Most people have heard of Slow Play and know what that means. However, some people think it’s the same thing as Stalling. While the two are often related, they are definitely independent problems with very different outcomes.

Slow Play is, very simply, taking too long to make game decisions. This is difficult to quantify, and there’s no specific amount of time that automatically counts as Slow Play. Each game state is different in complexity, and each player has a different pace of play. What might be too long in one situation (you’re on the play and you spend 30 seconds deciding which land to play first) may be totally reasonable in another situation (your opponent just cast Living Death and you’re trying to figure out whether an attack makes sense in this new game state). If a judge watching the match determines that a player is spending too much time without making a decision, and a judge’s reminder that a decision needs to be made doesn’t speed the player up, a warning for Slow Play likely in order.

Stalling, on the other hand, has a more problematic element to it. In order for Stalling to occur, the player must be doing it intentionally. Stalling can mean purposely taking too long to make decisions because that player won the first game and wants the second game to end in a draw (and a corresponding match win for the player) due to the clock running out. It could mean the game score is at 1-1, and a player in a losing position decides to spend extra time in order to end the match in a draw instead of a loss.

Sometimes, Stalling is completely independent of Slow Play. In either of the above situations, if a player who has been playing quickly during the whole match suddenly “relaxes” the pace of play when time is running out, that could be Stalling. Perhaps what routinely took the player 3 seconds to do now routinely takes 10 seconds to do. While 10 seconds might normally be reasonable for that decision, and it isn’t necessarily Slow Play, the fact that the sudden change in pace of play coincides with the clock running low means an investigation for Stalling may be justified. If Stalling is determined to be the appropriate infraction, the penalty is Disqualification.

The reason Stalling is a Very Bad Thing is that we want players to play the game of Magic, not to play the “clock game.”

Today’s Tournament Tip written by
Josh Stansfield, Level 2 judge from Orange, CA