You would need the turns to be 3 min unless you always wanted to go into overtime.
This game just isn’t like MTG and IMHO isn’t well suited to 50 min rounds. If people playing MTG had to sideboard every turn during the game there is no way MTG rounds could be completed in anywhere near 50 min.
50 minute games do feel like they test something different than 75 minute games for Codex, but I mean you also want to be able to play tournaments in 3 days or fewer so… I get it, and it’s something a more APing player can practice down I think
I know but the first two turns are pretty fast, and games are usually pretty much decided by turn 6 (at least to the point where you don’t need too much time to finish off your opponent’s base).
Those occasional 8-9 turn awesome games would get pretty pushed for time, though, which is sad. I also guess you might see fewer early concessions in RL, as if your opponent is getting close to running out of time, there’s a lot higher chance they make a mistake, or just don’t have enough time to perform the attacks they need to close the game out.
@Raiddinn What’s overtime?
ETA: I’d also love to see a stream of a “Lightning Codex” tournament, with like 10 minute chess clocks or something.
I’d love to try “lightning codex” XD
Whatever time the game is being played after matches officially end.
Something like this.
Hopefully you are not able to use the opponents clock time to do these things. Its pretty easy to drain several minutes off someone’s clock if you can repeatedly stop them on their turn and ask them to count things.
I was mostly talking about the time it takes to write stuff down, which I don’t think anyone will object to doing during their turn. If you’re tracking cycles, there shouldn’t really be any counting required, you just need to know how many cards they played, discarded and drew.
I think having an overtime rule is far more likely to cause problems, as you are incentivised to slow play if you’re ahead, or if you’re concerned that your opponent is advantaged at Tech III. If you’re going to use chess clocks, I think you’d be better just ruling that if you run out of time, you lose.
MtG does this when it can use chess clocks (i.e. online), the overtime rules are a concession to real life play that it’s impossible to track time well due to passing priority. However, I guess I should also mention that MtG timers are generally extremely generous…
In general, I would say there are numerous instances where you can easily ‘waste’ your opponents time if you attempted to utilize some type of game clock whereby each player has X amount of time.
Opp plays a unit and attacks. You see no reason for it to have haste, so both players argue for 30 seconds over whether it has haste. Who’s clock is running during this time? Player draws a card, opponent thinks he drew 2; they discuss for 20 seconds on how many cards he had before that. There are countless opportunities for this to take place.
In chess, I would say a clock is acceptable, as the rules are straightforward (i.e. a rook moves in a straight line, so if they move it diagonally its easily noticed with no discussion needed, hence 1-2 seconds ‘lost’) vs codex, where many things are not straightforward, and start to fall into the 10-20 second ‘discussion’ range (if not longer).
A computer can easily track these things, hence why a computer controlled implementation can follow a clock system. You don’t waste ‘the wrong players’ time when trying to figure something out (i.e. no time ‘lost’ discussing if it has haste, did they draw an extra card, etc).
The general approach to deal with an opponent who is doing that is to call a judge. At that point, they can’t interrupt any more, because it’s the judge’s job to check everything you’re doing, and you can proceed with your turn unimpeded.
I don’t agree that there couldn’t potentially be the same problems in chess. You could claim that I touched a piece that I didn’t touch, or that I made an illegal move, or anything else. It’s pretty easy to stop the clock if there’s a significant discussion to be had, or if players are making illegal moves and a judge is required. Thankfully most people attending tournaments are nice people, and these kid of problems are pretty unusual…
Time increments per move could work well to accommodate short and longer games, you get these modes on most non-analog chess clocks. eg something like 10mins + 3 additional mins per move. Also makes it harder to force a win just by stalling if you’re ahead on time.
Seems reasonable to stop the clocks for rule queries, as these happen to pretty well everyone below “judge tier” experience.
What type of opponent? Normal?
Lets check the following scenario:
A player controls Skeleton Javelineer with a javelin rune, feather rune, Soul Stones is attached to it, its controller has 2x Skeletal Lords and a Fairie Drag (that has been Polymophed since its controllers last upkeep), along with a max level Vandy in play.
We can stop here for sake of discussion (but for sure there are other factors on top of this that need to be considered in a typical game).
What are the stats, abilities and number of runes and type on each card for the Skeleton Javelineer, each Skeletal Lord, Fairie Dragon and Vandy.
Hopefully you know the answer within a split second so you don’t end up being ‘that opponent’ who would need more than 0 seconds per card to figure that out.
I guess that makes me ‘that opponent’ since I’d require some ‘non-zero’ amount of time to understand a game state at any given time.
Sorry, I maybe misunderstood you. I thought we were talking about players who were trying to manipulate the timing rules to give themselves an unfair advantage. So in your previous post, the other player actually knew that the unit had haste, but was pretending that they didn’t think it did in order to waste time.
Now you seem to be talking about opponents who are genuinely confused about the gamestate, which is a completely different situation. Of course it’s fine to check what’s going on if you’re genuinely not sure, and obviously if you think your opponent is unintentionally cheating, you should point it out to them. The 25 minutes allowed for the game allows for some confusion and discussion regarding the gamestate.
Nevertheless, my advice is probably still pretty appropriate. If I ever got into a situation that complex (thankfully they’re pretty rare), I’d call a judge, just to make sure I’m not making any errors.
I’m just trying to figure out who’s clock should be running when one or more players has a legitimate question/concern.
Say there is anywhere from a small to large number of cards in play and both players are unsure what any-given-cards stats are. Which players clock is running while they figure this out? (Maybe even both players…dunno?)
‘In theory’ I’d say nobody’s clock (or both players clocks) should be running. If its decided that somebodies clock has to be running all the time, and no more than one clock can be running at a given time, then Player A should view the board while their clock ticks, and Player B has to move away from the game area (somehow handled so they can’t think about the game state while Player A is doing so → something very difficult to do) and then they switch who can look at the board state when the clock switches back.
In the meantime some third party would have to also view the game state, and then, once both players think they know what’s going on, the third party would have to confer with each of them individually, and if one person has an incorrect understanding, then their clock runs while the third party explains to them what’s happening?
Another case:
It’s Player A’s turn, and player A asks player B how many cards are in their hand, discard pile, and in play, how long does player B have to respond? 5 seconds, 10 seconds? 20? While this is happening, is time ticking away from player A’s clock?
These, plus countless other questions, need answered before anyone should want to use some type of clock system as a potential method for determining a winner.
Trying to prove that someone was abusing a time rule would be extremely difficult to do. Numerous legitimate questions exist about the game state and there are several valid reason for their having asked any one of them (this holds true across a multitude of game states and questions that could be asked).
I’m beginning to question if you have ever played this game with a human before.
When it’s Player A’s turn, the only person who needs to understand the board state is Player A, as they are the only person who needs to make any decisions during their turn. Therefore, if they need to time do consider the board state, and think about possible plays, it is their clock which should be running. In theory, Player B doesn’t even need to be there while Player A takes their turn, as they have no decisions to make.
In practice, Player B may want to observe Player A’s actions, and point out if they are taking illegal moves. However, this shouldn’t really interrupt the flow of play at all, as it’s usually very clear what’s happening and how a given move is illegal. If there is any uncertainty about the legality of an action, you should call a judge, not sit there wasting time, as that’s what judges are there for.
There is no reason why Player A needs to know how many cards there are in Player Bs hand, discard pile or in play during Player Bs turn. I would imagine that B is probably happy to answer queries during their turn, but they aren’t required to do so, and are likely to be less willing if A is continually asking for information in order to waste time. Player A is very welcome to request as many counts as they like once Bs turn has ended.
Does it really matter?
Maybe Coiser is a world class tournament player in some other game and maybe there is rampant abuse of rules in that other game?
Seems like the questions are valid and probably something that would come up at the top tables of a high end tournament if such a thing were ever created for Codex. Somebody is going to take advantage if the rules aren’t ironclad.
Beyond that, though, you would need some kind of qualifiers just to weed out people who need more than 25 min to play a side, because if you let newbs in that top level tournament (in the growth phase or whatever) they are for sure going to blow past 50 minute rounds. My first game took hours, I think.
So which players clock runs if Player B says that something illegal occurred during Player A’s turn?
So which players clock runs while waiting on a judge?
If you aren’t worried about being cheated against, then I guess not.
I wasn’t even discussing that issue, my previous statement was about a player, on their own turn, with their clock running, asking their opponent a question. How much time does the opponent have to correctly respond? Do you switch the clock to the other player and let your opponents clock run until they answer the question?
I fail to see the relevance of this to the ‘discussion’. Do you have anything meaningful to add?
This.
If it’s your turn, your clock is running.
If you think your opponent did something illegal on their turn, call a judge.
Stop the clock when you call a judge.
If the Judge determines that the opponent did an unintentional illegal action, they do something. This might include a time penalty, a noted warning, or whatever else is in the tournament rules.
If the Judge determines that the opponent did an intentional illegal action (and knew it), the opponent gets disqualified from the tournament for Cheating.
If the Judge determines that the opponent’s action was legal, you have gifted your opponent extra time on their turn while the Judge was called.
Note that deliberately questioning / judge calling / etc. for the purpose of wasting the opponent’s time could be included in the tournament rules as an example of Cheating, at which point you are risking a DQ to even try it.
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.
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.