Tournament Etiquette?

Codex
79

EricF has it right. There is really nothing else it could be.

Not having chess clocks is just clearly worse than having them. (Note: please don’t let that trigger you, and attempt to construct some convoluted argument where no time enforcement is somehow “better”. It’s not, and it’s infeasible. There really must be clocks.)

Given that there are clocks, of course yours must run on your turn and not the opponent’s.

All tournament floor rules MUST inherently involve squishy, less than 100% perfect rules. “Don’t shout loud, racist things at your opponent” is either implicit or explicit in any reasonable set of floor rules for any game. But you can’t precisely define what loud means (decibels? for what duration? etc) or what racist means. But it would be very bad indeed to discard the rule entirely because it can’t be 100% defined. Anything involving the boundary of the game and how humans interact with it or each other must be squishy and that’s fine. Fine relative to not having the rule. More and more effort to define the loudness of what is shouting or what constitutes racism is not really going to help. In the actual situation, a human judge making a judgment call about what is reasonable is totally fine.

It’s exactly the same for if someone is stalling. You can’t say “it’s impossible to precisely define stalling, therefore it’s allowed.” There is no choice but say it’s not allowed, and to let a judge decide. This whole thing is a non-issue because when you’re using chess clocks, the issue is minimized to a microscopic level. If you instead had just ONE clock for the entire match, shared by both players, then it would be a big issue. Frank is taking a long time thinking on his turn, but is it stalling or strategizing? We’ve seen this type of tournament in real life and the squishy rule is so squishy there that it’s pretty hard to deal with. When you reduce the problem to JUST people asking the opponent on their turn what’s going on, you’ve already removed like 99.99% of the problem. The remaining tiny area where you can “cheat” is easily handled by calling a judge and stopping the clocks. I think we could run dozens of tournaments and encounter 0 problems on this. Or maybe 1 at most, which would then be quickly decided by a judge. If it’s more than a few seconds of questioning what’s going on, I’d say stop the clock and call a judge. If it’s more than like two times, that’s suspicious and not usual for tournament play, so a judge should closely watch the match.

8 Likes
80

Based strictly off this video:

this ‘idea’ of using a clock has a long way to go. I’ll assume the players in the finals know what they’re doing…

General things to be worked out when using a clock:

A.) There seems to be a good bit of Player A stopping Player B on their turn and asking questions. Time stamp 1:14 :00 - 1:14:45 = 45 seconds of asking the active player whats going on.

B.) Do you discard/draw on the opponents turn? Time stamp 1:17:54 a player does this.

C.) When your units have lethal damage on them, they don’t die until your opponents turn? Time stamp 1:17:55 this seems to be the case.

All of that with just a few minute skim of the video.

So, players in the finals fail the ‘rules’ established above, best of luck to everyone else in the tournament.

Sorry to hear if the player was banned for the above infringements (as the above posts seem to imply will be the outcome of these actions). In my opinion, it was pretty hard to follow what was going on from Time Stamp 1:12:30 - 1:14:00 (hence why Player A was questioning it).

If its this hard to follow the finals, I can only imagine trying to keep up with game states in the early rounds.

81

Let me elaborate now that I am home.

Nothing even close to this scenario ever happens in a real game. In fact, the only thing slowing down games in the last tournament was people taking to long to think about their turns, not rules questions. Thus the need for clocks. You have set up an extreme edge case scenario that will never happen in order to argue from, and which I politely refuse to accept.

We were all fairly new to the game at that tournament yet had hardly any rules questions. New players I’ve taught usually stop asking a lot of questions after game 2. You seem to have a unrealistic view of what is normal in Codex and act like basic questions are big obstacles. This is why I question if you’ve ever actually played the game.

It was actually much less hectic in the early rounds.

The “Idea” of using the clock is standard, but you are correct that we were going through growing pains during this tournament. What we eventually stubble upon at the end was very promising. You basically have two minutes to play your turn and are rewarded for quick play. Quite doable with just a little bit of practice.

I think it’s important to understand why having no clock would be a disaster in a real time tournament. I once tried that with a Yomi novice tournament; which was a tournament specifically aimed at pitting new players vs new players with personally assigned mentors to inspire confidence. I said “no timer” in the rules and one match took 2.5 hours to complete which held up the tournament for so long that I had to split it into two days instead of one! I changed the rule to “slow timer” and the players adapted without any problems.

I’ve also seen soooooo many other tournaments, which already took 4-5+ hours, get delayed by several hours because of all sorts of OTHER issues besides timers. Running a real time tournament on schedule is a divine feat as is, without timers it would be impossible.

7 Likes
82

Just for giggles, I went and opened a recent pbf game, here’s one turn:

Upkeep:
Get Gold (10)
No techs this turn

Main:

Maestro (7)
Fencer rises from the grave, free as can be thanks to the Maestro
Star-crossed Starlet from hand, fo free!
Stop the Music (Hammertime!), Dancers get angry af
Dark Pact, base to 12 draw 2
Another Star-crossed Starlet from hand, fo free!
Discord, your stuff gets weak (5)
Deteriorate a basilisk, it dies
Sacrifice the Weak, Skeleton and other Basilisk die (3)
River kills Cadet, takes 1 damage from tower
Maxband Vandy, dooming a dancer (1)
Vandy 4 + Doom Dancer 4 + Other two dancers 4 + Fencer 2 + 2x Starlet (haste from fencer) 6 = 20 damage to your base

In my opinion, the game state above is is not ‘more simple’ than the scenario I proposed, but to each his own.

Can you link me a post where I said having no clock was a good idea? I probably said several times that a ‘chess clock’ style of time management seems bad at best, but can’t seem to the find a post where I said no clock was necessary.

Again, you’ll have to forgive me for wanting to discuss Codex, rather than other games. I don’t know much about that other game, so I can’t speak knowledgeably about it.

This is fine, but when people start moving their hands fast, gold & cards can easily get ‘confused’. I would say its very difficult to follow the coins & cards in the video I linked, and that’s with me dedicating my whole attention span to it. In a real life game, being ‘rewarded’ for discarding your hand quick can pretty easily lead to another reward of drawing more cards than you should have.

Ditto for gold gaining/spending. In that video they spend money, play cards, take things back, get some money back. Its very confusing and you have to dedicate everything your doing just to watching the other player to see if they are cheating.

In my opinion, that’s not a ‘great’ way to try and enjoy the game.

83

I’m not sure I see it. The scenario you first proposed features seven distinct modifiers to one of your opponent’s units, and it features modifiers which you have to unpuzzle in order to figure out if you can kill something.

The scenario you dug up features a grand total of zero listed modifiers to your opponent’s units that didn’t originate with you–so there’s no complications that you weren’t already thinking about on your turn previous.

Listed modifiers: Discord (aura debuff, persistent that turn), Deteriorate (temporary debuff that also instantly kills the unit, so it doesn’t really persist at all), Maxband Vandy on one of your own dancers

So, less than a third of the number of persistent buffs/debuffs than your demonstrated scenario. In addition, it’s the closing turn of the game, which means you only really care about doing lethal damage (and have tons of time to figure it out). Turns which end in lethal tend to be a little more complicated to figure out, but not more than the scenario you describe.

Were there any more complicated board states you could hunt down from earlier turns in a game? Say, Turn 3?

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84

This is a very straight forward turn to anyone used to codex. Compared to having an extremely unrealistic number of buffs from 3 different specs and a tech lab concentrated on a tech 0 unit in what is supposed to be a midgame example. What questions about this turn could possible slow down a tournament by any significant amount?

You are strongly indicating that the clock method is bad.

We are talking about tournaments in general, then specifically codex. You can’t dodge my entire point unless you want to throw away any authority you might have had about how tournaments should be run.

It is much easier for an spectator to be confused by a match then the players themselves. If Major confusion happens then you can just stop the clock and call a judge.

The video you linked is an edge case unto itself and mistakes were made. I think you need to accept that in real life mistakes happen.

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85

Mr. Modesty.

After quite a few PBF games and heavy use of these tools, you should be developing a stronger and stronger gut sense of the game and you would probably play just as well without those toys now that you have experience and should be able to guess with decent accuracy %s and tech choices. I doubt most people are lucky enough to have high caliber players to play with IRL regularly, so PBF is the place you’re going to really be able to test your best spec/strategy against players who also have their shit together.

I remember the few times in my life I was playing a significant amount of wc3 or sc2, and I would be able to feel the tempo of the game and be able to predict within minutes of when “oh yeah time to attack” or “oh no they are coming need to be sure I can defend against X.” I think a similar thing could be achieved here, and its not even real-time!

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88

I don’t think there are any rules which say Player A can’t ask Player B a question during Player B’s turn.

As for the likes thing, all I can say is that you often come across as abrasive and a bit passive aggressive in your tone. You probably don’t mean to, and the internet has never been an amazing platform for expressing emotional nuance, but it might be worth trying to change your communication style to be a little more friendly. We’re a community, and we post on these forums because it’s fun to discuss stuff. It’s less fun when you feel like you’re engaged in a legal battle of wits rather than chatting about a game you enjoy playing.

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89

I would prefer if you could do that, but this seems to be saying that isn’t allowed:

i.e. Only the active player can ask the non-active player questions. Unless somehow I am misunderstanding it (in which case only the non-active player can ask the active player questions on the active players turn…but that seems worse).

90

What you have made is a bunch of claims not “solid facts”, and you are extrapolating your video evidence well beyond any reasonable limits.

I am speaking from the position of having been there at the tournament, and then continuing to play, discuss, watch, and teach Codex hundreds of times since through forums and in real life. I am not a great player but I have seen a lot.

And this is a prime example of a passive aggressive line that gives everything a mean tone. You tend to have a few of these in any post that is replying to someone which would explain[quote=“Coiser, post:87, topic:1123”]
Side Note: I think the “likes” that posts on this forum get are interesting.

I write facts, supported by ‘very good’ (i.e. video) evidence which supports my statements and get 0 likes and flagged (I guess for being to correct?).
[/quote]

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91

Can we all agree that this is getting way out of hand
And that no one is getting anywhere.
This conversation is getting increasingly inane and is just a waste of everyone’s energy.

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92

I have to echo Jadiel’s sentiment here. I’m sure you’re not intentionally being argumentative or hostile towards @Shax, but care needs to be taken with the tone of posts disagreeing with another person.

As for the point being disagreed upon @Cosier, I don’t think Sirlin was saying the inactive player can’t ask the active player questions. I can see where that could become a problem if abused heavily, and I think that’s why human judges will need to be around to provide warnings (and perhaps verbiage can be written into rules explicitly if it’s a common problem) to curb any such abuse, and what his post was saying wasn’t that “the rule is you can’t interrupt an active player with questions during his/her turn”.

Lastly, I’m glad you liked my fairly complex recent tournament turn! However, not only was that a pretty rare moment for PbF tourney games (thus why people were commenting on its rarity in post-game), I would contend that it had a lot less inter-card interactions / complexity than a “Javelineer with a Feather and Soul Stone and 2x Skeletal Lords and a Fairie Dragon that’s been polymorphed and Maxband Vandy”. That scenario requires:

  • Your deck be VERY SPECIFICALLY Demon/Necro/Balance (I haven’t seen this combo played in 7+ PbF tournaments)
  • You are able to have three Tech 2 units from two different Tech 2 specs that cost a total of 10 gold on the board (so you invested in tech lab and tech 2, and kept them healthy)
  • You played soul stone on the Jav and it’s survived awhile. (with only 2 hp, soul stone included)
  • You’ve also had gold to spend on Maxband Vandy? (was the opponent hanging heroes out to dry on purpose? you’ve spent a lot of gold on a lot of other stuff…)
  • AND you’re playing against Growth AND they teched Polymorph Squirrel against your Demon/Necro/Balance combo that doesn’t really scare the Growth player with units?

My turn specifically required that I have Dark Pacts and a bunch of Finesse units / spells in my deck. It wasn’t that hard to setup, Demon/Finesse is a very common spec combo with tons of inherent synergy, and Mooseknuckles was putting very real pressure on me such that I was barely pull it off.

They really aren’t the same scenario, not really even close from my perspective. I’m not the best player on this forum, but I’ve played enough to see a very distinct difference between those scenarios. But quite honestly, I want to see a scenario with even 80% of what you’re proposing, as I feel like that’d be a very entertaining game!

I think we can nitpick tournament rules a lot in this thread, but I don’t really see this line of conversation yielding something fruitful. I’m open-minded, though, and happy to listen to further support of how this will benefit future tournaments!

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94

I’ll admit I didn’t see that (I haven’t been following the whole thread that closely). That comment, too, is out of line.

Let’s all agree to be kind and open-minded here, yea?

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95

Maybe because you were doing it to literally everyone before I even said anything?

I haven’t kept my cool nearly as well as the rest of the insanely polite people on this forum. I’ll go ahead and ban myself from these threads.

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96

There’s no need to be over-dramatic, @Shax. I think you’re plenty capable of participating civilly XD

I can understand a lot better how this whole thing escalated now. Let this just be a lesson to all of us that it’s especially important to check your ego at the door of a disagreement, and let’s move on :slight_smile:

97

Do I have to be the lawyer and call it ?
@Coiser how can a javelineer ever have a feather rune and javelin rune at the same time ?
“Arrives: You may put a feather rune on a tech I or II unit.”

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98

Agreed. Everyone needs to chill out. It seems that some of the animosity from the Rules Discussion thread has spilled over into this one.

It’s not useful to continue being disrespectful to others in retaliation to them being disrespectful to you. Just flag, alert mods, let us know the situation, proceed civilly. I’m not issuing any direct warnings to anyone as of now because this is one of the first times this has been a problem on the new forums, but it’s moreso a direct warning to anyone who pursues that sort of avenue in an argument.

The Rules Questions thread is for asking questions and figuring out edge cases, not making arguments that the entire game is broken and that it’s crazy that anybody can get through a game without having to ask for help.

This thread is about what’s allowable and acceptable in a tournament, and it’s okay to discuss whether or not chess clocks are viable for Codex, how judges should operate, how much time should be allotted to a single game, etc. This is all useful feedback that we can use to help better the tournament experience at future events.

As the person who made that video and oversaw the first FSX Codex tournament, I agree that things didn’t go as well as we’d hoped. We ran over on time due to not strictly enforcing timers for the rest of the Swiss tournament, and it let to a very unfortunate situation where our Grand Finals was compromised as a result of trying to get it done as fast as possible to proceed with the rest of the weekend’s events. Apologies to @Alhazard and @sharpobject for that.

Also, keep in mind that Codex was at the time unreleased, and we were all still pretty green then (and if we weren’t, we still were, because of iterative balance changes that occurred all through the testing phase). Also, it was the first real timed tournament situation that either player had ever been in, so it’s unfair to judge their play based on this. If anything, the blame for the event running poorly should be placed solely on me, and not on “the use of chess clocks” or “Codex’s inability to be understood by even the best players”.

So using our FSX Grand Finals video is actually not a great indicator of why we should or shouldn’t do anything actually. There’s a lot of passion in this thread, and I think that’s overall a good thing; we all want Codex to have a strong ruleset and be a stand-up tournament game. But let’s try to channel that energy in a positive way, instead.

10 Likes
99

In general, getting a Feather Rune on a Skeleton Javelineer isn’t straightforward, but it is possible.

Here is one possibility to arrive at the game state I was asking about:

Player A plays and maxes Vandy
Player A plays and maxes Quince, and gets up to 2x Mirror tokens

(some point later in the same game, but continuing from before)
Player B plays Skeleton Javelineer, it has a javelin rune on it
Player B plays Argagarg and summons a Wisp token

(some point later in the same game, but continuing from before)
Player A Mind Controls the Skeleton Javelineer
Player A casts Manufactured Truth on the Skeleton Javelineer they control. It copies a tech 1 unit
The same turn, Player A plays Fairie Dragon, and puts a feather rune on the manufactured truth Skeleton Javelineer that is copying a tech 1 unit

(some point later in the same game, but continuing from before)
Player B plays Skeletal Lord
Player B plays Fairie Dragon (whether this put a rune on anyting doesn’t matter)

(some point later in the same game, but continuing from before)
Player A plays Soul Stones on their Skeleton Javelineer
Player A loses their Fairie Dragon (it dies, etc)

(some point later in the same game, but continuing from before)

Player B is worried that the flying Skeleon Javelineer can do the final points of damage to their base next turn, so they decide to take away its flying for a turn, so…
Player B Polymorphs their own Fairie Dragon

Next turn:
Player A uses Quinces ability to copy the Skeletal Lord with Mirror A
Player A uses Quinces ability to copy the Skeletal Lord with Mirror B

Player A Mind Controls the (Polymorphed) Fairie Dragon

I left out the details of how I arrived at the board state in my previous post, but in general the board state seems ‘legal’ to me.

1 Like
100

Well done.
I think this the second time I fall for the manufactured truth trick to cheat in normally not possible states.
I guess we can open a new thread to showcase such elaborated game states, it will be fun. I dont think there is any chance something this elaborated will ever happen though in a competitive match.
Ill leave this thread for now since I have nothing to add to tournament etiquette discussion.

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103

I think you’ll find this thread to your liking.

1 Like