@Lawman: I like the idea of issuing time extensions but not penalties in situations like that. Is that a possible choice? There is no malicious intent, and game state isn't disrupted. Yet I do feel at times that an extension would be the most fair solution.
I've also run into situations in games where it is roughly under 5 minutes on the clock left, and something goes terribly awry. Say, you Cosmic for 6, and wiff on an energy, and you need to reformulate an entire plan. Or your opponent just surprised you with a Dusknoir and really cut into your set up. Late in a game, these changes can really warp a game plan and require a player to " go into the tank" recalculate a whole game plan. Rushing can easily throw a winnable game away. In a lot of these situations, due to time leading up to this, your turns may be quick because you formulated your plan turns in advance. One of the things that good players do is they take very lopsided turns. They will take a turn, usually a long one ( sometimes this is done on opponents turns too ) to figure out how the next series of turns will go. Somewhat like Chess where you plan out X moves in advance. The turns which fall under those "X turns" will breeze by on near auto pilot. If something disrupts those plans, they may need to "re-think" again. Sometimes this happens near the tail end of the game.
In top 32 of Worlds 06, this happened to me vs Jeremy M. I had waited too long to scoop game 1, and game 2 I was at 2 prizes to his 6, and my set up was fully developed ( LBS ) and ended up using Stevens for 5...and missed an energy. I took a very long turn to re-think, and lost. Jeremy never stalled me out, he played at a good pace, I simply had to take a long, calculative turn. These happen.
I was wondering, if this type of scenario occurs, is it possible, with a judge present, to ask for a time extension, or to guarantee your opponent the last turn, or some fair time compensation to an opponent in order to have that time to think? Sometimes a minute or two to work probabilities, check card counts, and try and determine what cards your opponent may or may not have is necessary to make the correct play. A better example would be back when clocks were public information ( and visible ) its your turn, and the clock is sitting at a minute and 15 seconds, and you NEED to think. At best, your opponent is getting one more turn. Is it fair to "offer" your opponent the "last turn" of the game in a scenario like that? Theoretically a player is not "trying to stall" for a minute and a half, but also doesn't want to win on time either. I think most players can agree sometimes long turns really do just naturally come up. Sometimes they do happen at the end of the game. There is very little that can be done. To me, if a player can justify to me what they were "doing" during a long term, I have very little problem with it. If a player tells me " I needed to figure out the odds of drawing these two cards if I Bebe before I cosmic power, and again if I do so after. I need to see how many Warp Points my opponenet used, and have to guess at how many they have left, and analyze past plays to see if they made any moves that would hint that they were aiming to use a Warp Point. " You can't expect a player to make such a move in 20 seconds. Yet if you sit there and think for the last minute of the game, your opponent is clearly going to feel stalled despite the fact you are actually going for a win. I see no realistic issue with offering a "last turn" to an opponent in scenarios like that. Yet I'm not sure if there is anything directly against that in the floor rules, or if it is the players/judges call. People can be stalled, but they can also be rushed too. Theres been such a witch hunt on "stalling" that any example of "losing on time" gets taken as being stalled out. As a result, players in the last few minutes of a game experience extreme pressure to not just "not stall" but play at an uncomfortably fast pace to the point where they make mistakes and play far below their ability.
I'll use Worlds as an example. I was down by 4 prizes ( he was at 2, me at 6 ) and there were 15 or so minutes to go, and his set up was alright, but mine finally became better. I kindly asked him if he could play a bit faster ( he was playing at an acceptable pace, albeit a BIT slow, but he had maintained it all game. I simply knew I was in bad shape if the game didn't speed up.) No judge was called, no threat of calling a judge was issued, and he simply nodded, smiled and said sure. And he did. His quality of game dropped like a rock. He played a very tight game up until this point, and afterwards he effectively threw the game away and I won a game that should NOT have been winnable on 15 minutes. Now if a worlds level player can be unnerved by a player simply requesting a slight speed increase, imagine how the average player feels with a judge hovering over them at a CC for example with a stop watch near the end of a game. People are unsure of how judges will "handle" claims of slow play and stalling. People are AFRAID of it. I wish there was a better answer to the problem ( outside of longer time limits...ideally an hour would be perfect, but I know most venues cannot handle that. At a Worlds or Nationals I would honestly push for it, you'll have almost every game fully completed and all of the "stalling" issues will be pretty much erased. ) There is an issue of stalling. There is also the associated issue of rushing. Both are very bad. As you fight the issues of stalling, you inherently deal with the issues of rushing, and vice versa.
In regards to the Uxie deck...yeah, if you were to use a Chess clock, on average, the Uxie deck will end up taking roughly 20-25 minutes of the time limit.
An interesting issue though...in Unlimited, I've seen a deck that can literally "loop" itself. It uses Crobat G ( previously Jolteon * and even the 10 to everyone Zapdos, and with BTS maybe even Jolten EX now ) with PokeTurn/Mr Fuji, Scoop Up, Super Scoop Up, etc, and than Trash Exchange and all of the supporterless draw to do a "super uxie" and literally can go for hours if its Trash Exchanges keep hitting well. It could easily take up a full 40 minute turn just "going for the kill". Say there was an Unlimited tournament ran as a side event at Worlds. Someone shows up with this, and to counter it, their opponent benches like 3 Chansey and a Cleffa. The "Trash Combo" deck goes off for like, 37 minutes and kills 2 Chansey and a Cleffa. The opponent is running a Vileplume EX lock deck, and gets a Plume out next turn, making the game end in a few turns easily. They take one prize, pass the turn, and time is called. The other deck went for a win ( say they were 3 damage short on Chansey, and the Trash Exchange hit bad and they "stopped" ) but the other player legitimately only saw their second turn. Can that player demand a time extension? Can the other player be punished for using a completely legal deck approach and made the deck choice under the correct assumption it was legal for that tournament? ( Example, players at Worlds who would not have used Gengar had they known they would cripple Looker's Investigation mid-tournament ) While this is an extreme, decks like Uxie/Shuppet are lesser examples of the same problem. The deck has a legitimate means of win condition by perfectly legal plays, but takes FOREVER. Yet at the same time, when it doesn't "legitimately win" due to the nature of its long "failure" games, it also wins on time a LOT.
Its one of the intangibles of the game. If you look at a few decks from last format, you'll see what I mean. In best of 3, its almost impossible to beat Uxie if Uxie gets to choose who goes first game 3. ( with 10 minutes left even, it simply wins ) and Regigigas was at a HUGE disadvantage if it went to a game 3. Same with most decks that used POW! Hand Extension, Scramble Energy, etc. Now, those are strengths and weaknesses players take into account when making deck choices. For example, last season I REALLY liked Palkia G Lvl X because with all of the power locking, and the 80 snipe attack, it was at such a sick advantage in any sort of game 3/sudden death scenario, and that was a deciding factor in my choice to play it. It was a HUGE edge with Gallade Gardevoir over Empoleon too, where Psychic Cut would ALWAYS win the first KO race. Players know these deck traits and factor them into decisions. You wouldn't offer a player a time extension because he got hit by Mesprit 3 times in a row and had a benched basic sniped for the win vs Palkia. Its inherent that certain decks have advantages in timed games. ( The increased to 40 minute rounds at Worlds 08 made Empoleon a MUCH better play, where it would consistantly lose to GG otherwise on time ) If a deck can take a legitimate 35 minute turn, and the opponent sees 2 turns, its simply an extreme of the same principle. Obvious I don't see this being applicable to any tournament CURRENTLY, but I want to pick some judge brains here. Simple theory. And no, I don't know the answer, because it isn't fair for a player to basically not get a turn, but you also can't impose an unfair penalty to a player for his deck choice if they make timely plays. Obviously the IDEAL answer is " ban or errata whatever card is allowing a deck to take a 40 minute turn " but as far as I know thats a decision to be made overseas not here. I'm sure banning Shedinja years ago would have been a GREAT solution. Or even the Mynx Mewlock deck. Those are fringe decks that just happen to function in bad ways that were strictly negative to the game. They complicated tournaments and hurt the formats they were in.
Ok, this should almost be its own rant post, I barely noticed I was typing all of this. So congrats on being truly masochistic, whoever made it all the way through that.
