So I've been mulling over something that happened over the weekend, but I think I'm a little too personally involved to make a fair decision, so I'm turning to you folks.

I was playing in a tournament at a store that was simultaneously running a Magic: the Gathering tournament. During one of the games, my opponent looks away from the board and says "I don't want to rush you, but we do only have 10 minutes left in the round." I follow his gaze to the clock to confirm, because I hadn't realized we were so close to the end of the round. I begin playing with the time limit at the front of my mind. In those 10 minutes, my opponent is able to claim victory with less than a minute on the clock. As I start to pack up, I look at the time clock and notice that the clock that is now at "00:00" is the clock for the M:tG event, we still had another 10 minutes on the X-Wing clock. Nobody at the event knew how to resolve this, and I ended up taking the loss anyway because I didn't want to stall out the whole event.

I'm certain that my opponent made an honest mistake when he pointed out the wrong clock, but it is still a misrepresentation of one of the factors that make up the board state. At the same time, I also didn't notice which clock was assigned to which game, and took his word that it was 10 minutes without bothering to verify for myself. How would you have handled this, or is there an official ruling for situations like these?

Pretty sure this will come under the "unsporting conduct" section of the tournament regulations, similar to if he was stalling for time to delay an extra round whilst he's up on VP's

I'm sure there's no official ruling for using the wrong clock at a tournament, as it's a pretty bizarre circumstance you've described. I suppose it should have been up to the tournament organizer to clearly define which clock was being used for which tournament. Seeing as you both made the same mistake, I feel it would be totally incorrect to penalize either of you. What could have happened in the game in those last 10 minutes is anybody's guess, so you can't really dwell on it, and I guess you'd just have to take the loss. There's no way to reset the table once you've started packing up.

Personally, I think it the organizers should have labelled the clocks clearly, but that's something that you should possibly ask for next time. Your best option for the future is to keep a stopwatch at your table for your own personal reference. You can look at that and know how much time you have left without having to rely on the official clock too much. You're still bound by the official clock, but at least you'd have a better idea of when the end of round is getting near.

Pretty sure this will come under the "unsporting conduct" section of the tournament regulations, similar to if he was stalling for time to delay an extra round whilst he's up on VP's

That's only likely to be an issue if you can prove the opponent used the incorrect clock on purpose. If both players made the same mistake, then it's simply a mistake. No foul, no penalty.

Sounds like an honest mistake made based on the tournament setting. There are a lot of details missing, like the size of the tournament, ship status when you thought only 10 mins were remaining, and whether or not your opponent also appeared to play with the same sense of urgency as you. In most cases, this is a learning experience and something you make sure you are aware of in the future.

I'll be the meanie and say you should have done your own due diligence to know which timer was for X-Wing and which was not.

Also, and I'm surprised no one mentioned this, there is no requirement that you speed up (or slow down) your play to accommodate your opponent's awareness of the round timer like you did. You should play at a reasonable and fair pace, no matter how much time is left. You definitely did him a favor by speeding up your play and may have allowed him to win by making quick decisions.

Unfortunate result. Hope you have a better time next tournament!

What I'm wondering about is it that common for a round to end with no announcement? I mean you should have gotten to the end of the one clock but then realized you still had ten more minutes to play. If you lost before the early clock ran out then why wouldn't you have lost with another 10 minutes of game time? Unless you were already losing nothing should have forced you to mess up by playing faster.

There's nothing you can do. It's too late to back up, and no one believes the mistake was intentional so it's simply a lesson for next time: keep your clocks straight.

It should also be a lesson for the tourney organisers to clearly label their clocks...

So I've been mulling over something that happened over the weekend, but I think I'm a little too personally involved to make a fair decision, so I'm turning to you folks.

I was playing in a tournament at a store that was simultaneously running a Magic: the Gathering tournament. During one of the games, my opponent looks away from the board and says "I don't want to rush you, but we do only have 10 minutes left in the round." I follow his gaze to the clock to confirm, because I hadn't realized we were so close to the end of the round. I begin playing with the time limit at the front of my mind. In those 10 minutes, my opponent is able to claim victory with less than a minute on the clock. As I start to pack up, I look at the time clock and notice that the clock that is now at "00:00" is the clock for the M:tG event, we still had another 10 minutes on the X-Wing clock. Nobody at the event knew how to resolve this, and I ended up taking the loss anyway because I didn't want to stall out the whole event.

I'm certain that my opponent made an honest mistake when he pointed out the wrong clock, but it is still a misrepresentation of one of the factors that make up the board state. At the same time, I also didn't notice which clock was assigned to which game, and took his word that it was 10 minutes without bothering to verify for myself. How would you have handled this, or is there an official ruling for situations like these?

I ll come up as the mean guy but if playing on the clock made you loose you deserved that lose. Sorry but its just like that. If you lost focus its your own fault not the TOs clocks.

Playing on the clock changes nothing - if you were behind you got nothing to loose and try to finish some ships to get points - if that fail you were behind anyway so what does the clock change? Especially if lost due to wipeout 1 minute before time not cause you did not manage to kill something due to time.

If you were ahead and started running away chased by the clock and lost anyway - you did it wrong, and you should have either finished his ships or you just screwed your escape.

10 minutes one or another way would change nothing here.

Next time we will see "the table had a bump that made my ship slip an inch what now?"

I know that i may have bursted some bubbles here but seriously lets know when we should blame the TO and when its our own fault.

That's only likely to be an issue if you can prove the opponent used the incorrect clock on purpose.

Exactly, and even if you could, the most you could do is give the other guy a loss, and if I were the TO, I'd need pretty concrete evidence before I'd do something like that.

I'll also echo what everyone else said, it was most likely a honest mistake and without proof of something else it was as much your fault as anyone else's. It's really not much different then realizing after the fact that a ship should've had a stress token on it.

There's no question it sucks for you, because it sounds like you changed how you played and lost 10 minutes of game time, if you had known you had 20 minutes left you likely would of made different choices... But it was far too late to go back and fix anything after the game was over.

I would say as Vitalis...

It sound like all your ship were destroyed in this 10 min and you lost square before the 10 min ended... I doubt having 10 more min would have made you win... There is no need to hurry at this game, as long as you destroy more point you win. This is like chest, you don't have to kill every pieces, just kill the king.

Thanks guys. Like I said in the first post, I wanted a neutral opinion, since I was personally involved with the issue.

This was definitely an important lesson, though; in a tournament setting, I can't keep the casual attitude I normally play with.

Thanks guys. Like I said in the first post, I wanted a neutral opinion, since I was personally involved with the issue.

This was definitely an important lesson, though; in a tournament setting, I can't keep the casual attitude I normally play with.

Tournament setting definitely requires more focus than a casual game. Playing at your local store or in a casual setting - you're typically going to get more chances to correct mistakes and feedback on how to avoid them.

I've had experiences where I made mistakes - like performing the same action twice in the same round - and neither I or my opponent knew at the time I couldn't.

I've also listened to friends tell me of how they lost in a game and helped them figure out that their opponent did something that wasn't legal - like rerolling dice with Predator and then using a target lock to roll again. Most of these (typically) honest mistakes come out after you have time to sit back and reflect on everything and share experiences with others. There are a lot of rules and FAQ changes and things don't always come out clear.

You learn from them and just try to help yourself and others avoid the same mistakes down the road.