Judge questions - a competent help needed!

Here are some questions that I've got while being a judge for the last year or more. Please assume that I'm not a novice CCG judge, as I was a certified Magic judge (Level 2) prior to moving to VTES, and getting such certificate isn't very simple. Unfortunately, judging VTES tournaments proved to be much more complicated than even judging a Magic Nationals. I'd like to get some advices from the experienced judges, if possible. Situation 1. Players A and C (grandprey of A) have a deal. Player B declares an action to burn Army of Rats of player A. Playes C plays Eagle's Sight and tries to block the action without even waiting for player A's reaction. Player B plays superior Elder Impersonation, and player C cannot block this action anymore. Then player A says that he didn't refused to block yet, and asks whether he can attempt to block now. My response was: "Player C should wait until Player A refuses to block the action, since A has the first priority to block. So C gets a warning for illegal play, and A can attempt to block now". After that the players argued that C could play Eagle's Sight since the text reads "ignoring the normal prey, predator or target restrictions for blocking actions". I'm pretty sure that my interpretation of this was correct - it means only the right to block actions that you cannot normally block (Direct actions against other players and non-Direct actions performed crosstable), not the right to ignore the normal order of blocking priority, but the confirmation would be great. Situation 2. A player was going to be ousted by Dragonbound at start of his turn, and he couldn't avoid that. He used his master phase to burn Tensions in the Ranks by discarding two master cards. After his turn ended and he was ousted, his predator (controller of the burned Tensions) recalled that his prey couldn't burn Tensions, since he played Rotschreck before. Thus, he attempted to return Tensions back to play. My response was: "The turn is ended, the player is ousted, and we cannot make a rollback now, so the Tension cannot be returned, even though it was burned improperly". In Magic judges have clear guidelines for such cases: a judge can make a rollback if he thinks that the game state didn't changed much, but if the turn was ended, it's strongly adviced to leave the game as is. Usually both players get warnings in such cases for not being careful enough. I completely understand that it's impossible to provide "the best" answer in such situation, but I want to know your opinion nevertheless. What would you do? Do you think that a judge could allow the player to return Tensions in play, and why? Situation 3. The round time is running out, but some players are arguing with a judge about his ruling on some play situation. After several minutes they demand to get some additional play time due to the discussion! What would you do in such situation? In Magic, this case could be considered "Unsporting Conduct - Severe" with an automatic disqualification at all Rules Enforcement Levels, or or at least "Unsporting Conduct - Major" with a game loss at lower RELs. ----------------- Can anybody provide me an advice on the tournament procedure after issuing Game Loss or disqualification? How should I re-build the table seating after that? For instance, with 12 players I have three tables with 4 players each. What should I do after issuing a Game Loss in the first round? I guess I cannot just "oust" the player in that round, since it would break a table balance, so that player should lose the next round, right? Does it mean that the seating order will remain the same, and some table would play with 3 players?

On 27 mrt, 07:45, "Ector" <E...@mail.ru> wrote: > Situation 1. Players A and C (grandprey of A) have a deal. Player B > declares an action to burn Army of Rats of player A. Playes C plays > Eagle's Sight and tries to block the action without even waiting for > player A's reaction. Player B plays superior Elder Impersonation, and > player C cannot block this action anymore. Then player A says that he > didn't refused to block yet, and asks whether he can attempt to block > now. > > My response was: "Player C should wait until Player A refuses to block > the action, since A has the first priority to block. So C gets a > warning for illegal play, and A can attempt to block now". > > After that the players argued that C could play Eagle's Sight since > the text reads "ignoring the normal prey, predator or target > restrictions for blocking actions". I'm pretty sure that my > interpretation of this was correct - it means only the right to block > actions that you cannot normally block (Direct actions against other > players and non-Direct actions performed crosstable), not the right to > ignore the normal order of blocking priority, but the confirmation > would be great. from the rulebook, in 6.2: "The target Methuselah may try to block the action with any of her ready untapped minions. If the action doesn't target another Methuselah (or targets more than one), then the minions of the prey and predator may try to block." I would have ruled that if player A didn't object to the playing of the Eagle's sight AT THE MOMENT IT WAS PLAYED, not after the block failed has implicitly stated he won't block. > > Situation 2. A player was going to be ousted by Dragonbound at start > of his turn, and he couldn't avoid that. He used his master phase to > burn Tensions in the Ranks by discarding two master cards. After his > turn ended and he was ousted, his predator (controller of the burned > Tensions) recalled that his prey couldn't burn Tensions, since he > played Rotschreck before. Thus, he attempted to return Tensions back > to play. > > My response was: "The turn is ended, the player is ousted, and we > cannot make a rollback now, so the Tension cannot be returned, even > though it was burned improperly". It doesn't matter if his turn ended or not. The guideline is:" If it is possible and not too complicated, roll back. In this case, I would have put the Tension back into play and be done with it. > Situation 3. The round time is running out, but some players are > arguing with a judge about his ruling on some play situation. After > several minutes they demand to get some additional play time due to > the discussion! Depends on the discussion. If they are bringing forth good arguments, they might get additional time...

On 27 mrt, 07:45, "Ector" <E...@mail.ru> wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] Your ruled correctly. The normal prey/predator or target restrictions are restrictions on who can block, timing issues are not affected whatsoever by alleviating these restrictions. Eagle's sight is played in your blocking window, or after all other blocking windows have passed. Skipping ahead to your blocking window is not the correct order of play. > Situation 2. A player was going to be ousted by Dragonbound at start > of his turn, and he couldn't avoid that. He used his master phase to > burn Tensions in the Ranks by discarding two master cards. After his > turn ended and he was ousted, his predator (controller of the burned > Tensions) recalled that his prey couldn't burn Tensions, since he > played Rotschreck before. Thus, he attempted to return Tensions back > to play. > > My response was: "The turn is ended, the player is ousted, and we > cannot make a rollback now, so the Tension cannot be returned, even > though it was burned improperly". In Magic judges have clear > guidelines for such cases: a judge can make a rollback if he thinks > that the game state didn't changed much, but if the turn was ended, > it's strongly adviced to leave the game as is. Usually both players > get warnings in such cases for not being careful enough. > > I completely understand that it's impossible to provide "the best" > answer in such situation, but I want to know your opinion > nevertheless. What would you do? Do you think that a judge could allow > the player to return Tensions in play, and why? If an illegal play is made, then the judge should judge how to best return the game to the state it should be in. As the ousted player was unaffected by the tension, I'd return it to play as it was removed illegally. However, you have to see wether the discarding of the two masters affected his turn a lot. > Situation 3. The round time is running out, but some players are > arguing with a judge about his ruling on some play situation. After > several minutes they demand to get some additional play time due to > the discussion! > > What would you do in such situation? In Magic, this case could be > considered "Unsporting Conduct - Severe" with an automatic > disqualification at all Rules Enforcement Levels, or or at least > "Unsporting Conduct - Major" with a game loss at lower RELs. I'd say that's as much your fault as theirs for arguing with eachother. If you make a ruling, just be definite about it. Listen to people's arguments and keep things fair and concise. I don't think it's a strange request to ask additional play time due to judging. If you think they're just arguing for the sake of arguing, stop it right there and then. ;) > ----------------- > Can anybody provide me an advice on the tournament procedure after > issuing Game Loss or disqualification? How should I re-build the table > seating after that? For instance, with 12 players I have three tables > with 4 players each. What should I do after issuing a Game Loss in the > first round? > I guess I cannot just "oust" the player in that round, since it would > break a table balance, so that player should lose the next round, > right? Does it mean that the seating order will remain the same, and > some table would play with 3 players? Disqualification seems rather harsh. Issuing a game loss is very tricky. If you want to remove someone from the game, or someone has to go, for instance, there's a few options I think are good to follow. First what you have to do is make an assessment of table balance. Optimally you don't want to give an unfair disadvantage to anyone left on the table. How to act should be dependent on that. Usual options include just straight up removal from the game, his predator doesn't get a VP and now predates on his previous prey. This is the best option if there's no obvious discrepancy between strength and chance of survival between these three players. If the prey of the to be removed player is less strong than the to be removed player, then the better option would be to "poolbag" this player. His predator has to remove all the pool of his now defenseless prey, who then is ousted, granting the predator 6 pool and a VP. This is also a popular option, but comes with a disadvantage, since when the predating deck is a votedeck, he will be able to direct damage onto his "next prey" without being blockable by said prey. (ie. he chooses not to damage his current poolbag prey, but instead his grandprey, who cannot defend, and he's certain of the VP provided by said poolbag anyway.) So with vote decks around you have to watch this option. There's lots of other viable options, but these are the most popular and easy. Cheers, B

K, not LSJ... But I'm gonna test my skills with this one. [ quoted text not captured ] Seems to me that Player C did jump the gun, but Player A let it happen because he'll rather have the Player C block. Unfortunately, correct order is more important then motive. I would have warned both Player A and Player C though, and unfornately would have to rewind to the start of the actions, and force Player A a block attempt. (Because if he doesn't make a block attempt, the rewind was pointless. Eagle sight only lets you block ignoring only normal prey, predator, or target restriction but nothing about the order in which block attempts are allowed. > Situation 2. A player was going to be ousted by Dragonbound at start > of his turn, and he couldn't avoid that. He used his master phase to > burn Tensions in the Ranks by discarding two master cards. After his > turn ended and he was ousted, his predator (controller of the burned > Tensions) recalled that his prey couldn't burn Tensions, since he > played Rotschreck before. Thus, he attempted to return Tensions back > to play. > > My response was: "The turn is ended, the player is ousted, and we > cannot make a rollback now, so the Tension cannot be returned, even > though it was burned improperly". In Magic judges have clear > guidelines for such cases: a judge can make a rollback if he thinks > that the game state didn't changed much, but if the turn was ended, > it's strongly adviced to leave the game as is. Usually both players > get warnings in such cases for not being careful enough. > > I completely understand that it's impossible to provide "the best" > answer in such situation, but I want to know your opinion > nevertheless. What would you do? Do you think that a judge could allow > the player to return Tensions in play, and why? I presume you met, he'll die at the end of his turn and not beginning. Won't hit the master phase at all. I would say, if you could rewind time without too much of a hassle, interruption, and accurately AND if it would affect the remaining player, then it probably should be done. At the end of one person's turn, could go by pretty fast and seems easy enough to go back. If more then 1 turns has gone by with alot of card flow and other interactions, it's not really possible to go back. But in this instance, I would go back. > Situation 3. The round time is running out, but some players are > arguing with a judge about his ruling on some play situation. After > several minutes they demand to get some additional play time due to > the discussion! > > What would you do in such situation? In Magic, this case could be > considered "Unsporting Conduct - Severe" with an automatic > disqualification at all Rules Enforcement Levels, or or at least > "Unsporting Conduct - Major" with a game loss at lower RELs. Judge ruling are rulings. They could be totally wrong, If they don't like it, tough. About the time, it's judge's ruling again. In the tournament rulebook. 2.3. Player Responsibilities 2.8. Lengthy Rulings > ----------------- > Can anybody provide me an advice on the tournament procedure after > issuing Game Loss or disqualification? How should I re-build the table > seating after that? For instance, with 12 players I have three tables > with 4 players each. What should I do after issuing a Game Loss in the > first round? > I guess I cannot just "oust" the player in that round, since it would > break a table balance, so that player should lose the next round, > right? Does it mean that the seating order will remain the same, and > some table would play with 3 players? During the Game, player goes but the pool stays on the table and it still needs to be bleed through. (Since your prey getting kicked out or getting a "Loss" doesn't seem to consitute a VP, only ousting him/ her will.) Your' replacing the player with a null Prey. Course the method of seating is up to the judge, as he sees fit. Of course being impartial. I would first ask if anybody would like to sit out, and help be a judge/ or the event. Somebody might not be having a good deck vs the others. 11 is a bad number, and skipping rounds as suggested in the tournament rules isn't possible with 2 rounds and a final. If that doesn't work, not sure of the statistics, or if it's ok... But couldn't you ask the top seated so far sit out and get to the finals by default? Break the game down to 2 5 tops, which would be more fun. Top seat, probably wouldn't get the premiun choose at the final table, but he's assured he' there. Other player, has a chance to get better ranking and with a less dominating deck in the next round, and maybe a better chance at the final table. 3.1.2. Preliminary Rounds Seating

[ quoted text not captured ] Interestingly, and perhaps tellingly, Jeroen's first response was exactly what I was going to say on points 1 and 2. Situation 3: If the judge was actually wrong, then definately yes. If not, well at least the players aren't trying to delay the game and force a time out, they actually want to finish. If the dispute came from genuine confusion and they were willing to stop arguing in order to finish the game, a small extension to make up for the unplayed time might be warranted.

> On 27 mrt, 07:45, "Ector" <E...@mail.ru> wrote: > > My response was: "Player C should wait until Player A refuses to block > > the action, since A has the first priority to block. So C gets a > > warning for illegal play, and A can attempt to block now". You are correct about the way Eagle's Sight works. As a previous poster mentioned, unless Player A was also unaware of how Eagle's Sight works, I would tend to say that Player A tacitly passed his opportunity to block by allowing the other players to play Eagle's Sight followed by Elder Impersonation, without interrupting them. But I think your ruling was also quite reasonable. > > Situation 2. A player was going to be ousted by Dragonbound at start > > of his turn, and he couldn't avoid that. He used his master phase to > > burn Tensions in the Ranks by discarding two master cards. After his > > turn ended and he was ousted, his predator (controller of the burned > > Tensions) recalled that his prey couldn't burn Tensions, since he > > played Rotschreck before. Thus, he attempted to return Tensions back > > to play. In this situation, I would have rewound and put the Tension back into play, because so little had happened. If many turns went by and then the players realized it was removed illegally, that would be much harder to fix (and I'd probably just leave it removed.) > > Situation 3. The round time is running out, but some players are > > arguing with a judge about his ruling on some play situation. After > > several minutes they demand to get some additional play time due to > > the discussion! I would limit the amount that I tolerate players arguing with me after I've made a definite ruling (though I would also ensure I listen to their opinion in advance.) If I took several minutes to make the decision, I would tend to give the players extra time. > > Can anybody provide me an advice on the tournament procedure after > > issuing Game Loss or disqualification? How should I re-build the table > > seating after that? > > If the prey of the to be removed player is less strong than the to be > removed player, then the better option would be to "poolbag" this > player. His predator has to remove all the pool of his now defenseless > prey, who then is ousted, granting the predator 6 pool and a VP. That should really only be used as a last resort, since it will drastically alter the table balance. If at all possible, get a substitute player to continue playing the deck. Also, if at all possible, avoid people leaving in the middle of the game. Here is a good thread about how to deal with someone leaving in the middle of the game, and other judging issues: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/browse_frm/thread/ef16aa4c0b6a0d9b/88ef1bbeb2c66ed5 Enjoy, Ira

On Mar 26, 9:45 pm, "Ector" <E...@mail.ru> wrote: > Can anybody provide me an advice on the tournament procedure after > issuing Game Loss or disqualification? How should I re-build the table > seating after that? For instance, with 12 players I have three tables > with 4 players each. What should I do after issuing a Game Loss in the > first round? > I guess I cannot just "oust" the player in that round, since it would > break a table balance, so that player should lose the next round, > right? Does it mean that the seating order will remain the same, and > some table would play with 3 players? Here is another thread that discussed a player leaving mid-game: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/browse_frm/thread/c6729c87e9bce0c4/e063553e098a722c But now that I read your questions more carefully, I think you're asking about the situation where you go from 12 players to 11 players *between* rounds. In that case, I would get an additional player to play (myself if necessary) to ensure each table had 4. In a 12 person tournament, I should be able to play my game and still judge. If I couldn't do that for whatever reason (no extra decks?), then yes, I would have 2 tables of 4 and one table of 3. For the table of 3, I would give an extra VP to whoever got the most VPs and use 60, 36, and 12 for the Tournament Points. Ira

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Ector wrote: > Here are some questions that I've got while being a judge for the last > year or more. Please assume that I'm not a novice CCG judge, as I was > a certified Magic judge (Level 2) prior to moving to VTES, and getting > such certificate isn't very simple. And you have an MCSE too, right? Please don't annoy us all with irrelevant qualifications. What you really are is a novice V:TES judge with some experience in judging other card games. This is likely to put you slightly ahead of the average novice V:TES judge... we'd hope. > Unfortunately, judging VTES tournaments proved to be much more > complicated than even judging a Magic Nationals. This is why your other qualifications were irrelevant. > Situation 1. Players A and C (grandprey of A) have a deal. Player B > declares an action to burn Army of Rats of player A. Playes C plays > Eagle's Sight and tries to block the action without even waiting for > player A's reaction. Player B plays superior Elder Impersonation, and > player C cannot block this action anymore. Then player A says that he > didn't refused to block yet, and asks whether he can attempt to block > now. > > My response was: "Player C should wait until Player A refuses to block > the action, since A has the first priority to block. So C gets a > warning for illegal play, and A can attempt to block now". This is correct, as others have already stated; Eagle's Sight doesn't override the timing. Player A possibly deserves a verbal warning for sitting there and letting it all happen, but that depends on how it went down; if player C really did jump the gun very fast, then it's reasonable to expect that player A would just sit and let everything handle itself first. Also, I would rewind; put the Eagle's Sight and Elder Impersonation back in each player's hands, and start from the beginning: allow player A to decide whether or not he wants to block. > Situation 2. A player was going to be ousted by Dragonbound at start > of his turn, and he couldn't avoid that. He used his master phase to > burn Tensions in the Ranks by discarding two master cards. After his > turn ended and he was ousted, his predator (controller of the burned > Tensions) recalled that his prey couldn't burn Tensions, since he > played Rotschreck before. Thus, he attempted to return Tensions back > to play. Since the existence or nonexistence of Tension in the Ranks couldn't have affected the overall table state during that player's turn, I would return Tension to play and say "good point, you can't do that". If the cards drawn as a result of burning Tension had affected gameplay somehow, I'd try to reverse that as well; without further information I can't tell for sure. However, I would definitely lean towards restoring Tension in the Ranks to the table, no matter what. > My response was: "The turn is ended, the player is ousted, and we > cannot make a rollback now, so the Tension cannot be returned, even > though it was burned improperly". This is an awful ruling. Just because the turn has ended doesn't mean that it's impossible to figure out what the game state should be. > Situation 3. The round time is running out, but some players are > arguing with a judge about his ruling on some play situation. After > several minutes they demand to get some additional play time due to > the discussion! First mistake: Why are you arguing with players? Never let a situation get out of control like this. You are the judge; you have the authority. Each side should get an opportunity to state their case; once the judge is satisfied that he has an accurate report of the circumstances, a ruling is made. Excessive player whining afterwards gets verbal warnings for starters and can continue on as necessary until players quit whining or are, in the extreme, removed from the building. Sure, you could be wrong, but at the table is not the place to make that decision, nor is it the right time to allow an argument that further disrupts game play. You're the judge; use your judgement. If the judge required several minutes to explain the ruling properly so that all players understood, or if each side stating their case took some time, then it would be quite appropriate to add, say, five or ten minutes to the play clock for that table. The judging process should not interfere with the normal flow of the game if at all possible. > ----------------- > Can anybody provide me an advice on the tournament procedure after > issuing Game Loss or disqualification? How should I re-build the table > seating after that? For instance, with 12 players I have three tables > with 4 players each. What should I do after issuing a Game Loss in the > first round? We need more information here about the circumstances. A Game Loss is something you should avoid issuing at all costs _if possible_. > I guess I cannot just "oust" the player in that round, since it would > break a table balance, so that player should lose the next round, Absolutely not. A Game Loss in the first round should apply only to that round, not the next. If the game is in progress, you resolve the Game Loss for _that_ table, at _that_ time. This can be either by awarding the predator an oust and 6 pool, by turning the Lost player into a poolbag (no actions, no minions, no blocks, but the predator must bleed through the remaining pool), or by any of a number of suggested resolutions in other threads. But you should never penalize a player's future rounds unless you are disqualifying them from the tournament flat out. - -- Derek insert clever quotation here -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGCQdKtQZlu3o7QpERAsHNAKDizkxGzxOmRn9r4w1LBN8hhNqJZwCfQ+C5 D73FO1TCSCTewlPo2KGErEk= =pQ7Z -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

ira...@gmail.com wrote: > On Mar 26, 9:45 pm, "Ector" <E...@mail.ru> wrote: >> Can anybody provide me an advice on the tournament procedure after >> issuing Game Loss or disqualification? How should I re-build the table >> seating after that? For instance, with 12 players I have three tables >> with 4 players each. What should I do after issuing a Game Loss in the >> first round? >> I guess I cannot just "oust" the player in that round, since it would >> break a table balance, so that player should lose the next round, >> right? Does it mean that the seating order will remain the same, and >> some table would play with 3 players? > > Here is another thread that discussed a player leaving mid-game: > http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/browse_frm/thread/c6729c87e9bce0c4/e063553e098a722c > > But now that I read your questions more carefully, I think you're > asking about the situation where you go from 12 players to 11 players > *between* rounds. In that case, I would get an additional player to > play (myself if necessary) to ensure each table had 4. In a 12 person > tournament, I should be able to play my game and still judge. exactly. And if it's a 12 player tourney, with the judge already playing, and one person drops (for whatever reason), I as the judge would also drop to bring the number of players down to 10, to avoid the player number being 11. (which is better, i think, than the painful skip-a-round method used for 11 player tourneys...if it's still even in the tourney rules?) -- salem (replace 'hotmail' with 'yahoo' to email)

Ector wrote: > Situation 1. Players A and C (grandprey of A) have a deal. Player B > declares an action to burn Army of Rats of player A. Playes C plays > Eagle's Sight and tries to block the action without even waiting for > player A's reaction. Player B plays superior Elder Impersonation, and > player C cannot block this action anymore. Then player A says that he > didn't refused to block yet, and asks whether he can attempt to block > now. > > My response was: "Player C should wait until Player A refuses to block > the action, since A has the first priority to block. So C gets a > warning for illegal play, and A can attempt to block now". > > After that the players argued that C could play Eagle's Sight since > the text reads "ignoring the normal prey, predator or target > restrictions for blocking actions". I'm pretty sure that my > interpretation of this was correct - it means only the right to block > actions that you cannot normally block (Direct actions against other > players and non-Direct actions performed crosstable), not the right to > ignore the normal order of blocking priority, but the confirmation > would be great. The ruling on the mechanics of Eagle's Sight and timing is correct. And then the trouble begins. To avoid trouble, player B should help the other players remember the ordering (and, thereby, enable his fiendish plan to play out properly). B says "Blah blah burn Army of Rats". C says "Eagle's Sight blah blah". At this point, B should speak up, saying "hold on, it's not your turn to block. A, do you block?" But, since the timing was either snafu'ed or not made explicit, problems ensue. You start with "A and C have a deal". Either that is irrelevant to the timing of the block, or it means that A and C are agreed that C will block (and therefore A will implicitly decline to block). If the latter, then the proper ruling is to play on. It's up to the judge to decide which is the case, of course. Assuming the judge determines that the deal is irrelevant to the case at hand, then it's all up in the air, just waiting for the judge to figure out what has transpired implicitly and what has been skipped. If player A didn't realize the timing rules for blocking (unlikely), then rewind. If player A would have been agreeable to C's offer of "don't bother blocking this one; I'll Eagle's Sight it", then play on (with A's implicit " no block" now part of the explicit landscape. This is likely close to reality given the "A and C have a deal" preface. For the cases in between, rewinding is possible, but the exposing of B's Elder Impersonation is game-altering enough to classify as an advantage to either A or C or both. There are several ways to remedy this (restoring the game balance, if not the exact state), depending on how much of an advantage it is (and how much complicity from A and B was involved in C's misplay: 1. Rewind, but shuffle C's Eagle Sight into his deck (or into his top X cards) and have him draw back up. Rewind back to B's announcement of "burn Army" (since B's hand hasn't changed). 2. In conjunction with 1 above, shuffle B's Elder Impersonation in his deck (or into the top Y cards) and have him draw back up. If this is done, rewind to before the start of the action (and B can choose any action, based on his new hand). 3. In conjunction with 1 or 1 and 2 above, untap B's acting minion if the action to block the Army is blocked. (Unlikely, but just illustrating the leeway the judge has in rebalancing the table). In all, "play on" seems to be the most likely scenario from the data given (that is, A's acceptance of deal-mate C's Eagle's Sight block attempt without an interruption of "wait C, I get to try to block first" indicates that he is satisfied with passing his block attempts and letting C attempt to block). > Situation 2. A player was going to be ousted by Dragonbound at start > of his turn, and he couldn't avoid that. He used his master phase to > burn Tensions in the Ranks by discarding two master cards. After his > turn ended and he was ousted, his predator (controller of the burned > Tensions) recalled that his prey couldn't burn Tensions, since he > played Rotschreck before. Thus, he attempted to return Tensions back > to play. > > My response was: "The turn is ended, the player is ousted, and we > cannot make a rollback now, so the Tension cannot be returned, even > though it was burned improperly". In Magic judges have clear > guidelines for such cases: a judge can make a rollback if he thinks > that the game state didn't changed much, but if the turn was ended, > it's strongly adviced to leave the game as is. Usually both players > get warnings in such cases for not being careful enough. > > I completely understand that it's impossible to provide "the best" > answer in such situation, but I want to know your opinion > nevertheless. What would you do? Do you think that a judge could allow > the player to return Tensions in play, and why? Since Tension could not have been removed, it stays. Leaving it in play doesn't change the balance of the table from what it would have been if the illegal activity had not occurred. Removing it does change the balance of the table (most likely, unless it Tension is completely irrelevant, in which case leaving it in play also won't matter). > Situation 3. The round time is running out, but some players are > arguing with a judge about his ruling on some play situation. After > several minutes they demand to get some additional play time due to > the discussion! > > What would you do in such situation? In Magic, this case could be > considered "Unsporting Conduct - Severe" with an automatic > disqualification at all Rules Enforcement Levels, or or at least > "Unsporting Conduct - Major" with a game loss at lower RELs. Add time, if the judge feels like it (the players "ask", they can never "demand"). The judge can always add time to restore the time spent making a ruling, if he feels it is warranted. In the case of the impending timing limit, it seems warranted. > ----------------- > Can anybody provide me an advice on the tournament procedure after > issuing Game Loss or disqualification? How should I re-build the table > seating after that? For instance, with 12 players I have three tables > with 4 players each. What should I do after issuing a Game Loss in the > first round? > I guess I cannot just "oust" the player in that round, since it would > break a table balance, so that player should lose the next round, > right? Does it mean that the seating order will remain the same, and > some table would play with 3 players? Mid-game game loss is handling in-table only (not by reseating). By ousting if balance allows that (i.e., if he's about to be ousted already). But usually by removing him and restoring the game balance (e.g., with awards of full or fractional VPs, awards of 0-6 pool, tapping or untapping of minions or other cards, movement of blood/life to or from minions, and so on). Ideally, a judge will simply step in to play the remainder of the ejected player's game (with the ejected player's cards, adjusted as necessary to correct deck discrepancies, if any). If disqualification leaves the tourney with an unsanctionable number, then the tournament becomes unsanctioned (and the judge can proceed in any manner he likes -- rearranging as he likes). To avoid becoming unsanctioned, the judge can play (and use the multi-judge rules) if he was not playing already (and can find suitable assitant judge/players), or he can recuse himself if he was playing in a multi-judge event.

On 27 Mrz., 14:00, Derek Ray <moot@i_dont_check_the_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Ector wrote: > > Here are some questions that I've got while being a judge for the last > > year or more. Please assume that I'm not a novice CCG judge, as I was > > a certified Magic judge (Level 2) prior to moving to VTES, and getting > > such certificate isn't very simple. > > And you have an MCSE too, right? Please don't annoy us all with > irrelevant qualifications. What you really are is a novice V:TES judge > with some experience in judging other card games. This is likely to put > you slightly ahead of the average novice V:TES judge... we'd hope. > Unfortunately judging MTG is indeed much easier than VTES because game and tournament rules are much less blurry. But this doesn't explain your rude behaviour which is in now way respectful to anyone contributing to this game.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 xcver wrote: > On 27 Mrz., 14:00, Derek Ray > <moot@i_dont_check_the_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote: >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA1 >> >> Ector wrote: >>> Here are some questions that I've got while being a judge for the last >>> year or more. Please assume that I'm not a novice CCG judge, as I was >>> a certified Magic judge (Level 2) prior to moving to VTES, and getting >>> such certificate isn't very simple. >> And you have an MCSE too, right? Please don't annoy us all with >> irrelevant qualifications. What you really are is a novice V:TES judge >> with some experience in judging other card games. This is likely to put >> you slightly ahead of the average novice V:TES judge... we'd hope. > > Unfortunately judging MTG is indeed much easier than VTES because game > and tournament rules are much less blurry. You know, there's a pretty standard rule of thumb in the world today, and it applies to a lot of things, not just V:TES and the computer 'biz'. When someone feels the need to lead off the discussion with an extended list of their certifications, it means they don't believe they know what they're doing, and they're trying to pre-emptively convince us and themselves otherwise. I hate that, and I take every opportunity to discourage it. Just ask the question, or in this case tell us what you did, and THEN ask the question; don't give a list of excuses before you've even told us what you think you did wrong. The funny part is, absent that initial paragraph, he didn't really screw anything up irrevocably except for the 3rd issue, where he let his players get out of control and start arguing with him. From all his previous posts, we've already figured out that he doesn't have the nuts to stand up to his playgroup (witness how he comes to RGTCJ and tries to get the game changed to resolve his problems, instead of just asking his players to quit bludgeoning the newbies mercilessly), so it's not too surprising that it happened during a tournament as well. > But this doesn't explain > your rude behaviour which is in now way respectful to anyone > contributing to this game. Excellent. I wasn't intending to be respectful in any way. - -- Derek never just rude -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGCTuXtQZlu3o7QpERAhmbAJ9VPSeaAiO4aSqCReEMygY+ANympACeOKm0 51F2ZFn1ZBe2XKdjojLviss= =5Fq0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

xcver wrote: > Unfortunately judging MTG is indeed much easier than VTES because game > and tournament rules are much less blurry. They aren't "much" less blurry, if at all. The real problems in judging VTES stem from each game of VTES involving more than two-players.

On 27 мар, 15:00, Derek Ray <moot@i_dont_check_the_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Ector wrote: > > Here are some questions that I've got while being a judge for the last > > year or more. Please assume that I'm not a novice CCG judge, as I was > > a certified Magic judge (Level 2) prior to moving to VTES, and getting > > such certificate isn't very simple. > > And you have an MCSE too, right? Please don't annoy us all with > irrelevant qualifications. What you really are is a novice V:TES judge > with some experience in judging other card games. This is likely to put > you slightly ahead of the average novice V:TES judge... we'd hope. Well, I can only laugh at these words. Really. Should you have at least half of my judging experience in Magic, you'd never write this. In that game, they have a serious judge certification program; they have a judge mail-list, and the rules are formalized to the last comma. The judge knows exactly what is right and what is wrong, and he has to memorize almost 200 pages of rules/rulings to achieve this. In Magic the competition is much more fierce, and stakes are much higher, so the judge is much more important person there than in VTES which is more "informal", IMHO. Any person knowing what takes to be a good Magic judge won't neglect the experience of a person who were a judge for five years and judged hundreds of tournaments, including Nationals. Actually, I wrote these words just to avoid the unnecessary explanations (what is "warning", "game loss", DQ and so on). You may don't know, but many elements of rules are similar in these games. Penalties and their guidelines, for instance, are quite similar. > > Unfortunately, judging VTES tournaments proved to be much more > > complicated than even judging a Magic Nationals. > > This is why your other qualifications were irrelevant. Actually, it's more complicated just because I don't have the Comprehensive Rules of the game, the comprehensive Tournament Rules and the deliberate Penalty Guidelines. VEKN should issue the strict recommendations on what to do when you issue a Game Loss, and so on. Probably, such information can be found at the newsgroup, but collecting it is very difficult. Yours, Ector

On 27 мар, 16:01, LSJ <vtes...@white-wolf.com> wrote: > > The ruling on the mechanics of Eagle's Sight and timing is correct. > > And then the trouble begins. > > To avoid trouble, player B should help the other players remember the ordering > (and, thereby, enable his fiendish plan to play out properly). > > B says "Blah blah burn Army of Rats". > C says "Eagle's Sight blah blah". > > At this point, B should speak up, saying "hold on, it's not your turn to block. > A, do you block?" > > But, since the timing was either snafu'ed or not made explicit, problems ensue. > > You start with "A and C have a deal". Either that is irrelevant to the timing of > the block, or it means that A and C are agreed that C will block (and therefore > A will implicitly decline to block). If the latter, then the proper ruling is to > play on. It's up to the judge to decide which is the case, of course. > > Assuming the judge determines that the deal is irrelevant to the case at hand, > then it's all up in the air, just waiting for the judge to figure out what has > transpired implicitly and what has been skipped. > > If player A didn't realize the timing rules for blocking (unlikely), then rewind. Actually, this is the case. Player A thought that Eagle's Sight allows Player C to break the timing. I described him the right ruling, but didn't rewind, since it would bring a serious advantage to Players A and C who were "guilty" in this illegal play (that's why I wrote that they had a deal). > If player A would have been agreeable to C's offer of "don't bother blocking > this one; I'll Eagle's Sight it", then play on (with A's implicit " no block" > now part of the explicit landscape. This is likely close to reality given the "A > and C have a deal" preface. No, they had no such talks. In this case Player A wouldn't even ask me whether he can block, as it would be absolutely clear that he actually declined to block when he allowed Player C to block. > In all, "play on" seems to be the most likely scenario from the data given (that > is, A's acceptance of deal-mate C's Eagle's Sight block attempt without an > interruption of "wait C, I get to try to block first" indicates that he is > satisfied with passing his block attempts and letting C attempt to block). I guess I shouldn't allow Player A to block, since it was his fault that he didn't know the correct rules for Eagle's Sight. This seemed too harsh for me, though. But it's the most logical solution. I don't believe that the player actually intended to refuse blocking, but he somehow thought that he will get his chance to block in case Player C would fail. I don't like rewinding games at all, especially in such complicated cases. > > Since Tension could not have been removed, it stays. > > Leaving it in play doesn't change the balance of the table from what it would > have been if the illegal activity had not occurred. Removing it does change the > balance of the table (most likely, unless it Tension is completely irrelevant, > in which case leaving it in play also won't matter). Well, looks like I made a wrong ruling here. But can you suggest at least some guidelines about the time that should pass until the "rewind" would become impossible? Really? What if a player with no MPAs improperly played Fame, then torporized Famed minion, then some players lost pool on their untap phases, and only then somebody recalled that Fame couldn't be played? I really need a guideline - when to rewind and when not. > > Situation 3. The round time is running out, but some players are > > arguing with a judge about his ruling on some play situation. After > > several minutes they demand to get some additional play time due to > > the discussion! > > > What would you do in such situation? In Magic, this case could be > > considered "Unsporting Conduct - Severe" with an automatic > > disqualification at all Rules Enforcement Levels, or or at least > > "Unsporting Conduct - Major" with a game loss at lower RELs. > > Add time, if the judge feels like it (the players "ask", they can never "demand"). > > The judge can always add time to restore the time spent making a ruling, if he > feels it is warranted. In the case of the impending timing limit, it seems > warranted. Surely, the judge should add time he spent to make a ruling. But what to do if the players start to argue with his ruling? Isn't it unsportsmanship conduct? > Mid-game game loss is handling in-table only (not by reseating)... Ideally, a judge > will simply step in to play the remainder of the ejected player's game (with the > ejected player's cards, adjusted as necessary to correct deck discrepancies, if > any). I'm completely lost here. The judge should play for that player, but he will get 0 VPs, right? > If disqualification leaves the tourney with an unsanctionable number, then the > tournament becomes unsanctioned (and the judge can proceed in any manner he > likes -- rearranging as he likes). > > To avoid becoming unsanctioned, the judge can play (and use the multi-judge > rules) if he was not playing already (and can find suitable assitant > judge/players), or he can recuse himself if he was playing in a multi-judge event. Thanks a lot for your help! Yours, Ector

On 27 мар, 18:43, Derek Ray <moot@i_dont_check_the_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote: > You know, there's a pretty standard rule of thumb in the world today, > and it applies to a lot of things, not just V:TES and the computer > 'biz'. When someone feels the need to lead off the discussion with an > extended list of their certifications, it means they don't believe they > know what they're doing, and they're trying to pre-emptively convince us > and themselves otherwise. > > I hate that, and I take every opportunity to discourage it. Just ask > the question, or in this case tell us what you did, and THEN ask the > question; don't give a list of excuses before you've even told us what > you think you did wrong. If you read the text carefully, you'd notice that it started with "Please assume that I'm not a novice CCG judge". I wrote this to politely state that I don't need the explanation of the most basic things. Nothing more was intended. > > > But this doesn't explain > > your rude behaviour which is in now way respectful to anyone > > contributing to this game. > > Excellent. I wasn't intending to be respectful in any way. If so, I'm going to ignore the things you're going to write here. Since, you know, most people here at least try to respect each other. Especially in this thread, since judging is a difficult job, and any person willing to perform it without any reward deserves a LOT of respect in my eyes. --------------------------- Thanks a lot for everyone, besides Derek, of course! :) Yours, Ector

Ector wrote: > On 27 อมา, 16:01, LSJ <vtes...@white-wolf.com> wrote: >> If player A would have been agreeable to C's offer of "don't bother blocking >> this one; I'll Eagle's Sight it", then play on (with A's implicit " no block" >> now part of the explicit landscape. This is likely close to reality given the "A >> and C have a deal" preface. > No, they had no such talks. In this case Player A wouldn't even ask me > whether he can block, as it would be absolutely clear that he actually > declined to block when he allowed Player C to block. Well, this case is different from the "did they have talks?" case (handled above). This is "IF C had made the offer of Eagle's Sight blocking in A's place, then WOULD A have been agreeable?" case. That is, the judge evaluates the hypothetical once the error has come to light. >> In all, "play on" seems to be the most likely scenario from the data given (that >> is, A's acceptance of deal-mate C's Eagle's Sight block attempt without an >> interruption of "wait C, I get to try to block first" indicates that he is >> satisfied with passing his block attempts and letting C attempt to block). > I guess I shouldn't allow Player A to block, since it was his fault > that he didn't know the correct rules for Eagle's Sight. This seemed > too harsh for me, though. But it's the most logical solution. I don't > believe that the player actually intended to refuse blocking, but he > somehow thought that he will get his chance to block in case Player C > would fail. > I don't like rewinding games at all, especially in such complicated > cases. This case is complicated. Period. Rebalancing is hard (from the definition of a complicated case) and perhaps distasteful, but it is still required. Rewinding or not doesn't change that. Rewinding only to A's opportunity to block is still rewinding, and it still leaves the complication of the benefit of seeing B's card to be handled (and re-balanced). >> Since Tension could not have been removed, it stays. >> >> Leaving it in play doesn't change the balance of the table from what it would >> have been if the illegal activity had not occurred. Removing it does change the >> balance of the table (most likely, unless it Tension is completely irrelevant, >> in which case leaving it in play also won't matter). > Well, looks like I made a wrong ruling here. But can you suggest at > least some guidelines about the time that should pass until the > "rewind" would become impossible? Really? When it is too complicated to do so (and some other rebalancing option is easier). In this case, no rewinding is necessary at all -- you just put the Tension in play (an alternate option to accomplish the goal of restoring game balance). > What if a player with no > MPAs improperly played Fame, then torporized Famed minion, then some > players lost pool on their untap phases, and only then somebody > recalled that Fame couldn't be played? I really need a guideline - > when to rewind and when not. In the Fame case, rebalance if rewinding is not feasible. This most assuredly includes giving back all the pool lost to Fame's effect. That might be a sufficient solution. Or there may need to be other adjustments (depending on whether other players' actions were based on the Fame or the resultant pool loss). >>> Situation 3. The round time is running out, but some players are >>> arguing with a judge about his ruling on some play situation. After >>> several minutes they demand to get some additional play time due to >>> the discussion! >>> What would you do in such situation? In Magic, this case could be >>> considered "Unsporting Conduct - Severe" with an automatic >>> disqualification at all Rules Enforcement Levels, or or at least >>> "Unsporting Conduct - Major" with a game loss at lower RELs. >> Add time, if the judge feels like it (the players "ask", they can never "demand"). >> >> The judge can always add time to restore the time spent making a ruling, if he >> feels it is warranted. In the case of the impending timing limit, it seems >> warranted. > Surely, the judge should add time he spent to make a ruling. But what > to do if the players start to argue with his ruling? Isn't it > unsportsmanship conduct? If it is, sure. That tone cannot be evaluated from email. The judge should not exacerbate the situation, but should handle it in whatever manner the community standards (and the health of the local VTES community -- defining "local" as "players who come to events judged by this judge") thrive best. Players have debated rulings with me (in a manner some might call arguing). I've never found it to be (or allowed it to rise to) the level of Unsporting Conduct. >> Mid-game game loss is handling in-table only (not by reseating)... Ideally, a judge >> will simply step in to play the remainder of the ejected player's game (with the >> ejected player's cards, adjusted as necessary to correct deck discrepancies, if >> any). > I'm completely lost here. The judge should play for that player, but > he will get 0 VPs, right? Yes.

In message <1175012815....@r56g2000hsd.googlegroups.com>, Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> writes: >On 27 อมา, 15:00, Derek Ray ><moot@i_dont_check_the_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote: >> And you have an MCSE too, right? Please don't annoy us all with >> irrelevant qualifications. What you really are is a novice V:TES judge >> with some experience in judging other card games. This is likely to put >> you slightly ahead of the average novice V:TES judge... we'd hope. > >Well, I can only laugh at these words. Really. Should you have at >least half of my judging experience in Magic, you'd never write this. No, he'd still be quite happy to write it. Your Magic judging hasn't helped you. At all. Why not? Because Magic is a different game. They both happen to use small pieces of card, but similarities end there, pretty much. In many situations, V:TES judges absolutely have to use their judgement. No amount of textbook learning will help a judge to discern when a player is making a losing deal. No amount of textbook learning will help a judge spot collusion between two players on a table. In Magic, you can just spank both players. (And this happens: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=judge/article/20070309a) This is somewhat harder in Jyhad, because you don't know who on the table was doing what. So a judge has to use their judgement. Once you accept that a multi-player game requires judgement calls, you don't need a textbook to tell you EVERY SINGLE ANSWER. The judge has very helpful guidelines explaining the outline of each penalty type, and what fits where, and can extrapolate and interpolate as necessary. Using their judgement. If you want a little textbook of V:TES judging, you're not going to get one. -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR. EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Ector wrote: > On 27 мар, 18:43, Derek Ray > <moot@i_dont_check_the_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote: > >> You know, there's a pretty standard rule of thumb in the world today, >> and it applies to a lot of things, not just V:TES and the computer >> 'biz'. When someone feels the need to lead off the discussion with an >> extended list of their certifications, it means they don't believe they >> know what they're doing, and they're trying to pre-emptively convince us >> and themselves otherwise. >> >> I hate that, and I take every opportunity to discourage it. Just ask >> the question, or in this case tell us what you did, and THEN ask the >> question; don't give a list of excuses before you've even told us what >> you think you did wrong. > > If you read the text carefully, you'd notice that it started with > "Please assume that I'm not a novice CCG judge". I wrote this to > politely state that I don't need the explanation of the most basic > things. Nothing more was intended. Wouldn't you think your actions would indicate that you are familiar with the most basic concepts? Have some self-confidence, man. >>> But this doesn't explain >>> your rude behaviour which is in now way respectful to anyone >>> contributing to this game. >> Excellent. I wasn't intending to be respectful in any way. > If so, I'm going to ignore the things you're going to write here. Ignoring the message because you don't like its tone won't help you learn, nor will it help you keep control of your own players, nor will it teach you that changing the game for the rest of the world just to suit your own playgroup is never going to be a correct solution, no matter how much you stamp your foot and demand that it occur. > Since, you know, most people here at least try to respect each other. I only respect those who deserve it. You have shown the exact opposite; that if people say things you don't want to hear, that you stick your fingers in your ears and shout "lalalala". This is not worthy of my respect, and so you get none. > Especially in this thread, since judging is a difficult job, and any > person willing to perform it without any reward deserves a LOT of > respect in my eyes. You know, perhaps this is the problem with the Internet Generation, also known as Generation Y, also known as the Helpless Generation. You all seem to expect boundless gobs of respect for just trying, no matter how horrible a job you end up actually doing. Fuck that; any idiot can "try" and fail, and I see no reason why I should kowtow to them as though they were royalty. - -- Derek insert clever quotation here -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGCW1JtQZlu3o7QpERAtjGAJ42O0NCotfSExIr7yet/Wsu2dTfcwCcC874 cRxzFCK1M01zY7ul2zR/v0Y= =m8mk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Ector wrote: > On 27 мар, 15:00, Derek Ray > <moot@i_dont_check_the_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote: >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA1 >> >> Ector wrote: >>> Here are some questions that I've got while being a judge for the last >>> year or more. Please assume that I'm not a novice CCG judge, as I was >>> a certified Magic judge (Level 2) prior to moving to VTES, and getting >>> such certificate isn't very simple. >> And you have an MCSE too, right? Please don't annoy us all with >> irrelevant qualifications. What you really are is a novice V:TES judge >> with some experience in judging other card games. This is likely to put >> you slightly ahead of the average novice V:TES judge... we'd hope. > > Well, I can only laugh at these words. Really. Should you have at > least half of my judging experience in Magic, you'd never write this. See? This is why I busted you out on this in the first place. People told you that you probably made some wrong calls, and now you're resorting to "but eye m a h0t magicz judge" as to why you should be excused for making wrong calls, rather than simply making a note, learning from your error, and doing better next time. Magic = Magic. V:TES = V:TES. Different games. Totally. Magic Experience = Not Relevant to V:TES Experience. > more "informal", IMHO. Any person knowing what takes to be a good > Magic judge won't neglect the experience of a person who were a judge > for five years and judged hundreds of tournaments, including > Nationals. Who cares? It's easy to judge a game where there are only two players. Either one person gets a penalty, or the other one, or both. And you can assume that anything that benefits one player hurts the other, so it is much more of a zero-sum equation. V:TES is nowhere near as simple. So yeah, I will "neglect" your experience, because it's all completely irrelevant EXCEPT for... > Actually, I wrote these words just to avoid the unnecessary > explanations (what is "warning", "game loss", DQ and so on). ...Yes, some terminology is similar. That's where the similarities end though, so we can by golly count our blessings that you didn't have to be told what "disqualification" meant. Not that any of our PLAYERS even had to be told that. But. >>> Unfortunately, judging VTES tournaments proved to be much more >>> complicated than even judging a Magic Nationals. >> This is why your other qualifications were irrelevant. > Actually, it's more complicated just because I don't have the > Comprehensive Rules of the game, www.white-wolf.com > the comprehensive Tournament Rules www.white-wolf.com > and the deliberate Penalty Guidelines. www.white-wolf.com > VEKN should issue the strict > recommendations on what to do when you issue a Game Loss, and so on. For every possible circumstance in which a Game Loss can be issued, in a multiplayer game with extremely complex seating arrangements? Let me know when you get done creating that. I'll be waiting. - -- Derek insert clever quotation here -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGCW84tQZlu3o7QpERAiWWAKC9Dcnlfr5iXmqqtWgHjHdc2u620QCgx1b8 UImPRDnv5h8eqIsmJjPvz0U= =rA0Z -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> schreef in bericht news:7uDRRs7O...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > If you want a little textbook of V:TES judging, you're not going to get > one. Don't say that. Write 'the Ultimate Guide to Textbook V:TES Judging' textbook and make a killing :-)

On Mar 27, 10:30 am, "xcver" <x...@xcver.com> wrote: > But this doesn't explain > your rude behaviour which is in now way respectful to anyone > contributing to this game. You must be new here. Regards, Noal

Ector wrote: > Well, I can only laugh at these words. Really. Should you have at > least half of my judging experience in Magic, you'd never write this. > In that game, they have a serious judge certification program; they > have a judge mail-list, and the rules are formalized to the last > comma. The judge knows exactly what is right and what is wrong, and he > has to memorize almost 200 pages of rules/rulings to achieve this. In > Magic the competition is much more fierce, and stakes are much higher, > so the judge is much more important person there than in VTES which is > more "informal", IMHO. That's because there is actual money to be won. If there was every "real" money to be won at V:TES, the game would suck. Perhaps not as much as potence and Nosferatu voting decks suck ;-) , but it would still suck. best - chris -- Super Fun Cards http://myworld.ebay.com/superfuncards/ auct...@superfuncards.com

librarian wrote: > > That's because there is actual money to be won. If there was ever > "real" money to be won at V:TES, the game would suck. Perhaps not as > much as potence and Nosferatu voting decks suck ;-) , but it would > still suck. I have often said that if you really want to see which decks are "good" and which decks aren't,... and which playstyles are "good" and which aren't... and what "play to win" _really_ looks like... then someone should put up a tournament, or run a series of tournaments, which pay out a cash prize that isn't peanuts. In short order, you would have an excellent idea of both what players considered to be effective, and what they were willing to do to conceal collusion. :) [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mar 27, 4:07 pm, Derek Ray [ quoted text not captured ] I have done it. The experiment need not be repeated. Collusion was rife as there were pods of 3-4 guys whose decks complemented each other. The most common formation was 2 combat decks and a deck stacked with Conservitive Agitations w/ weenies. The combat decks would eliminate any standing titles. The edge usually countered anyone pitching votes. $200.00 was the cash prize, which may or may not be peanuts to you. Comments Welcome, Norman S. Brown, Jr XZealot Archon of the Swamp

[ quoted text not captured ] Sad how little money it would take to reduce a game to rubble. Perhaps there should be an "Unexpected Coalition" variant, wherein collusion is expected, encouraged, and fostered in the rules. Sort of like Bridge, tables always have 4 players, and the two players on a team play across from each other. If you have a variant that allows collusion, you can then control it's negative aspects better. Whether it's worth it or not to have that sort of format is an exercise left for the reader... [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mar 27, 5:50 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote: > Sad how little money it would take to reduce a game to rubble. To be honest, it's not all that surprising. Money is a powerful motivator to get people to focus more on winning than "fun." This is why serious poker players focus very heavily on "playing the game correctly" as making the correct decisions will necessarily reap monetary benefits over time. The people that come to play poker "for fun" are usually brutally victimized and aren't even aware of it. When people really, and I mean *REALLY*, start playing V:TES as a pure strategy game with blatant disregard for fun, the game becomes a much different animal. Regards, Noal

[ quoted text not captured ] Yup. At that point you tend to see a hell of a lot of weenie cheese, as well as REALLY nasty bleed decks. Why? Cos they are efficient with a high win to loss ratio. The fact that they are more boring than a MtG Turbo stasis deck is not important, the fact that they win you money is. Sad, hey?

"librarian" <auct...@superfuncards.com> schreef in bericht news:wkgOh.109961$907....@newsfe13.phx... > Sad how little money it would take to reduce a game to rubble. > > Perhaps there should be an "Unexpected Coalition" variant, wherein > collusion is expected, encouraged, and fostered in the rules. Sort of > like Bridge, tables always have 4 players, and the two players on a team > play across from each other. > > If you have a variant that allows collusion, you can then control it's > negative aspects better. > > Whether it's worth it or not to have that sort of format is an exercise > left for the reader... http://www.vekn.be/Teamplay.htm we played a 12 player tourney 3 years ago. Mostly fun....

[ quoted text not captured ] LOL. The funny thing seems to me that Derek "firestarter" Ray even stopped playing some time ago, IIRC. Alf

On 27 мар, 21:35, James Coupe <j...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > > No, he'd still be quite happy to write it. As long as we're talking about Derek, nobody doubts :) > Your Magic judging hasn't helped you. At all. Why not? Because Magic > is a different game. They both happen to use small pieces of card, but > similarities end there, pretty much. > > In many situations, V:TES judges absolutely have to use their judgement. > No amount of textbook learning will help a judge to discern when a > player is making a losing deal. No amount of textbook learning will > help a judge spot collusion between two players on a table. > > In Magic, you can just spank both players. (And this happens:http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=judge/article/20070309a) This is > somewhat harder in Jyhad, because you don't know who on the table was > doing what. So a judge has to use their judgement. > > Once you accept that a multi-player game requires judgement calls, you > don't need a textbook to tell you EVERY SINGLE ANSWER. The judge has > very helpful guidelines explaining the outline of each penalty type, and > what fits where, and can extrapolate and interpolate as necessary. > Using their judgement. Actually, my Magic experience helped me a lot (not in these situations, though). Magic judges also have to use their own judgement in many cases. For instance, the judge doesn't have to assemble a court to accuse somebody in cheating - if he believes in cheating, that's enough. In both games, the "Unsportsmanlike conduct" definitions and penalties are almost the same. Any experienced Magic judge knows "by heart" when he has to intervene, and when he should not, what penalty he should issue and why, and so on. In the "uncivilized" countries like Belarus the judge is also a teacher, so he should know all his players very well to encourage them for playing better, not to discourage them. In both games any judge ruling should not provide any advantages for some players, and so on. As you can easily guess, I'm quite experienced in all these matters. No game has a textbook with EVERY single answer. Still, Magic judges have much more detailed recommendations than VTES judges. For instance, they have a clear recommendation for rollbacks: "You can rollback if not much happened since the mistake, but no rollbacks after the turn ends". I don't have such clear recommendation in VTES, though I'd like to. Things like returning the improperly destroyed permanent to the game without actually rolling the game back never happen in Magic, and I was quite surprised to know that they are recommended here. I know that I will have to use my own judgement in such cases, and I will try to "repair" the game as I can, having in mind that the player who made the mistake deserves some "punishment" during the "repair". For instance, in the mentioned illegal Fame example I'm going to return all burned pool (and blood of the Famed vampire), return the vampire to the Ready region and move Fame to the owner's ash heap as a "punishment". What can you say about such ruling? > If you want a little textbook of V:TES judging, you're not going to get > one. I'd like to have a separate newsgroup for the judges, at least. Magic judges have a regular "Rules Questions" column, a separate forum for rules questions ONLY, and a special mailing list. This newsgroup is open for all discussions, and filtering the rules questions isn't easy. I'd also would be happy to get an official document like Comprehensive Rules, describing all "windows to play" and examples of the most complicated situations. And my players would be happy to get such document, too. Yours, Ector

Derek Ray, this "macho"-style judging doesn´t work in my experience. A judge has to make the right decisions, or else there will be bad feelings, and that is not good in small playgroups (which most playgroups are). Also, I think being an experienced MtG judge actually is good. As would being an experienced soccer or ping-pong judge. It gives you experience in how to interact with other people in competitive environments. But in these cases it did not matter much, sadly. Also, the VTES rules and tournament rules could be more clear. After every night of play I usually have 3-4 rules question noted. I guess every place you play should have a computor with internet for searching the newsgroup.

In message <1175069507.5...@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>, Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> writes: >Actually, my Magic experience helped me a lot (not in these >situations, though). If you are allowing players to argue with you to the point that you're considering issuing Unsportsmanlike Conduct warnings to them, I would suggest that you need *vast* amounts more experience at judging before you can claim it's helping you any. Telling a player: "That's my ruling. Sit down. Play." is a fundamental, necessary ability that you should have picked up within the first couple of tournaments you judged of *any* game. >No game has a textbook with EVERY single answer. Still, Magic judges >have much more detailed recommendations than VTES judges. For >instance, they have a clear recommendation for rollbacks: "You can >rollback if not much happened since the mistake, but no rollbacks >after the turn ends". V:TES has pretty clear recommendations on this too. - Rollback if you can. - Correct state if you can't. - Make corrections to game state as appropriate if it comes to light later on. (That is, bodge as best as you can, if you feel it's still necessary.) Note that Magic can more often be rolled back in some situations where V:TES can't easily be rolled back, because of V:TES's dynamic draw mechanism. It might only be two or three actions into the turn of a player with a lot of minions/actions, but far too much may have happened for a judge to be confident to roll back. Each card played will be redrawn. In Magic - typically - there are far fewer cards being drawn than in the most prolific V:TES scenarios where a dozen or more cards can fly on a single action. A hard and fast rule like "roll back to the start of the turn" would miss the simplicity of rolling back several turns at e.g. the start of the game (say, I Sudden your Dreams of the Sphinx, and then play my own Info Highway, and a couple of turns pass before anyone has brought anything out - roll-back is easy!), and miss the complexities > For instance, in the mentioned illegal Fame >example I'm going to return all burned pool (and blood of the Famed >vampire), return the vampire to the Ready region and move Fame to the >owner's ash heap as a "punishment". What can you say about such >ruling? Without more details of the situation, it is hard to say. However, in general, punishments should be applied to the player. Corrections should be made to the game state based on how to best correct it, rather than who to punish. The end result *may* be the same, but the motivation for correcting the game state is one of restoring what would/should have happened. Which you can't do perfectly, most of the time. >> If you want a little textbook of V:TES judging, you're not going to get >> one. >I'd like to have a separate newsgroup for the judges, at least. You wouldn't get the votes for it.[0] Nor would it be helpful. Every player may be a judge, particularly in multi-judge situations. Additionally, it will inevitably transpire that many judging queries stem from a mis-understanding of the game rules or card text. Players don't need Yet Another Forum to follow for card text rulings! That makes the player's life harder. And judge and tournament questions would still turn up in every other V:TES forum (web, newsgroups, mailing lists etc.), because of players who don't know about, don't want to use, or can't use the dedicated forum. >Magic judges have a regular "Rules Questions" column, a separate forum >for rules questions ONLY, and a special mailing list. This newsgroup is >open for all discussions, and filtering the rules questions isn't easy. There are several quick ways of doing this. 1) Use a real news-reader (i.e. not Google Groups). Most of these will let you filter posts by specific people, or search for posts by specific people. (A popular recommendation used to be Free Agent.) If you're in a hurry, a search for unread posts by LSJ will bounce you through most of the important rulings based threads. If you find any that are interesting (i.e. not just simple one line rulings) or any threads that suddenly exploded into 100 posts, it might be worth looking in. However, it's extremely rare to find a substantive thread on tournament policy and judging that doesn't have a post from LSJ in it. (Even if it's just a "Correct" to some other player's interpretation of the situation.) 1a) If necessary, do an Advanced Search using the Google Groups interface and replicate the above. It's less fun, but posts by LSJ in the last month (or whatever period of time you've been busy) will do much the same, just be less fun. 2) Encourage the use of a descriptive tag in headers. Many decks are identified by "Deck:" or "[DECK]" or something. Ditto, TWDA entries. Questions to LSJ often get "LSJ" in the Subject. Just start using a "Judge:" tag in your headers. (I'd suggest not using square brackets [ ] because Google has a tendency to eat them.) If it's useful, it'll catch on. > I'd also would be happy to get an official document like >Comprehensive Rules, describing all "windows to play" and examples of >the most complicated situations. And my players would be happy to get >such document, too. If you want one, write one. And ask for input. And actually do something with that input. Then re-draft it. Repeat. With a careful hand, this doesn't actually need that much work on your part; if you get two or three players discussing a given point, they may thrash out text for you. Many years ago, LSJ used to maintain such documents that were quite comprehensive at the time. (V:TES has moved on quite way since then.) This would serve as a useful model for your attempts, as well as showing the difficulties that such a document will have so you can avoid some of them. [0] Go read up on how to create Usenet newsgroups in the rec.* hierarchy. You'd need something like 130 people in favour to even think about creating it. Many more if there's even a whiff of drafting in uninterested friends to vote for it. [ quoted text not captured ]

Ector wrote: > Still, Magic judges > have much more detailed recommendations than VTES judges. For > instance, they have a clear recommendation for rollbacks: "You can > rollback if not much happened since the mistake, but no rollbacks > after the turn ends". I don't have such clear recommendation in VTES, > though I'd like to. You do have: "You can rollback if not too much happened since the mistake." It's even clearer than the MtG quote above -- no additional concerns like "end of turn" to cloud the issue of "what is 'too much'?" > Things like returning the improperly destroyed > permanent to the game without actually rolling the game back never > happen in Magic, and I was quite surprised to know that they are > recommended here. In Magic, the *only* allowed method of restoring balance is a rollback. But Magic is a 2p game, so the only player benefiting from the error is the player who made the error or the player upon whom it was made. That's not the case in VTES, so there's a much bigger incentive to correct the error, even when a rollback is not possible. > I know that I will have to use my own judgement in > such cases, and I will try to "repair" the game as I can, having in > mind that the player who made the mistake deserves some "punishment" > during the "repair". For instance, in the mentioned illegal Fame > example I'm going to return all burned pool (and blood of the Famed > vampire), return the vampire to the Ready region and move Fame to the > owner's ash heap as a "punishment". What can you say about such > ruling? Restoring game state balance isn't about punishment. It's about balance. Including punishment in there is at odds with balance. When 100% balance is not possible, then you should err on the side of punishment, but that's not the same as imposing punitive damages. >> If you want a little textbook of V:TES judging, you're not going to get >> one. > I'd like to have a separate newsgroup for the judges, at least. Magic > judges have a regular "Rules Questions" column, a separate forum for > rules questions ONLY, and a special mailing list. This newsgroup is > open for all discussions, and filtering the rules questions isn't > easy. I'd also would be happy to get an official document like > Comprehensive Rules, describing all "windows to play" and examples of > the most complicated situations. And my players would be happy to get > such document, too. google: "judge author:LSJ" should make an adequate filter.

On 27 Mar, 17:26, "Ector" <E...@mail.ru> wrote: > Well, I can only laugh at these words. Really. Should you have at > least half of my judging experience in Magic, you'd never write this. > In that game, they have a serious judge certification program; they > have a judge mail-list, and the rules are formalized to the last > comma. The judge knows exactly what is right and what is wrong, and he > has to memorize almost 200 pages of rules/rulings to achieve this. In > Magic the competition is much more fierce, and stakes are much higher, > so the judge is much more important person there than in VTES which is > more "informal", IMHO. Any person knowing what takes to be a good > Magic judge won't neglect the experience of a person who were a judge > for five years and judged hundreds of tournaments, including > Nationals. The only transferable skills that exist between judging V:TES and M:TG are the same that you would find judging and refereeing any game or sport that the players take remotely seriously. Carry yourself in a manner that commands respect and have the ability to back up your assertions. Anything else is pointless. Stating you have a professional soccer refereeing qualification would carry more weight. Stating you have M:TG level 2 means you are capable of running off and getting the Level 4/5 judge to come and deal with a whinging teenager at a Pro Tour who disagrees with your ruling, be it correct or not, and that you are capable of counter-signing a results slip. Passing a judging exam doesn't necessarily equate to you automatically becoming a good and competant judge. Take two early Magic judges as examples: Beth Morisund (Level 4) was fabulous at rules comprehension and the intricacies of the game. She was not good at face to face confrontation though. Tom Wylie (Level 4) alledgedly assaulted a player. Given a choice I would prefer a judge with good interpersonal skills over rules knowledge. Matt Green

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 as...@hotmail.com wrote: > Derek Ray, this "macho"-style judging doesn´t work in my experience. Oh, of course it does. Where it DOESN'T work is if you show favoritism, or if it isn't made clear to the players that your judgement is based entirely on card text and your knowledge of the rules and procedures. > A judge has to make the right decisions, or else there will be bad > feelings, and that is not good in small playgroups (which most > playgroups are). If a judge makes a ruling based on card text, the rules, and tournament procedures, and gets it wrong, there may be some disappointment, but why will there be bad feelings? If some of your players tend to harbor "bad feelings" when a judge has ruled against them, I would think those would show up regardless of the correctness of the ruling at issue. At this point, the problem is with the player, not with the judge or style of judging. I can assure you of this; sitting and allowing players to argue with you _always_ causes bad feelings, especially if you change your ruling as a result of the argument. For one, most of the time you'll be changing it to something "wrong", or in the best case, something no more "right" than your original ruling. And two, you have guaranteed that all of your rulings are now subject to debate and vote at the time of the ruling -- because you just taught the person who was ruled against that if he doesn't like what you said, he just has to convince you and you'll change it. This is awful for a playgroup. I don't recommend it. > Also, I think being an experienced MtG judge actually is good. As > would being an experienced soccer or ping-pong judge. This is a near-restatement of what I originally said, which was "he is a novice V:TES judge with some experience in judging other card games. This is likely to put him slightly ahead of the average novice V:TES judge." > Also, the VTES rules and tournament rules could be more clear. Please indicate which section exactly you find unclear? - -- Derek insert clever quotation here -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGClYdtQZlu3o7QpERAuGQAKCG4JoiZVFToCBPIC7pybUcIjPRmQCgrHvn fUgNXNYSnByeOOls1n0RxmA= =qqm1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Alf wrote: > On 27 Mrz., 21:29, "Noal McDonald" <dharz...@my-deja.com> wrote: >> On Mar 27, 10:30 am, "xcver" <x...@xcver.com> wrote: >>> But this doesn't explain >>> your rude behaviour which is in now way respectful to anyone >>> contributing to this game. >> You must be new here. >> > The funny thing seems to me that Derek "firestarter" Ray even stopped > playing some time ago, IIRC. Correct. I stopped purchasing cards during the Gehenna playtest, which was around the time of the release of Black Hand, and quit playing not too much longer after that. - -- Derek insert clever quotation here -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGClZ8tQZlu3o7QpERAv1TAKDNJlw1Bp4ioDUSGNSoVNUiF8SSwQCePzXE DxtiEn2Inv/qAHHUo6dYn30= =Kawo -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

mgre...@googlemail.com wrote: > Tom Wylie (Level 4) alledgedly assaulted a > player. was it because that player said they were quitting MTG to play VTES instead, or something? ;) -- salem (replace 'hotmail' with 'yahoo' to email)

On 28 mrt, 13:50, Derek Ray <moot@i_dont_check_the_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Alf wrote: > > On 27 Mrz., 21:29, "Noal McDonald" <dharz...@my-deja.com> wrote: > >> On Mar 27, 10:30 am, "xcver" <x...@xcver.com> wrote: > >>> But this doesn't explain > >>> your rude behaviour which is in now way respectful to anyone > >>> contributing to this game. > >> You must be new here. > > > The funny thing seems to me that Derek "firestarter" Ray even stopped > > playing some time ago, IIRC. > > Correct. I stopped purchasing cards during the Gehenna playtest, which > was around the time of the release of Black Hand, and quit playing not > too much longer after that. > is that ...because of the Gehenna playtest or just during?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [ quoted text not captured ] At the time, I made the prediction privately that the Events were going to completely trainwreck the game; that they were too much of a random destabilizing "haha, now-u-lose!" influence, and that many people had little interest in playing a game where their entire deck could stop working because of a single card. (I am, of course, one of those people.) I chose to gamble on this prediction with my wallet and time; specifically, retaining the contents of my wallet and regaining a large portion of my free time. While I do miss traveling and seeing some of the other players on a regular basis, I have seen no reason to regret my decision from any other perspective. - -- Derek insert clever quotation here -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGCly6tQZlu3o7QpERAmjlAKCGKdTQe7LaGDHv/tDiygX1htEimgCgg0iU 7anxZuldZbZmvY5PXW8JLjI= =FULL -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

> > Derek Ray, this "macho"-style judging doesn´t work in my experience. > > Oh, of course it does. Where it DOESN'T work is if you show favoritism, > or if it isn't made clear to the players that your judgement is based > entirely on card text and your knowledge of the rules and procedures. I think the tournament rules should have an often-updated FAQ with contrete situations described. > > A judge has to make the right decisions, or else there will be bad > > feelings, and that is not good in small playgroups (which most > > playgroups are). > > If a judge makes a ruling based on card text, the rules, and tournament > procedures, and gets it wrong, there may be some disappointment, but why > will there be bad feelings? Gee, I guess that is something human. > > Also, I think being an experienced MtG judge actually is good. As > > would being an experienced soccer or ping-pong judge. > > This is a near-restatement of what I originally said, which was "he is a > novice V:TES judge with some experience in judging other card games. > This is likely to put him slightly ahead of the average novice V:TES judge." More than slightly I think. Your "Please don´t annoy us all with irrelevant qualifications" sounded otherwise. (And why the "annoy us all" when it´s you that are annoyed?) > > Also, the VTES rules and tournament rules could be more clear. > > Please indicate which section exactly you find unclear? No, that is general. The game calls for a lot of judging, as situations are often quite unique. In for example MtG the rules are more "when A, do B".

On 28 mrt, 14:16, Derek Ray [ quoted text not captured ] Sadly, i think you are being proven right. *sigh* > > I chose to gamble on this prediction with my wallet and time; > specifically, retaining the contents of my wallet and regaining a large > portion of my free time. While I do miss traveling and seeing some of > the other players on a regular basis, I have seen no reason to regret my > decision from any other perspective. I haven't bought any cards since Most Wanted, and I guess I won't in in the near future. Pity...

On Mar 27, 6:14 pm, "Blooded Sand" <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote: > Yup. At that point you tend to see a hell of a lot of weenie cheese, > as well as REALLY nasty bleed decks. Why? Cos they are efficient with > a high win to loss ratio. The fact that they are more boring than a > MtG Turbo stasis deck is not important, the fact that they win you > money is. Sad, hey? I don't think it's necessarily sad. You should know that I'm one of those serious poker players that intentionally preys on people that show up to a casino to play poker for fun. I think it's actually a good test of a game's dynamics. If the game undergoes a substantial change when people really focus on winning it, then maybe its design is flawed. Regards, Noal

LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in news:UNrOh.454$2M....@newssvr22.news.prodigy.net: > Ector wrote: >> Still, Magic judges >> have much more detailed recommendations than VTES judges. For >> instance, they have a clear recommendation for rollbacks: "You can >> rollback if not much happened since the mistake, but no rollbacks >> after the turn ends". I don't have such clear recommendation in VTES, >> though I'd like to. > > You do have: "You can rollback if not too much happened since the > mistake." It's even clearer than the MtG quote above -- no additional > concerns like "end of turn" to cloud the issue of "what is 'too > much'?" > Since no one else has put it up yet, I will. From the Judge's Guide: "200. Correction of Game State This section generally deals with returning the game to a fair and playable state after certain types of infractions. Only the judge may make corrections to the game state. Correction of the game state is done in addition to and not instead of the application of the appropriate penalty for the infraction. Philosophy: It is important that the player committing the infraction receive no benefit in the game for doing so. If no significant game actions have taken place, play should be backed-up to the point of the error. The error should then be corrected and the game should proceed forward from that point. If significant game actions have taken place (***such as moving to the next player's turn*** or knowledge of another player's cards), the judge may choose to leave the game undisturbed or may adjust the game state in some other way (for instance, altering pool or blood levels) since players have made play decisions based on the subsequent state of the game." *** emphasis mine. Maybe Ector glanced over this, and thought it read the same as M:tG's guidelines? It isn't, the section goes on to describe ways in which acceptable alterations can occur _without_ rewinding everything done in the turn. But perhaps it may be made more clear that a change of player turn doesn't itself mean that significant alteration of the game state has also occured. Ector's example of realizing an illegally-burnt Tension just after a player is ousted is a good example of a turn change with a corresponding lack of significant changes to the game state, easily correctable. >> I know that I will have to use my own judgement in >> such cases, and I will try to "repair" the game as I can, having in >> mind that the player who made the mistake deserves some "punishment" >> during the "repair". For instance, in the mentioned illegal Fame >> example I'm going to return all burned pool (and blood of the Famed >> vampire), return the vampire to the Ready region and move Fame to the >> owner's ash heap as a "punishment". What can you say about such >> ruling? > > Restoring game state balance isn't about punishment. It's about > balance. Including punishment in there is at odds with balance. When > 100% balance is not possible, then you should err on the side of > punishment, but that's not the same as imposing punitive damages. > Right. As the Judge's Guide says, restoration of game state is done in addition to, not as a substitute for the appropriate penalty (verbal, warning, game loss, disqual.). I don't believe that restoring the game state in a way that also penalizes the offender can be seen as reasonable by any sort of read of 200. You try to fix the game state in a way that is fair (returning illegally burned resources strikes me as fair) and offers no advantage to any player. Punishing someone through alteration of the game state to their disadvantage is not the stated goal here. Regards DaveZ Atom Weaver

[ quoted text not captured ] Thanks for that. I've updated the section to read "If significant game actions have taken place (such as having too many cards played and/or replaced), "

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 as...@hotmail.com wrote: >>> Derek Ray, this "macho"-style judging doesn´t work in my experience. >> Oh, of course it does. Where it DOESN'T work is if you show favoritism, >> or if it isn't made clear to the players that your judgement is based >> entirely on card text and your knowledge of the rules and procedures. > > I think the tournament rules should have an often-updated FAQ with > contrete situations described. Great. How does that relate to the section you quoted? >> If a judge makes a ruling based on card text, the rules, and tournament >> procedures, and gets it wrong, there may be some disappointment, but why >> will there be bad feelings? > > Gee, I guess that is something human. Disappointment is human. Bad feelings are something entirely different. To hold grudges against a judge just because he ruled against you, even though you know he was trying to be objective... well... I call that childish. >> This is a near-restatement of what I originally said, which was "he is a >> novice V:TES judge with some experience in judging other card games. >> This is likely to put him slightly ahead of the average novice V:TES judge." > > More than slightly I think. Not really. Most Magic players don't really impress me with their interpersonal skills and rational thought processes; why would the grunt-level judges impress me any more? > Your "Please don´t annoy us all with > irrelevant qualifications" sounded otherwise. (And why the "annoy us > all" when it´s you that are annoyed?) Because it's patently obvious that I'm not the only person who finds Ector's posturing and pretensions annoying, perhaps. >>> Also, the VTES rules and tournament rules could be more clear. >> Please indicate which section exactly you find unclear? > > No, that is general. If you're going to make a bitchy statement, you should at least have the balls to back it up. Now please indicate which section exactly you find unclear. > The game calls for a lot of judging, as situations are often quite unique. Correct. Hence it is a more difficult game to judge than Magic, and thus Magic judging experience means even less than it typically does. - -- Derek insert clever quotation here -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGCvL3tQZlu3o7QpERAlDDAJ9Fw0qtJhUvxjV0jhtXE5hO/9tHCgCgpscb WU9j9hzBKdp6lpHDHTYnQ5c= =eqim -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On 28 мар, 12:00, James Coupe <j...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > In message <1175069507.525592.305...@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>, > > Ector <E...@mail.ru> writes: > >Actually, my Magic experience helped me a lot (not in these > >situations, though). > > If you are allowing players to argue with you to the point that you're > considering issuing Unsportsmanlike Conduct warnings to them, I would > suggest that you need *vast* amounts more experience at judging before > you can claim it's helping you any. > > Telling a player: "That's my ruling. Sit down. Play." is a > fundamental, necessary ability that you should have picked up within the > first couple of tournaments you judged of *any* game. Look, I've got a lot of players that don't take a VTES tournament seriuos enough. Some of my players are former (and current) Magic players, but others are role-players that never participated in a "real" tournament. Such arguing of theirs doesn't mean that they don't respect me as a judge or don't believe in my rules knowledge - they just accustomed to the "friendly" casual games. As long as I know what to do after issuing a Game Loss now, I'm going to fix this problem. This surely doesn't mean that I'm going to issue it frequently, but I think that a good explanation at the local forum and 1-2 cases would be enough. > > V:TES has pretty clear recommendations on this too. > > - Rollback if you can. > - Correct state if you can't. > - Make corrections to game state as appropriate if it comes to light > later on. (That is, bodge as best as you can, if you feel it's > still necessary.) > > Note that Magic can more often be rolled back in some situations where > V:TES can't easily be rolled back, because of V:TES's dynamic draw > mechanism. It might only be two or three actions into the turn of a > player with a lot of minions/actions, but far too much may have happened > for a judge to be confident to roll back. Each card played will be > redrawn. In Magic - typically - there are far fewer cards being drawn > than in the most prolific V:TES scenarios where a dozen or more cards > can fly on a single action. > > A hard and fast rule like "roll back to the start of the turn" would > miss the simplicity of rolling back several turns at e.g. the start of > the game (say, I Sudden your Dreams of the Sphinx, and then play my own > Info Highway, and a couple of turns pass before anyone has brought > anything out - roll-back is easy!), and miss the complexities It's pitiful to say, but looks like Derek Ray was right. My Magic judging experience actually harmed me in this case. Moreover, I didn't pay proper attention to the section 200 of Judge's Guidelines (especially example C). This is really a shame. I will do my best to train better. > > For instance, in the mentioned illegal Fame > >example I'm going to return all burned pool (and blood of the Famed > >vampire), return the vampire to the Ready region and move Fame to the > >owner's ash heap as a "punishment". What can you say about such > >ruling? > > Without more details of the situation, it is hard to say. > > However, in general, punishments should be applied to the player. > Corrections should be made to the game state based on how to best > correct it, rather than who to punish. Definitely. I meant that it's usually impossible to "correct the game state" without providing advantage to certain players, and it wouldn't be wise to provide such advantage to the player who made the mistake. Should it be advantageous, players may start to make such "mistakes" intentionally :) > >> If you want a little textbook of V:TES judging, you're not going to get > >> one. > >I'd like to have a separate newsgroup for the judges, at least. > > You wouldn't get the votes for it.[0] Nor would it be helpful. Every > player may be a judge, particularly in multi-judge situations. > > Additionally, it will inevitably transpire that many judging queries > stem from a mis-understanding of the game rules or card text. Players > don't need Yet Another Forum to follow for card text rulings! That > makes the player's life harder. Why do you think that having a separate forum for rules questions and for general discussions would make a life harder? We have a separate thread for rules questions at our local forum, and it makes a life easier! > And judge and tournament questions would still turn up in every other > V:TES forum (web, newsgroups, mailing lists etc.), because of players > who don't know about, don't want to use, or can't use the dedicated > forum. At the official D&D Miniatures forum this is solved in the most logical way: all rules questions are moved to the rules subforum. > > I'd also would be happy to get an official document like > >Comprehensive Rules, describing all "windows to play" and examples of > >the most complicated situations. And my players would be happy to get > >such document, too. > > If you want one, write one. And ask for input. And actually do > something with that input. Then re-draft it. Repeat. With a careful > hand, this doesn't actually need that much work on your part; if you get > two or three players discussing a given point, they may thrash out text > for you. > > Many years ago, LSJ used to maintain such documents that were quite > comprehensive at the time. (V:TES has moved on quite way since then.) > This would serve as a useful model for your attempts, as well as showing > the difficulties that such a document will have so you can avoid some of > them. OK. Can anybody provide me a link to the last version of this document? I will try to do as much as possible, since I hate to have no clear anwer in some situation. Then, I will post the result and ask for help in finishing it. > [0] Go read up on how to create Usenet newsgroups in the rec.* > hierarchy. You'd need something like 130 people in favour to even think > about creating it. Many more if there's even a whiff of drafting in > uninterested friends to vote for it. This would make no good unless somebody would actually move all rules answers there. Yours, Ector

On 28 мар, 13:52, LSJ <vtes...@white-wolf.com> wrote: > Ector wrote: > > Still, Magic judges > > have much more detailed recommendations than VTES judges. For > > instance, they have a clear recommendation for rollbacks: "You can > > rollback if not much happened since the mistake, but no rollbacks > > after the turn ends". I don't have such clear recommendation in VTES, > > though I'd like to. > > You do have: "You can rollback if not too much happened since the mistake." > It's even clearer than the MtG quote above -- no additional concerns like "end > of turn" to cloud the issue of "what is 'too much'?" "Too much" means "players drawed too much cards, or fetched something from their libraries, and so on". Yes, in Magic cards aren't immediately replaced, so a rollback can actually be performed in many cases. I should realize that in VTES the rollback is almost never possible and I should forget that Magic ruling. Thanks for your help! Besides, don't you think that the examples of "Correcting the game state" in the Judge's Guidelines aren't informative enough and even somewhat confusing? The only example of "game state correction" is case C, and its suggested resolution, IMHO, contradicts with the phylosophy "It is important that the player committing the infraction receive no benefit in the game for doing so". The player that improperly burned a vampire will obviously benefit from making that vampire to hunt for two turns! And from absence of the vampire that decreased the possibility of blocking too. I would AT LEAST grant that vampire some "free untaps" during the next 1-2 turns, and, probably, add some pool to his controller, depending on the situation. Other examples of difficult cases and various ways to correct the game state are really needed. A judge should get accustomed to the things he can do to correct the game state and he must train in getting the game to the "fair" state with minimal number of corrections. > > I know that I will have to use my own judgement in > > such cases, and I will try to "repair" the game as I can, having in > > mind that the player who made the mistake deserves some "punishment" > > during the "repair". For instance, in the mentioned illegal Fame > > example I'm going to return all burned pool (and blood of the Famed > > vampire), return the vampire to the Ready region and move Fame to the > > owner's ash heap as a "punishment". What can you say about such > > ruling? > > Restoring game state balance isn't about punishment. It's about balance. > Including punishment in there is at odds with balance. When 100% balance is not > possible, then you should err on the side of punishment, but that's not the same > as imposing punitive damages. When I wrote "punishment" I meant that it's almost never possible to correct the game state to the "fair" level without providing some players advantages compared to the other players. And the "guilty" player should NEVER get an advantage from the correction - actually, he should get "a short stick". In the Fame example, restoring pool isn't enough, since the controller of the Famed vampire could make some wrong decisions based on his lowered pool, so I'd say that forcing the "guilty" player to lose his Fame would be an adequate "punishment" for his mistake. What do you think about it? > google: "judge author:LSJ" should make an adequate filter. I fear not that adequate, but helpful. Sometimes you participate in general discussions, too, and you answer to many newbie questions that will "spam" the filtered result. But, nevertheless, thanks for a good advice! Yours, Ector

> >>> Derek Ray, this "macho"-style judging doesn´t work in my experience. > >> Oh, of course it does. Where it DOESN'T work is if you show favoritism, > >> or if it isn't made clear to the players that your judgement is based > >> entirely on card text and your knowledge of the rules and procedures. > > > I think the tournament rules should have an often-updated FAQ with > > contrete situations described. > > Great. How does that relate to the section you quoted? It would help to make VES a game more about "knowledge of rules and procedures" and less about "your judgement". > >> If a judge makes a ruling based on card text, the rules, and tournament > >> procedures, and gets it wrong, there may be some disappointment, but why > >> will there be bad feelings? > > > Gee, I guess that is something human. > > Disappointment is human. Bad feelings are something entirely different. > > To hold grudges against a judge just because he ruled against you, even > though you know he was trying to be objective... well... I call that > childish. OK. Some people who play CCGs are kind of childish. And I think being childish is human. > >> This is a near-restatement of what I originally said, which was "he is a > >> novice V:TES judge with some experience in judging other card games. > >> This is likely to put him slightly ahead of the average novice V:TES judge." > > > More than slightly I think. > > Not really. Most Magic players don't really impress me with their > interpersonal skills and rational thought processes; why would the > grunt-level judges impress me any more? Maybe because they have more interpersonal skills and rational thought processes than "most Magic players". > > Your "Please don´t annoy us all with > > irrelevant qualifications" sounded otherwise. (And why the "annoy us > > all" when it´s you that are annoyed?) > > Because it's patently obvious that I'm not the only person who finds > Ector's posturing and pretensions annoying, perhaps. So "not the only person" = "all of us". You are really funny sometimes. When you aren´t just > >>> Also, the VTES rules and tournament rules could be more clear. > >> Please indicate which section exactly you find unclear? > > > No, that is general. > > If you're going to make a bitchy statement, you should at least have the > balls to back it up. "Bitchy"? Do you feel offended that I don´t believe the rules are perfect? > Now please indicate which section exactly you find unclear. Sorry, I don´t have time for that. When I say general I mean that VtES rules in general are more like guidelines than rules. > > The game calls for a lot of judging, as situations are often quite unique. > > Correct. Hence it is a more difficult game to judge than Magic, and > thus Magic judging experience means even less than it typically does. Even less than when? When a Magic player judges soccer?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 as...@hotmail.com wrote: >>>>> Derek Ray, this "macho"-style judging doesn´t work in my experience. >>>> Oh, of course it does. Where it DOESN'T work is if you show favoritism, >>>> or if it isn't made clear to the players that your judgement is based >>>> entirely on card text and your knowledge of the rules and procedures. >>> I think the tournament rules should have an often-updated FAQ with >>> contrete situations described. >> Great. How does that relate to the section you quoted? > > It would help to make VES a game more about "knowledge of rules and > procedures" and less about "your judgement". What's wrong with using your judgement? Because, see, V:TES is complicated enough that you're going to have to _anyway_. I find that it's easy enough to just rule from card text anyway, since most issues that arise tend to be similar to Ector's first described circumstance, where there is a disagreement about how a card should be played. Read card text, make ruling, sort out the rest later as appropriate to the individual situation. There are no concrete situations described in the rules because it would be impossible to even come close to having a comprehensive list of all situations that occur. You will just have to grow a pair and use your judgement, even if one of your players ends up disagreeing and, oh noes, not liking you. He'll get over it. If not, well, see below... >> To hold grudges against a judge just because he ruled against you, even >> though you know he was trying to be objective... well... I call that >> childish. > > OK. Some people who play CCGs are kind of childish. And I think being > childish is human. I think being childish has no place in a game played by adults, and if you find a player being childish in the above manner, he should be told that he needs to grow the fuck up, or get lost. Your call whether or not to do it politely the first couple times. I try to avoid associating with childish people, because I simply do not have time to put up with that sort of behavior. We should all have left it on the playground in fifth grade. Life is short and you only go around once; someone who is determined to make others miserable if they don't get their way is simply a waste of space. >> Not really. Most Magic players don't really impress me with their >> interpersonal skills and rational thought processes; why would the >> grunt-level judges impress me any more? > > Maybe because they have more interpersonal skills and rational thought > processes than "most Magic players". Please don't tell me you're trying to hold Ector up as an example of interpersonal skills and rational thought? ...Maybe you should, I haven't had a good laugh yet today. >>> Your "Please don´t annoy us all with >>> irrelevant qualifications" sounded otherwise. (And why the "annoy us >>> all" when it´s you that are annoyed?) >> Because it's patently obvious that I'm not the only person who finds >> Ector's posturing and pretensions annoying, perhaps. > > So "not the only person" = "all of us". It's a figure of speech. Get used to it. >>>>> Also, the VTES rules and tournament rules could be more clear. >>>> Please indicate which section exactly you find unclear? >>> No, that is general. >> If you're going to make a bitchy statement, you should at least have the >> balls to back it up. > > "Bitchy"? Do you feel offended that I don´t believe the rules are > perfect? No, I think you're just making a vague complaint as an attempt to support and/or prove some other "point", and I'm busting you out on it because I think you don't know what the fuck you're talking about and may not have ever read the rules in the first place. >> Now please indicate which section exactly you find unclear. > > Sorry, I don´t have time for that. When I say general I mean that VtES > rules in general are more like guidelines than rules. And I was right. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Care to retract your whiny little statement about "waaaah, the rules could be more clear" now? - -- Derek insert clever quotation here -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGC6r7tQZlu3o7QpERAiNWAJ9h/SL9G6ulpSuohT3s23p8aN2xUgCeJd10 9eKgUhIL5Kgn0TU+WXlUrMQ= =G4AD -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Mar 29, 2:44 am, "Ector" <E...@mail.ru> wrote: > Look, I've got a lot of players that don't take a VTES tournament > seriuos enough. It's a game. It's their choice whether to focus on fun or winning. > Such arguing of theirs doesn't mean that they don't > respect me as a judge or don't believe in my rules knowledge - they > just accustomed to the "friendly" casual games. Casual games are not timed. Tournament games are. Disruptive behaviour is necessarily disrespectful to the judge and the rest of the players. People generally come to tournaments with an expected time commitment. Disruptive behavior extends that, not to mention what it can do the mood of the players. > As long as I know what > to do after issuing a Game Loss now, I'm going to fix this problem. > This surely doesn't mean that I'm going to issue it frequently, but I > think that a good explanation at the local forum and 1-2 cases would > be enough. Generally, game losses should be issued in the case of absence and blatant cheating. Honest mistakes happen. Your job as a judge should generally be nothing more than to be helpful by answering questions. > It's pitiful to say, but looks like Derek Ray was right. Derek wouldn't be riding you if you didn't deserve it. It's not like he's some sociopath with Tourette's Syndrome. You may not like the fact that he's not gunning for Miss Manners' Model Citizen of the Year award, but the points he makes are generally spot on. > My Magic > judging experience actually harmed me in this case. Which is why he gave you shit for bringing it up. If he hadn't, I would have. M:TCH is a much different animal than V:TES. The dynamics of a 2 player game is much simpler than a 5 player game. There's also a HUGE difference in the tournament scene of each. > Moreover, I didn't > pay proper attention to the section 200 of Judge's Guidelines > (especially example C). This is really a shame. I will do my best to > train better. Train better...?!? Dude, switch to decaf. Judging a V:TES tournament isn't going to change the course of humanity. > Why do you think that having a separate forum for rules questions and > for general discussions would make a life harder? We have a separate > thread for rules questions at our local forum, and it makes a life > easier! It's been tried before. It failed. Mostly because there's really no need. > At the official D&D Miniatures forum this is solved in the most > logical way: all rules questions are moved to the rules subforum. That's nice. Comparing this forum to that of D&D Minitiatures makes less sense than thinking that M:TCH judging experience benefits you in judging V:TES. > This would make no good unless somebody would actually move all > rules answers there. Which is why it's doomed to failure. Nobody has the authority or motivation to do such a thing. Seriously, take it easy. Listen to Marvin Gaye. Play the game and have fun. Stop trying to change the game or any of its infrastructure. You'll find your stress levels drop. Regards, Noal

librarian <auct...@superfuncards.com> wrote: > Ector wrote: >> Well, I can only laugh at these words. Really. Should you have at >> least half of my judging experience in Magic, you'd never write this. >> In that game, they have a serious judge certification program; they >> have a judge mail-list, and the rules are formalized to the last >> comma. The judge knows exactly what is right and what is wrong, and >> he has to memorize almost 200 pages of rules/rulings to achieve >> this. In Magic the competition is much more fierce, and stakes are >> much higher, so the judge is much more important person there than >> in VTES which is more "informal", IMHO. > > That's because there is actual money to be won. If there was every > "real" money to be won at V:TES, the game would suck. Perhaps not as > much as potence and Nosferatu voting decks suck ;-) , but it would > still suck. Ahhhhh Here we go, again. A conclusion with no basis-in-fact. Care to add something substantial to your empty idea? Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas "Know your enemy, and know yourself; in one-thousand battles you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* "Contentment... Complacency... Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier

Kevin M. wrote: > librarian <auct...@superfuncards.com> wrote: >> Ector wrote: >>> Well, I can only laugh at these words. Really. Should you have at >>> least half of my judging experience in Magic, you'd never write this. >>> In that game, they have a serious judge certification program; they >>> have a judge mail-list, and the rules are formalized to the last >>> comma. The judge knows exactly what is right and what is wrong, and >>> he has to memorize almost 200 pages of rules/rulings to achieve >>> this. In Magic the competition is much more fierce, and stakes are >>> much higher, so the judge is much more important person there than >>> in VTES which is more "informal", IMHO. >> That's because there is actual money to be won. If there was every >> "real" money to be won at V:TES, the game would suck. Perhaps not as >> much as potence and Nosferatu voting decks suck ;-) , but it would >> still suck. > > Ahhhhh Here we go, again. A conclusion with no basis-in-fact. Care to > add something substantial to your empty idea? > Hey Kevin - Well, since I hate to lose money, and playing for money would be like losing money (since I doubt I would win), it would suck for me. Sorry, I assumed that a phrase like "game would suck" doesn't need to be supported with fact, since it's obviously a subjective term. Next time, I'll be sure to put "for me", or "in my opinion", or "as far as I'm concerned" or something like that, so that it's clear for EVERY one that the statement is an opinion. Or maybe I'll just let the reader try to figure it out on their own - most seemed to handle it ok. best - chris -- Super Fun Cards http://myworld.ebay.com/superfuncards/ auct...@superfuncards.com

librarian wrote: > Kevin M. wrote: >> librarian <auct...@superfuncards.com> wrote: ... >>> That's because there is actual money to be won. If there was every >>> "real" money to be won at V:TES, the game would suck. Perhaps not as >>> much as potence and Nosferatu voting decks suck ;-) , but it would >>> still suck. >> >> Ahhhhh Here we go, again. A conclusion with no basis-in-fact. Care to >> add something substantial to your empty idea? >> > > > Hey Kevin - > > Well, since I hate to lose money, and playing for money would be like > losing money (since I doubt I would win), it would suck for me. > > Sorry, I assumed that a phrase like "game would suck" doesn't need to be > supported with fact, since it's obviously a subjective term. Next time, > I'll be sure to put "for me", or "in my opinion", or "as far as I'm > concerned" or something like that, so that it's clear for EVERY one that > the statement is an opinion. Or maybe I'll just let the reader try to > figure it out on their own - most seemed to handle it ok. Maybe be was referring to the comment about potence Nosferatu voting decks sucking, and not the money thing? ;) [ quoted text not captured ]

Noal McDonald wrote: > On Mar 29, 2:44 am, "Ector" <E...@mail.ru> wrote: > > Look, I've got a lot of players that don't take a VTES tournament > > seriuos enough. > > It's a game. It's their choice whether to focus on fun or winning. Not at the tournament. Playing not-to-win at the tournament is an unsportsmanlike conduct. > > As long as I know what > > to do after issuing a Game Loss now, I'm going to fix this problem. > > This surely doesn't mean that I'm going to issue it frequently, but I > > think that a good explanation at the local forum and 1-2 cases would > > be enough. > > Generally, game losses should be issued in the case of absence and > blatant cheating. Honest mistakes happen. Your job as a judge should > generally be nothing more than to be helpful by answering questions. Blatant cheating = DQ, not just a Game Loss. Honest mistake = a warning. But there are a lot of situations where Game Loss is quite appropriate. Not that I LIKE to issue them - actually, I hate it, but sometimes there are no other choice. > > It's pitiful to say, but looks like Derek Ray was right. > > Derek wouldn't be riding you if you didn't deserve it. It's not like > he's some sociopath with Tourette's Syndrome. You may not like the > fact that he's not gunning for Miss Manners' Model Citizen of the Year > award, but the points he makes are generally spot on. > > > My Magic > > judging experience actually harmed me in this case. > > Which is why he gave you shit for bringing it up. If he hadn't, I > would have. > It may sound funny, but my initial words had nothing about "boasting" and were understood right by everyone BESIDES Derek. Surely, I'm a novice VTES judge (and I wrote that myself), but, you know, a novice judge without any judging experience isn't the same thing as a novice judge with 5 years of intensive Magic judging experience. I cannot just "abandon" that experience, even if it sometimes harms me more than helps. All responses that assumed my experience helped me much more than they would without assuming it - people pointed out the differences between VTES and Magic, and that was great for my confused mind. But Derek's "shit" wasn't useful to anybody, including himself. And I don't think that such things can ever be useful to somebody... > > Moreover, I didn't > > pay proper attention to the section 200 of Judge's Guidelines > > (especially example C). This is really a shame. I will do my best to > > train better. > > Train better...?!? > > Dude, switch to decaf. Judging a V:TES tournament isn't going to > change the course of humanity. I like the true coffee :) And I like VTES, as it's the only game that doesn't rob its players and provides so much fun and so variable strategies. Don't think that I'm going to leave my job and devote my whole life to training, though :) > It's been tried before. It failed. Mostly because there's really no > need. Strange enough. It works almost everywhere - why it shouldn't work here? > > At the official D&D Miniatures forum this is solved in the most > > logical way: all rules questions are moved to the rules subforum. > > That's nice. Comparing this forum to that of D&D Minitiatures makes > less sense than thinking that M:TCH judging experience benefits you in > judging V:TES. Nobody compares *games* here - only the forums structure. > > Seriously, take it easy. Listen to Marvin Gaye. Play the game and have > fun. Stop trying to change the game or any of its infrastructure. > You'll find your stress levels drop. I will find the game stopping here. Seriously. The whole playgroup depends on the few enthusiasts: some people bring the cards (there are no stores with WW stuff here), I'm organizing the tournaments, serve as a judge, answer the rules questions and so on. We even organized the regular card orders from TheLasombra's store for the whole community! Stress is inevitable for a people that are working. I prefer working to the pointless "having fun". Yours, Ector

[ quoted text not captured ] Oh yeah. Well, since I put a smiley after that, I thought it was pretty clear that what I wrote "would suck... as much as potence and Nosferatu voting decks" was said with sarcasm. If only I could put my smileys in bold and larger type... [ quoted text not captured ]

librarian <auct...@superfuncards.com> wrote: > Kevin M. wrote: >> librarian <auct...@superfuncards.com> wrote: >>> Ector wrote: >>>> Well, I can only laugh at these words. Really. Should you have at >>>> least half of my judging experience in Magic, you'd never write >>>> this. In that game, they have a serious judge certification >>>> program; they have a judge mail-list, and the rules are formalized >>>> to the last comma. The judge knows exactly what is right and what >>>> is wrong, and he has to memorize almost 200 pages of rules/rulings >>>> to achieve this. In Magic the competition is much more fierce, and >>>> stakes are much higher, so the judge is much more important person >>>> there than in VTES which is more "informal", IMHO. >>> >>> That's because there is actual money to be won. If there was every >>> "real" money to be won at V:TES, the game would suck. Perhaps not >>> as much as potence and Nosferatu voting decks suck ;-) , but it >>> would still suck. >> >> Ahhhhh Here we go, again. A conclusion with no basis-in-fact. Care >> to add something substantial to your empty idea? > > Well, since I hate to lose money, and playing for money would be like > losing money (since I doubt I would win), it would suck for me. > > Sorry, I assumed that a phrase like "game would suck" doesn't need to > be supported with fact, since it's obviously a subjective term. Re-read the 'That's because...' paragraph you posted. Everything in there leads the reader to believe that you are making a conclusion, not for you but as a whole, that 'the game would suck'. So yes, due to your language and context, you DID need to support your statement with fact, since it WASN'T obviously a subjective term. e.g. If I had posted an (as you correctly say, subjective) opinion such as '...game would suck...' I would have posted why I thought such, and not just thrown up the empty idea to the room. > Next > time, I'll be sure to put "for me", or "in my opinion", or "as far as > I'm concerned" or something like that, so that it's clear for EVERY > one that the statement is an opinion. Or maybe I'll just let the > reader try to figure it out on their own - most seemed to handle it > ok. No need to be a smart-ass. Also not neccesary to make *another* broad, sweeping comment like 'most seemed to handle it ok' -- how would you know? Just re-read your post before you hit 'send' next time. Then you won't confuse me so much, especially on an issue in which I have a great interest. hehee=) [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mar 27, 4:50 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote: > XZealot wrote: > > On Mar 27, 4:07 pm, Derek Ray > > <moot@i_dont_check_the_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote: > >> librarian wrote: > > >>> That's because there is actual money to be won. If there was ever > >>> "real" money to be won at V:TES, the game would suck. Perhaps not as > >>> much as potence and Nosferatu voting decks suck ;-) , but it would > >>> still suck. > >> I have often said that if you really want to see which decks are "good" > >> and which decks aren't,... and which playstyles are "good" and which > >> aren't... and what "play to win" _really_ looks like... then someone > >> should put up a tournament, or run a series of tournaments, which pay > >> out a cash prize that isn't peanuts. > > >> In short order, you would have an excellent idea of both what players > >> considered to be effective, and what they were willing to do to conceal > >> collusion. :) > > > I have done it. > > > The experiment need not be repeated. > > > Collusion was rife as there were pods of 3-4 guys whose decks > > complemented each other. The most common formation was 2 combat decks > > and a deck stacked with Conservitive Agitations w/ weenies. The > > combat decks would eliminate any standing titles. The edge usually > > countered anyone pitching votes. > > > $200.00 was the cash prize, which may or may not be peanuts to you. > > Sad how little money it would take to reduce a game to rubble. > > Perhaps there should be an "Unexpected Coalition" variant, wherein > collusion is expected, encouraged, and fostered in the rules. Sort of > like Bridge, tables always have 4 players, and the two players on a team > play across from each other. > > If you have a variant that allows collusion, you can then control it's > negative aspects better. The funny thing is that the tournament was 3 rounds with no final. It lasted a grand total of 2.5 hours for the whole thing. You would be amazed at how short the games were when people were allowed to gangbang other players. Comments Welcome, Norman S. Brown, Jr XZealot Archon of the Swamp

[ quoted text not captured ] I don't think he actually would have meant that, I was just making a bad joke with reference back to your bad joke.... ah, usenet. you da best. [ quoted text not captured ]

> And I was right. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. > > Care to retract your whiny little statement about "waaaah, the rules > could be more clear" now? No. Suddenly I don´t feel like interacting with you at all.

[ quoted text not captured ] Welcome to crushed-land: population, YOU. [ quoted text not captured ]

Kevin M. wrote: >>>> That's because there is actual money to be won. If there was every >>>> "real" money to be won at V:TES, the game would suck. Perhaps not >>>> as much as potence and Nosferatu voting decks suck ;-) , but it >>>> would still suck. Then you won't > confuse me so much, especially on an issue in which I have a great > interest. hehee=) > Ok, now I'm confused. Which issue do you have an interest in? The PotNosVote decks? I think we have worked that one to death. The VTES for money angle. Here's my take on it: I think that if VTES were played for serious money, it would be a much different game. Having observed the cutthroat/nasty nature of many Magic and Vs. "Pro" players, I don't think I would like to play with people like that. I find the cutthroat VTES player is much more jocular in general. Here's the thing: VTES is a game that requires being cutthroat, much like the boardgame Diplomacy. It's sort of like playing someone you can't be normally - but after the game you revert back to your nice self. One reason it works is because there aren't any real stakes. When you are cutthroat in VTES, it's all in the name of fun, or at the most a box of boosters, even the continental championships. It's for fun, it's not personal. You can be a dick, but in the end it doesn't matter - you're friends with the guy afterward (usually). I may be naive, but that's how I feel. If the game was played for money, then that cutthroat nature becomes more "real", i.e. you are now actually being a dick, because you are taking something tangible, something quantifiable from your opponent - the prize cash. For me, I think that's the difference and why the game would change for me if it was played for money. In addition, I think it might bring in the cutthroat/nasty players, and many of the jocular types would leave. That would also make the game less fun for me. In addition, I think the rules would have to be fundamentally changed to truly address collusion. As the rules stand right now, I don't think collusion can be prevented, and if there was real money on the table, collusion would be rampant. My suggestion is to embrace the collusion by making Money VTES a game with 4-player tables and teams of 2. No doubt others have other solutions. One solution that I am pretty sure won't work is having judges try to prevent it. But now we are heading down the road often traveled previously of trying to prevent collusion and how to determine PTW. Finally for me, I already spend too much time on this game, even for a hobby. What if I decided to try Money VTES. And contrary to my expectations, I really liked it? And I got even *more* serious about it? I'd have to wait until they actually had a 12-step program to get off Money VTES... The prospect is scary. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mar 29, 8:48 pm, "Ector" <E...@mail.ru> wrote: > Noal McDonald wrote: > > It's a game. It's their choice whether to focus on fun or winning. > > Not at the tournament. Playing not-to-win at the tournament is an > unsportsmanlike conduct. You're missing the point at what I'm getting at. Refer to the part of the thread where I allude to the differences between the two as it plays out in a poker game. Playing for fun isn't exclusive from playing to win. It's just a different priority. For example, when playing for fun, people have a more carefree attittude and are willing to experiment more with deck design. People who are focussing entirely on winning vs. fun are more likely to bring the brutal "cheese" decks that nobody likes playing against. > Blatant cheating = DQ, not just a Game Loss. Honest mistake = a > warning. But there are a lot of situations where Game Loss is quite > appropriate. Not that I LIKE to issue them - actually, I hate it, but > sometimes there are no other choice. Perhaps, so. But the tournament community of V:TES has always been much more casual than that of V:TES. Punishment of a player should not be a desired goal in any situation save for the most drastic. You really come off like Judge Dredd here and I'm trying to caution you against a toxic attitude that you seem to have inherited from M:TCH. > > Which is why he gave you shit for bringing it up. If he hadn't, I > > would have. > > It may sound funny, but my initial words had nothing about "boasting" > and were understood right by everyone BESIDES Derek. I doubt that. Derek's just the one that was most direct in his communicating his impressions. As I said, I agreed entirely with what he said to you. Besides, whether you were being boastful or not, your previous judging experience is irrelevent in THIS community. You really come off as a new hire at a company that endlessly says, "But at my last company, we did it this way..." > Surely, I'm a > novice VTES judge (and I wrote that myself), but, you know, a novice > judge without any judging experience isn't the same thing as a novice > judge with 5 years of intensive Magic judging experience. That's true. A truly novice judge hasn't picked up any bad habits that we have to beat out of him or her. > I cannot > just "abandon" that experience, even if it sometimes harms me more > than helps. Read what you wrote. Then think about what I wrote above it. > But Derek's "shit" wasn't useful to anybody, including himself. And I > don't think that such things can ever be useful to somebody... You'd be wrong. I don't believe in coddling people any more than he does. I find that brutal honesty often forces people to self examine more effectively than some Miss Manners peace and love hippy crap. > > It's been tried before. It failed. Mostly because there's really no > > need. > > Strange enough. It works almost everywhere - why it shouldn't work > here? The V:TES community isn't large enough to need it. All rules concerns are considered by the rules team and communicated via LSJ, which are then posted on the White Wolf site. All public rules conversations are a preface to that internal private discussion or are just people seeking to understand rules currently in place. Between rules questions, deck critiques and tournament announcements, there's very few topics left over for pure game discussion. > > That's nice. Comparing this forum to that of D&D Minitiatures makes > > less sense than thinking that M:TCH judging experience benefits you > > in judging V:TES. > > Nobody compares *games* here - only the forums structure. Different communities have different needs. > Stress is inevitable for a people that are working. I prefer working > to the pointless "having fun". If you're not organizing V:TES games for fun, what are you doing it for? Certainly not profit. What I'm telling you is take it easy and listen to what people are saying. You don't do enough of that. This community has been active for almost 13 years. Most of the dynamics are not going to change and there's generally a good reason that things are the way they are. Understanding must come before action. Do some research on the National Jyhad Leage and you'll understand that I have a very firm understanding of what it means to promote changes to V:TES and its community. Regards, Noal

*LOL* How old are you? Like 12 or?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 as...@hotmail.com wrote: > *LOL* How old are you? Like 12 or? Wait, I thought you were going to ignore me? Here, let me help you. You meant to respond to this post: [ quoted text not captured ] > And I was right. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. > > Care to retract your whiny little statement about "waaaah, the rules > could be more clear" now? And right about here is where your balls shrank up when you realized you were wrong, and you posted Standard Internet Excuse #14. - -- Derek insert clever quotation here -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGDYPEtQZlu3o7QpERAkZdAKDhAYspoQzrudA+hOmGU7K/bHhqLQCgmDPD vYVo9oTN7ugkzIGdsPpiI7w= =TkyJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Howdy Derek, > > Care to retract your whiny little statement about "waaaah, the rules > > could be more clear" now? > > And right about here is where your balls shrank up when you realized you > were wrong, and you posted Standard Internet Excuse #14. I'm having trouble finding details of this standard. Is it ISO or ANSI? IEEE? Also, are there Excuse Standards for interchange media other than the Internet? I'd be particularly interested in protocols for the Workplace and/or Marriage... (I did actually Google 'Standard Internet Excuse', just on the off chance that it existed... It seemed possible. And cool.) We now return to the flamewar in progress... Thanks, Alex

[ quoted text not captured ] Most of the time I read this forum because there are interesting threads about a game I enjoy a lot. And sometimes I read it because, well, the newspaper is just plain frikkin boring. And then sometimes I read it to see Derek and Kevin swear at people. Usually way out of proportion to what is needed. Surely there is a difference between "miss manners" or "mollycoddling" and just being a civilized human being? Ah well at least its good, free entertainment.

Blooded Sand <sand...@gmail.com> wrote: > Most of the time I read this forum because there are interesting > threads about a game I enjoy a lot. And sometimes I read it because, > well, the newspaper is just plain frikkin boring. And then sometimes I > read it to see Derek and Kevin swear at people. Usually way out of > proportion to what is needed. Surely there is a difference between > "miss manners" or "mollycoddling" and just being a civilized human > being? I have finally achieved Derekdom! Shweet! /me revels in the achievement of his lifelong dream [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mar 30, 8:58 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > I have finally achieved Derekdom! Shweet! Given how mild mannered you are in real life, I find that rather...amusing. Regards, Noal

[ quoted text not captured ] Oh, he can explode. Mild mannered Kevin Kent is just a front for "The Juggernaut, Bitch!"

[ quoted text not captured ] Now I feel sad. Nobody calls ME mild-mannered. Maybe if I wear a blue suit and glasses? [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mar 31, 9:14 am, Derek Ray <moot@i_dont_check_the_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote: > Now I feel sad. Nobody calls ME mild-mannered. > > Maybe if I wear a blue suit and glasses? Heh. Let me know how that works out for you. If it works for you, it may work for me, too. Regards, Noal

> On Mar 31, 9:14 am, Derek Ray > > <moot@i_dont_check_the_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote: > > Now I feel sad. Nobody calls ME mild-mannered. > > > Maybe if I wear a blue suit and glasses? If the glasses are those big plastic ones with a moustache and a a silly fake smile, maybe :) Else, you are beyond the pale amigo, but hey, its always useful having heavy artillery to call in. you know when you want to napalm a small country or sumtin.... (and for those who have REALLY short fuses and absolutely no sense of humour, the above is a joke. As in meant to be funny. Maybe not very funny, probably not even worth a chuckle, but hey, i tried you know? (standard internet excuse #518)

Blooded Sand wrote: >> On Mar 31, 9:14 am, Derek Ray >> >> <moot@i_dont_check_the_spamtrap_anyway.com> wrote: >>> Now I feel sad. Nobody calls ME mild-mannered. >>> Maybe if I wear a blue suit and glasses? > > If the glasses are those big plastic ones with a moustache and a a Then they'd call me Groucho. And it really _would_ be funny. > Else, you are beyond the pale amigo, but hey, its always useful having > heavy artillery to call in. you know when you want to napalm a small > country or sumtin.... > > (and for those who have REALLY short fuses and absolutely no sense of > humour, the above is a joke. As in meant to be funny. Maybe not very > funny, probably not even worth a chuckle, but hey, i tried you know? > (standard internet excuse #518) No, no, no. For it to be a Standard Internet Excuse, you have to come rushing back and pretend it was a joke _after_ someone rips your head off over it. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Apr 1, 3:28 pm, Derek Ray [ quoted text not captured ] Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh. Okay, so would that then make it standard Internet defence #231?

Blooded Sand wrote: > Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh. Okay, so would that then make it standard > Internet defence #231? I think you're getting mixed up with #734, where you call someone a "goat-f*cking, flea-infested herpes factory", but put a smilie face at the end of the sentence. You know, so you don't cause *offence*. Similar to the "dude, no offence, but...(insert a whole lot of offensive stuff here)" type internet tirades. [ quoted text not captured ]

Salem wrote: > I think you're getting mixed up with #734, where you call someone a > "goat-f*cking, flea-infested herpes factory", *writes that down* [ quoted text not captured ]

On Apr 2, 1:11 am, Derek Ray [ quoted text not captured ] (sorry bout this Derek, but the opportunity is just too good to pass up) So that is then obviously followed by #735: Your too thick to even think up #734...... *shamefacedly also writes down #734...*