Originally posted by Nick Rutkowski:

If you take an action in game and its only purpose is to eat up time no matter how small it its you've committed stalling.

This simply can't be correct. Many times players who are a game up will take legal game actions near the end of the round with the specific goal letting time run out. Players will do things like make complicated attacks, board wipe from an advantageous position, or make an unnecessary attack simply to make sure their opponent's turn is turn zero rather than their turn is turn zero. Spending the 10 seconds it takes to suicide a 1/1 into your opponent's creature simply because it will cause the end of round timer to complete this turn instead of next turn is totally legal.

Stalling is intentionally taking too long to make a decision in order to run the clock out.

Slow Play is unintentionally taking too long to make a decision.

Strategy is taking actions that best insure your chances to win. Playing to draw is a part of that.

You misunderstand my statement. If your ONLY purpose of the action is to eat time on the clock. That is stalling.

There is a fine line between playing to not loose and stalling. The important factor in that is, if you are advancing the game in some manner, not stalling.

Case in point:
Using Venser to blink a Stonehorn Dignitary every turn. You might not be able to win but you are not going to loose. Not stalling.

Originally posted by Nick Rutkowski:

If your ONLY purpose of the action is to eat time on the clock. That is stalling.

This seems contrary to the Official position on Stalling expressed earlier:

Shawn Doherty
“I have a problem with a system that says that certain actions taken at a reasonable pace are perfectly legal in certain cases and worthy of a DQ in other cases. DQs should be for doing illegal things for advantage, not doing legal things for advantage.”

Scott Marshall
If a player mulligans to zero in a timely manner, do not DQ them for Stalling.

Is it that taking pointless actions solely to run out the clock is Stalling within a game, but not before the game has begun? Or is the mulligan exception based on a different principle?

Mulliganning down to 0 results in a progress in game state. Rearranging the
top 3 cards of your library 10 times, not so much.

2015-05-04 15:11 GMT-04:00 James Winward-Stuart <

Activating Top 10 times in a row is one of the things you need to shortcut
if you don't want to be committing Slow Play.

How about you shortcut the mulligan from 7 to 0, because you wanted to mulligan to 0 anyway ?

Originally posted by Philip Böhm:

How about you shortcut the mulligan from 7 to 0, because you wanted to mulligan to 0 anyway ?

New information is gained with each hand you draw, so your decision might change from hand to hand.

No new information changes the second time you top.

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

Philip Böhm
How about you shortcut the mulligan from 7 to 0, because you wanted to mulligan to 0 anyway ?

New information is gained with each hand you draw, so your decision might change from hand to hand.

No new information changes the second time you top.

But it won't because i don't care what cards are in my current mulligan-hand. All I care is the clock.

Except that it's easy to argue that the decision changes with each
mulligan, especially if you're claiming to do it honestly.

And someone attempting to game the clock by shortcutting their mulligans
straight from 7 to 0 is doing it wrong.

We're taking 1 card, looking at it, putting it back in the deck and doing 6-7 push shuffles, presenting again. That should be what… 15 seconds? Are we making a mountain out of a mole hill here?

Talking about this is necessary. IC has seen 3 cases like this in the last 6 months, and we average maybe 5 per year.

The thing we look for is an actual change of pace to slow down. Did he do a pile shuffle when he usually doesn't, for example.

-Eric S.

We're taking 1 card, looking at it, putting it back in the deck and doing 6-7 push shuffles, presenting again. That should be what. 15 seconds? Are we making a mountain out of a mole hill here?

I hope this doesn't count as thread-necromancy, if so, i'm sorry.

In my opinion, using a mulligan down to 0 cards is completly fine, because it may be a strategic decision. Maybe he had to go down to three cards and thought to himself :"If i go down to 0, and my first draws are land, land, Blood Scrivener (or something else that interacts positively with an emtpy Hand) ,I might draw enough cards to come back".
Of course, the possibility for that to happen is small, but it exists. And we shouldn't punish players for making strategic decisions we think are bad, if this occurs in Top8 or not doesn't matter.

Originally posted by Philip Böhm:

I'll ask the player: Why did you mulligan from 1 to 0? He will very likely either lie to me or admit he wanted to waste time. Either way he will end up DQed.

I don't like that question, it has a very negative vibe in it, something that shouldn't come from judges (in that situation). It doesn't look like you are there to help as a judge, but to actively find infractions when none are present.

Originally posted by Benedikt Ebert:

I hope this doesn't count as thread-necromancy, if so, i'm sorry.

Yeah, it really is. And this thread already received an 'O'fficial answer, even though that didn't seem to slow the debate much.

I think we're done, here, really.

Edited Scott Marshall (July 21, 2015 12:34:58 PM)