article below that.

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mi/20080403a

The judging went smoothly … for the most part. We had to deal with one major issue. A chronic problem with timed events is slow play, and the DDM Limited Championships were no exception. The biggest difficulty with adjudicating slow play is identifying it in time. With only a handful of judges, watching each game is impossible. We have to rely on the players to point out slow players. Even when you're in the middle of it, it is difficult to identify slow players until half-way or more through the match. By the time a judge is called over to watch for slow play, much of the time allotted for the round has already been lost. On top of that, slow players become more conscientious about slow play when a judge is watching, so they speed up their play. Note that 'slow players' includes both those who unconsciously play too slowly to get a fair result in a one-hour game session and players who deliberately stall to win the game. The first is unfortunate, but the second is outright cheating. Distinguishing between the two can be difficult. In the end, our solution was to appoint as 'headhunter' a judge with proven ability to spot slow players, then turn him loose to watch specifically for slow play and to keep an eye on those players who had previously been identified as potential slow-players. Once that was established, things went quite well.