Punishing scouting is a huge can of worms. If scouting will be punished then there needs to be very clear rules what is allowed. Are players allowed to look players from left or right when they are playing? Are players allowed to talk to each other between games? What part of "scouting" is allowed and when it comes punishable? Tournament will lose a lot of credibility when somebody will get punished by scouting when he felt he didn't do much wrong. At least I can always blame someone random I lost to for scouting to get "byes". Not very hard to realize which system allows for more serious abuse if there are players who abuse the rules. I am very friendly player but I am not a fan of rules which hasn't work in any game this far.

Damon's suggestion regarding "scouting" is a bit confusing. On the one hand, scouting is discouraged, but on the other hand watching other games when yours is complete is fine if the players don't mind. That suggests to me that watching someone's game is NOT scouting, but then I'm not sure what would constitute scouting.

I think the idea of minimize poor sportsmanship is good. Identifying poor sportsmanship might be more of an art than a science though…

TheProfessor said:

My thought is that almost everybody has a good sportsmanship. "Cheaters" will find the loop holes anyway, what ever the rules. By making hard to govern and strict rule sets you will just punish the normal players.

Yep. I think poor sportsmanship/cheating is a rare thing, and it is not necessary to put barriers in place that could potentially stop players from joining.

But, on the other hand, it if that rare event happens, it is necessary to have a solution in hand so that you don't lose players because of one "bad apple".

It is a delicate balance - don't make the environment restrictive, don't make rules that are overly burdensome, but at the same time be clear that poor sportsmanship is not tolerated.

I think some players are more and some players are less afraid of scouting. If I feel like my deck relies a lot on surprises than at least I have the opportunity to say "please leave us alone" to bystanders.

Also I think random watching is a milder form of scouting than talking before the semifinal with someone who has already played your opponent and asking him about the deck and its strategy. Yes there is no way of really controlling this but reminding people before the tournament that this would give them an unfair advantage actually could help. Not everyone might be aware that this would be regarded as unfair. From my experience most CoC players are good-minded. We're not playing Magic, you don't get money prizes. In our environment I think this can work.

mischraum.de said:

That is kind of my point. MTG doesn't have rules against scouting even with those money prizes. I don't understand why CoC tournaments should be even more strict and serious than MTG tournaments.

EDIT Even AGoT doesn't have against scouting but CoC does. I would say scouting is more handy in AGoT than CoC.

It's moot now - the new Tournament rules have made Scouting unsportsmanship conduct. Now all we need is a definition of Scouting so we know when it is happening…

It states the TO is the final arbiter of how to enforce all rules. Damon in his email clearly states what he believes scouting to be, and still states it is up to the TO to decide how best to handle the situation.

I suspect that it was our debates here that "forced his hand" to have an official stance.

Basically what it reads like is if both players don't care if people observe their game then the TO can just let it go. Sounds perfectly reasonable. Accusing someone after the fact of scouting, rather than when the scouting is occurring is going to be extremely difficult to prove unless you have credible eyewitnesses.

In the end, it really sounds no different than all the other things in the rules about shuffling, stalling, and manipulating your or another player's standing in the results. None of those are particularly easy to enforce, or even easy to tell when it has been violated. We all have laws, no matter what country we reside in, that are difficult to enforce or prove violation of, but those laws are there none the less because just having them reduces the frequency that honest citizens will violate the law.

*shrug*

I think in the end the idea is for people to play their games, letting each game itself determine how well you do. Does anybody here really want to argue that this is not the ideal way for us all to play in a tournament?

Penfold said:

Obviously this is true. But, we have Tournament Rules we are expected to enforce, and the ultimate purpose of the TR is to make it easy for people to just play their game. I think it helps everyone if we have some uniform expectation of how to enforce the rules.

I'm still confused about how scouting is bad, but watching someone's game is not. Sure, we have to get the players' approval for people to watch, but that doesn't eliminate scouting. The people playing the game might not even be thinking that scouting is an issue.

I want to make sure I both enforce the rules as written, but also don't reduce the potential for fun in the tournament.

If I knew what scouting was (a formal definition provided by FFG) I would understand better how to enforce the rule while maximizing the enjoyment of the participants.

Defintion of what is considered scouting and what isn't is definately needed.

Having to ask players (there by interrupting their game) if I can watch… is terrible in my opinion. I much rather, as a player, ask spectators to step away.

Last thing I want is someone asking mid thinking phase if they can watch. Especially during an important/stressful game.

So… unless you're cheating by feeding me or my current opponent information, or unless otherwise directed to leave. Everyone has my approval to watch a game I am in. If you feel the need to ask my opponent, please do so at an appriopiate time.

Oh wait, if you knew when the appriopiate time is, then that would mean that you were already watching the game… lol.

On a more positive note, I think the "how to end a unfinished game" rule is an improvement and is clearly the best one we've had yet.