Level Two - Lesson 18

Competitive Policy Guide - Tardiness and Slow Play

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Hello there!

Welcome back to the level two lessons for the Star Wars™: Unlimited Judge Program!

As always, I’m your host Jonah, and this lesson is going in depth with Tardiness, Slow Play, and several other Tournament Disruptions we haven’t previously covered. The first two are both infractions that affect tournament progression more than tournament integrity. However, they’re on opposite sides of the spectrum - Tardiness is one of the most objective infractions we have, while slow play is one of the most subjective. The other Infractions - Outside Assistance, Communication Policy Error, Limited Procedure Disruption, and Insufficient Randomization - all are impactful, but are very specific and relatively uncommon.

As always with policy, this is an area that is continually being refined, and will grow and evolve as play also continues to evolve. This does make it a bit of a challenge to both learn and teach, so this is likely a lesson that will similarly evolve over time.

Tracking Tardiness

As mentioned, tardiness is one of the easiest penalties to measure and observe.

If a player isn’t in their seat when the round begins, they are tardy to their match. Tardiness is important to keep track of because players who are late to their match can delay the tournament. Their opponent, who has not committed an infraction, is due the full duration of the round in order to play natural and organic games.

To keep the process smooth, at small events, you can simply keep an eye on the players present as they move towards their matches. Once it seems like everyone has made it to their table, you can then announce the start of the round.

For a larger event, where you can’t easily see all the matches or there are spectators making it difficult to identify who is playing in the event, you can request that players still finding their seat raise their hand. Not only does this let you identify which players are not yet seated, but it also informs players that you’re about to start the round, and so they should hustle, and it identifies those players who may need assistance to judges on the floor.

If the player has shown up within the first minute of the round, simply issue them a warning and a time extension.

Longer Delays

If they show up after five minutes have passed since the round timer began, but no more than ten minutes, they receive a game loss. They get the choice of having the initiative for their game, and neither player may sideboard.

After ten minutes, they will have already received a match loss and will be dropped from the event. If they want to rejoin the event, they are allowed to do so. Players are dropped when they are absent from a match because the vast majority of the time, an absence is caused by a player leaving the venue without remembering to drop from the event, and they intended to.

If a player sits at the incorrect table and plays a match, they have not correctly sat themselves at their match, and should be treated as tardy if the match progresses. This is often discovered at the end of the match when players realize that the name in the software doesn’t match the name of their opponent. This can feel like reversing the outcome of one or more matches, because usually it’s two players next to each other who accidentally swap seats at the start of the round.

Preventing Tardiness

It is important to try to minimize tardiness penalties, because it creates a better play experience. At smaller and local events, encourage players to introduce themselves and confirm their pairing with their opponent before they begin play.

Furthermore, as mentioned above, you can make an announcement to have players raise their hands.

If you see a player moving towards their table or towards a pairing board, you can approach them and offer assistance. Some players may have difficulty with scorekeeping software or their dataplan, and your assistance can make their event smoother.

Furthermore, sometimes a player will be speaking with a judge about a previous call, trying to understand a ruling, talking with stage staff about an event discrepancy or maybe they just had a long match last round and told a tournament official that they were going to use the washroom and might be late. If a player is actively speaking to a tournament official or has let a tournament official know that they’re going to be late for a legitimate reason, tardiness should not be applied. Examples of unacceptable reasons include “I want an artist to sign my card” or “I want to go to a nearby cafe for a lunch break”.

These exceptions should also not take longer than ten minutes, and tournament officials should be cognizant of the round time and help get players to their seats if they’re able to pick up the conversation at the end of the round. But even if the delay is longer than ten minutes, they should not receive a penalty.

Managing No-Shows

If a player calls you over because they don’t have an opponent, don’t tell them that they’ve won. Ask them to call you when their opponent shows up or when ten minutes have passed. This is because sometimes there are extenuating circumstances (as mentioned above) that could lead to a player being late for their match, but not tardy, and telling a player that they’ve won a game, and taking it back or them telling their opponent and not calling a judge when the game loss shouldn’t be issued are both extraordinarily poor experiences.

Once a tardy player does arrive it’s important to ask them why they were late. Some players won’t proactively explain their reason, even if it is a valid reason. A player who was resleeving their deck due to a judge instruction might not bring that up - they may simply be contrite and end up accepting a game loss that they did not earn if you don’t ask the question. Most of the time the answer won’t be meaningful, but it’s a short enough process that the information is helpful.

It can also grant you knowledge about your tournament. If you get many players who are receiving tardiness because the amount of time between you announcing the pairings are available and starting the round is too short, you can briefly extend that window to improve player experience.

If there’s a section of the shop where the announcements can’t be heard, or the organizer has a patio for lunches outside, you may want to include sending a judge to those areas to echo the announcement to ensure that players are able to hear that pairings are available.

What is Slow Play?

On the other end of the manageability spectrum is slow play.

First, what is slow play? Slow play is when a player unintentionally takes an excessive amount of time to make decisions or take actions.

Slow play is not intentionally taking excessive time to make decisions in order to run out the clock and manipulate the match result. A player who is up one game to zero and is likely to lose game two may take longer making decisions in order to run out the clock and end up with a win instead of a draw. Notably, a player playing at a normal pace of play, even if it is markedly slower than their opponent, is not stalling. Stalling is a form of cheating and will be covered in the unsporting conduct lesson.

Identifying Slow Play

Slow play is one of the harder infractions to both identify and issue, for one key reason - unlike practically everything else, it is subjective and not objective. If a player exhausts the incorrect quantity of resources, that’s something that everyone can see and can agree is an error. If a player removes a shield token when a unit is dealt indirect damage, that’s something that can be seen and pointed to.

With slow play, the situation of the game changes the context, and consequently, there isn’t consistent enforcement. Furthermore, an error is just that - an error. With slow play, there’s the implicit judgment of “you don’t know what you’re doing” and “you’re not good enough.” It can feel like a judgment of player skill, and dealing with the social pressure and conflict that comes from it can be difficult.

Finding Flags

The way I approach slow play is by using what I call a “flag” system. If I’m watching a match (and if you’re not doing something else productive for the event, you should be watching a match), and I start to see any of these flags, I start keeping track. When I see another one, or the first one is repeated, I step in and give a nudge, just a gentle “I need you to make a play”.

Many times, the player just needs that reminder to make a decision - they already have all the information they need, but their mind is stuck in a loop. I think we’ve all been there before - evaluating our options and not making a decision.

So what flags do I look out for?

Issuing the Infraction

As mentioned above, it’s a best practice to start with a gentle nudge, because most of the time the player is stuck in the tank, and that nudge gets the game continuing. However, frequently the best time to interrupt the match is after the player has made their decision. If you interrupt while they’re thinking, it’s possible that they have to start their thought process over from the beginning, as opposed to making a decision immediately. It can be hard to tell whether the player is stuck and needs a nudge, or is just taking a lot of time processing the information.

Looping behavior or no actions occurring can both indicate a player is stuck, whereas a player slowly evaluating each option one at a time is more indicative of a player methodically evaluating their lines of play.

If you have to give a player more than one nudge, you should begin to issue warnings and commensurate penalty. Slow play isn’t something that you can easily fix - the issue is that one player is disproportionately using up the time, and so giving an arbitrary time extension only gives the player playing slowly more time to take up.

Consider the Context

Slow play can happen at any time, and by any player or deck. The circumstances and context of the match are important to include in making your decision to call out slow play.

During the late game, if a player spends a whole minute deciding what to resource - that could be considered excessive. However, if they then spend the next action phase making all of their decisions and resolving all necessary triggers in under five seconds each, while their opponent spends fifteen seconds per decision and trigger - the player who sat and thought for a moment is playing faster overall than the other player, so it can be beneficial to watch the match for more than a single action - they might be developing a long term plan that can affect multiple decisions.

On the other hand, if you’re in a late game scenario, and you see a control player currently on eight resources draw an Avenger - Hunting Star Destroyer and a card that does nothing at this stage in the game, that player spending a significant amount of time on the decision is faintly ludicrous. Players are allowed to spend some time to bluff their opponent into thinking they had a harder decision than they do, or that they have more options than they do, but it should be a respectful amount of time.

Furthermore, if a player gains access to hidden information - like their opponent’s hand due to Viper Probe Droid or their whole deck from Annihilator, they are allowed to take notes of what they see, but should likewise be respectful in the time they take. Writing down the whole decklist is not appropriate. Writing down a couple of sideboard cards and the remaining late game powerhouses can be.

Finally, if the game state has changed dramatically recently, it’s reasonable for a player to take more time to make their next decision. If a player plays Superlaser Blast with a large army and General Krell in play, and consequently resolve many triggers and draws a huge number of cards, they’re now operating with a lot of new information. Similarly, if a player plays Endless Legions and plays several units in a single action (or even U-Wing Reinforcements playing three cheap units) , it is reasonable that the opponent needs to take some time to make their decisions, because the landscape of the arenas has changed dramatically.

Other factors like where you are in the game or the tournament, can change what is a reasonable amount of time to make a decision.

The closer the game is to ending, the more impact each decision has, and so it’s okay to allow players a bit more time to make those critical decisions. Similarly, in single elimination portions of an event, the outcome of the match is more significant, and because slow play is subjective and relative to the context, that is something we can and should take into consideration.

Expressing Empathy

As mentioned above, slow play can feel like a condemnation of skill. Being told that you’re not fast enough can easily be interpreted as being told that you’re not smart enough to be playing this game, and that’s a very alienating and negative experience.

When you issue slow-play infractions or even when you’re nudging players, be kind and respectful. I recommend avoiding phrases that accuse the player, things like “you’re playing slowly” or “you need to play faster”.

I use language like “I need you to make a decision” or “I’m going to ask you to keep an eye on your pace of play.”

The former limits it to a single instance - this play is the problematic one, not the player’s entire behavior. The latter doesn’t tell the player that they’re playing slowly, but instead asks them to take responsibility for their actions, and is more respectful of them. All of these are very similar, and for most players and interactions, any of these (or anything similar) will be sufficient. Take time to figure out what works for you, and what language you want to use when issuing these infractions.

Closing Considerations

If you’re having trouble with issuing warnings for slow play... just don’t (for now).

Instead of issuing warnings and infractions for slow play, next time you’re judging (or playing) in an event, simply watch for slow play. Write down in your notebook or on your phone each time you might have seen slow play, and what made you think it was. Then, after you get comfortable identifying slow play, you can start to give nudges. Then, after you get used to prodding players along and dealing with pushback, you can begin to issue warnings when appropriate.

And players will push back. Even if you’re the most empathetic and gentle about asking players to make a decision or keep an eye on their pace of play, they’ll respond with “it’s an important decision” or “my opponent wasn’t complaining,” or one of a hundred other reasons. They’ll push back on nudges even when you’re not issuing a penalty. Listen to what the player has to say, and just stick to your ruling. Slow play is subjective, and you thought it was an issue. That’s the long and short of it.

Demonstrating that you understand it’s an important decision, or that their opponent might not be playing at lightspeed either allows them to recover some dignity, and they’re likely to be more accepting - you can cede some ground, but walking back a slow play call is nearly unheard of.

Slow play can also happen anywhere in the event, and at any time. We will most frequently issue it during the last few minutes of the round, because at that point we’re watching one or two matches, and so we’re able to concentrate more on the pace of play and players play a bit more slowly because there’s the pressure of the clock and potentially spectators and we as judges might feel some pressure to move the tournament along, because the round has already elapsed. But that doesn’t mean that a player can’t play slowly enough on turn one of game one. Be aware of this logistical bias, but don’t let it keep you from issuing slow play when you see it.

Finally, it’s important to accept that slow play is a subjective ruling, as both a player and a judge. Sometimes players will complain to you that you should have issued slow play to their opponent. There aren’t hard and fast rules of what is and isn't’ slow play because it’s very hard to break time into discrete chunks, and it’s hard to evaluate “what is a reasonable amount of time to consider everything that might happen in this game as a consequence of this decision?” In time, you’ll become a bit more comfortable with slow play, but it’s something that takes practice and exposure.

Outside Assistance

That brings us to the rest of the Tournament Disruptions. The first of these is Outside Assistance - this occurs when a player requests or is provided with strategic advice from outside the match, whether from another participant or from text.

The purpose of a tournament is to test a player’s skill - not the skill of spectators. Even if the advice is relatively minor or obvious, it’s still disruptive to the game and could potentially have changed the outcome dramatically. Consequently, the penalty is a game loss.

If the player received advice that was unsolicited, they do not receive the game loss, and the match continues. They do receive a tracking penalty because it’s important to make sure it’s not something that was pre-arranged, but it’s also important to ensure that a spectator can’t disrupt a match and maliciously make another player get a game loss.

Checking notes that were written before the match began (before the player presented their deck) is considered outside assistance. This includes decklists in the open-decklist portion of an event.

Referring to electronic devices, in violation of the Electronic Device policy can be Outside Assistance, but can be downgraded to a warning if the Head Judge believes the player did not access strategically relevant information.

Communication Policy Error

As we’ve discussed in a few places, predominantly in lesson nine, covering game information, players can frequently miscommunicate, which can result in an unnatural game state.

Notably, this is only communication that is in violation of the communication policy laid out in section 7.1 - other miscommunications aren’t necessarily Communication Policy Errors.

When a player miscommunicates this controlled information, and their opponent takes game actions based on that information, that is a Communication Policy Error. If the information doesn’t impact their decision-making process, the information should be corrected, but the game continues without an infraction.

When an opponent’s decision-making is impacted, a rewind should be considered to the point of the decision, not to the point of the miscommunication.

Communication Policy Error is relatively infrequent, and is often caught before a decision is made based on erroneous information, and consequently, not an infraction.

Limited Procedure Disruption

Limited Procedure Disruption is what it says on the label - if a player commits an error in limited procedure, either during a draft or pool registration, it needs to be noted, and the situation remedied.

The language here is incredibly vague, because either the disruption is minor (a player passes a pack in the wrong direction, but it’s not picked up or they look at cards when they’re not supposed to), and the draft or registration process can continue or the disruption is significant (a player passes their picks and they are drafted or they open seven packs instead of six for a sealed pool) and the process can not continue.

These later situations are irrecoverable, and the solutions must be handled on a case-by-case basis, and often involve the Tournament Organizer, because possible solutions include opening or providing more product, which has a material impact, and is not a decision the judge is necessarily empowered to make. The judge should make their best efforts to repair the set of cards, and should weigh in with the impact on tournament integrity. However, every situation is unique, exceptionally difficult to repair, and significant disruptions are rare. In these situations, a game loss is issued, and applied to the players next game.

Note that registering cards on a deck registration form incorrectly is not an error if it is caught before the deck registration form is turned in.

Insufficient Shuffling

Finally, we get to the last Tournament Disruption - Insufficient Shuffling. This occurs when a player does not properly randomize a set of cards. This can be their deck during pre-game shuffling, or a subset of cards after the conclusion of a search, or any other randomization of card order that the game requires.

This is addressed by properly randomizing the cards now, which usually involves shuffling the set.

There isn’t a ton to go into here, but Insufficient is its own infraction because it’s very dramatically different from other errors, and has a relatively straightforward and specific remedy.

What it takes to effectively randomize a set of cards varies depending on the size of the set - for a deck of cards, roughly seven riffle or mash shuffles is generally effective in randomizing the set, but we don’t need to be specific in counting how many times a player shuffles.

One final note is that pile counting (often called pile shuffling) is not a form of randomization - it’s an even distribution of cards, and if a player knew the location of a card before the distribution, they would be able to know its relative location afterwards, even after multiple iterations. Pile counting can be performed in order to verify the number of cards in a deck, but it shouldn’t be used to randomize cards.

Players may also intentionally distribute cards across their deck before shuffling. If this has an impact on where the cards end up, that’s a problem. If it doesn’t, it’s a waste of time, so players generally shouldn’t be doing this. However, people also have a hard time conceptualizing random, and so they may distribute the cards before shuffling thoroughly for the placebo effect it gives them, and that shouldn’t be penalized or even remarked upon, as long as their shuffling is appropriate.

And that’s the end of the Tournament Disruptions! Next up will be a bevy of Unsporting Conduct penalties. A lot of those are very straightforward, but it’s important to highlight specific behaviors that are not appropriate.

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As always, good luck, and have fun.

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