Judging Philosophy Elective
Event Integrity
Also available are archives of live broadcasts, where the Program Director goes over the lesson, answers any questions that folks may have and sometimes goes on tangets about other elements of judging. You can find the playlist of broadcasts on youtube.
Click for Translation
While proper translation and localization are among our long-term goals, we are currently offering Google Translate on the page. Please keep in mind that the translation is automatic, which means that specific game terms, names of cards or mechanics, or technical language used to describe the game may not translate well. As with the documents for the game itself, the English page is the authoritative document in case of any confusion or discrepancy.Join the discussion in our Discord and talk with other judges about what you learned, and ask any questions you may have!
Hello there!
As always, I’m Jonah - the Program Director for the Star Wars™: Unlimited Judge program.
This is one of those elective articles that aren’t part of the curriculum, but I had some thoughts, and need to share them. Luckily, I have a platform where a bunch of folks like to listen to me ramble, so welcome to the first Judge Philosophy Elective!
Today I’m going to be talking about Event Integrity. We, as judges, often talk about holding up event integrity, particularly as a goal of our work.
But what does that really mean? What constitutes event integrity?
I think event integrity breaks down into several different component parts - environment, outcome, progression, and rules. Each of these has a different impact on the event, and they’re important to hold up in different ways, and this is represented in policy.
Environment Integrity
Environment Integrity is the first on the list because it’s making sure that the environmental seals on our spaceship are intact, and that we’re all breathing air, and not vacuum. Okay, so that’s not exactly it, but it is still fundamental - it’s ensuring that your event maintains its intended environment and atmosphere. Particularly with casual-tier events, ensuring that the competitive players don’t get too competitive is key - having a prerelease where a player is gloating about easy wins and how other players need to get better undermines the event’s environment, and drives players away.
Behaviors that make folks uncomfortable need to be addressed quickly and directly. Unsporting conduct penalties generally are directed toward maintaining the desired environment.
Outcome Integrity
The idea of tournaments, particularly competitive tier events, is to determine which player is the best player on that day.
To maintain the outcome of the event, we want to make sure that games play out as they’re supposed to. If an error results in a player gaining an advantage, that detracts from the outcome’s integrity. If a player drops a card from their hand and their opponent sees it, the opponent now has an advantage that no other player in the event has. However, there isn’t a lot we can do without further damaging the outcome of the game.
This is core to the philosophy behind the policy, in that, we want to restore the game to as close as possible to the correct state while mitigating any advantage. Sometimes, after we finish addressing a situation, a player will have some information that they shouldn’t, or a gamestate that is better for them than if everything had played out correctly... but we don’t have fancy little mind erasers (wrong IP for them) and we’re living in the universe where things did go wrong, so we do what’s best.
This is mostly covered by gameplay disruptions and their fixes - we try to undo as much as we can, and get the game back to where it should be, knowing that it’ll never be perfect again. Of course, cheating also goes against outcome integrity.
But sometimes we have to sacrifice outcome integrity.
Progression Integrity
That brings us to progression integrity. This is maybe a weird phrasing of it, but we need the event to progress - it has to end at some point. Players need to play their matches, and we need a result.
As a consequence of this, we have time limits on rounds, and when a match goes to time, it ends in a draw. However, anytime a match ends in a draw, we lose a little bit of outcome integrity - we don’t know which of those two players was better.
If we had untimed rounds... well, we’ve all seen a control mirror. To keep the event rolling smoothly, we have these limits.
There’s a balance to strike between progression and outcome - when we handle a call, if we issue a time extension, we’re potentially hindering the progression of the event in favor of the outcome. It’s important to keep this in mind with longer rulings and the impact the ruling will have on the outcome of the event.
If you’re in the final round of an event and there’s a base damage discrepancy at table four, and the winner of the match makes the cut to top-eight, the outcome of that call has a lot more impact than at table sixty-four where both players have been out of contention for any prizes for a few rounds and are just playing for fun with the same exact call.
Those players deserve the same respect and attention to detail, but it’s important to recognize that a long extension at table four preserves the outcome at the cost of progression, but the same extension at the last table in the event doesn’t have as much impact on the outcome of the tournament, but still has the same cost in progression.
Rules Integrity
This last one may sound heretical, but sometimes we can ignore the rules.
As long as the resulting gamestate is legal, no player gained an advantage or information, and both players understood what has happened, games can go off the rails in small ways.
If a player plays a card with smuggle, replaces it from the top of their deck, and then exhausts their resources to pay for it... they’ve technically broken the rules, but they haven’t gained information, the card was still paid for and it’s pretty clear what happened. If a player plays restock, and doesn’t put it into their discard before resolving it... that’s fine too!
If a player has an effect that instructs them to draw a card then discard a card, and they discard Kylo’s TIE Silencer before drawing - that’s fine! All they did was make a decision a little bit early. If the effect was the inverse, instructing them to discard then draw, they wouldn’t be allowed to take those actions backward because drawing a card would give them new information and options that they shouldn’t have had access to.
If a player plays with their leader above their base when laying out the game, as long as that doesn’t confuse the opponent that’s okay! If their opponent would like them to match the prescribed layout, the rules exist to give us the framework to enforce that and ensure that players are on an even playing field. Some decks in some games (cough Magic cough Dredge cough) play the game in such a way that the default layout hampers the experience for both players.
The purpose of the rules is to facilitate a fun, fair game. Sometimes issues of sequencing, layout, timing, or communication can be shortcut or pushed around a little bit, in an effort to play the game more naturally. When one player has claimed the initiative, their opponent will often batch attack actions together and say “These three attack your base” resolve damage for all the attacks, and then resolve their triggers.
This is how people play the game naturally, and it’s not the job of judges to intervene, as long as everything checks out at the end of the sequence.
This is a small sacrifice of the rules in order to better support the progression. If each of those events needed to be performed perfectly technically correctly it would lead to more matches reaching the time limit, and hindering the outcome. Furthermore, allowing space for rules sharking by having exceptionally pedantic policy enforcement without the use of reasonable judgment weakens the environmental integrity and drives away players who are beginning to explore more competitive or organized aspects of play.
All that is to say - think about how your actions impact the different axes of event integrity. Taking more time on the call can improve the outcome and environment at the cost of progression. Being firmer with the rules can support rules and progression integrity, but can hamper the environment. Judging is a balance, and understanding what the event you’re running is trying to do is fundamental in striking the right balance.
What’s appropriate for a pre-release is generally going to be very different from what’s appropriate for a PQ. Heck, what’s appropriate for round one of the Galactic Championship is going to be different from the final match, on camera, for the title of champion. In that moment, the integrity of the outcome is paramount - that’s why we’re all there. The progression doesn’t matter - there’s nothing else after this in the event. The environment is solid and everyone involved understands the stakes.
So, yeah, think about what’s happening when you’re taking a judge call and how it impacts the event and the people around you, whether they be players, judges or organizers - it’s a large community. And maybe you make the wrong call and tip the balance too far in one direction - that will happen, but that’s okay! We’re a community that’s growing together, and learning from these decisions is something that we’ll do together.
As always, if you have questions, comments or just want to share your opinions, hop into the official Star Wars: Unlimited Judge Program Discord and share!