SLOW PLAY - Why I stood up & left the table

[DarthVicious]

I have noticed, as the board state increases with Stax, the time I eat up is disproportionate to my opponent. They have no options, but they will make me play it out anyway. No joke, a turn on the late game is often this:

Untap,
Tabernacle on the stack
Smokestack on the stack
Tangle Wire on the stack
Activate Trading Post, make a Goat.
Tap Goat, Gods' Eye and Crucible
Sac Goat, Gods' Eye, make a token
Tap Metalworker, pay all Tabernacle triggers.
Move to draw.

We have not even hit my first main phase yet, this game is over, I am playing only because my opponent is choosing to make me. I do not accept that because my board state becomes more and more complex (Stax makes for some fucking crazy board states) and my opponent wishes to watch me play it out in place of scooping that I should start being punished.

Mechanical actions, when taken quickly, are not slow play. I am not tanking on my upkeep triggers.

It looks like a lot, and is certainly time consuming, but in no way would I classify an upkeep taking a minute or two as slow play as long as things are actually happening.
Where I call slow play is when my opponent blatantly does/says nothing for what seems like an endless amount of time... then finally says "Resolves."
Either they have a response, or they don't. Digging for a counterspell with Brainstorm/Top or activating Vial or Stoneforge or Deathrite or Wirewood or whatever is a response, and none of that should take any more than ten seconds to decide on.

Instants are the enemy of fun.

[wcm8]

I think what people tend to forget, or at least minimize, is the human element of this game. Legacy specifically is more of a social event compared to many other MtG events. Sure, there are prizes on the line at tournaments, but compared to formats like Standard, Draft and even Modern, Legacy has a smaller, more insular community comprised of individuals with personalities. Over a long enough timeline, pretty much everyone playing Legacy in an area become acquainted with each other, and become if not friendly at least pleasant with each other. 'Rivalries' tend to dissipate eventually; maturity trumps childish emotion.

I can only speak for myself with absolute certainty, but I imagine I'm not alone in terms of playing Legacy more for enjoyment than as a means to an end. It's *fun* to tweak a decklist over multiple testing sessions and (intellectually) duke it out in a tournament setting to see if your theory-crafting and suppositions actually achieve victory despite the harsh environment of luck and innumerable chaotic factors working against you. Winning is fun, but it's not a requirement for having fun during a tournament. I see the tournament entry fee as more of a cost for several hours of enjoyment than as a ticket towards the prize, and compared to something like going to a movie theater it has a better time conversion rate.

Local events are mostly self-regulating. The point of having a comprehensive set of rules is more for the benefit of running a large tournament when disparate players from multiple communities are forced to play against each other, e.g. at a Grand Prix or SCG Open. Back at home in local events, if a player is being problematic (in terms of friendliness, rate of play and decision-making, being gracious as both a winner *and* as a loser, etc.), this person would be ostracized from the local playgroup and his/her enjoyment would go down, perhaps even to the point where they no longer want to attend MtG events. This happens to sore losers, players who don't want to put in the work of 'gitting gud', and people who emphasize winning over the journey it took to get there. Rarely does it require a local judge to enforce this, it's really more a natural result of the unconscious will of the group, some sort of dominance-hierarchy sub-structure enacting its law.

But unfortunately, MtG tends to draw some anti-social people. People who haven't been receptive to the shame of their poor behavior or anti-fun mentality. There are also sadists, people who derive a sort of sociopathic pleasure from seeing others suffer. These people typically play lock pieces such as Chalice of the Void and/or Counterbalance* . At a large enough event, these people sidestep the shame that would've been enforced in a local environment and are able to continue their negative ways. The only hope is that they burn out and quit tournament MtG before continuing to spread their negativity too long.

In a local environment, it's up to the collective players to shame these players into either changing their ways or quitting. In a large event, it's completely justified to use the assistance of a judge to get the point across.

And if for some reason the judge called seems complicit with their bad behavior, that's what the appeal process is for.

Know the rules, call a judge when needed. You're not only making MtG better for yourself, but also for the Legacy community at large.

*footnote: there are many definitions of "fun". I think a game of MtG is fun when both players were able to interact with each other in a meaningful way, and where the outcome of the game had more to do with the sequence of choices made (and maybe a little bit of luck), rather than just being an exercise of going through the motions on a set rail path. Some players enjoy 'pillow fort' type decks, or 'prison'-style decks; that's fine as long as there's still some amount of meaningful interaction. And it typically beats non-interactive combo decks that function in a way to ignore their opponent almost entirely. I do think it takes a certain type of mentality to willingly choose to play a deck like Stax, however I am NOT saying that everyone who chooses to play such a deck is a sadist or sociopath. Just that it's more likely to find those sorts of people playing those sorts of decks