Twn2dn said:

Actually, I brought it up because he mentioned it happening twice in the later Rounds and that it directly affected him making the cut to the top 4.

FFG really should address this as this could create a larger NPE during Regional Season than someone running 3x Drogo's tent If it created this large of a thread on a TR, imagine it happening to someone at Kubla or GenCon. The infamous smoke break would have nothing on that possible scenario.

Once again, any anger or frustration at this practice should not be directed at Robb or the TN meta. They thought they were doing an honorable act by letting their sense of gamesmanship determine a full winner. Others may agree or disagree with what they did,but it obviously wasn't a devious act to manipulate the stanndings.

Being a solutions oriented guy this morning, I started a thread with a possible solution to minimize this happening in the future.

By the way, it's never happened to me that I'm aware of and really see both sides of the argument. I have no desire to see this knid of thing fracture the community when it could be handled proactively.(Aren't you the proactive "Ban bad cards immediately"guy because it warps the Metagame? I see this as doing the same thing with tournament rules)

"sense of gamesmanship"? Nice sucker punch there

Ratatoskr said:

I'm pretty sure he meant "sportsmanship" instead of the term "gamesmanship" which is often viewed in a negative sense. Just look at the connotation of the paragraph it is found in. And when you consider GoT is a game and not a sport, I can see someone using those two terms synonomously.

Dobbler said:

Yeah, me too, hence the smiley. I should've used the tilde, though. My mistake.

Dobbler said:

I did mean sportsmanship. I had never heard gamesmanship used as a term til you called that out. Sorry for the miscommunication.

Well, I think the most important thing that we all remember about this is that the Bruins swept the Flyers and are going on the spank the Bolts on the 16th.

Giving someone a full win instead of a Partial win because time ran out isn't really clear cut. Just because someone has more power on their house doesn't mean they are actually closer to their win condition, because you don't know how fast they are moving towards it. It is very much an uncertainty principle. Consider the case of a control player who has his lock round six or seven or eight, which happened to me yesterday. My opponent was at 12 power and I was at 3, but I my lock hit, and he couldn't break it. With some claim 2 military I lowered his power by killing renown characters the next turn while he could not do anything, and it was a wear and tear until I hit 15. Well what if time ended when he was at 7 power (and bleeding it) and I was at 5? Is he closer to winning? I guess that depends ib how you look at it - who would reach 15 sooner, me, who needed less power to get to the win condition, him. This would be a lot different than two players hitting time with 13 and 14 power with even board position.

Obviously this is only a small fraction of the overall issue, but look at it in terms of a control player. Your essentially using your opponent gathering power as a clock your racing against to get your lock. He can be at 14 or 13 or 10 or 5, but when your lock sticks and you can keep it, that doesn't matter. So would you win the game? yes. They could run the time limit and take a "partial win" over you if they have say 10 power and you have 8, but is that really an honest representation of the match? So in the extreme case you have a tournament format that gives "partial wins" based on the time limit that give an advantage to the rush player over the control player. Just some food for thought.

Mathias Fricot said:

My heart is breaking over the plight of the poor control players who can't win in 50 minutes to an hour. Maybe they can start some threads decrying how this is breaking the Metagame and get this changed in the next FAQ or Tournament Rules. Seems to have worked in the past. Just get the Jedi Counsel to agree and it should be changed by GenCon.

kpmccoy21 said:

Hmm... Through all the bitterness, I think you actually have a good point. I don't see that "agreeing on who was ahead and giving them a full win" is as unproblematic as people seem to think it is. The time limit is there for a reason, and I'd say one of its biggest parts is to encourage players to play to win, instead of just playing to dominate and control. Modified wins are a risk you are taking, if you're playing a deck that isn't able to win the game with power in a quite generous (1h) amount of time, and hence working around this rule is a bit... dodgy.

I almost play control exclusively, when it isn't control it is control/delayed rush, or control with an aggro element.

If we have a known time-limit for a tournament it is up to us to come with a deck that is able to meet the win condition within that limit or deal with the consequences. PERIOD.

The fact the game is as strategic as it is with so many deciions being made and so much under the players purview, it favors the player who takes the longer view and plays the odds, that is almost always going to be the control player. No need to alter the tournament rules to give a greater advantage. As long as the actual outcome of the games is what is determining who gets the points and moves on and up, then the point system is just fine.