On Slow Play

I think what you end up with is an effective ELO system - like how the Stimhack league works.

Yeah that is basically just an open league/store league system (there are leagues, such as the TWA league, which run with Swiss structure as well). It’s usually more casual and can be good for dealing with varied numbers of people (no bye), weird times/schedules (more flexible), and less downtime between ‘rounds’. Some issues are that you need a higher minimum of people (anyone who’s tried to schedule 4-6 player testing sessions knows that it’s basically impossible to have two games, let alone matches finish at coincidentally the same time), it’s worse at dealing with skill differentials (since there’s no easy system to match people doing badly with other similar people, and you’re incentivised to play against people who are much worse than you), and that it’s hard to cut to a top X without rewarding fast players excessively (if you can play twice as fast as someone else, assuming no downtime, you only need to win half as many matches). If you keep those drawbacks in mind and use it where the strengths are beneficial it’s a great structure.

Almost all of my slow opponents have been people who explicitly are slow players or people who are slowing down intentionally to wait out the clock. But I don’t play a ton at the bottom tables where you’d see more of what you describe.

Usually, my rounds are over in about 15-25 minutes, so I notice when other people are slow rolling it.

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Then call a judge? Slow play is against the rules.

Edit: I rarely have time issues, and I play slow decks on both sides.

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This is harder to get a judge to agree on having actually called them over before; and if you’re worried about slow play getting a judge involved often slows the game down further. TOs need to be more vigilant. I will also say, having participated in multiple tournaments where TOs are players or are friends with people in the upper echelons, this is much harder to call than it should be (because either they are playing, are inexperienced, or aren’t entirely impartial).

It’s a good reason for us to have a judge program because it would solve a lot of these issues.

When is playing a conservative game and making choices explicitly designed to keep the game from ending AND keep yourself from losing slow play? There are some shells, notably those with fewer agenda counts where you can manage your resources and just not risk anything. At this point it only takes extending each click use or each ice rez a bit with what looks like intentional thought to really slow a game down and make it look like its not.

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Surely this is for 1 side only no? Otherwise, if you can finish 2 games in this timeframe, everyone is slow in comparison.

Everyone is slow in comparison; But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell when someone is especially slow.

I mean a round, a match, 2 games. If I take glacier, (which I normally don’t) that’ll bump up to 25-40 minute rounds, but even then that’s faster than a lot of people are finishing their rounds. People do tend to play a lot slower vs glacier. It’s a harder match up. I’ve had to take more RP this last 7 months than I ever did previously and you can just see the other player slow down. I’m still going fast. Decisions aren’t hard. Ice. Money. Go until your ready for an agenda, but a lot of runners just sit there agonizing over every decision.

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And honestly, I’d feel like a jerk calling a judge over for slow play, even if I was correct. The worst part of about having this problem show up is there is no good solution that doesn’t involve ‘bad feels’.

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This is the biggest problem in my opinion, and why I’d really like an objective definition of slow play. Saying you know it when you see it isn’t great. Is 1 minute per turn enough? That probably means combo decks can’t function.

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I think we both know it’s all we’ve got, though.

Autopilot isn’t hard. It’s also how I lose games. I try to finish rounds between 30-40min; still gives me plenty of rest before the next.

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I’ve found no correlation between play length and game result, and I keep track. This may be for multiple reasons. Slowing down or speeding up can easily irritate players and put them on tilt depending on their style. It may also be that slowing down benefits your opponent as much as it does yourself. There’s also the question of when you’re doing your thinking. I tend to do most of mine during my opponents turn. What I draw will alter my decisions slightly, but I have a rough game plan by the time my turn starts if my opponent takes longer than I do (which they normally do).

I wouldn’t call what I do autopilot; though it is pretty awesome when your deck is functioning in “auto-win” mode. :wink:

Lets be clear about something here, slow play in Netrunner only means taking too long to take clicks/between clicks, it does not ever mean playing in a fashion to extend the game. A judge does not, cannot, and must not have anything to say about the way a person plays, as odd, unorthodox, or nonsensical as it may seem. People can play how they want, as long as they do it in a reasonable time frame.

As far as people feeling bad about calling a judge - the sooner that opinion/train of thought goes away, the better the game will become. People need to call a judge a lot more often than they do now for rulings, clarifications, and situations like slow play. It isn’t a dick move, its why the judge is there.

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Scoring all your glen stations and putting government take overs and vanity projects on them and taking your turns in reasonable time periods may not be slow play, but if you can’t deck yourself before the game ends it is artificially choosing the lengthen the game, perhaps a game you would ultimately lose while preserving a state where you must have a higher agenda points scored. Basically, it’s possible to take “unwinnable” circumstances and stretch them to the time limit to turn them into wins with smart play. Or in the new scenario’s case auto losses for both players.

It may not be conventional “slow play”, and this example is extreme, but there are ways to manipulate the game state to cause them to go to time without ever creating scoring opportunities.

Other games actually do punish players for playing in this fashion. Famously, in a tournament level multiplayer magic game a player was kicked out for attempting to play a red card which would cause every player to exchange their cards randomly. The player was called for slow play and kicked out for merely playing a card that would make the game take to long to complete because the card didn’t create a victory condition and was seen as a time waste.

I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, but it does happen. And similar things can happen in netrunner. If a player stops playing to win and starts playing to lose or to reach the time limit regardless of how fast their turns are judges should be able to call them on that.

That sounds hilarious and awesome and I hope Netrunner never gets a ruling that lame.

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There was a lot of arguing about that idea and I don’t think it made it into the final rules.

just deleted to better articulate the post–sorry @gumOnShoe for the ghost edit

In chess, I understand many players will drag out a losing position to turn it into a draw. And chess has quite strict rules on playing to time.

Link me to the Magic story, I don’t believe it. Or at least, it didn’t happen at an actual DCI event, a player could never be penalized for playing a card in Magic, it isn’t in the floor rules. In fact, some of the best decks in many formats of Magic have had an emergency “panic button” combo that either caused an infinite loop, or killed both players at the same time in order to cause the game to be a draw.

Playing within the confines of the rules of the game can never be punished, and should never be punished. Can it be frustrating, yes, but people must be allowed to play the way they want. Playing intentionally slowly should not be allowed (and is not) and players may need to be prodded by their opponents, and if necessary have a judge come over.

It is a perfectly valid tactic to put yourself in a situation where neither player can win the game in order to avoid losing, but were I the runner I would call a judge, show him the situation, and make sure the judge forced the player to take timely turns (in that case, the corp hardly needs any time to consider their turn, as they cannot lose).

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I just checked with my original source and he can’t remember it either so he must have been exagerating when he told me that. /notsurprising /apologies