Edit: I didn't really know where to put this, but since the crux of the matter is that it impacts running an event in a timely fashion, I put it in this forum.

Recently at a GP during one of the events I was judging I repeatedly ran into an issue with one player playing Eggs. Nearly every match I stopped to observe, the player was taking 30 seconds or so to make each decision. As this deck quickly evolves into more of a solitaire match, I noticed many opponents exceedingly frustrated, waiting for the player to make decisions. In reference to the recent slow play article, everyone (judges, spectators, and the opponent), were very bored. In a number of occasions when the round when to time this was the only match left still going and given how long a turn can take with this deck, those extra 5 turns can bee exceedingly long.

It should be noted that there were a handful of other players playing the same deck and they moved along at a very brisk pace. I assume the discrepancy was simply that this one player was not as well practiced with the deck as the others.

I tried to encourage him to speed up, but he seemed to be unable to process the board state any faster. He would go through the motions of cracking an egg, looking at the card, then waiting another 20 seconds, cracking another, etc… At this point, after issuing a slow play warning, it seemed this was going to devolve into a game loss each match, effectively amounting to a DQ.

My questions:
- Is it appropriate to penalize a player with a game loss (losses?) for not being familiar enough with with an exceptionally complex deck to play at a brisk pace?
- What are some effective strategies on coping with Eggs? I've heard enough stories like this from other people that it seems to be a common issue with the deck.

Edited Adam Zakreski (Dec. 28, 2012 07:46:10 PM)

I always try to remind the players in these types of discussions that the game state may change only a small bit at a time, and it has developed over a long period of time via these small changes.

If they are rethinking the same things that they just thought about, I'm more inclined to call Slow Play. And yes, if the player doesn't know how to play it reasonably quickly, he can get GL's, etc. No one and no rule guarantees a player enough time to find the optimal play, but the rules DO require a player to play fast enough to be able to complete the match in 50 min.

-Eric Shukan
Woburn, MA
—– Original Message —–
From: Adam Zakreski
To: eshukan@verizon.net
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2012 8:44 PM
Subject: Slow play and Eggs/Second Breakfast (Tournament Operations)


Recently at a GP during one of the events I was judging I repeatedly ran into an issue with one player playing Eggs. Nearly every match I stopped to observe, the player was taking 30 seconds or so to make each decision. As this deck quickly evolves into more of a solitaire match, I noticed many opponents exceedingly frustrated, waiting for the player to make decisions. In reference to the recent slow play article, everyone (judges, spectators, and the opponent), were very bored. In a number of occasions when the round when to time this was the only match left still going and given how long a turn can take with this deck, those extra 5 turns can bee exceedingly long.

It should be noted that there were a handful of other players playing the same deck and they moved along at a very brisk pace. I assume the discrepancy was simply that this one player was not as well practiced with the deck as the others.

I tried to encourage him to speed up, but he seemed t o be unable to process the board state any faster. He would go through the motions of cracking an egg, looking at the card, then waiting another 20 seconds, cracking another, etc. At this point, after issuing a slow play warning, it seemed this was going to devolve into a game loss each match, effectively amounting to a DQ.

My questions:
- Is it appropriate to penalize a player with a game loss (losses?) for not being familiar enough with with an exceptionally complex deck to play at a brisk pace?
- What are some effective strategies on coping with Eggs? I've heard enough stories like this from other people that it seems to be a common issue with the deck.

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I do not believe this is a valid excuse for slow play. If a player is playing a complicated deck, the onus is upon them to know the deck well enough. If a deck is too complicated that you have to play too slowly then either you need to spend more time preparing for the event with that deck or you need to play a less complicated deck.

Note I've moved this to Competitive REL as I think it's probably more appropriate a discussion relating to the MTR/IPG and Slow Play specifically, rather than a tournament operations area.

My questions:
- Is it appropriate to penalize a player with a game loss (losses?) for not being familiar enough with with an exceptionally complex deck to play at a brisk pace?
- What are some effective strategies on coping with Eggs? I've heard enough stories like this from other people that it seems to be a common issue with the deck.

The player chose to play the deck. He should be familiar with its interactions. If he isn't capable of playing the deck faster maybe he should rethink his deck choice.

I've played both a regular and a competetive event where players with this deck were present. It's clearly a problem. Players claim that as long as they keep doing stuff that brings them closer to winning, they can do that as slow as any other player. I literally heard a player say: “But he can't help it, he's not playing slow on purpose.” There were 10 players nodding in agreement, since the player tried his best, he shouldn't be punished at all.

An Eggs deck that tries to ‘go off’ needs to cast Second Sunrise for about 20 times, each time drawing 3 cards (and shuffling one Sunrise back) before the deck is able to reach a deterministic loop. That involves 20 activations of Conjurers Bauble, 20 triggers from Elsewhere Flask, 20 activations from Chromatic Star, 20 activations from Lotus, and typically 5 activations from Ghost Quarter with search, but 20 shuffle effects from Ghost Quarter. These are 120 ‘decision moments’, and I've probably missed some. Since a player has to play at a reasonable pace, to allow the match to reach a conclusion, and the player must be planning to complete his combo twice each match, he has a maximum of 25 minutes to combo out. That is 1500 seconds. Based on the above 100 decision points, he has 15 seconds per decision point. That is including shuffling in-game, and not leaving any time for shuffling, or even letting the opponent do stuff (or playing the turns leading up to the moment the player goes off, nor allowing time to actually kill the opponent)

While I won't recommend giving a player a game loss because he thinks 16 seconds after drawing from a bauble, a player that can't resolve back-to-back Second Sunrises within 2 minutes is clearly not playing quickly enough. He needs to resolve that at least another 15 times, and then there's a second (and a third) game.

I think it's fairly reasonable to give a player a Warning for Slow Play if his pace of play will take longer than 20 minutes to win the game, even if the round is only 10 minutes old. Do give some leeway if the opponent is bluffing a response, but once a loop is completed, the next loop should be performed at increased speed, fast enough to allow at least a second, equally long game.

Upgraded slow play warnings should take care of weeding the slow players out of the tournament. There are players that can play this deck at a good pace, and are able to win quickly with it. Also, there are matchups (for this deck, but also UW mirrors) where this strategy won't work: since both players have to respond to each others actions, the pace of play is not one players responsibility, and sometimes it just IS hard. But then there should be an interaction between both decks that is the reason the match goes long, not just the interaction in one deck.

What is important to note is that usually, judges only get called over during the last few minutes of a round, or after time is called. The egg deck wins in one turn, and often that is turn 4. That means that even if the game just started, the player can still win once time is called. If a judge comes over, and the player is clearly playing quicker than in game 1, how will players respond to a Slow Play warning? The solution is identifying the reason tables go to time, and then make sure to visit them during game 1 on the next match. If a player takes 3 minutes between SSr1 and SSr2 on minute 5 and minute 8 in the round, then another 3 minutes to SSr3 in minute 11, you can give him a slow play warning already.

If you haven't already, check out Toby's comments on a similar topic:
http://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2012/11/02/horsemyths/
(It's more about Four Horsemen than Eggs, but still valuable insight.)

Eric and Mark are spot on - but Jim may have said it best; to restate his point: “own your decisions”. :)

Jasper, you make several great points - but I always recoil in horror whenever I see specific times associated with a Slow Play discussion. (I guess it's one of my phobias - LOL!) I've had players argue that they're allowed 30 seconds to make a play. Not only is that untrue, but it's a primary reason I'll never publish a time limit, and why you'll never see it in policy. (There I go using “never”, when I should know better… never is such a long time.)

d:^D

Sorry if i should have started a new thread instead of resurrecting this one, but i have a related question:

At a recent PTQ I was judging, I witnessed an Eggs player “work his magic” in turn 4 of the extra turns. He was in no way playing slowly, taking no more than a second or two here and there (not at every decision point, even). Still, it took him about 20 minutes to perform enough iterations that he would be able to win the game.

Considering that there were several such decks in the tournament, I was not really surprised to see one of them taking quite a bit longer than 50 minutes in almost every round.

The question now is: is there anything we can do to prevent such a slow-down of the tournament? I can't see myself giving a slow play penalty (nor really any other sort of penalty), and still my tournament would suffer incredibly. Any ideas would be appreciated.

On Tue Feb 19 15:14, Georgi Benev wrote:
> Sorry if i should have started a new thread instead of resurrecting this one, but i have a related question:
>
> At a recent PTQ I was judging, I witnessed an Eggs player “work his magic” in turn 4 of the extra turns. He was in no way playing slowly, taking no more than a second or two here and there (not at every decision point, even). Still, it took him about 20 minutes to perform enough iterations that he would be able to win the game.
>
> Considering that there were several such decks in the tournament, I was not really surprised to see one of them taking quite a bit longer than 50 minutes in almost every round.
>
> The question now is: is there anything we can do to prevent such a slow-down of the tournament? I can't see myself giving a slow play penalty (nor really any other sort of penalty), and still my tournament would suffer incredibly. Any ideas would be appreciated.

I think the interesting question is how was he playing for the rest of the match. Eggs decks usually lose quickly, so unless he went most of the way off and fizzled, he shouldn't get to that point unless he was playing slowly earlier.

The other point, which may be controversial, but I think we should bear in mind is that some decks (like eggs) need many hundreds of actions. Others (belcher, say) will always require a lot fewer. In both cases we are requiring them to be able to complete a 3 game match in 50 minutes which clearly means that each action must be completed quicker in one case than the other, so what might not be slow for the average deck, may still be slow for an eggs player. In particular, as eggs player after the 2nd second sunrise when the opponent is unlikely to be interacting you should be able to do all the steps very quickly.

Matt

It's really important to ensure that your judges are looking for slow
play in the early minutes of the round.

And while it might feel like victimisation (we aren't a police force,
we can afford a little bit of that appearance) do look harder at the
players who are going to time each round. There will probably be
several players who go longer more regularly with the same deck. it
might be that they take 2s to think durring the combo where the faster
players only take 1s or that they take the 2s thinking time at more
decisions points in the combo. Or they take a lot longer on their
mulligan decisions.

There is usually a reason why they go longer. Some of the time it is
that they continually run up against slow opponents and it isn't their
fault. Don't start burning false witches, check that their nose isn't
false.