This past weekend we held Punt City 5. TopDeck first got its start with the original Punt City back in August of 2022. The software, the community, it all stemmed from the want to run that first event, so it feels great to continue the tradition four years later.

We saw a lot of familiar faces at the event, alongside way more new ones. It’s a testament to the growth the scene has had.

This week, how to deal with slow play, and how to actually win a tournament.

Let’s get into it.

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Sometimes games just draw. But a lot of the time that draw was avoidable if someone had been willing to call slow play.

By Talion

The five-minute warning is called on the round, on your turn or perhaps the turn of the player after you. You pass, and try to chivvy everyone along through steps and phases and triggers, knowing that if you can just make it back around to your turn you can present a win. Despite your best efforts, time is called on the turn of the player before you, they get stopped, and the game draws.

I think most tournament cEDH players, especially midrange players, have been in this situation. It feels inevitable, it feels inexorable, and most of all it feels frustrating. A lot of players chalk it up to the unavoidable nature of tEDH, that “sometimes, games just draw.” And they’re right, sometimes they do! But a lot of the time that game could have come to a more favourable conclusion if everyone had been a bit more mindful of the clock. Thankfully, Magic already has a built-in rule to facilitate this, but you won’t find it in the CR. You’ll find it in the tournament grinder’s best friend and worst enemy, the Magic Tournament Rules.

Section 5.5 of the MTR has this to say about Slow Play:

Your first thought on reading this might be “that seems really vague”, and you’d be right – it is vague, intentionally so. It’s very difficult to provide a hard number on the amount of time that can go by before taking another game action, and doing so leads to problems. By instituting (for example) a 30-second time limit on game actions, you would effectively be giving permission for a player to legally stall by taking 29 seconds to perform every action. 

So what is considered a “timely fashion?” Judge Jason Flatford offers some tips and insight in his article for Star City Games, my favourite of which is that “if a spectator has had time to assess the boardstate, determine what they believe to be the best course of action, and then have time to get bored” you should call Slow Play. I find this advice particularly helpful in cEDH, where you can often sit back, observe what your opponents are doing, and read the board state without feeling the need to take actions. I personally like the method of starting and resetting a mental countdown from ten or fifteen seconds anytime a player takes a game action, and prompting them any time they reach the end of that countdown. Which brings us neatly to the next problem: how to encourage your opponents to play faster without seeming like an asshole.

I play a lot of slow and midrangey decks under the EU ruleset, where the time limit is 75 minutes. I rarely go to time, even after restarts (which we also have here), which I attribute to my willingness to simply ask that people play faster. I often make jokes about how slow my deck is, or reference the complexity of the board before kindly prompting my opponent to take an action.

However, If your opponent doesn’t respond to gentle prodding (or responds negatively), it isn’t your prerogative as a player to take things any further; it’s time to involve a judge. Call one over, and ask them to watch your table for slow play. Don’t point fingers, don’t name names, just ask them to watch the table. 

I have never seen anyone get a game loss due to racking up Slow Play warnings. But the threat is there, and physically having a judge breathing down your neck is usually cause enough for even the worst offenders to somehow miraculously remember how to resolve their Breach line at a reasonable speed.

If you are playing a deck like RogIshai or Blue Farm, it is your responsibility to play fast and your right to ask that everyone else does the same. You will not win tournaments with these grindy decks if you are not willing to call your opponents out for playing slowly. Be kind, be firm, call a judge if you need to, and don’t let ums and ahs and three-minute Necropotence cleanups be what stands between you and a trophy.

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You know your deck cold. So why does the long day still beat you? A multi-time Edison champion on the intangibles that decide the final rounds.

By Eric Shen

What’s the secret to winning tournaments? Often I ask myself this question and reminisce about past tournament runs and how I can replicate that success in the future. While most understand success in card games takes both preparation and luck, many do not realize there are many more factors that I believe contribute to successful tournament runs in card games.

First, let me glaze myself a little and show my deep tournament runs in Edison format.

I try to relive these tournaments and go through what went well and what didn’t.

To win tournaments, you have to be LOCKED IN the whole time, often for 12 hours minimum. That’s not easy, and I see many people not use available resources. I want to share what I believe are important to win tournaments and help you achieve success as well. This article will mainly talk about the intangibles that many players do not talk about enough.

I’m not going to go in-depth about this, I could talk about actual tournament preparation forever. I will say, if you are trying to win a large scale tournament, you have to go in thinking you are the best player.

Why out of all the players in the room, why is it that YOU deserve to win? 

There are players that have put hours, days, even years in this game. You better know your deck inside and out, side patterns memorized, game plans and matchup notes etched into your brain. The players that consistently top events are not players that are trying to top, they are trying to win.

Drinking water is huge. I literally go to the bathroom every round to pee, and I’m definitely not seeing the same faces in the bathroom each round. There are many studies out there that show that cognitive function, memory, attention, and task focus all suffer if you are even 1% dehydrated.

I think everyone knows this and yet, everyone (including myself) are constantly guilty of not getting enough sleep before the tournament. Even one hour less of required sleep can lead to significant cognitive performance loss. Try to get to the tournament early so you can try to get to bed early.

I may get meme’d on for this, but this is backed by actual science. I don’t know about you, but I am stressed out at tournaments. In this article titled The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving, it states that “Grandmasters in competition are subjected to a constant torrent of mental stress. That stress, in turn, causes their heart rates to increase, which, in turn, forces their bodies to produce more energy to, in turn, produce more oxygen.” Chess grandmasters are actually focusing on their fitness to increase oxygen supply to the brain during tournaments.

Chess and card games draw many parallels. Both are sitting down across from your opponent and testing your wits against each other. 

I do think being physically fit helps my ability to focus and lock in for long days at tournaments. I hear it all the time during the final few rounds of tournaments. “Oh it’s been a long day.” “Oh the mental fatigue got to him.” I don’t want to be put in the situation where that’s my excuse that I misplayed.

I don’t have any science based evidence for this one. I’m sure you have all heard sayings along the lines of “if you can’t imagine it, you can’t do it.” I think there is definitely some truth behind it. I’ll imagine how can I win the tournament? Am I going to play my best matchup many times? How am I going to beat the new flavor of the month deck? Will I draw broken all tournament? Or will I just not brick often?

My personal favorite is taking my deck and pretending to do an in-depth deck profile. By explaining specifically every card and imagining their purpose, I get a better feel for my deck and feel more locked in for the event. Often times it even leads to me changing my deck and improving it!

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