billiv15 wrote:
spryguy1981 wrote:
From Sven
Quote:
Lets go back to that evening i sat down against Wes. Wes had a great squad and i know that the damage out put in it was immense and not to mention the fact that the absorb energy would have given me fits. So i knew that personnaly my only chance of winning without compromising my chance at 3rd place was by lock out and that is what i did. I killed off the ugnaughts and lobot ran for cover and locked him out as i sat in gambit. It is a legal win however definatly not the best way to finish a game, especially if you are the one getting locked out. I admit it was a pretty crappy way for me to take 3rd but it was how it happened.
I call BS here. Not against Sven but because I was specifically told I could not do this last year at the Tennessee Regional in the finals. I was told I could not lock out my opponent because I had the points lead and thus win the entire regional. I was playing Graham last year at the Tennessee regional and I had gotten a strong enough points lead, and calculated out that he could not catch me in the game and locked myself in the turbolift to eek out the cheap win. I am aware that it would be a cheap way to win, but I was under the impression that it wasn't legal for me to win by lockout because Daniel said I had to be making an effort to win the game by killing pieces. So would someone please clarify this rule for me. Is a Lockout win a legal win or not.
It's legal. The punishment during swiss is typically that you'd get a 2 point win. That wouldn't apply in a final. You could get a warning for slow play (as in not attempting to win the game in the time allowed), but that's a bit of a stretch for the scenario you mentioned.
To me this is basically the paint-by-numbers definition of stalling. You're playing in such a way not to win but to force a tiebreaker. There have been lots of discussions about stalling in the past and I think it's generally agreed that you don't have to be playing slowly to be stalling, stalling is more precisely defined as playing in such a way that you win by specifically NOT really playing the game. The intent of the 5 rounds of no rolls rule has always seemed to me to deal with situations like one player has Lobot and a Treadwell Droid and the other player has Darth Sidious Hologram and a couple R7s; that game ends in 5 rounds because it's dumb to make the players keep playing until someone has 200 points from Gambit. If you're using that part of the rules to actually win a game where you could be out there making an honest attempt to NOT force a tiebreaker, you're stalling.
Obviously this reading of the rules isn't shared by everyone, which segues nicely into my more on-topic point.
I think losing on purpose IS poor sportsmanship. Well, maybe not poor sportsmanship per se, but it's absolutely poor gamesmanship. The problem is that you're basically devaluing the entire tournament. The purpose of a tournament is to determine who here are the best players, more or less in order. That's why we have standings. If you lose a game on purpose so that the best player isn't in the best player's spot, or the 4th best player isn't in the 4th best spot, you're artificially rigging the tournament. Tournaments are to measure player skill; if you prevent that from happening, it's almost tautologically bad. It's not about a player doing what is best for them. I've always been of the opinion that you can basically do whatever you want within the rules, and that arguments about the "spirit of the game" are ridiculous. You override your opponent out of your room, out activate, then pop out and shoot them before retreating and locking the door again? That's cool. You play the Lancer, out activate, then strafe somebody to death? That's cool too. I'm sure everyone knows that some people call this against the "spirit of the game", but I 100% disagree with that and think it's a fine strategy. The difference is that you aren't compromising the integrity of the tournament.
This isn't really about Tim losing to Wes, it's about the other ramifications. If Tim had beaten Wes, I'm pretty sure Mike Giles would have gotten into the top 4 instead of Wes (Mike was 5th place). Instead, Tim lost on purpose, putting Wes in the top 4 and knocking Mike out. Mike played in such a way that he really EARNED his place in the top 4, and it's not fair that it's taken away from him because Tim wanted to lose for whatever reason. Mike proved through his own play that he deserved to be considered the 4th ranked player there after Swiss, but instead he was the 5th ranked player. That sucks, and I think that kind of stuff happening really hurts tournament play in general. We're here to play Star Wars Minis and see who the best is, but you're playing a different game; you're gaming the system. That's not what I signed up for. If I were in Mike's position, frankly, I would be pissed.
At the Maryland regional last year I played David in the final round of Swiss and I was undefeated, but he had 1 loss. At this point basically if I lost I was still in the top 4, but he needed a win to get in. He suggested that I throw the game so that we could both get in. David is one of my best friends, and I would have loved for us both to get into the top 4, but my response was "Screw you, you gotta beat me if you want in". Why? Because me throwing the game would have been unfair to the other players. Whoever got knocked out of the top 4 because I threw a game would be denied their shot in the playoffs because of a deal I made that had nothing to really do with the game. It would have been collusion, and it would have been wrong. It would have been poor sportsmanship. It would have been gaming the system. Maybe it isn't directly against the rules, but I absolutely believe it would have been unfair.
The problem is that Bill is partially right (that's always a problem, isn't it?
). How in the world are you going to enforce this? It would be so easy for a judge to be wrong about this, and DQ'ing a person is a really big move to make. Should judges have that kind of power explicitly given? I dunno. It certainly does make me uneasy. I generally trust our judges, but they're only human, and there will always been different interpretations of certain rules. This rule in particular would be almost completely subjective, unless a player actually said "Yeah I'm losing on purpose". Judges shouldn't be put in that position.
Is losing on purpose wrong and an example of poor sportsmanship? I believe so, yes. It compromises the entire tournament and undermines the primary reason they exist. Is it something that should be policed by judges with the authority to DQ people if they suspect it? I'm not so sure. I think if a judge were told explicitly by a player that they were losing on purpose, that player should be DQ'd. Outside of that, though, I'm not really comfortable with judges determining whether or not a player is losing on purpose.