the solution is clear then….everyone HAS to play melee so the number is greater than the joust number and the collusion dilutes itself.XD

papalorax said:

I agree that only awarding first and ignoring 2nd - 4th won't help much.  

But I think we also need to separate different issues.  Premeditated collusion is a completely different issue than someone playing for second in a game where they have mentally assessed that they think it is impossible to get first.  As well, premeditated collusion is different than playing for second when there is no intrinsic value to the tournament points (such as knowing a second place finish will allow for an advancement just as easily as the first place finish).  The decision to play for second place is a tournament or game specific decision based on that specific situation.

People should play for first place until there is no more value to play for first.  Granted, people can assess value differently, but its at least a starting point.

Dobbler said:

Not sure I agree. Were the DQ'd 3 not essentially DQ'd because they were friends and they were accused of premeditated collusion based on that? Does anyone think three people who had never met before the melee and played out the game the same would have been DQ'd?

So I am playing a game, is it collusion to have the attitude - "I want to win but if not me I want my friend to win"? Who would possibly expect people to behave different from that?

What is unfortunate is that many are applying their own preconceived notions of what constitutes "collusion" when in reality there were/are no well-defined definitions of collusion, other than making deals outside the game. Although I can respect Greg trying to prompt a community definition.

Some are saying that bringing a net-decked or meta-developed deck is collusion because it does better than it does on its own, or because it creates an NPE experience; I think that's a bit of a cop-out, and I think that perhaps people are just looking to apply their own personal value judgment. Most people have no problem with players net-decking in joust, and if they do it's probably in principle, not because of it's end result. If people did net-deck, then I think it's safe to say that that would not garner such harsh judgment; it would merely serve as an indicator to FFG that a certain build or certain cards are broken. So why then is it all of a sudden a problem in melee? That leads me to think that the melee format in itself is the problem all things being equal. 

However, I'm fine with saying that these "behavioral" type rules are organically, even collectively defined and can be re-defined, just like FFG's errata or restricted list. But retroactively making value judgments and condemning players for something that has NEVER been considered anything more than "weird" (as Rings put it), is folly and fruitless, and only served to propagate inter-meta hatred and hard feelings.

There are a couple different issues here:

1) People are riled up because bringing the same deck "hurts the spirit of the game"? Fine, let FFG create a rule that members of the same meta can't bring decks that are more than 75% the same. (I don't really recommend this btw). I don't have any problem with this, and it's not just because I'm in the DC meta if you're looking for a reason to dismiss my opinion. If there are combos that are broken, FFG should errata it. Again, people don't moralize on a player bringing the Stark maester plot combo deck to joust; FFG just puts it on the restricted list. End of discussion. I expect the Engineer to be placed on the melee restricted soon, or even banned, which is a shame since this is the first time I recall anyone even talking about it as a serious card.

2) People are questioning to what extent it is "legal" to discuss and use table placement as a tool for deal-making and table-talk. And in what situations, or at what specific point it is okay to leverage it. People are just speculating as to "what FFG was trying to say". Was it because it was the final table? Was it because they thought Erick should have only been trying to take first? Was it because Dennis should have even made a deal with table placement as a bargaining chip? That's is a good question.

This is just a tricky a situation. I think we collectively NEED an explanation from FFG so that this doesn't devolve into "my definition of collusion is more right (more extreme? more nuanced?) than yours so that should be the standard upon which we judge all events past and present." Heck, we can't even successfully come to a conclusion about why FFG DQ'd them.

EDIT: Just to conclude, I think if we come away from this with better collusion rules, or at least a list of behaviors to be cautious of, that would be a good thing for the community.

 But Dan, this wasn't a "net-decking" situation.  So lets please not try to muddy the waters by comparing it to that.

This is not a "same deck" issue.  This is a predetermination issue.  Its a recognition by a group of players that this deck absolutely builds on itself, then a decision to convince the entire meta of players to use it to increase all of their chances on winning by increasing the odds of sitting at a table with a friendly metamate using the same exponential deck.

I had conversations with 6 different players from that metagroup using that deck.  While I appreciate you and twn2dn coming on here and trying to defend them, they admitted they were well aware of the interactive nature of this deck when played with a metamate using the same deck.  And they admitted there was a decision to mass play the deck.

I think trying to justify the decision to DQ three players at the final table is like trying to justify MLBs ban of steroids because of Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire.  There was much more in the DQ decision making than just the final game including early round history and a warning that was issued.

The bigger question is this, if a warning was issued after round 1, why wasn't an FFG employee watching any table where two of these decks from that metagroup played?  Why was it allowed to perpetuate for 5 rounds?  Unfortunately, because of lack of quantity of judges, there is no way a judge could sit and watch each and every table.  But when it came time for the final table, the judges were there and watching, and they felt (in their opinion) that the warning had been ignored and choose to enforce the DQ.

 i dont understand what the warning was supposed to even mean. we warn you to what……not use the engineer at all? not use the scourge at all? dont use it more than three times? dont strip both other players at the table before challenges start? are we then forced to allow a challenge to succeed even though we have the cards on the table to stop it just because we were warned? i would've just rather been dq'd on the spot in round 2 rather waiting until I didn't heed the vague warning that was never issued directly to me and waded into the blurry waters of the river collusion at 3 o'clock in the morning.

papalorax said:

Nah, it was the last round of Swiss and Greg had 2nd and 3rd and I had 2nd and 4th for records. Something close to that anyway. Either way it had gone, there was effectively 0 chance that either of us would have gone on to the top 16.

*shrug*
I guess it's just a difference in personalities. We attempted to get everyone in our meta to agree to not work against each other in 2009 and you can probably get a half dozen different stories about how often we turned on each other and accidently gave the game to one of the other players. Or there's this game where Greg wouldn't take an in game deal to end it right then and there so that we could get food and whatnot and proceeded to lock me out of the game for the next two turns. Or MN in 2011 at the final table of melee where I stabbed Greg in the back with a Scurvy Cutthroat so that I could push for a win myself, despite knowing that Greg was far more likely to be well positioned for overall champ come Joust the next day.

At the end of the day, it seems like we wind up having too much of an individualistic drive to win. Maybe it's our huge egos, who knows? We consistently crush each other, I bitch about losing, and then we move on. On the other hand, the last couple of years seem to show that the DC/Wis. guys at large don't consider it an individual game in the same manner that others do.

Dobbler said:

I'm not sure I can entirely support the "state of undress" rule. Otherwise, spot on.

Dobbler said:

~The water can't get any less clear. ;)

Okay, fine. I think the comparison is valid because the only difference is intent, which becomes mired in assumptions. But my net-decking comparison aside, I just wanted to provide some caution to people trying to apply their own perspective of collusion to this situation, when it's really only FFG's to make, and we're just guessing at this point as to why. (This is my years of working with college students in student affairs coming out. :P) I'm not my intent to defend them; they can do that themselves if they wish. So I'll pipe down so that doesn't come across. Ultimately if FFG decides that bringing the same deck is collusion, I'm sure we'll follow the rules. I just don't want any new rules to be retroactively applied as a moral justification that "we're all evil."

EDIT: Sorry, just to comment on Kennon's post: I absolutely think that each member of DC/WI is out to win it. I certainly am. That being said, there have been times when arbitrary decisions have to be made, such as Morgan's decision about who made second at her table at Gencon. In those situations, the decision is rarely (as it was for her) just arbitrary if friends/spouses/bros are involved. 

BTW, how would melee work if it went to double or triple elimination (in the sense that you don't get 1st 2 or 3 times, you're cut), instead of swiss. That way everyone is shooting for first, yes?

 Perhaps melee winner could be awarded to meta rather than players. Points could perhaps be normalized to account for number of meta-mates present. Much better IMO than fighting the inherent team aspects of the format and trying to regulate motive and intent.

I believe someone already said that if points only went to the first player at the table it would be worse.  If 2 friends/meta/spouse were at the same table and one of them realized they could not win they could push for their friend to get first place at all costs.

Greg, I appreciate and respect your attempt to explain why FFG ruled there was collusion. But I don't agree. If one follows the logic, then it seems inevitable that we will condemn players for playing the same decks, regardless of their intent.

Several personal accounts and tourney reports have explained that the DC players believed their Martell build was the best deck possible. They state, and I believe them, that they ran this build for its overall strength, not because it was powerful in the infrequent situation in which two meta mates play at the same table. Whether or not that deck had a potentially NPE combo when paired with other similar decks seems to have been a minor consideration, if it was a consideration at all.

As you know, I ran a variant of this build at GenCon, and you may remember that I placed 10th in the melee (and placed third overall at GenCon). I can attest to the power level of the Hellholt Engineer + Scorched Earth + Brimstone in melee, with or without other Martell players at the table. I think it also relevant to consider that Erick consistently runs the tightest decks possible. I suspect he would never have chosen this deck had he felt it was the best deck ONLY when paired with a metamate.

I would also remind you that this is hardly the first time the DC meta has brought the same decks to a tournament. This seems to be regular practice for them in melee and joust. So I think it extremely problematic to assume intent to collude simply because DC players all had the same deck, even if there happened to be an NPE combo when compared with other similar decks. This was the best melee deck in the environment, and just as DC players all play identical builds in joust, they played identical builds in melee.

Finally, I would point out that in the finals game, Erick never had a Hellholt Engineer in play (I think..my memory of the game is hazy now), so any explanation for his disqualification that involves his use of broken combos is inaccurate. But even if he did have the combo in play (let's say my memory has failed me), that has never been nor should it be grounds for disqualification. Broken combos are grounds for errata/restriction of the cards in question after the tourney.

Greg, if I understand your argument correctly, we should ask players from the same meta to intentionally play weaker decks and go out of their way to avoid broken combos, while smaller metas or players without metas can play anything they want?

Again, I will restate for the record (since we've begun a new thread and I haven't mentioned it here) that I have no personal stake in who wins, and frankly the DC players are more "rivals" to the NYC meta than anything else. Us New Yorkers typically appreciate stomping on them when we have the chance. That said, I think the line of reasoning presented in this thread is problematic. At best, enforcing collusion rules based on the decks people bring will cause confusion; at worst, it will result in many more charges of collusion at future tournaments, further eroding the reputation of the melee format.

As i said in another thread, the problem is the Low number of people in the melee vs the high % of metamates/friends in that really organized meta.

The solution has to be something on the line of changing the format of the tourney (not the rules of melee though). Something like randomly placing people on 4 teams whenever they are registered and awarding equal points to the whole team at the end. Still there has to be a champion for the trophie, but it wouldn't matter for the overal.

Then your team points + your points in the joust make the overal points. 

Also, don't place people from the same team in the same table, just rotate the people…..team A, B, C, D best players from 1st round play against each other and down. The good thing is that you could innovate in the teambuilding on the knowledge of the players, since the judges/organizers are familiar with the best players so they could balance it. Or they could select four captainsand then they could draft…..and the best part would be the people the captains don't know, since they are a sort of wildcard!!

Ok, now i'm just throwing ideas….the objective would be to detriment the friend interaction in every table.

dcdennis said:

I agree that if FFG had wanted to send a statement that Metas that decide to bring a deck that operates in concert with a copy of itself will not be tolerated, then they should have brought the hammer down and DQ'd from the get go. Doing it in the final round sent the wrong message, with the same result. Now it looks like they are picking on them or as one poster put it "looking for a reason" to DQ them. Had the entire meta been DQ'd from the start you don't have that problem, and the message is sent.

As for the message, meh, agree with it or not. In the end, it's FFG's rules (subjective as they are) you have to abide by them. Don't piss them off by trying to flaunt your intellegence or craftiness or try to embarrass them by overtly and blatently planning to break design flaws at major tournaments and you won't get DQ'd.

In the end, you build the deck you think you can win by yourself with, and you play that. It's called sportsmanship. It's called pride. It's called being respected and not being called cheaters; because now, that's what you are going to be known as. And no one will want to play a melee game if your Meta is involved.

In the end, while your Meta may have thought it was being cute, or clever, or that it was its job to expose the brokeness of the cards/deck, you ended up damaging the credibility of the melee format, the game, and the community.

Call it collusion or call it whatever you want, in my opinion (which is worth bits in cyberspace) you all deserved to be DQ'd and so did every other meta-mate who agreed to play the same deck. There is no one best deck. They could have come up with other competitive decks that could have won on their own, you all conciously chose not to do that, and this is the result.

I don't think you need any more rules than what is already in place.. let what happend to the DC meta be a warning to every other meta out there. You've been put on notice.. don't. do. this. ever.

Can't get much clearer than that, in my book.

Twn2dn said:

You offer this up as if that should make it okay, when it doesn't.

An entire Meta bringing the same deck to a Joust tournament isn't as detrimental as all of them bringing a deck to a Melee. You and I both know they are two very different animals and you cannot use that excuse equally for both formats.

And I think it's a stretch that you want us to believe that more than 10 people all thought that deck was the best deck, and no one thought anything else was better (especially since Rick has already pointed out that he would have prefered to play a different deck and only played this one because everyone else was).

I'm not saying FFG should restrict the decks a meta can bring, that's silly. But they can make it clear they prefer that not to happen, and if it does and that results in what they feel is a negative impact on the experience for all players and they want to call it collusion, then what are you going to do to stop them. 

They put the community on notice, and it looks like the DC meta (and everyone else) will have to branch out into multiple decks instead of just one from here on out (at least in Melee).