February CS Rules and Guidelines

[Admin]

February Challenge Series
When: February 22nd-23rd
Time: Saturday 10 AM EST (15:00 GMT)

As you can see, the event will be held over the course of two days. The entire Swiss portion of the event will be held on Saturday with the top 8 playoffs being held on Sunday morning EST time. As I’ve stated before, the Challenge Series is in Alpha just as well as Hex itself. We’d like to see what works and what doesn’t. If the one day format doesn’t work as planned, we’ll find another method that does. That said, this is a normal CS event with CS points being given out as normal and with normal prizes.

At the moment there are no banned cards or gems as any bugs that were brought up before have since been fixed.

Other Important Bulletpoints

Each round will be 50 minutes in length. I will start the round timer five minutes after pairings are made on my stream at twitch.tv/htp_jtatta. Any match not reported when the timer expires will end in a draw. No questions asked.

In the case of a no show, you will be issued a match loss and dropped from the event. Given the mess that was the later rounds of last event, we’re issuing a no tolerance policy for no shows. If you sign up for the event, we expect you to play. If you’d like to drop from the event, please let someone know.

Match wins are worth 3 points and draws are worth 1. There will be no intentional draws. If I find out that someone intentionally drew with another player you will both be disqualified. The reason for this is that we want to avoid any kind of collusion and have a level playing field for everyone involved. Draws just need to be in place because of the strict time limit.

Matches are best two out of three without sideboards, just like last event. You may switch decks from round to round but not from game to game.

The tournament organizers for this event will be John Tatta and G Prime. Any ruling that comes from either of us is final and you can take any answer to a question by either of us to be official. Nobody else has the authority to make a final decision. We have forums set up for concerns at hextcgpro.proboards.com. Please make use of them to voice your cocerns or questions.

Sign-ups for the event are here: SIGN UP FOR FEBRUARY CS

You will have to be registered for a challonge account to sign up for the event, otherwise you will not see the “Sign-up” option. This is of course free and is the best method that we’ve found for tournament organization.

For this event, we will be using challonge again for pairings and will also be using challonge for official standings as opposed to Mantis for the last event. In the future, we will hopefully be afforded the option to use an in-game system for pairings and standings.

Good luck to everyone and don’t forget to use the official forums to voice concerns!

- John

[htpkroan]

Maybe it's a good idea to have a list of all players and their ingame name so we can better find each other when we're paired. Saves time and confusion!

[juzamjedi]

Kroan's suggestion is good - hopefully there can be a list somewhere (on Challonge?) where we can cross reference Challonge names with HexTCG names. Or maybe we ask players to add their Hex name to the Challonge sign up (like some people did with Time Zones in the January challenge).

In the event we are playing a game that does not end in time is there a tiebreaker of some sort or will it always be a draw? I want to hope for the best, but plan for the worst... I have seen players in other games that use the clock as their strategy and try to slow play a game that they are losing.

Also I want to say there seems to be a LOT of new bugs in this latest patch. Just as one example: in a playtest game my opponent hit me with Xarlox. I milled three cards and all were troops. The troops were sent to my opponent's graveyard and the opponent only received 1 token from Xarlox. I have also had games where the casting cost of Xentoth was reset to 3 after multiple uses (I have not noticed a pattern for when it happens). Not much we can do about the bugs unfortunately.

[GPrime]

In my experience (which I have video of on my twitch page) the "cost bug" where increasing card cost from buccaneer/ripple and other effects doesn't update is purely visual. In every instance I've seen, the proper cost has been subtracted from the resource pool despite what shows on the card. However, if there are other bugs that aren't fixed by the time the weekly patch rolls out, we'll certainly have to look into their effect on the tournament.

That said, it's too early to have that discussion since the (usually) weekly patch hasn't released yet.

[stormchyld]

Hello. I hope this question isn't out of place. Life distracted me for awhile, and i found out about our first tournament when the second one was announced. Im hoping to jump in and test my luck here. I noticed that streaming is a big part of the tournament. My questions are 1) Do i need to stream? 2) If it is required, or prefered, how do i stream? Again my appolagize if this is in the wrong spot. Online forums arent my strong suit, and i couldnt find the answer, which im sure lies in here somewhere.

[GPrime]

Storm: your questions seem equally appropriate here or in the general discussion section.

To answer: It isn't required that you stream. It's strongly encouraged as one of the objectives of the Challenge Series is to promote a strong competitive community and streaming is a great way to drum up interest and community spirit. However, if you can't or don't want to stream, there's no obligation to do so. This event is open to everyone who is able to play.

[htpkroan]

In my experience (which I have video of on my twitch page) the "cost bug" where increasing card cost from buccaneer/ripple and other effects doesn't update is purely visual. In every instance I've seen, the proper cost has been subtracted from the resource pool despite what shows on the card. However, if there are other bugs that aren't fixed by the time the weekly patch rolls out, we'll certainly have to look into their effect on the tournament.

Allthough that's partly true, it doesn't stop troops to get inspired by those troops. Ie. I bucanneerd a Cerulean Mentalist , which increased it cost to 4. My opp. replayed it for 4 (checked resource count), the card still showed up as 3-cost troop on the battlefield and after that it inspired all 3-cost troops that entered the battlefield after that.

[htpkindmime]

Will chime be allowed in tournament as is?

It is not completely broken just with escalation cards. It escalates on the stack, as well as creates an extra card to be shuffled into the deck.

Can see it going both ways. With the limited time to build decks with new cards short as is the sooner everyone knows the better.

[armiesofmordor]

its working as intended since the article about it says so!

[zubrin]

Inquisitor and Chime are both broken. Inquisitor is not increasing costs properly. Chime is copying its copies while on the stack.

[wurtil]

The Inquisitor bug is bad, but I've only seen the Chimes bug if the opponent used an Interrupt effect on the original action while Chimes was in play (so if you stoneskin in response to a Chimes'd Inquisition for example, the Chimes player would get an infinite number of Inquisition copies).

[Admin]

The Inquisitor bug is VERY bad. I'll be looking into this sometime this afternoon and will be posting a final banned list today for the event tomorrow.

- John

[htpkindmime]

What is the inquisitor bug? Isn't it just the non adding of the increased mana cost. It might be optimistically speaking but having players just obey when the cost goes up would be a option if the community could be trusted. While this might sound like a plea to keep inquisitor in for a deck of mine or current meta game sake. Its more of a plea to be able to trust the community when it can be up to us to follow rules

If a rule as simple as keep track of an increasing cost card can't be followed it seems that any card that has a bug should not be allowed.
Most notable countering 3rd on the stack, were that actually freezes the game but we are to never do that because its in the rules and we follow it. In essence we change the "rules of the game" to play this card but we cant expect our players to be honest to have another card in play.

If there is a bug besides the cost not getting fixed I am just not aware of it and it in fact breaks the card or their is a horrible interaction of the game because the cost doesn't increase.

While chime actually breaks the game?

[wurtil]

One issue with the Inquisitor bug is that all cost changes are really really f'd right now. The game currently typically acknowledges Inqusititors altered cost while still having it actually cost three, but sometimes when syncing it will revert back and show just 3 again. When that happens, it is hard to say if an opponent is cheating and playing the old Inquisitor for cheap or if they drew a new Inquisitor that actually cost three.

Same issue currently with Countermagic, Time Ripple, Buccaneer, etc. The altered cost will be displayed most of the time, but occasionally during syncing the cost shown will revert back to the cards original cost (which is what it will still take to cast even if hit by one of those cards).

On a side note, the Auras and Air Superiority (and probably others like that I don't know about) are also having issues with the altered P/T reverting back to normal occasionally (and sometimes reverting back at the next sync).

[htpkindmime]

Feb 21, 2014 17:27:35 GMT wurtil said:

it is hard to say if an opponent is cheating and playing the old Inquisitor for cheap or if they drew a new Inquisitor that actually cost three.

This is where the trust comes into play, We play with a lot more cards that are much more broken and effect the board state than a simple cost fix solution. Crown never being reverted for example, reversion not working as intended on many cards. Mimic not working as intended. But we are still allowing these because it is not game breaking and players can play around it. 

Counter magic not increasing a cards cost what is to be done with that? I know me personally I would feel like taking advantage of a bug if I were to have a card countered and then the very next turn play the same card for the same cost. But if its between losing or playing that second extinction who is to choose what is right. Who is to say how we play around this bug. Are we to play the card as it is intended to be used or play as is? 

Who is to say your opponent isn't cheating when he plays that counter third on the stack to freeze the game. Cheating is inevitable sadly, but we should look at players optimistically before we assume everyone is a cheater. 

I am sure we have all come across the do gooders in the matches we have played and the players that take advantage of such bugs. In the end its a game these tournaments will mean very little in the grand scheme of things but the reputation players build from being scumbags will last in peoples minds for awhile. 
 
This is an alpha tournament there are plenty of bugs, bugs that we can prepare for and bugs that we cannot. It is the nature of the beast. 

Sorry if this isn't the most articulated slew of sayings was in a rush may edit later.