For some context, I'm a new player and got to participate in my first store championship recently. It was a very casual tournament, but we still had some folks from out of town come in to compete for the prizes.

In one of my games, I had an opponent who I allowed to do numerous things I would consider unsportsmanlike. One example, I had a 5 ship list, and he still hadn't started unpacking by the time the clock started which clearly played to the strength of his two ship build.

Once my opponent got a lead that I probably couldn't overcome, he started intentionally putting one of his dials down with its face up and showing me the face of the other dial as he put it down. The first two times I attempted to be a good sport and didn't look at it while reminding him he had played his dial face up. Once he had done it three turns in a row, I realized he was obviously tempting me to play more quickly so that he could get the full 100. Again, I had been playing as fast as I could all game, and in hindsight I shouldn't have worried about the clock and just played it out because it pushed me into bad decisions.

My question is, should that have been considered an illegal dial which would have allowed me to choose the maneuver? His ship was near the edge, and I could have easily flown it off the board. It wouldn't have been enough for a points victory, just a minor moral one.

Or should I just have had the TO come over, and gone through the list of his unsportsmanlike conduct to attempt to get him DQed from the tourney?

Core rules (page 6) say that the dial has to be placed facedown during the planning phase- if your opponent hasn't placed his dial face down, he has not completed his planning phase - you may wait until he does.

Core rules (page 6) say that the dial has to be placed facedown during the planning phase- if your opponent hasn't placed his dial face down, he has not completed his planning phase - you may wait until he does.

That makes it easy enough. It's not behavior I ever want to see again, but at least I know. The correct answer was probably to talk with the TO and put it into his hands regardless.

Core rules (page 6) say that the dial has to be placed facedown during the planning phase- if your opponent hasn't placed his dial face down, he has not completed his planning phase - you may wait until he does.

That makes it easy enough. It's not behavior I ever want to see again, but at least I know. The correct answer was probably to talk with the TO and put it into his hands regardless.

or just show him the rules and make him get on with it

Or just look at his dials and know where he is going. If he wants to volunteer that information to you, that's just advantageous and helpful for you. Just because he put his dials down face up doesn't mean that you should feel obligated to play in a way that he wants. Take your time. As long as you are taking an appropriate amount of time in the planning stage (a very had thing to quantify), who cares what he is doing.

I'm just not seeing the problem? You are upset that your opponent is volunteering to show you where he is going? It's weird, but I'm not sure it's something worth getting too upset about.

Clearly he was baiting you for some unknown reason. If he persisted in putting his dial down faceup, I would have told him I wasn't quite finished yet and then plan around his exposed maneuver. Then again, maybe he was hoping you would do this so he could accuse you of looking at his dial during the Planning phase. Either way, it seems to be very dodgy behaviour.

If this sort of thing occurs again, inform the TO and ask him to discreetly observe for a while and see what he thinks.

If he only started doing it once he was so far ahead then it sounds to me like he was just being a ****! His way of saying 'I'm doing this - you can do whatever you want ... I'm still going to win.'

The only reason I'd ever place dials face up is if my opponent was clearly done with his/her dials and my placed dial was the last to be set for the first ship to be activated that turn - i.e. I'd save the enormous energy of placing the dial, picking it up again and turning it around. Well, there is one other reason: as a mistake. But even I wouldn't do that several turns in a row...

For the still packaged I would have talked to the TO.

For the revealed dial, it is fine (yet, very braggin-ish), he gives you free information, use it at your advantage.

For some context, I'm a new player and got to participate in my first store championship recently. It was a very casual tournament, but we still had some folks from out of town come in to compete for the prizes.

In one of my games, I had an opponent who I allowed to do numerous things I would consider unsportsmanlike. One example, I had a 5 ship list, and he still hadn't started unpacking by the time the clock started which clearly played to the strength of his two ship build.

Once my opponent got a lead that I probably couldn't overcome, he started intentionally putting one of his dials down with its face up and showing me the face of the other dial as he put it down. The first two times I attempted to be a good sport and didn't look at it while reminding him he had played his dial face up. Once he had done it three turns in a row, I realized he was obviously tempting me to play more quickly so that he could get the full 100. Again, I had been playing as fast as I could all game, and in hindsight I shouldn't have worried about the clock and just played it out because it pushed me into bad decisions.

My question is, should that have been considered an illegal dial which would have allowed me to choose the maneuver? His ship was near the edge, and I could have easily flown it off the board. It wouldn't have been enough for a points victory, just a minor moral one.

Or should I just have had the TO come over, and gone through the list of his unsportsmanlike conduct to attempt to get him DQed from the tourney?

If my opponent didn't have their stuff on the board ready to go and the TO announced that the round was starting, I would probably yell across the room to the TO "Hold up please, we aren't ready yet". All the tournaments I've been to have had TOs verify that everyone was ready and had their dials down before starting the rounds.

Ya know that brings up an interesting thought...

What would you do as a TO if you had one person who was being very slow in the setup? Do you hold everyone else back, or perhaps enact some sort of penalty on that person? Clearly it would depend on the situation...

But I could see someone who is of a mind to stall wanting to get a free 5 minutes by waiting to start assembling the ships and laying out the card until after time has started. Time can be tight as is, so how long can you wait for one person?

Ya know that brings up an interesting thought...

What would you do as a TO if you had one person who was being very slow in the setup? Do you hold everyone else back, or perhaps enact some sort of penalty on that person? Clearly it would depend on the situation...

But I could see someone who is of a mind to stall wanting to get a free 5 minutes by waiting to start assembling the ships and laying out the card until after time has started. Time can be tight as is, so how long can you wait for one person?

I don't start the timer until everyone has setup their stuff and have started placing asteroids.

If one table is lagging behind, everyone will wait a couple more minutes until they've started placing asteroids.

We've never had a problem, but if someone were being deliberately slow, having the whole tournament waiting on him should, hopefully, be enough to get him going without requiring more explicit warnings.

For a 60 minute round, I recommend starting the timer after asteroids and ships are placed, by which time most players have already set their dials.

From the rulebook:

"Choosing a Maneuver

To choose a maneuver, the player rotates the faceplate of the ship’s maneuver dial until the window shows only the desired maneuver. He then assigns the maneuver to one of his ships by placing the dial facedown near its corresponding ship inside the play area."

Placing them faceup, or revealing them before placing them facedown, is not allowed. You choose your maneuver and then place the dial facedown. There is nothing in between those two steps.

Your opponent was being a jerk for doing it, and you should have called the TO. He'd be lucky to get off with just a warning.

Ya know that brings up an interesting thought...What would you do as a TO if you had one person who was being very slow in the setup? Do you hold everyone else back, or perhaps enact some sort of penalty on that person? Clearly it would depend on the situation...But I could see someone who is of a mind to stall wanting to get a free 5 minutes by waiting to start assembling the ships and laying out the card until after time has started. Time can be tight as is, so how long can you wait for one person?

Doesn't it say in the tournament rules that the time starts when everyone is ready?

Guess in larger venues that's hard to do, but i thought I read that in there

Ya know that brings up an interesting thought...What would you do as a TO if you had one person who was being very slow in the setup? Do you hold everyone else back, or perhaps enact some sort of penalty on that person? Clearly it would depend on the situation...But I could see someone who is of a mind to stall wanting to get a free 5 minutes by waiting to start assembling the ships and laying out the card until after time has started. Time can be tight as is, so how long can you wait for one person?

Wait

Doesn't it say in the tournament rules that the time starts when everyone is ready?

Guess in larger venues that's hard to do, but i thought I read that in there

Here's what the Tournament Rules have to say (emphasis mine) :

The following steps must be performed before each game begins and may be performed before the TO officially announces the start of a tournament round:

[Lay out cards, Determine initiative, Place asteroids, Deploy ships, Activate shields, etc...]

This implies that the steps can take either before or after the clock has started.

Ya know that brings up an interesting thought...

What would you do as a TO if you had one person who was being very slow in the setup? Do you hold everyone else back, or perhaps enact some sort of penalty on that person? Clearly it would depend on the situation...

But I could see someone who is of a mind to stall wanting to get a free 5 minutes by waiting to start assembling the ships and laying out the card until after time has started. Time can be tight as is, so how long can you wait for one person?

Give him the bye and have him sit out this round and have the player who got the bye get the chance to play. If no one has a bye, give one bye to the player who was left waiting and give a no show to the guy who is starting to unpack and tell him he lost his first round for not being ready to play, or give him 2 mins to get his stuff on the table or else he gets the round DQ.

See how fast he moves then.

I mean, seriously, how long does it take to sort out TWO ships?!? If the TO has declared the start of the round, then this dude gets to play with what he's managed to get on the table. You can't go adding ships after the round has started, ready or not. And there's now way this can be seen as anything other than intentional stalling. He should have been severely penalised, if not disqualified.

Thanks everyone. I tried to give it a few weeks before posting my questions both to cool off, and I wasn't sure I wanted to play competitive X-Wing after playing him. The biggest take away for me was that I need to get the TO involved earlier, both on initial setup and his play throughout the game. I didn't realize that I could have held up the round since he wasn't set up. I let him get away with bullying a new player.

My opponents moment of retribution occurred in the next game when he tried to cheat to keep his last ship from flying off the board. He was caught and called out by everyone watching.

He was caught and called out by everyone watching.

IME cheaters never get away with it for long.

Ya know that brings up an interesting thought...What would you do as a TO if you had one person who was being very slow in the setup? Do you hold everyone else back, or perhaps enact some sort of penalty on that person? Clearly it would depend on the situation...But I could see someone who is of a mind to stall wanting to get a free 5 minutes by waiting to start assembling the ships and laying out the card until after time has started. Time can be tight as is, so how long can you wait for one person?

Wait

Doesn't it say in the tournament rules that the time starts when everyone is ready?

Guess in larger venues that's hard to do, but i thought I read that in there

Here's what the Tournament Rules have to say (emphasis mine) :

The following steps must be performed before each game begins and may be performed before the TO officially announces the start of a tournament round:

[Lay out cards, Determine initiative, Place asteroids, Deploy ships, Activate shields, etc...]

This implies that the steps can take either before or after the clock has started.

Will do the same with our spring kit

I like the idea of everyone ready to go.

I don't like the idea some are still setting up and the clock stars ticking.

This gives everyone a fair chance imo

As a TO I'd warn the person for stalling. Second instance would be a game loss, third a DQ.

From the rulebook:

"Choosing a Maneuver

To choose a maneuver, the player rotates the faceplate of the ship’s maneuver dial until the window shows only the desired maneuver. He then assigns the maneuver to one of his ships by placing the dial facedown near its corresponding ship inside the play area."

Placing them faceup, or revealing them before placing them facedown, is not allowed. You choose your maneuver and then place the dial facedown. There is nothing in between those two steps.

Your opponent was being a jerk for doing it, and you should have called the TO. He'd be lucky to get off with just a warning.

And from page 9 of the FAQ:

"If a player forgets to place a maneuver dial next to a ship, but tells his opponent he is ready to begin the round, once play has proceeded to the first ship (a dial has been revealed, a maneuver has been executed, etc.), he may no longer place a dial. Instead, when that ship activates, the player’s opponent chooses the maneuver that ship will perform. No actions may be taken before this maneuver, but play proceeds normally after the maneuver has been executed"

If he hasn't chosen a maneuver and he says it's go time; he doesn't get to pick his maneuver, you do.

I'll just say to not get discouraged and to make sure to tell the TO that you are not ready before he starts the timer. No one will mind waiting a minute or two for everyone to get set up (it happens to all of us sooner or later).

As for your opponent not setting his dials face down, I cannot see "how" this practice cannot do anything more than hurt him:

- Best case scenario: he reveals his maneuvers to you (and you are free to change yours for as long as you are both not ready).

- Worst case scenario: someone calls him out on the rules, like WWHSD posted above (that would really suck, but rules are rules).

- In both cases: your opponent can develop a bad habit and that can come and bite him in a variaty of ways later.

It's to ward off the latter that I always do all the steps. Ex: yes, I know my opponent rolled only 1 hit and I rolled 3 evades + 1 blank and that turning the 1 blank to a 4th evade (autothrusters) is overkill. I'm not doing it to brag; I'm doing it to get the good habit to never, ever forget to use it

About the dial face up:

As a player I would ask the opponent once to place it face down. If he still place it face up, i would thank him, look at the dial, and choose a suitable maneuver.

When he start to change his maneuver after i placed mine, i would call a TO to ask the opponent to place the dial face down.

As a TO i would ask him to place the dial face down. And tell him, if he does not do it, and still place it face up, he is not allowed to touch it again. If he want to give the info to the opponent it is his problem.

Starting to place it face up, waiting for the opponent, and changing the maneuver after it would be stalling (in my eyes).

And if he dont follow this, i would go the normal way. Warning, GL, DQ.

Such a behaviour dont has to be negativ. Maybe he just want to speed up the game by placing it face up, so he can move his ships faster. It is not always the reason for stalling or bragging. Sometimes it is just out of laziness.