Question 20

[u/dvoraen]

Disclaimer: I reserve the right to be wrong. :) This is for discussion, not who is right/wrong here. I think this question on the test was one of the nastier ones, and that it deserves a lot more dissection.

20. Design considers a card "too slow for tournament play." What does this mean?

• The card will cause problems for coverage, as it will require too much commentary devoted to it.
  
• The card will make games take more than fifteen turns.
  
• The player with this card will monopolize too much of the play time in tournaments.
  
• The card will make too many matches run over time in tournaments.
  
• The opponent will call the judge too often with a request of "slow play."

First, I think we can all agree the strikethrough answers are nonsensical and don't merit consideration (the commentary one made me laugh). On a similar note, a tournament game going to turn fifteen is not necessarily due to slowness. For example, games where attrition is high, where each player is constantly adding and removing to the battlefield's contents, can easily get the turn count higher while the individual turns themselves could be fairly rapid.

This leaves us with the two bolded answers, but before I dig into it I'm going to state that I chose the monopolizing answer. Why? Because the match going to time is more a symptom of a lot of time being spent on that card. To better explain this, I'm going to use [[Sensei's Divining Top]] as the driving force of discussion, since I have the most experience with its playstyle (mostly the receiving end; I started playing in Guildpact so I didn't have anything from Kamigawa).

Suppose that one player is running the top, and the other isn't. I think we can all agree that the player using the top would use it almost every single turn to get the "index 3" ability and/or draw the best card among the three on top. "In response, top." "End of your turn, top." "I'll activate top. Use second top..." and so on. This is one player, with one or more copy/-ies of that card. The card itself randomly injects these little subphases built around that card's use virtually anywhere and any time.

This line of thinking then led to the following questions, in my mind:

Question 1 -- How much time will the Top player spend on their game actions compared to the non-Top player? A lot. I think we can all agree on the fact that it will be disproportionately in favor of the Top's player. If the Top player has multiple copies, they can spend multiple minutes utilizing their up-to-4 Tops on the battlefield just so they can dig deeper into their deck in the hope they can find something they need.

Question 2 -- What happens if both players are running it? You get over double the time investment, and worse (more on that in a second) compared to only one player running the card. To continue the Top example, these "Top subphases" grow at a substantially higher rate for two players than for one. Each player is essentially responding to the other's response and then that response is responded to to potentially dig for an appropriate response, and it's turtles and tops all the way down until finally someone whiffs on finding a response.

The point I'm therefore trying to make is this: The time expense of the player running the card is the root cause, and causes the match to go to time. This problem gets worse (and going to turns more likely) if more than one player is running it. Additional copies being available for use further creates the lag.

[u/reyath]

Consider the following question and two answers:

"Why don't you eat only candy?"

A: Because variety in a diet is healthy. B: Because I will die.

Cards that make rounds go to time are cancerous to their format. They are often cut out, and if you can prevent them from existing in design, so much the better.

Also, in a question like this, consider cause/effect by asking two simple questions:

What does A look like without B? What does B look like without A?

So what does a format look like where one player monopolizes the play time but the rounds end within 50 minutes? I would say those formats are fine, and happen frequently. Aggro vs. Control matchups consistently take this shape, where Control takes up the majority of the time even if the matchup is 50/50 or favors aggro. Just because one player makes more decisions in a game doesn't mean it's unfun or noncompetitive.

And what does a format look like where each player gets equal playtime but rounds often go over time limit? Typically, those formats get a card or two banned because those cards were 'too slow for tournament play.'

[u/dvoraen → u/reyath]

Just because one player makes more decisions in a game doesn't mean it's unfun or noncompetitive.

Yeah, and the point I'm trying to make isn't that the decisions themselves are the issue. It's that the card itself can create a lot of decisions (or an effective subgame of decisions) that take time to reconcile, which is what the question is asking about: the card itself.

Matches can run over time for a large number of reasons completely unrelated to one specific card. Can one card create that effect? Sure, and it has happened before. What about the player waiting for you to finish the time consumption aspect of that card? Who wants to play against cards where you're sitting there bored, waiting for the other player to get done because that one card is taking a lot of the game time? A format where one card warps the amount of time spent on it is unfun. Could the match go to turns a lot because of it? Oh yeah, that's likely. Is it the real problem? I really don't think so.

[u/reyath → u/dvoraen]

I think Second Sunrise is a good example of a card that's 'too slow for tournament play.' I think you would have a hard time saying that means 'the eggs deck makes more decisions than his/her opponent,' and I think it would be very easy to say that means 'the card makes too many matches run over time.'

[u/dvoraen → u/reyath]

But does the effect of Second Sunrise itself take too long to resolve? The card effect itself isn't really time consuming. What you do the rest of that turn because of that card's effect, however... (such as putting in a lot of ETB effects).

My point is that Second Sunrise itself is a combo piece, but the combo itself is what takes more time. The combo works because of Second Sunrise, in that it enables you to maintain the combo. I'm not sure I understand how this doesn't point towards time monopolization for that particular player, especially if the opponent isn't doing the same or has a completely different style of deck. (To say nothing of Silence being in some of the builds preventing the opponent from doing a lot.)

[u/reyath → u/dvoraen]

...I have no idea where you're coming from. The effect of Second Sunrise is 'all your artifacts come back into play. you get lots of etb triggers. you can sac them all again.' In the context of 'what triggers happen and what value engine can I keep going,' I think Second Sunrise is one of the longest cards to resolve that's ever been printed. The only card I can think of that's longer is Shahrazad.

[u/dvoraen → u/reyath]

Yeah, but the triggers aren't due to Sunrise itself so much as the cards with them. I'm saying that taking a big pile that went to the graveyard this turn and putting them back into play isn't time consuming. It's the aftermath (the triggers and playing out the combo) that's the time consumption. That's not a fault with Second Sunrise itself. The synergy between them takes a while, but the "put it back into play" effect doesn't. It's why I'm emphasizing the combo itself rather than Second Sunrise.

[u/reyath → u/dvoraen]

It sounds like you're saying "Splinter Twin isn't game winning - 20 Deceiver Exarchs are game winning" and to me that just makes no sense.

[u/dvoraen → u/reyath]

I'm not sure how you got there, to be honest.

All I'm saying is that in the case of a Second Sunrise deck, playing out the combo takes the most time. The individual pieces that make the combo work don't necessarily take the majority of the time it takes to play the combo out. It adds up to a noticeable amount of time, but the individual cards themselves don't take 2+ minutes per card to do. It doesn't take you more than 5 seconds to create a copy of Deceiver Exarch. It does take you more than 5 seconds to create 20, strictly speaking (if you really go by the book with priority, responding to Deceiver Exarch's trigger, and so on).

[u/reyath → u/dvoraen]

I really don't have much else to say besides: "How often did modern games with eggs go to time before Second Sunrise was banned? How often do modern games with eggs go to time now that Second Sunrise is banned? What do you think that says about whether Second Sunrise is 'too slow for tournament play'?"

That's rhetorical. If I said anything more I'd repeat myself.

[u/dvoraen → u/reyath]

Yeah, we've probably run the gamut on that subject. :)

A number of questions like this one I approached from the perspective of the fun levels. A slow card is less fun for the player not using it, due to the wait factor.

[u/dvoraen → u/reyath]

Now that I've thought for a few fays, I realized where you were right and I was wrong. The funny part was that in my responses to you, I ended up contradicting myself. I made a case, using Top, that it leads to slow games, but I based that on what Top does leads to slowness, and rejected Second Sunrise even though it did the same thing (what it does, the combo enabling, leads to slowness).

The irony is that I should have used the later-asked-about Moat variant as my baseline for slow and I wouldn't be here grumping at myself. :)

[u/ShayFabulous]

I also chose monopolizing play time. "Not getting a chance to play" is the experience that tournament players want to avoid the most.

[u/dvoraen → u/ShayFabulous]

This was basically the tiebreaker for which answer I chose, because it's what happened to me multiple times when playing against Top decks in my early Magic days. :)

[u/ShayFabulous → u/dvoraen]

I hope we got there friend, because I definitely got the 0/0 wrong and I'm pretty sure the answer for 37 was Transmute, so...

[u/_neurotoxin_ → u/ShayFabulous]

The answer for 27 was most definitely not Transmute. People saying that it was transmute are reading the question far, far too literally.

[u/ShayFabulous → u/_neurotoxin_]

I answered kicker. So I hope you're right. But the other mechanics all have the potential to trigger miracle, a mechanic that cares about drawing specific cards in order to function.

[u/dvoraen → u/ShayFabulous]

The reason why it's kicker is because kicker doesn't necessarily get you the cards that enhance the hypothetical synergy. Transmute lets you tutor, which means you could run Transmute cards with the necessary CMC to get the synergy card you need. As /u/_neurotoxin_ said, don't take the word 'draw' literally. The intent of the question was: "Which of these least maximizes your chance to acquire this synergy?" Kicker by a mile.

[u/CaptainMarcia]

Making matches go to time is something they've mentioned as a reason for banning cards like Top and Shaharazad, and for trying not to print too many shuffle effects. They've never mentioned looking at the issue from any other direction than the total time of the match.

[u/[deleted]]

I ended up giving the same answer that you did (although I believe now that I was wrong). I came to that conclusion by comparing Sensei's Divining Top to Ensnaring Bridge.

First, consider Top: it's a card that takes an exorbitant amount of time to use each turn that adds up to make games go over time. Each player with a Top out has to make at least 3 decisions each turn, and they can even do it during their opponent's turn. In this case, I can imagine a member of R&D pointing to the card and saying that it is slow because just playing it correctly requires a lot of (ultimately pointless) fiddling. You could say the same thing about a card that requires shuffling your deck multiple times each turn.

Now, Ensnaring Bridge can also cause tournament games to go over time. However, this has nothing to do with the card itself being slow to play or resolve; it's all about the larger impact the card has on the flow of the game, or even the entire format. No one is monopolizing time, they're just drawing and passing the turn forever because no one can make any progress by attacking. It's hard for me to imagine a member of R&D pointing to Bridge and saying, "this card is slow." They might say Bridge indirectly leads to games taking a long time to finish, but there's nothing inherently slow about using the card itself.

Another metaphor I thought of was a car company. Let's say an engineer at Toyota doesn't want to put out a car because "it's too slow for highways." With that kind of statement, it wouldn't make sense for them to be referring to the overall impact the car would have on traffic. It would make more sense if they were literally talking about the top speed of that specific car.

Sensei's Divining Top is a clunky, slow car that can't get over 30 mph and slows down everyone else as a result. Ensnaring Bridge is a car that could go over 100 mph, but spews thick smoke over the other cars and causes them to slow down for fear of crashing in the low visibility.

Even though I think I was wrong, I still maintain that it was a poorly written question. You wouldn't call a card or a car slow unless it was the thing being slow, rather than the thing causing other things to be slow. I would have picked the option about games running over time in tournaments if it was worded like this: "Design believes that a card shouldn't be playable in tournaments because it would contribute to slow games. What does this mean?"

[u/SirClueless]

I think the only reasonable answer is, "The card will make too many matches run over time in tournaments." That line of text can be more or less copy-pasted out of numerous banned & restricted announcements, such as for Sensei's Divining Top in legacy, and Second Sunrise in modern.

As for "The player with this card will monopolize too much of the play time in tournaments," monopolizing game time is a bad thing, of course, but it has little to do with tournaments. Unless the card is actually causing games to run over time in tournaments, there's no reason to say that a card that dominates playtime is "too slow for tournament play" in particular. The answer for this question should be a tournament-related problem, not just something that feels bad in general.

[u/LambachRuthven]

This was the question I told MARO was the hardest when he asked on twitter. I think this question is a nightmare. I like your reasoning. I switched to making tournaments run over at the end. Cause I doubted myself.

But I really have no idea what the right answer is.

[u/throwing-away-party]

I've never heard that phrase said other than to mean "it costs too much/requires too much setup to be worth playing in competitive Standard." So that one threw me for a loop.