Just want to ask about what would the ruling be if your opponent plays too fast?

Player A is the active player and he mentions he is about to attack an objective with X,Y, and Z. Player B wanted to play Force Stasis on X, preventing him from attacking this phase.

Is it perfectly legal to ask Player A to back up one step and allow Player B to play an action before he annouces any engagement or does Player B have to tell Player A to tell him when a certain phase is about to begin and so forth?

Player A should be giving Player B the time to perform actions during the player action windows. If he is jumping ahead then yes say something to Player A. 

This is subjective and not incredibly helpful, but if they are not allowing the other player enough time, then yes. If they are trying to rush to get ahead, that is not a good thing for anyone.

I appreciate the comments, I do also agree with the above. Getting players to slow down can be tough when they have a clock on them, and I wanted to make sure that my thought process was universal.

Your opponent can not skip past action windows.  If he does so you are fully within the rules to force him to rewind and take your action.

Had a sticky situation happen in a tournament last weekend.

Player A began his Deployment phase and played Ben Kenobi.

Player B asked to go back to the draw phase action window.

Player A said ok, then Player B goes to play "Interrogation" Where Player A gets upset and says that isn't fair

I asked if they are mentioning their phases and so forth like they should in which they did not

So what is the right call here? What would you guys do in this case?

Rogue 4 said:

If it was me I would not allow it as the only reason Player B did that is because they saw Obi-Wan come out. Player B should have spoken up before the Deployment Phase and Player A deployed a card. He could have done the same thing sooner and still have been able to do it.

If Player A had not played a card I would have allowed it.

good to hear. That is what i did, and reminded them to say there actions,phases etc the rest of the games.

Toqtamish said:

Here is the problem with that inteprtation, often people aren't annoucing change in phase.  Therefore the only way that the inactive player is clued into the fact that the active player has advanced the phase is by the active player taking an action approriate to the new phase., deploying a card, declaring an attack, commiting to the force.  The inactive player (for instance)has no idea if you are going to declare more attacks or not, until the other player starts commiting character to the force.  How do you kknow the deployment phase is over if your opponent doesn't annouce it other then when they start declaring attacks?

Because advancing the turn is on the active player, it is also on the active player to annouce such things to his opponent, so that his opponent can play actions at the appropriate time.  If he doesn't then he has to allow his opponent to rewind the game, as you simply can't fast play through phases to deny action.  Yes in that situation the opponent gained additional information, but that was solely the fault of the active player not annoucing the advance in phase.  You have to give your opponent the chance to pass or play in ever action window, if you don't and they gain additional info because you didn't then that is frankly your fault not thiers

You have to allow the Interrogation to be played, but you should warn both players to annouce when they are moving past the end of phase.

something i did when i played MTG was to tell my opponent "let me know when you have finished x phase" or "i have an action at the begining of x phase"  this makes sure that such window is not skipped.  plus, you can also use this to mess with your opponents head.

jhorphear said:

Old CCG players unite! I do a similar thing, even if I don't have anything to play I'll say "I may have an action at x phase, please let me know when we're there".  When he does I might say "hmm ok, I'm good for now, pass" or something.  If you do this regularly, it can make your opponent nervous and not give away when you really do want to play something, while also giving you the opportunity to do so in the event that you do.

+1 and stuff

I agree with ScottieATF 100% as well.  The active player could have said something like "moving to Deployment unless you have something" prior to the whole thing and avoided the issue.  Had he, his opponent could have said " wait, have something in draw window" without causing the contention.  If he didn't then the active player would have been within his right to say "I gave you the opportunity, sorry I won't go back" if he tried to pull that after the Obi was played.  The responding player could have also done what was suggested above, and that would have helped, but it wasn't on him to control the active player's turn.

Yeah Scottie I agree with you completely, and what I did is what you said, i gave a warning. I did not let the inactive player the opportunity to play the said card because there were only 3 people in the tournament and we all agreed it was a bad situation.

Since then though we all have gotten very used to declaring which phase, passing on actions, and other moves needed to allow this not to happen again. And yes if the situation ever comes up again, I would rule the approapiate way. I think there is still a slight learning curve going on and once more games are played it will be a lot smoother.

There's a related issue here that I haven't heard come up. At the moment, we often see people just wait until the active player tries to move on before playing their action. In essence, they're saying, "I want to play this card at the end of the phase." However, the rules, as I understand them, don't accomodate that sentiment.

Let's say it's your  deployment phase. Your opponent wants to play some event at the end of your deployment phase, say Force Choke to combo with Darth Vader. You play a unit as an action, let's say Twi'lek Loyalist. It's now your opponent's turn to play an action. He chooses to pass since there's only 1 hp on the table, and he'd like to deal maximum damage if he can. He chooses to pass. Now you choose to pass instead of play more units. Suddenly, the action window has closed because both players have passed consecutively. Your opponent now has to wait for the next action window.

In other words, a player can't wait until his/her opponent is done before playing X because they would have to pass until the opponent if finished and when the opponent finishes by passing, two consecutive passes have occurred, closing the action window (pg 24 of core rules).

At the moment, this timing is seemingly trivial, but I think it could potentially have ramifications later on.

Budgernaut said:

I think this is probably one of the reasons there's an action window at the beginning of the Conflict phase, before an engagement can be declared.  You could also think of it as an "after all deployments have been finalized" window.