Upper Deck Entertainment Forums

I have reason to believe I was Stalled against at a recent tournament with the Judge observing for the entirety of my Round 3, Game 2. Thank you in advance for considering the report in the thread at the bottom of this post.

I am not looking to get anyone in trouble. My motivation in all this is to simply ask whether we can define more clearly any of the following, or related areas (especially with Realm Championships a few short weeks away):
1) Slow Play rulings (ie - define max number of seconds before a player's first play on their turn), with the intent of avoiding abnormally long average times for player turns.
2) End-of-Match Procedures to prevent an opponent's response opportunity from counting against a player who's clearly attempted to end his turn when time is called.
3) Compile, for judge enrichment, a list of known deck archetypes whose goal is not to actually win 2 of 3 games.

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P704 Stalling
This infraction occurs when a player intentionally plays slow during a game to gain an advantage.
Players that intentionally play slow to gain an advantage from end of match procedures create an unfair game environment, and unnecessarily delay the tournament.

The penalty for Stalling is a Disqualification for both Rules Levels.

Examples:
A player who won the first game of the match purposely plays slowly in order to stall for time and wait for the round to end.
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http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/WOW/COMMUNITY/forums/1/1849028/ShowThread.aspx

The problem with slow play is that it is one of those penalties that is completely subjective.  What you consider to be "slow play" may not be the same as what I consder to be slow play. 

While it may only take you 5 seconds to see the best or most optimal play in a given situation it may take another player 30 seconds.  Of course this situation is addressed as players become more competant in their play.

As a judge it is our responsibility, to provide a fair judgement of how long a player should be taking in a given situation.  Now if you have called a judge over and asked them to watch for slow play.  As they sit there the judge is not providing what you consider to be a fair ammount of time, you should appeal to the Head Judge. 

Unfrotunatly we don't have chess clocks in this game (and there is no viable way for that to work in this time of game where priority passes back and forth between the players so often).

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William C. Zobac
Lubbock, TX
WoW TCG RK 1
WoW Minis RK 2
PM LV 1

Thanks for looking. Up until the end of this post, I hadn't really considered the fact that a judge, if asked to observe for Slow Play, wouldn't also automatically suspect that Stalling could be taking place (simply because that's how I would handle such a situation). I think I know how to handle that type of scenario (as a player) now.

Unfortunately, the more people I spoke with about this, the more I realized that "working the clock" is actually a fairly common exploit amongst some of the top-level players. Knowing this is part of why I was hoping the rules might get some re-consideration, but I understand a lot more about the arguments for and against clarifying the rules in this area.