Curryman's Meta-Amalgam Tourney!

Originally posted by beatboks
?????????????

Leo is in the draw to face Abhi as i read it, if I beat Sin I face chip guy, and the winner of that ( likely Chip Guy) faces the looser of Digi / PG) The winner of whom faces the winner of the match between Charlotte and ID and the winner of Abhi and Leo.....

huh, bro, i'm out. and just so people don't think i was bs'ing about what i said:

curry confirms in this thread that what i did was ALLOWED:

Originally posted by curryman
Like I just explained through PMs now, all of the stuff that has been allowed has been allowed for a reason. The stuff that might seemingly be inconsistent with the rules, has already been thoroughly discussed and explained in PM....

- I have made no decision without carefully considering them first.

here is one (of no less than FOUR pm's that again confirms that my planned WAS ALLOWED and explained to curry's satisfaction therefore i would NOT NEED TO CHANGE MY STRATEGY, something i would have been willing to do:

curryman wrote on Jul 28th, 2013 08:35 AM:
You explained it very well, and you won't need to change your post.

Thank you.

I'll inform PG of my decision, and try to convey it in a way that's satisfactory to him, without revealing your strategy/weakness.

and beyond that, here is PG himself--in the MATCH--acknowledging that, while he may disagree with curry's decision, he accepted it and moved on:

Originally posted by leonidas
recapping: i planned for everything he did. his attempts to have my amalgam and plan tossed out failed.

Originally posted by psycho gundam
Well let us go over that, then.

now, in light of ALL that, go ahead and re-read the first paragraph of delph's vote in particular and tell me any of you wouldn't feel the same way i do about this. it's.....unbelievable, and like i said, feels utterly misleading. factor in judge comments/allusions about what should or shouldn't have been allowed in the DRAFT in regards to mind/power/body distinctions, erroneous assumptions about the nature of powers and abilities and simply making pronouncements outside of purview, and well, yeah. sorry folks, like i said, i'm not up for this type of outside the character/battle "argumentation" or for defending things that have been blatantly ruled upon LONG AGO by a higher authority in this thing. judges had a right to disagree with curry's decision, but should have still needed to rule based on his decision--ie, under the assumption that everything i did was LEGAL. rules were/have been instituted to ensure things were NOT going to be repeated, but that is as far as it should have gone. someone might as well have said in the beatboks match that well, he lost, but, since he wanted jared stevens and i think he should have been allowed, well, i'll give boks the win because stevens should have been allowed and he would have won with him. perhaps a slight over-exaggeration, but you get my point.

i've been in a LOT of tourneys. i've been party to some odd decisions that i've privately disagreed--strenuously--with, but i've never been a part of something like this. it really is incomprehensible to me and i cannot work up the desire to carry on in this, knowing that there is now doubt cast, unfairly IMO, on everything i had assumed to be solid.

anyway, best of luck beatboks. i'm pulling for YOU man!! 😄

Originally posted by leonidas
judges had a right to disagree with curry's decision, but should have still needed to rule based on his decision--ie, under the assumption that everything i did was LEGAL.

I would've gladly done that if I was asked to.

Originally posted by leonidas
i've been in a LOT of tourneys. i've been party to some odd decisions that i've privately disagreed--strenuously--with, but i've never been a part of something like this. it really is incomprehensible to me and i cannot work up the desire to carry on in this, knowing that there is now doubt cast, unfairly IMO, on everything i had assumed to be solid.

I understand your disappointment and I really wanted to address your comment because I think it's implicit in me taking responsability of my vote. But frankly I don't see any good thing coming out of it, sorry if you felt the decision was unfair. There wasn't as much room for manouvering for us.

Yeah, sorry Leo. For clarifications sake, however, I'd like to point out that Curry messed up in posting my judgement and cut off the first portion of it in copy pasting it (not sure if intentional or by mistake). Here's my entire vote:

Ok.

After reading through the Leo vs Gundam match, I've come to the following judgement:

1. In reviewing the match and reading through the tournament rules, I find multiple parts of Leo's prep and plan illegal. For example, in the rules (Step 2; Power Limitations) it clearly states that multiplying/duplicating is illegal [rule 3] and that time manipulation is illegal [rule 6]. If I'm reading Leo's plan correctly he's intending to create 3 temporal duplicates of himself:

when diabolik returns from the BLEED--only seconds after having entered it--with his temporal duplicates, we are scattered around the perimeter of the city. EVA will have told us exactly where pg's guy is, as well as what his plan entails. when the first diabolik returns, he immediately casts a MISDIRECTION. now, for those who don't know, fantomex's misdirections are.... amazing. his misdirect has NEVER failed. ever. certain enormously strong characters have broken it after varying lengths of time, but the only time it has ever been no-sold was against ENTIRELY robotic minds. that is not the case here, obviously, since my opponent has the very LIVING mind of tony stark.... here is a great example of the effectiveness of the MISDIRECT against, of all things--a CELESTIAL SHIP!"

he fooled a living piece of celestial technology. that feat is ridiculous and is very analogous to what he'd be facing here--a piece of tech with a living mind. only the tech is nowhere NEAR as advanced as celestial tech. not, clearly, that it would matter if it was.... and recall--that was BEFORE i upgraded his misdirect to uber levels. so, upon returning, the first diabolik to arrive casts the MISDIRECT and my opponent sees EVA and me rising from the ground directly in front of him, getting ready to launch an attack. like ship, even if his surrounding tech is telling him i'm NOT THERE, it doesn't matter to tony: PART OF THE MISDIRECT IS MAKING HIM SEE THAT HIS OWN TECH IS TELLING HIM I'M IN FRONT OF HIM! once he attacks, the 3 temporal clones all enact the best countermeasure to eliminate my opponent. could be 3 separate NUKES

Now, per Step 4; Rule 6, one independent construct, which must be created during battle, is allowed, but I think the means by which Leo accomplished creating multiple copies of himself [temporal duplication] would be illegal per Step 2; Rule 6 [time manipulation being banned], as well as it being achieved via self BFR (leaving the battlefield to enter The Bleed). Best case scenario Leo'd be limited to only one construct per rule, and the means by which he created this duplicate, IMO, is against the rules, so I'm proceeding in my ruling as if Leo had zero duplicates.

2. Misdirection - the misdirection ability is a power that Fantomex has which is based on his being a techno-organic being. It's one of his powers. If we're assuming that Fantomex's misdirection power comes along with his mind into Jamie Reyes' body (effectively making Jamie a form of a telepath), that power would likely be susceptible/negated by the neutralizer (the Beetle armor, possibly, wouldn't be neutralized, but Jamie/Fantomex's telepathy would be. Given that in the scans Bucky was effected, I'm leaning towards Jamie being effected as well). If this power is not telepathic and is a result of some other ability that Fantomex possesses due to being cybernetic it might not come along with his mind at all.

Based on the above, my vote is for Psycho Gundam because his plan of bringing the power neutralizer into the battlefield, while hilariously simple, is a solid trump card. Despite how feasible the remainder of Leo's plan could be (the legal parts) he wouldn't be able to pull most of it off while powerless and debilitated (per the scans Psycho Gundam presented the neutralizer paralyzing Jaime, who has Fantomex's "telepathy", and the scarab grafted into his body, is feasible because he would apparently be just as vulnerable as Bucky was since Bucky was taken down by the neutralizer despite having no powers other than a cybernetic arm) and the portions of Leo's plan regarding the temporal duplicates being disregarded due to the rules [time manipulation rule, no duplication rule, independent construct rule]. IMO, the Misdirection power might be unavailable as well due to Fantomex not being the power or body pick, and possibly working against Leo in this match as, assuming this is a telepathic power gained by Fantomex's mind, it'd be vulnerable to and neutralized by Gundam's tech, and if it wasn't a property of Fantomex's mind, he wouldn't have access to it to begin with. There's also the issue of the fact that, as Psycho Gundam pointed out, Leo is trying to have Jamie's single human brain (body pick) perform all the tasks that Fantomex's cybernetic brains are capable of in his own body, and I don't find that feasible as while Fantomex's psyche goes into Jamie's body, Jamie's body isn't nearly as advanced as Fantomex's, so the processing power wouldn't be there, and downloading and processing all of that info in Jamie's brain in less than 30 seconds seems unlikely.

Judge's Vote: Psycho Gundam
------------------------------------------------

I know you dislike the ruling outright, but I at least want my stance to be seen in it's entirety.

I should have my writeup in tomorrow, for a Wednesday start, as planned.

With luck, we can move past the legality of stuff. We're all at least one match in, so the remaining matches should be more traditional.

While I think that the legality issues we had we're mostly because of miscommunication more than anything else, the PG vs leo match got me thinking that I really don't want any of the participants to address curryman in order to confirm the legality of their strategy. There are several reasons for that, and only the communication issues came up in this past match.

In general, I think coming with a free "judges have to accept this" card, it's against the spirit of the match, because you're not defending your points in front of the judges and your opponents don't get to answer, you don't spend posts on developping, etc. This is almost like a pre-debate that gives an unfair advantage for those who thought about asking for a ruling. Not only leo but Digi also came up with a similar argument, and they are among the most crafty participants in the tourney, and they can and will push that advantage to the fullest. I understand that since they are putting so much work on the tourney they want to be sure everything will work. But if you're using a strategy so unconventional it needs checking, you already know there is some risk involved and you have the option of using something else entirely. I don't know, maybe I haven't considered everything, but some input for participants could be interesting.

So, who's facing me in my next match and when would it take place?

I can see why Psycho won this, and this is not JUST "legal-illegal" issue.
If the constructs are not independent "temporal after-images", created as side effect of Bleed port, then they should behave like those.
And at this point debate turns from "illegal" (with some craftiness the same trick could have been repeated by any character teleporting through dimensions with different time flow) to "possible-impossible" aka "why attempt to detonate ALL three chrono-clones at the same time will result in time paradox" and "why, by the very mechanics of the trick, having all three in roughly the same place results in the very same paradox".
Bucky's example could have been pushed better since Leo insisted that Fantomex' misdirection power is of cybernetic origin but NOT a part of an armor.

Had PG debated like that, this would have been much better. Instead it turned into "lawlz it's illegal" instead "it has some problems with its internal logic and logistics, like, massive ones". That is how I would have debated in the same situation.

From what I understood Leo was told not "OK, this is totally 1000% solid strategy, now go whip this pussy ass", but "this is plausible (displacement via teleportation) and technically not independent clones but there are some problems with that that may require to be defended in actual debate". If it's former then I may understand Leo. If it's latter... I fail to understand him.
The problem with implants in this tourney is slightly headscratching, though. I was allowed to have Apocalypse implants-powered Polaris under "powers" and then cases were made for borderline between all THREE categories (Dark Angel and Fantomex)...but whatever.
I myself was told that I could claim Zachary Zatara for both mind and powers, say, since his magic ability is inborn and not learned skill.

Beh, I think we all agree that PG can't debate sh_t 😖hifty:

Originally posted by Bentley
Beh, I think we all agree that PG can't debate sh_t 😖hifty:

Anyways, I sympathize with Leo in this situation, but I can see how the route of attack which would not have turned into legality debacle leads to the same result. In my model above, at least.

Originally posted by Bentley
While I think that the legality issues we had we're mostly because of miscommunication more than anything else, the PG vs leo match got me thinking that I really don't want any of the participants to address curryman in order to confirm the legality of their strategy. There are several reasons for that, and only the communication issues came up in this past match.

In general, I think coming with a free "judges have to accept this" card, it's against the spirit of the match, because you're not defending your points in front of the judges and your opponents don't get to answer, you don't spend posts on developping, etc. This is almost like a pre-debate that gives an unfair advantage for those who thought about asking for a ruling. Not only leo but Digi also came up with a similar argument, and they are among the most crafty participants in the tourney, and they can and will push that advantage to the fullest. I understand that since they are putting so much work on the tourney they want to be sure everything will work. But if you're using a strategy so unconventional it needs checking, you already know there is some risk involved and you have the option of using something else entirely. I don't know, maybe I haven't considered everything, but some input for participants could be interesting.

I'm not sure this all holds up. Neither leo nor myself tried to get anything past the judges. Leo actually brought the issues up himself; he didn't wait for others to find them. And after showing all the evidence, he asked if it was going to be allowed. The answer was yes. Curry wants the judges to have autonomy, and I get that, but I can also see how it seems like a breach of trust to leo. It wasn't pushing the limits so much as it was something that could be interpreted one of two ways. We made sure it wasn't against the rules before proceeding. Of course we could have gone a different route, but we checked repeatedly, and would have done differently if the decision had been different.

The same thing happened in my first match, though with a different outcome. I posted all relevant scans, asked curry if Angel's powers would be considered equipment or body, and the answer was equipment. In my case, the judges agreed, but I also thought it never should have gotten to that point, because we had all already been over it during drafts. As with leo, I have about four different occurrences of it being declared legal, and we also discussed the issue openly during drafts with no objections. I think it's a tricky precedent, because it almost means that we should have been ignoring potential rules breaches during drafts so that we could bring them up later. Because I was painfully open about my picks during drafts in an effort to avoid this, yet my first match was riddled with accusations of cheating. Abhi even went so far as to say I was overtly lying, misleading, cheating, etc. when everything I had tried to do was the opposite (we've since reconciled though). I understood that it could be seen one of two ways, but what I couldn't abide was the idea - implied or directly stated - that I was being knowingly duplicitous. That's the stuff that destroys tourneys for me...not rulings, per se, but the mud slinging that can come from ambiguity and competitiveness.

In leo's case, even after curry approved his strategy multiple times, curry himself seemed to doubt the legality of it, which is perplexing on many levels. I think if this were going to happen, curry should have said that he found it acceptable, but that both he and other judges could be convinced of anything in-match. Because the rulings on legality have ended up not being actual rulings, in either of our cases, which makes our position more precarious and goes against what we thought we understood. "Yes, it's legal" has become "It might be legal...let's see what happens." And if we had known that from the start, we probably would have done something different.

Thing is, though, it's not deliberate on curry's part. It's his first time hosting and he's trying to do a good job, and has succeeded on many fronts. This is the first item to cause true controversy, and he's also not the first host to encounter this particular type of debate, but I think we can all see the rationale that led to it.

Originally posted by Bentley
While I think that the legality issues we had we're mostly because of miscommunication more than anything else, the PG vs leo match got me thinking that I really don't want any of the participants to address curryman in order to confirm the legality of their strategy. There are several reasons for that, and only the communication issues came up in this past match.

In general, I think coming with a free "judges have to accept this" card, it's against the spirit of the match, because you're not defending your points in front of the judges and your opponents don't get to answer, you don't spend posts on developping, etc. This is almost like a pre-debate that gives an unfair advantage for those who thought about asking for a ruling. Not only leo but Digi also came up with a similar argument, and they are among the most crafty participants in the tourney, and they can and will push that advantage to the fullest. I understand that since they are putting so much work on the tourney they want to be sure everything will work. But if you're using a strategy so unconventional it needs checking, you already know there is some risk involved and you have the option of using something else entirely. I don't know, maybe I haven't considered everything, but some input for participants could be interesting.

i'll disagree with this, though i know what you're trying to say. in every tourney i've ever taken part in, there have been issues that required direct ruling by the host. as host, i recall having had to make several crazy calls regarding what was or wasn't going to be considered legal (like i'm sure all other hosts had to do) and i remember laughing at some of the things people WANTED me to pass as ok. the reason these issues need clearing up outside the thread (like i did regarding pg's body) is simple--it allows the debate to focus on the characters and strategies as opposed to veering off into legal/illegal debates. there IS a time for pre-debate, but it's not at all unfair because it's open to everyone. if someone didn't think to ask about a rule (btw, there was no rule about self-bfr at the outset of the match, and it should not have been ASSUMED to exist as all tourneys can and should be different) then it's no less unfair than if someone didn't do their homework and forgot to ask about a really good draftable character. we can't be faulted because someone else simply didn't think to ask questions. 😬 in past tourneys there was some crazy debate regarding characters and mesh limits well before the tourney began. that is NOT to say that natural inconsistencies can't be brought up but (i have an example i was going to use against someone for example) but arguing what ACTUALLY constitutes mind/brain/powers and what was allowed in each should have been worked out long ago and no longer be up for debate as those things were ruled on, discussion time allowed, and passed.

at least that is how it has always been.

Originally posted by Charlotte DeBel
From what I understood Leo was told not "OK, this is totally 1000% solid strategy, now go whip this pussy ass", but "this is plausible (displacement via teleportation) and technically not independent clones but there are some problems with that that may require to be defended in actual debate". If it's former then I may understand Leo. If it's latter... I fail to understand him.
The problem with implants in this tourney is slightly headscratching, though. I was allowed to have Apocalypse implants-powered Polaris under "powers" and then cases were made for borderline between all THREE categories (Dark Angel and Fantomex)...but whatever.
I myself was told that I could claim Zachary Zatara for both mind and powers, say, since his magic ability is inborn and not learned skill.

it was ok'd specifically because they were NOT clones. nor were they independent constructs. they were ME. all 3. i just existed in slightly (microseconds) different timeframes. i wasn't using time manip ON my opponent. the constructs were NOT constructs they were ME and there was no definitive rule about self bfr. it has a natural and exploitable flaw though that careful reading of the scans would have shown.

btw i only thought of the strat because someone had already brought up the viability of self-bfr so i was like, hey what about this? NO ONE was more surprised that it was allowed than me, (and again, i had other options) trust me, but once it WAS allowed--as much as everyone may have disagreed--it should have been considered legal. steps were taken to make sure i couldn't do it again (i wouldn't have time to do so).

you're right about the power/mind/body distinctions though. they were blurry and that is why they needed to be better debated before the tourney to avoid having debate the legality in threads.

Originally posted by Charlotte DeBel
I can see why Psycho won this, and this is not JUST "legal-illegal" issue.
If the constructs are not independent "temporal after-images", created as side effect of Bleed port, then they should behave like those.
And at this point debate turns from "illegal" (with some craftiness the same trick could have been repeated by any character teleporting through dimensions with different time flow) to "possible-impossible" aka "why attempt to detonate ALL three chrono-clones at the same time will result in time paradox" and "why, by the very mechanics of the trick, having all three in roughly the same place results in the very same paradox".
Bucky's example could have been pushed better since Leo insisted that Fantomex' misdirection power is of cybernetic origin but NOT a part of an armor.

Had PG debated like that, this would have been much better. Instead it turned into "lawlz it's illegal" instead "it has some problems with its internal logic and logistics, like, massive ones". That is how I would have debated in the same situation.

lol triple posts ftw!

sorry, don't want to debate this anymore, but thought i'd clarify and leave it at this: you're right--had i blown all 3 of me up i would have killed all of me/paradox etc.... but i blew him up and went ghost so i was fine and the other me's would simply have vanished as they did in the scans.

but my power was never said to be 'cybernetic'. not sure where that came from. his power has been very poorly defined. it may even come partially from eva. i never pushed for misdirect as mind, i just asked if it would fall under mind. at first he said no, then said yeah after checking it out some. i would just have drafted someone else were it ruled illegal, or maybe taken it as a power. it really never has been explained though but now it would seem it IS mind since the cloned mind gave the new weapon 13 the misdirect power. it is not telepathic though (he himself has been misdirected by a temporal copy) nor is it cybernetic. there is both proof and evidence AGAINST it being a mutant ability, though he isn't actually a mutant but a genetic experiment.

he's awesome, he was risky but lately i've taken to picking characters i think are cool. one of these days maybe it will pay off. sneer

anyway, sorry to bog this down. hopefully more discussion will come before matches and the remaining matches can focus on what they should be focused on.

btw--there is also several examples of his misdirect that do NOT involve any body-swapping at all. a minor point but wanted to throw it out there. lost in all this is pg--he attacked what he thought he should attack and did it well. i disagree with the tactic, but can't argue its effectiveness so good on ya.

Originally posted by leonidas
it was ok'd specifically because they were NOT clones. nor were they independent constructs. they were ME. all 3. i just existed in slightly (microseconds) different timeframes. i wasn't using time manip ON my opponent. the constructs were NOT constructs they were ME and there was no definitive rule about self bfr. it has a natural and exploitable flaw though that careful reading of the scans would have shown.

btw i only thought of the strat because someone had already brought up the viability of self-bfr so i was like, hey what about this? NO ONE was more surprised that it was allowed than me, (and again, i had other options) trust me, but once it WAS allowed--as much as everyone may have disagreed--it should have been considered legal. steps were taken to make sure i couldn't do it again (i wouldn't have time to do so).

you're right about the power/mind/body distinctions though. they were blurry and that is why they needed to be better debated before the tourney to avoid having debate the legality in threads.

PG turned this into legal debacle when he should have been debating time paradox. Hilariously I can see this getting the same result. Or at least making judges come to same conclusion. And Bucky example for implanted stuff.
By the way, Leo, you know this bio-EMP explanation scan. You should have used it.
Also "no time manipulation" rule is rather blurry as it is. Time manipulation may constitute many things - from temporal stasis protective field (this thing IS in the tourney by the way) to time displacement of yourself. Not only obvious time travel, prep extension and freezing opponents in time.
--------
In short, LEO, DEAR, DON'T DROP OUT, one "time paradox" failure and vague reading of rules should not ruin the whole tourney for you.

Originally posted by Digi
I'm not sure this all holds up. Neither leo nor myself tried to get anything past the judges. Leo actually brought the issues up himself; he didn't wait for others to find them. And after showing all the evidence, he asked if it was going to be allowed. The answer was yes. Curry wants the judges to have autonomy, and I get that, but I can also see how it seems like a breach of trust to leo. It wasn't pushing the limits so much as it was something that could be interpreted one of two ways. We made sure it wasn't against the rules before proceeding. Of course we could have gone a different route, but we checked repeatedly, and would have done differently if the decision had been different.

The same thing happened in my first match, though with a different outcome. I posted all relevant scans, asked curry if Angel's powers would be considered equipment or body, and the answer was equipment. In my case, the judges agreed, but I also thought it never should have gotten to that point, because we had all already been over it during drafts. As with leo, I have about four different occurrences of it being declared legal, and we also discussed the issue openly during drafts with no objections. I think it's a tricky precedent, because it almost means that we should have been ignoring potential rules breaches during drafts so that we could bring them up later. Because I was painfully open about my picks during drafts in an effort to avoid this, yet my first match was riddled with accusations of cheating. Abhi even went so far as to say I was overtly lying, misleading, cheating, etc. when everything I had tried to do was the opposite (we've since reconciled though). I understood that it could be seen one of two ways, but what I couldn't abide was the idea - implied or directly stated - that I was being knowingly duplicitous. That's the stuff that destroys tourneys for me...not rulings, per se, but the mud slinging that can come from ambiguity and competitiveness.

In leo's case, even after curry approved his strategy multiple times, curry himself seemed to doubt the legality of it, which is perplexing on many levels. I think if this were going to happen, curry should have said that he found it acceptable, but that both he and other judges could be convinced of anything in-match. Because the rulings on legality have ended up not being actual rulings, in either of our cases, which makes our position more precarious and goes against what we thought we understood. "Yes, it's legal" has become "It might be legal...let's see what happens." And if we had known that from the start, we probably would have done something different.

Thing is, though, it's not deliberate on curry's part. It's his first time hosting and he's trying to do a good job, and has succeeded on many fronts. This is the first item to cause true controversy, and he's also not the first host to encounter this particular type of debate, but I think we can all see the rationale that led to it.

yep. 👆

Originally posted by Charlotte DeBel
I agree. I would have debated it via "time paradox" route aka
A. No way they can be in geographically close place.
B. There is ONE actual nuke. Once it is blown up, in the next Planck unit of time the rest of clones disappear.

PG turned this into legal debacle when he should have been debating time paradox. Hilariously I can see this getting the same result. Or at least making judges come to same conclusion. And Bucky example for implanted stuff.
By the way, Leo, you know this bio-EMP explanation scan. You should have used it.
Also "no time manipulation" rule is rather blurry as it is. Time manipulation may constitute many things - from temporal stasis protective field (this thing IS in the tourney by the way) to time displacement of yourself. Not only obvious time travel, prep extension and freezing opponents in time.
--------
In short, LEO, DEAR, DON'T DROP OUT, one "time paradox" failure and vague reading of rules should not ruin the whole tourney for you.

lol thanks. i thought i was pretty clear in arguing why i thought the drainer wouldn't work but.... and you're right, things were very blurry when i was under the impression they were very clear. i really can't get back into this though. it'd be weird now, and awkward for judges probably. the whole thing just left a sort of bad taste in my mouth. don't worry, if another tourney comes along i'm sure i'll be sucked in again if i have the time. but this one is done for me. good luck to you though. bout time for you to finally win one of these things you know..... 🙂

Originally posted by leonidas
i'll disagree with this, though i know what you're trying to say. in every tourney i've ever taken part in, there have been issues that required direct ruling by the host. as host, i recall having had to make several crazy calls regarding what was or wasn't going to be considered legal (like i'm sure all other hosts had to do) and i remember laughing at some of the things people WANTED me to pass as ok. the reason these issues need clearing up outside the thread (like i did regarding pg's body) is simple--it allows the debate to focus on the characters and strategies as opposed to veering off into legal/illegal debates. there IS a time for pre-debate, but it's not at all unfair because it's open to everyone. if someone didn't think to ask about a rule (btw, there was no rule about self-bfr at the outset of the match, and it should not have been ASSUMED to exist as all tourneys can and should be different) then it's no less unfair than if someone didn't do their homework and forgot to ask about a really good draftable character. we can't be faulted because someone else simply didn't think to ask questions. 😬 in past tourneys there was some crazy debate regarding characters and mesh limits well before the tourney began. that is NOT to say that natural inconsistencies can't be brought up but (i have an example i was going to use against someone for example) but arguing what ACTUALLY constitutes mind/brain/powers and what was allowed in each should have been worked out long ago and no longer be up for debate as those things were ruled on, discussion time allowed, and passed.

at least that is how it has always been.

For me the real problem of discussing about whether a plan is legal or not it's the hard ruling that might come out of it. If you ask for the host to approve your plan so judges must vote as if it was a done deal, you are actually altering the debate pretty drastically before it even begins. I think part of the problem is how zero-risk that stance ends up being, and how it excludes certain key arguments from the debate entirely. Again, I think that it also ended up being the problem here, because if you didn't think you were into a zero-risk situation, you would've handled yourself differently. But I might be considering this from the wrong point of view, I'll try to add it to my Learning curve.

Arguing about mind/brain/powers was entirely out of place, PG should live in shame forever for even bringing that up.

Just to clarify: I get how you get around the independant construct rule -I actually see several ways of doing it using the same tools you brought (your amalgam was dope)-. But I still can't figure out how it was supposed to be something other than time-manipulation, because as far as the rules state, it's simply not allowed in disregard of it's usage on yourself or on the opponent. Feel free to PM me that answer.

well, i'll address your question here simply because it may be pertinent to the rest of the tourney. i believe time manip is viewed in a way similar to matter manip. matter manip can be performed, it simply can't be used offensively against an opponent. time can't be used in anyway to extend prep (that WAS explicitly stated) but i didn't use it offensively against pg (ie--i didn't age him, or make him slow or anything directly offensive) therefore it was ruled that my strategy was legal. once again, no one was more surprised than i was. so great was my surprise that i actually RESENT the scans asking curry--did you really look at these....? i approached it the same way someone might approach entering freezing water. i dipped my toe in and pulled it out thinking no way i'm going in! then as it was made clearer that it would be fine (only i couldn't do it in PREP because of the time manip rule.....) i sort of ease my way into it. by the time i was done discussing it, i was sure it would be beyond refute by pg and by the judges. i can't stress this enough---i did NOT push, at all, to have the strat legalized. i simply asked have tongue-in-cheek based on a post i read fully thinking it would be rejected. had i known it wasn't solid, i'd never have risked it as it WAS risky, as was a lot of my amalgam. which is why i checked so thoroughly throughout this thing.

i still disagree with your stance. judges should be asked to vote on plans/strategies and who debated better. they should NOT be put in a position to decide what is or isn't legal (i've no doubt some of the judges haven't been following the discussion thread (and i wouldn't really expect them to follow all that close as it takes a lot of time to follow closely....) and some may not even have read all the rules--they just read the match and make a decision as they have been asked to do so determining legal/illegal can only lead to issues......) ,nor do i believe a host should act as judge unless there is no alternative. they have too much inside info and it's hard to forget that and focus only on what is debated in the match.

if it would have been known that my strat could be so easily overturned, i would have simply asked for a restart of the match. can't do it now since it's no fair to pg but i would have been amenable to that even. anything really then to simply have my assumptions rendered null and void. it would have been tough enough beating pg without the hassle of having my strat blown out of the water.....