Like the points about slow decks. As to your suggestion though, who’s gonna count turns?
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Too many back and forth timing intervals, I suspect, though if anyone is interested I’ll bring my clock to the BABW finals to see how it goes in some casual games.
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I’ve played chess with a chess clock before. It was very counter-intuitive. Playing in a tournament is already more than playing Netrunner; I’m not sure we want to add ‘chess clock skill’ to that.
@Ravlin, agree to disagree I guess. You’re right that it doesn’t matter much in this case as it is a highly competitive event, and that it is very important for deviations from FFG rules should be made very clear to participants beforehand.
you suspect right. for a single encounter with a single piece of ICE, the clock would need to be hit 4-6 times, depending on subroutines (possibly many more times if there are many traces). to be strictly fair the clock also needs to be hit a minimum of twice per click to account for rez and card-ability windows.
TLDR is that chess clocks would be either unplayably tedious or highly abusable.
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I would like to test it before i came to a firm conclusion on that though.
I think I may have opened an unfortunate can of worms. I don’t want to upset anyone or detract from what will, I have no doubt, be a great event.
In the end it hopefully won’t make a difference - 1 point is enough worse than 2 and not enough better than 0. And because of that I might bow to public pressure for this event to be by the normal rules relating to going to time. I’m still going to keep a clause that says if someone is warned for slow play in eliminations they don’t win regardless of agenda points or anything at the end of the game. I’ve seen a couple of instances where the player who was in the strongest position losing due to their opponent’s slow play.
I think it’s an important discussion to have. I don’t think FFGs rules are right at the moment.
I agree with @popeye09 that the structure is designed to fit into a day. That’s why we’re running 60 min rounds. Because we’re running an LCQ + finals weekend, many people have a long journey to make Sunday night. As such we need to be done by 9pm. Sadly that means the very slowest decks are penalised. You can still play pretty slow decks in the time limit though. 30 mins is a pretty long game of netrunner.
Let’s test it out with Nasir running Clot and both Shards, against Spark with Cyberdex!
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I think this has been one of the more civil and polite discussions about something like this. (If I came off as anything but civil I apologize it was not my intent!)
Have a great event! I am sure whatever you choose will be fine for the event, all I wanted to do is make sure that any choices were made taking into consideration all those who play the game.
@voltorocks I think our disagreement is totally fine, civil, and perhaps not as far apart as it seems.
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I think the best way to do the chess clocks is to have them flip on change of turn only, and flip them back mid turn only if the opposing player requested time to think…
So - i make a run - if the corp thinks more than 1-2 seconds on whether to rez, then the runner flips the timer. If either player requests time to think during a paid window, opposing player hits the timer.
This is how I see it working also, though I’m still unconvinced about whether or not it will be practical
If someone busts out a chess clock on me for a game of Netrunner, I’m going to laugh at them and then concede. I can’t even remember to use click trackers, man.
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I think its important to be careful here, as punishing being matched against a slow player also means you’re encouraging people to get salty about being matched with new players, which may make a new player’s experiences more likely to be awful. Its definitely a balancing act but being welcoming of new players is definitely a worthy goal.
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Make an announcement to everyone before the first round that they are welcomed to notify a judge if they feel a game is not being played at a decent pace. I was too passive about this at US nationals a couple weeks ago and literally missed the top 16 cut because of a single timed win where we had only 10 minutes to play my Corp side and I could only make it to 5 points. I was devastated and since then I encourage players to feel free to notify their opponents every couple of turns of how much time is remaining to poke and prod them to keep a decent pace. Hearing the TOs say this may make everyone more conscientious of their play speed and make faster & more confident players feel freer mention it mid-game.
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I don’t have tons of tournament experience, but I feel that there would be a lot less going to time if the players were kept better informed of how much time was left. Maybe some TOs already do this, but IMO it would be best if the current time was displayed prominently if possible, and the TO announced how much time was left every ten minutes or so. This would obviously help prevent players losing track of time (in my experience the most common reason for going to time) and I think this would make it easier to notice intentional slow play.
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The problems I’ve had with slow players has always been a player who came to a tournament but wasn’t prepared to play their decks fast enough. It’s either a problem of their personal thought process or a problem of them not knowing the game, but I’ve never encountered a person intentionally playing slow in order to secure 1 point. I’m sure it happens, but I haven’t seen it myself. How are we to handle a situation like this, where players are going to time in good faith but are doing so consistently? Should we ask them to leave or disqualify them because they don’t have the correct tournament skills?
@Ravlin I disagree with your stance somewhat. I have a couple rules changes from FFG’s standard rules that I always use (you likely remember) when I run a tournament. One is that, of course you can concede. That is a ridiculous rule in my eyes, I have never heard a shred of sound logic for it, and a lot against it. The other is regarding time, I allow the active player to finish their turn, and then each player to get a full turn. FFG’s rules mean any non-FA corp is dead in the water if it was their turn. At least a full turn gives them a chance. I don;t think I have ever had trouble with new players, I just explain the variations in the pre-tournament announcements.
As far as 0 points for going to time, that sounds like a really bad idea to me. For mostly reasons previously mentioned here. I think slow play is fairly easy to identify, and players need to call a judge if prompting the opponent does not work. I know I have a tendency to play slow on some turns, sometimes taking several minutes to think over a turn in a particularly tight, or complicated situation. I try to compensate by taking 10-15 sec at most on the majority of my turns. I don’t think the 0 points rule is going to punish the right people.
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Oh yeah. I might have to think about both players getting a turn. I just wanted to advise mindfullness when it comes to rule changes that go against FFG rules in general.
I was not trying to take a position on rule changes in general, just a caution. I also allow concessions, and have only have one game go to time in recent memory so have not had to deal with that too much.
take jackson out of the card pool now and i guarantee people will finish their matches in under an hour. agenda flood ends games one way or the other very quickly 
id rather do away with the entire swiss tournament format lol. i aint got that kinda time. give me some sit n go netrunner tournaments and id be very happy.
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Can current Swiss programs that calculate the SoS or whatever be used retroactively in this manner? Alternatively, can such a thing be programmed to calculate results/standings from a pool of information not given in a round format?
I’m imaging something like this - at 12 PM (or whatever), someone gets on a table and yells out “Tournament start!” Then everyone just plays pick-up games with whoever, but in normal tournament style - IE, once on each side, and normal tournament procedure, rules, etc. The only exception would be time limit - there’s none. Matches may take as long as necessary to finish.
Once a match finishes, both players walk over to a table where the TO/assistants sit, and report the match - “I’m John Doe, and this is Jane Doe, no relation. We split, both winning Corp side.” The results are recorded somehow, but not put into any system yet.
After five and a half hours of this, or what-have-you, the TO calls out “No more new games, but finish any games you’ve started. If you’re in game one of a match, only complete that game.”
Once all games are done, just throw all the results in a computer, and let it figure out a top 4/8/16 for the cut.
Is something like that feasible?
Added benefits of this system -
Players can drop out anytime without wrecking shit.
If you play very fast, you can get in more games.
There are definite cons as well, but I’m tired of typing right now. 
EDIT: Kinda like the idea, will write up full rules for completeness if anyone asks.