If last week’s article was there to provide new hope to players who were looking for ways to cope when life dealt them a ropey hand, then this week’s will be a little more proactive. There are those who get downhearted, lose confidence, and in turn lose their concentration after dropping games, regardless of the reason.

This is not a good way to go about winning more.

There are other types of people who react rather differently, though—the Bruce Banners of this world. Whether or not they walk along desolate roads to the tune of miserable sounding piano music is irrelevant. Before they ever get to the strolling part, there is the unleashing of a primal rage.

Now, I don’t believe that a bit of passion in whatever you are doing is a bad thing. However you react to something, the fact that you do react ultimately shows that you care; and if you don’t care about something, then there is a reasonable argument that you should be doing something else. Unfortunately, anger is not really a particularly useful emotion to bring to a game. Games are meant to be fun. I think that over the course of his movie career, Adam Sandler has amply proven that getting mad (and potentially even) is neither big nor clever. And if you get mad at your opponent, you are unlikely to earn the crazy cash that Mr. Sandler does when everyone laughs at you.

There are exactly three ways of losing that make me angry. One is when I lose to my own play error. The trick to this one is simply to practice to an extent that it doesn’t happen at any point where losing is that big a problem (in other words, make your mistakes in testing).

The other two are a little more controversial. Luckily, there is rarely a good reason for them to happen.

Getting Timed Out

Losing on time is something that is, to say the least, a little frustrating. I, for one, was one of the players at front of the queue to applaud the move to one-game matches following the first Pro Circuit, for the simple reason that it dramatically reduced the chances of unfortunate time issues. A player could win a slow game 1 and then ride it to a match win simply by being fairly slow in the remainder of the match before the switch to the one-game system.

At $10K Indianapolis, I lost to Paul Sottosanti in the Swiss rounds, dropping a tight but slow game 1 and needing to pick up the second game in twelve minutes. This I did, but then we had to play a three-turn decider. Teen Titans are alright at that sort of thing, but ultimately, they don’t have much of a chance against Wild Vomit’s seemingly infinite 1-drops.

Bad beat story out of the way. I won in the rematch in the finals, so I really cannot complain.

Even with the one-game matches, time is still very much an issue within competitive Vs. System today. Really, it shouldn’t be a factor (and in testing, it is rarely considered at any great length in my experience), but inevitably, it becomes one with reasonable frequency.

If I had a single complaint about the choice of Ivy League by The Donkey Club, it wasn’t the difficulty of playing the deck, per se; it was the difficulty of playing the deck well enough within the constraints of the time available in a tournament setting. It isn’t fair (or reasonable) to assume that you will receive any more than fifty percent of the thinking time in any match. Assuming that is the case and given the number of actions necessary for the Ivy League deck to get to its win against a good opponent, one needs to make a lot of good decisions every turn with very little time to think them through.

I watched Anthony Justice, who had played the deck more than virtually anyone in the super-team, going through his actions at a frankly blistering pace in San Francisco, and still he found himself precariously teetering on the brink of losing on time with concerning regularity. Upon talking with various members of the team, there seemed to be a consensus on a few points. The deck was the most powerful thing in the room. The deck was insanely difficult to play. The deck’s worst matchup had nothing to do with Sage, Xavier’s Secret Weapon and everything to do with the clock.

Now, a churlish, grumpy, mayhap angry Tim might say, “If you are so bothered about running out of time, then play something you can play a bit faster!”

Okay, I’m not actually angry. But in this instance, I think that Angry Tim is, to some extent, correct. If you are going to play something really complex, then you should probably take the Anthony Justice Approach (also know as “The AJ Method,” not to be confused with the interpretive dance style from Alex Jebailey, christened ‘”The AJ System”). Play your deck a lot. Get to know it inside out. The icky bits on the inside that should really remain there? You should know them

 

better than you do the comparatively attractive outer skin of your hand. Back or front. Back to front. And after that, play at a pace where you can win even if your opponent is a little slow.

This is step 1 in the dance known as “Not Getting Timed Out.” It is a song with a fast tempo and relatively few steps. It’s fun. You should try it.

Once you have your own play style together, it’s time to start looking to your dance partner. Your opponent might like to slow dance with you. That is fine. I would just suggest that such activity is left until way after the tournament, when the lights are down low and you can really enjoy it. The slow play rules, though, are not a friend to anyone who can’t keep to the beat of tournament play.

There are two types of excessively slow play, and neither of them is allowed by the rules. First, there is the intentional slow play from an opponent who is trying to manipulate the pace of the game in order to win on time. This is the cheats, plain and simple. A fair proportion of players seem to consider that every time a penalty is handed out for slow play, it is because of this sort of infraction. Here, the intent is there to stop the game from getting to its appropriate conclusion. The intent is what turns playing slowly into actual cheats. But intent doesn’t need to be there for a penalty to be appropriate.

The rules require players to be able to play their decks in a timely fashion. If a game is being held up significantly by virtue of a single player taking a long time with his or her plays, then judges are well within their rights to start issuing escalating penalties, beginning with a caution or warning. If a judge ever tells you something along the lines of “you need to speed up your play” or “you need to make a decision,” then that is a caution. It is one step away from a warning, which in turn is just one step away from a game loss. As our intent is to avoid them at all costs, it is a good idea to treat the first caution as a good enough reason to correct matters of slow play.

Of course, slow play has a nasty habit of becoming clearer as a game progresses. When there are five minutes of regular time left, the pressure of a game going to time is a lot easier to feel than when a player is being slow about his or her turn 2 search effect. The more important difference to my mind, though, is that by this point, there is basically nothing that a judge can do to help you if you’re sitting opposite a slow dancer. If you have concerns about the pace of the game, the best thing you can possibly do is call a judge early. It doesn’t really help you if your opponent gets a warning as time is called if you still ultimately lose on time. If your opponent got that warning ten minutes into a round, then he or she would have to speed up the pace of play or face the consequences, thus giving you a much more real chance of winning (or losing) the game in the fashion that was always intended for Vs. System. You cannot expect judges to be everywhere at once, though they do try. Help them where you can. If you see a situation brewing, call them ahead of time. If a judge gives a ruling, be sure to ask for an appropriate time extension, also.

The funny thing is that the final way of losing in a way that can rile me up can also be largely avoided by good communication with both your opponent and the judging staff.

Losing to Marmite

I chose the title for this last section really carefully, believe it or not. Marmite is a dubious British delicacy that is fairly widely eaten on toast. It’s a yeast extract that looks a little like a dark chocolate spread, but most definitely is not. When I was little, I learned to my cost that Marmite leaves a very nasty taste in your mouth.

There are not a lot of shady individuals in Vs. System, so it is with a hopeful heart that I look forward to this little section being nothing more than a convenient way for me to boost my word count. Unfortunately, when you do lose to a player who plays by manipulating the game state beyond just the cards, you tend to remember it.

Other examples are the nastier ends of “trash talk.” I have no big problem with players talking their way through a match and playing little mind games with their opponents. I rather like to indulge in a little bit of this myself. However, I have encountered it being taken to extremes. My rule of thumb tends to be that if a player specifically asks for me to be quiet while they do something, I will do so. Personal verbal attacks are also strictly beyond the pale. It is one thing to make an opponent a little uncomfortable by applying the good beats with a team of heroes off a good draw. It is entirely another to do so with unsporting conduct chat.

Unsporting conduct is, in fact, the phrase. It is potentially the penalty that the Marmite of the tournament scene can get for pushing things too far. If you ever feel that an opponent is pushing things too far, then make your opinions known. It may well be that your opponent is just a little mouthy and will heed your requests for silence. If you are still worried, judges are there for more than just making sure that cards interact correctly.

One particularly troublesome thing that sometimes comes up in tournaments is the act of “rules lawyering”—taking the letter of the rules and using them to gain an advantage, both psychological and actual, over less well-schooled opponents by calling them on every little thing. It is a very tricky thing to play against and can be quite frustrating, as it isn’t really appropriate for judges to penalize players for enforcing proper play. My best advice here is to keep a cool head. Read up on your rules. Ask judges if you are unclear about interactions. Declare your phases (and indeed all your other plays). If you communicate clearly with your opponent, it is a lot less likely that there can be any misunderstandings about game state. Record your endurance (and your opponent’s) clearly with pen and paper.

The good thing is that if you practice your game to stop making mistakes, which ultimately improves your win percentage, then you will have a better chance of blowing out even those who are expressly trying to win by attacking your thought processes rather than your board. If your decisions come more fluidly, then they will be that much harder to disrupt. And ultimately, winning under adverse conditions like that will be all the sweeter.

Emotion is a good thing to have, and I would much rather that every Vs. player was enjoying every game every turn than sitting stoically like a robot, thinking about formations with a frown. Just be careful not to let your emotions get away from you, and you will have that much more to celebrate later when you are winning that much more.

Have fun and be lucky,

Tim “It Has Been Suggested that I Might Be a Spy. This is Possibly the Hardest Thing to Deny Ever.” Willoughby

timwilloughby@hotmail.com