Official Rules Question Thread

Two games during the match are completely unrelated to each other. Let’s say two players play 4 rounds each, one of them sweeps twice and is swept twice, the other draws all four matches. Does the fact that wins of one player came together indicate anything about their skill and mean they should get more points? I don’t see any reason behind such claim, so this extra point would be quite random bonus.

I disagree - there should be a bonus for sweeps, as this helps tease out overall player skill (splitting runner wins all day is qualitatively different than sweeping the first few rounds and then getting swept by a top player). But we’ve gone way off-topic for this thread. :slight_smile:

Yes, and this is usually reflected in SoS. But sweep-swept-swept-sweep is not much different than 4 splits in a row, and should not be massively rewarded.

Oh absolutely they should be completely discrete and in a perfect world they would be. But they’re not, as evidenced by this question! They’re linked by the combined time limit which gives rise to these types of problems, and it would be great if the scoring system acted in some way to mitigate that artefact of the tournament timing.

But yes, way off-topic. :slight_smile:

Ok, there’s three different concepts that are being conflated.

Concept 1: Unsportsmanlike play. This is not against the rules, and includes Bob complaining that Alice should concede. Maybe scummy, but it’s not something we penalize. (With exceptions of being aggressive towards players, that’s Not Cool.)

Concept 2: Slow play. This is against the rules, and deals with a player taking an unusually long time to consider a play. (Subjective.) I don’t believe this happened here.

Concept 3: Stalling. Intentionally playing so as to use the clock as a means to win more points in the tournament. This is what Alice has done, and I know it’s unequivocally against the rules in MtG, and I believe it is as well in Netrunner? (It’s a DQ for MtG. I don’t know the A:NR floor rules back to front yet so I don’t know that one.)

The clock is an artifice of the tournament and a concession that we can’t have all these people standing around waiting for just one match. It is not meant to be used to gain advantage in the tournament or individual games. Doing so accidentally is Slow Play. Doing so intentionally is Cheating - Stalling. (Breaking rules accidentally is one thing, breaking rules intentionally is always Cheating.)

Good idea defining these things!

Unsportsmanlike behaviour is totally against the floor rules. There’s a couple of sections for it. An example of a minor infraction (worth a warning) is “a player loses her game and mutters how her opponent only won because he cheated”, for example.

Slow play we can all agree on. It’s hard to rule, but it’s obviously against the rules. Also known as “Mobying”.

Stalling doesn’t seem to be included in any of the rules. Doing so accidentally is not slow play (how could it be, if stalling is defined as intentional?). Doing so intentionally simply isn’t covered. But I see great difficulty in enforcing this, as both players could reach a stalemate where neither have an incentive to act, and each wants the other to act or concede first.

Side note: imagine if the finals of a large tournament resulted in a ‘stall’ that neither player was willing to concede! We don’t even have a rule for this yet!

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I suppose this is the biggest gripe about museum as it removes the games internal clock (when they are untrashable e.g. in a well setup bio lock IG).

I have played in tons of tournaments where my opponents were unduly slow (even when they were playing fastro). I don’t know what the solution is, they could just be new or they could be doing it deliberately. its hard to call out, without being a total dick about it.

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Yeah, this is a problem we won’t resolve without chess clocks.

Note: I am not an advocate for chess clocks.

Yeah, it’s a hard thing to physically police. But that just means that it needs to be very clear what is expected of players so that (the vast majority of people being reasonable people) they can self-police their behaviour. However willing, you can’t self-police if the expectations are unclear!

We could have a presumption that players should play as if a normal, untimed game of Netrunner and avoid any change in their play to account for a time limit. But we don’t have such a rule. We have an expectation that players don’t artificially delay their actions because of the time limit, but not that they don’t modify their tactical decisions. For better or worse, it is expected that players may make tactical decisions based on the clock.

Thus Bob can play differently to an untimed game (sit at three points, not trying to win like a untimed game, guessing that Alice is unlikely to score agendas). And Alice can play differently to an untimed match (choose the tactically optimal moment as she sees it to concede game one based on the round time).

This behaviour has existed since the inception of tournament Netrunner in relation even to the decks people bring, let alone in-game tactics! This is just another example of an artefact introduced by the time limit.

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The floor rules do prohibit you from thinking longer about a play just because the game is timed rather than untimed.

They don’t prohibit you from hosting Government Takeover, Vanity Project, and Vanity Project on your Glenn Stations and using a Media Blitz’ed Hades Shard to cycle a Hedge Fund into R&D every turn.

Which is analogous to the gameplan Biolock has for dealing with Mopus Net Shield Feedback lists, at least for Biolock lists without Power Grid Overload, which is basically all of them.

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What about Mumba Temple vs Councilman - is putting the recurring credits on when rezzed considered a triggered conditional ability?

Getting recurring credits is actually faster than triggered abilities (as it happens as part of the process of a card becoming active). So yes technically a rezzed Mumba Temple (or other recurring credit card) that is derezzed by Councilman should have credits equal to the recurring credit value, even after derezzed.

Thankfully it doesn’t matter because you have no way to spend those credits, and it can’t “cheat” extra credits into play because recurring credits can only ever fill up to the indicated value.

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Data sucker + prey, does it work?

Data sucker is a constant ability that works during the entire encounter phase (step 3). Prey is a triggered ability that triggers when a piece of ice has been passed. According to the rules "Encountering ICE […] After the Runner breaks all of the ice’s subroutines and/or any effects from unbroken subroutines resolve without ending the run, he has passed that piece of ice. ". Breaking and resolving is step 3.2 in the run structure, which would implicate that passing the ice happens in that step, which is still in the encounter phase.

(Btw, “caprice should have been worded ‘when approaching the server’”)

As answered earlier here

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Except that is just a reference from a netrunner group. I haven’t seen the original discussion in the UK netrunner thread, facebook is terrible for archiving stuff. I mostly wanted to know if we have had an official ruling, since I haven’t seen one.

ancur for example have “passed” inside step 3.2. If this is correct, then datasuckers should affect prey.

But you don’t just pass the ICE at step 3.2. You pass the ICE and continue the run (to approach next ICE/server). That is to say passing the ICE entails moving to the next step. So when you come to resolve effects triggered by the act of passing, you are no longer encountering the passed ICE, since you’ve already resolved step 3.2 in its entirety.

It’s pass the ICE and continue on, not pass the ICE then continue on.

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Actually… the rules says this:

After the Runner breaks all of the ice’s subroutines and/or any
effects from unbroken subroutines resolve without ending the
run, he has passed that piece of ice. He then continues the run
by either approaching the next piece of ice protecting the server
or proceeding to the Access phase if there is no more ice to
approach.

Which is two separated events in my world. It even uses the word then.

Yep, you’re right it does say that. I was being lazy and referring to the ANCUR chart (and I can’t find the source for the actual wording used there, maybe an earlier FAQ?).

That part of the rules is a bit more conversational than the timing charts, and the rules as they are are terrible at defining passing. It is earlier highlighted as a keyword in the text, yet doesn’t appear in the glossary. It appears in the run timing chart present in the core rules only in relation to unrezzed ICE. Passing rezzed ICE isn’t mentioned.

However, the run timing chart in the FAQ supercedes the core rules, and it is subtly different. Again, it defines the point at which unrezzed ICE is passes, but not rezzed ICE. It does however detail the point at which “all ICE is passed” triggers resolve, and this is at the start of the server approach (step 4) and not during the encounter phase of the final ICE (step 3.2). This indicates that the continuation to the next step is part and parcel of the act of passing.

Ah, the fun of Netrunner rules documentation…

There is some logical problems with that, either that means we have gaps between the different phases of the run (which we shouldn’t have) or “Ice passed” happens at 2.0 and 4.0. But the text in 2.4 says it happens in that step.

The text in step 4 btw, indicates that they wrote Caprice wrong. :slight_smile:

Well, from the position of the “all ICE is passed” resolution and the mention of passing at 3.2, the action of passing ICE involves moving between phases in the run. If that’s correct, then to say it happens at one or other step is not quite right. Passing is invoked at step 3.2, and when it’s done we’re at step 4! It’s an act of movement between steps.