"Conceding at instant speed"

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
At some point last week, I watched this video. The things is rather long, but it's basically a discussion on things that the speakers believe EDH players should stop doing. Some of them are references to gameplay mistakes that they perceive as being common, and others are general etiquette things. I think that overall, their ideas are a mixed bag. But that's not important. You can watch the whole video if you like, but the part that caught my interest was their complaint about players conceding "at instant speed."

While I imagine that gameplay-affecting concessions have been frustrating for some players in some scenarios, I think this is actually the first time I've seen it mentioned in the context of admonishment, of "Don't do that." My first reaction was to simply disagree with the guys in the video, but I don't want to dismiss the notion out-of-hand. So I was wondering what others thought about it...

In my case, I haven't seen much of this in EDH anyway, but it's definitely happened in other multiplayer settings. Actually, I think the majority of the (gameplay-impacting) instances of "instant speed" concessions I observed were with the card Spirit Link.


Not lifelink, because it didn't exist yet. I vividly remember that Spirit Link was enormously popular when I was younger, and it was reprinted in 4th Edition and 5th Edition (as well as some later core sets), so it was readily available and showed up in most casual multiplayer games I was in. I have fond memories of those games in the late 1990's, and I think I've got a bit of an instinctive response against the commentary in the video because of the implication that my friends were wrong to be doing what they were doing, not a in a rules sense, but in terms of some decorum we never knew existed.

Honestly, when I was directly affected by this, it was mostly because of my use of Donate + Illusions of Grandeur...


It's not really applicable to EDH, but the principle is the same. I'd try to Donate an Illusions to a player, and that player would concede so as to leave me stuck with the Illusions. I was using Necropotence anyway and in all instances I can remember, I was still able to Donate the Illusions to another player. But it was probably the best chance that the other players in the game had of stopping me. It was logical and I never faulted them for trying.

The example they alluded to in the video involved the combo of Inalla, Archmage Ritualist + Wanderwine Prophets...


So Player A has Inalla as commander and casts Wanderwine Prophets, then uses Inalla's ability to make a token copy. The token copy champions the original. Perhaps Player C and Player D have blockers, but Player B is open, so Player A attacks Player B, then sacrifices the token to take an extra turn. The original Wanderwine Prophets comes back, Player A uses Inalla's ability again, and has the token champion the original again. The end step comes, the token is exiled, the original Wanderwine Prophets comes back again, and Player A once again uses Inalla's ability to make a token copy and have it champion the original Prophets. Then Player A gets another turn, and can repeat the process. It's a finite loop because the 4/4 tokens will eventually kill Player B, but Player A presumably gets enough extra turns to find more cards and can prepare to kill Player C and Player D once Player B is dead and the extra turns have run out. If Player A can find a way to get rid of blockers by bouncing/killing them, the loop could continue with more extra turns.

Seeing this and being able to predict how it would play out, Player B might concede after the first token copy of Wanderwine Prophets is already attacking, but before combat damage. The loop would "fizzle" and Player A would probably have to pass the turn to Player C, who might proceed to administer a righteous beating onto Player A. And hypothetically, if I were Player B, I'd assume that I'd take exactly that action. And I thought most people I knew would do the same. Now I'm finding that some players (i.e. the ones in this video) consider such a concession to be bad mannered. They are fully aware that yes, it's within the rules for players to do this, but their argument is that players should not do it. In the hypothetical example, Player A has earned extra turns and is entitled to them.

In my head, the way it worked in multiplayer games was that concession was tantamount to "planeswalking away." The "flavor" tie-in to the rules was that players could sever their magical ties to the realm corresponding to the field of battle at any time. This link was maintained of the planeswalker's own volition and if they chose to break it, nothing else was faster than it. That also explained what happened to the planeswalker's stuff when the planeswalker was gone and the battle still continued. I really can't remember where I ever came to think of it in this way. Perhaps I conjured the image on my own as a way to rationalize the multiplayer rules.

So I tried to give the guys in the video a fair hearing on this subject. They seemed very convinced that for players to concede "at instant speed" is poor sportsmanship. And after hearing them out, I guess I kinda came to the opposite conclusion: that they've contrived their own standard with no basis in the rules and that their attempts to use rhetoric and social ostracization to enforce this standard are mildly rude and smack of a false sense of entitlement. Even so, I'm worried that this is a knee-jerk reaction on my part. It's not so much that I've use "instant" concession myself (I have), but more that I had it done to me by old friends I've mostly lost contact with (at least one of whom is now dead), and maybe I'm being unfairly defensive because of that.

Anyway, I'd seriously never heard of this as being a "bad" thing before, so I wanted to see what the ideas on the matter were here at the CPA. We've had it happen here in Games Run (most recent example was, I think, me doing it in Explorers of Ixalan) and I'd imagine that most, if not all, of you have seen it at some point in your casual playgroups. Is it perfectly acceptable in your playgroups? Taboo? If it's not taboo for you, do you have any sympathy for the people who do view it in that way?
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I don't have a playgroup except for here, so except for the Explorers game, it hasn't really come up that I remember (and where it's been a problem). So here are my "armchair" thoughts:

If everyone is playing "by the rules" and nothing has been said before the game starts (meaning playing by the rules is the unstated assumption and understanding), conceding is fine and allowed.

If there are going to be problems with conceding, such concerns should be stated before the game starts and everyone comes to a common understanding based on said concerns. This meshes with that earlier thread about "expectations" of a game and whether certain cards should be played, if I remember correctly. If an understanding cannot be reached, the game doesn't have to be played and players can go look for other games with other players.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
I don't have a playgroup except for here, so except for the Explorers game, it hasn't really come up that I remember (and where it's been a problem).
I guess that was the first thing that struck me about it. This sort of thing seems pretty rare in most of the games I've seen. I specifically remembered Spirit Link because there was a time when everyone was using the card. I was probably like 12 or 13 years old and I think a lot of, um, us youngsters, probably overused the card. Or perhaps not. It's got some added versatility in multiplayer (I distinctly remember that one of my opponents put a Spirit Link on my Polar Kraken in a multiplayer game, much to my consternation). But yeah, I think unless you're playing a lot with cards/decks that lend themselves to gaining something off other players in multiplayer settings, it's just not likely to come up at all. It came up in Explorers of Ixalan because of the unique features of that variant. I think it did come up in some of the older Games Run here at some point, but I actually can't think of any off the top of my head. My overall impression is that it's at least kind of rare for it to matter at all. Although I guess, much like mana burn, it depends on the kinds of decks people are playing.

Since they brought up the Inalla + Prophets combo as an example in the video, I have to wonder if one of them built an Inalla EDH deck and was just frustrated with people conceding to it. That'd be understandable, but also the combo is pretty cheesy and as a cheesy combo enthusiast myself, I think you've got to let people have their outs if they exist. By that, I mean if you're the one setting up an obnoxious extra turns loop and you're trying to win with it, you've got to roll with the punches when other players attempt to sabotage that in any way that they can. You're trying to take all of the turns, so why would they not stop you from doing that?

So here are my "armchair" thoughts:

If everyone is playing "by the rules" and nothing has been said before the game starts (meaning playing by the rules is the unstated assumption and understanding), conceding is fine and allowed.

If there are going to be problems with conceding, such concerns should be stated before the game starts and everyone comes to a common understanding based on said concerns. This meshes with that earlier thread about "expectations" of a game and whether certain cards should be played, if I remember correctly. If an understanding cannot be reached, the game doesn't have to be played and players can go look for other games with other players.
Ultimately, that's the most sensible, diplomatic answer. And I agree. But yeah, for me at least, I wasn't even aware that this was a concern, that there existed anyone who was bothered by opponents conceding "at instant speed." So I was curious if anyone else had seen the issue raised in the past.

I do think that one point about establishing guidelines beforehand being important is that the "instant speed" aspect is entirely arbitrary. Seems to be to me, anyway. Like, if complaints about someone breaking the Inalla extra turns loop by conceding during the player's attack are valid, then what's to say that it isn't equally valid for me to want someone to stick around after I Control Magic his big creature and start beating the rest of the table to death with it? Is there something special about "instant speed" that makes this matter?
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I think this only really matters in team games, which is probably a small subset of the vast number of Magic games played. Conceding in simple multiplayer games just means you lose, take yourself out, and (if following the rules), affects the limited range of influence. In a team game, all team members have to lose in order for the team to lose, so having just one player lose doesn't stop the team as a whole but *does* stop the loop or whatever caused the conceding in the first place.

The phrase "instant speed" does seems to be arbitrarily set and by players - it's not part of the official Magic terminology for conceding. All the rules state is that you can concede at any time, you leave the game immediately, and you lose the game. That's it. "Instant speed" seems to have the connotation that others can respond to it with effects, but it really seems to be a state-based announcement.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
I think this only really matters in team games, which is probably a small subset of the vast number of Magic games played. Conceding in simple multiplayer games just means you lose, take yourself out, and (if following the rules), affects the limited range of influence. In a team game, all team members have to lose in order for the team to lose, so having just one player lose doesn't stop the team as a whole but *does* stop the loop or whatever caused the conceding in the first place.
From the standpoint of a strict, game-based goal, yes, I concur. But conceding is ultimately making a decision, and there are other decisions that can be made in the game with no real expectation of it leading to one's victory within that game. In many multiplayer games, I've found myself in a "kingmaker" position. Based on my knowledge of my own deck and of the board state, I had essentially no way to win the game (oh, I usually didn't know what everyone else's decks looked like, so there was typically some remote possibility of an unlikely sequence of cards being played that would salvage the game for me, but I was not counting on such events and that's silly anyway). But I did have the resources to choose which of two or more other players would probably go on to win the game. Granted, none of that has the ironclad guarantee of an "I concede." But I think the ironclad guarantee is a bit of a red herring in the discussion. If I assume I am going to lose, but I cast spells and take other actions to ensure that Player A loses and Player B wins...

...like for the sake of simplicity, let's say I attack Player A when it has no strategic benefit for me and might even, because of some card I can see on the battlefield, actually result in my own destruction. But I'm handing Player B the game, as an intentional effect of the plays I'm making. This is categorically different from conceding at a certain time in order to achieve the same goal. But the only significance to that categorical difference is any weight one attaches to the word "concede." It has no intrinsic importance. I might, by playing cards and using their abilities and such, go out in a blaze of glory, so to speak. If I have decided that even though I cannot win, Player A is going down with me, I can cast spells, choose targets, make attacks, etc. And the goal of my doing that, rather than winning, might be to affect the future of the game after I'm eliminated. In some circumstances, with the right cards in play, I could achieve a similar effect by taking the action of conceding. It is trivially true that there's a difference between conceding and doing other stuff, different stuff, which is not conceding. But, for me at least, I find no compelling distinction between the two. No reason to care about concession as being something players could do to affect the results of the game.

Incidentally, although it's been like 20 years now, I remember that I had a close friend who was known for his "never give up" policy in Magic. No matter how impossible it was for him to win a game, he'd refuse to scoop up his cards until he was officially eliminated. I had no complaints about this policy of his, but if I was in a big multiplayer game with a huge, triple Spirit Linked Sliver Queen, boosted by Coat of Arms, Muscle Slivers, etc. (with flying, trample, first strike, and shroud too, of course), guess which player I was attacking. One of the players who might concede and deny me a boatload of life, buying move of a chance for the others to kill me? Or the guy who had already so firmly established that he would never, ever concede? That's not a criticism of his mentality, by the way. It's just that it's a thing that actually happened (in my vague recollection anyway), and that those sorts of decisions do affect games. Sometimes players feel that it is meaningful to "get revenge" or whatever, to do something that influences the future of the game even after they'll be dead in that game. And of course, if this is a recurring playgroup, establishing a pattern of behavior can have an effect on future games with the same people. I did play with some people who would become recklessly aggressive at the first person who attacked them in a multiplayer game, potentially throwing away their own chances to win all in order to punish the person who started a battle with them. I've never really done that myself (not that I can remember, at least), but I've seen it and it can make an impression.

The phrase "instant speed" does seems to be arbitrarily set and by players - it's not part of the official Magic terminology for conceding. All the rules state is that you can concede at any time, you leave the game immediately, and you lose the game. That's it. "Instant speed" seems to have the connotation that others can respond to it with effects, but it really seems to be a state-based announcement.
Yeah. I put it in quotation marks because if was the phrase they used. It's not technically a meaningful term in the context, but I figured I knew what they meant. Although I did hint at it, your pointing it out makes me think about it even more a "sorcery speed" concession could be one that sabotages just as thoroughly a player in a dominant position, if the right cards are involved. The Control Magic example was the simplest one I could think of. In my own view, unaccustomed to this alien etiquette invoked by the players in the video, it seems odd to be affronted when Player A concedes at "instant speed" to thwart the benefits I'd reap from my attack, but to be totally cool with the idea that Player B could concede at "sorcery speed" and take away the creature I've gained control of, which was winning me the game. I mean, the timing is different, yes. But again, I'm left seeing a distinction without recognizing any concept of why I'd ever care about the distinction.

Ah, well. No practical importance. I assume that if the players I play with care about this concept, they'd bring it up at some point. I was just surprised to discover that anyone cared about this thing I didn't care about, even if it's a couple of strangers in a YouTube video. It all struck me as arbitrary, and I guess I was wondering if it struck others as being something more meaningful.
 

TomB

Administrator
Staff member
I actually remember running into the opposite situation in a tournament where my opponent was running a Turbo Stasis deck. I forget what I was playing (I think it was white weenie with a splash of blue), but we were 1-1 when we ran out of time with him having me in a somewhat lock state. I wouldn't concede (cause decks like that used to irritate me), and the judges ruled the game a draw, so my opponent was VERY unhappy with me.

I didn't care though, because, as I said, decks like that used to irritate me a LOT...:p
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Oversoul: The only thing I can see about conceding in the particular example you're giving with the Youtube video and the loop is that, well, it stops the loop and potentionally allows his partner to still win the game (I didn't watch the video so not sure of the board state). Everything you said is all "considerations" to be made in a multiplayer game and how it might affect the outcome and conceding is simply one piece of that consideration.

Oversoul said:
I was just surprised to discover that anyone cared about this thing I didn't care about
This sentence surprises me and maybe I misunderstood it (and explaining it will definitely go off on a tangent), but are you saying since you didn't care about this particular aspect of the game, you don't think anyone else should and you are surprised to find out other people do?
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Oversoul: The only thing I can see about conceding in the particular example you're giving with the Youtube video and the loop is that, well, it stops the loop and potentionally allows his partner to still win the game (I didn't watch the video so not sure of the board state). Everything you said is all "considerations" to be made in a multiplayer game and how it might affect the outcome and conceding is simply one piece of that consideration.
Well, if that's the case, I misunderstood the video anyway! It's possible, as I was, um, multitasking at the time I watched the last half or so of the video. Everything up to it had been about Commander games, and the context was presented as being about Commander, on a video channel that I thought focused on the Commander format. The first several things they were telling people to stop doing had nothing to do with team-based variants, and if some mention was made of the concession thing being team-specific was made, I missed it entirely.

I suppose that, from my perspective, there's nothing wrong with strategically conceding in a Team vs. Team variant if you find that it helps your team more for you to concede than to remain in the game. And that also, there's nothing wrong with strategically conceding in a free-for-all game if you are so inclined. I see nothing wrong with either, but I do understand that they're different situations, and maybe someone would have a problem with one but not with the other. But yeah, if that was part of the context in the video, I definitely missed it.

This sentence surprises me and maybe I misunderstood it (and explaining it will definitely go off on a tangent), but are you saying since you didn't care about this particular aspect of the game, you don't think anyone else should and you are surprised to find out other people do?
Short answer: No.

Longer answer: No, I was not talking about what other people should or should not care about. I was expressing surprise at discovering that this was a sticking point for anyone at all. That's not a value judgment. Maybe the people who care about this are right to care about it and I've been an ignorant buffoon this whole time. It does seem to be the case that they have given it more thought than I have: they took such issue with it that they went to the trouble of including a moderately detailed discussion on the topic in their video. I only just heard about it! Just because I'm surprised to find that people have a hangup, of a variety I didn't even know existed, does not mean that I want to dictate that such a hangup is in any way wrong. I still don't really feel like I "get it." But what I was saying with that sentence was that I was surprised to learn that this is a thing at all, and not that I in some way insist it should not be.

Much longer answer: Well, it's not really an aspect of the game, is it? It's outside the game. Or wait, no it's not. I mean, it kind of is. As you pointed out already, there are rules covering how players concede and what happens when a player does. But the admonishment not to concede in a certain way doesn't really comment on that. They acknowledged, in the video, that players are technically free to concede at any time. They think that there should be social repercussions for doing so because they find some types of concession offensive. So quibbling over the technical inaccuracy of the term "instant speed" aside, I'd say there's no misunderstanding of the rules. I'm willing to assume that I and the makers of the video both have the same (correct) understanding of what the rules say about conceding [A player can concede the game at any time. A player who concedes leaves the game immediately. That player loses the game.]

But it's not really a matter of taste, either. I know other players have different taste from my own, and I would probably not be taken aback by most of those things. Some people like foil cards or dislike white-bordered cards or have other preferences. But I think most of us consider those tastes to be our own and don't try to impose them on others. This "instant speed" conceding issue isn't a technical, rules thing. And it's not really a mere matter of taste, either. It's something else. It's decorum. It's a statement on etiquette. They're not talking about a disagreement on the actual rules of the game and they're not merely stating their preferences on a matter of taste. They're trying to strongly discourage a behavior that is allowed in the rules.

I'm well aware of the fact that not all views on etiquette are going to match my own. But I guess usually I don't find them surprising either. Some examples I can think of...
  • Not playing with one's phone during games. The guys in the video brought that one up and I am broadly with them on this point. Like, granted a lot of people use phone apps as life counters now, or to look up the Oracle text on one of my old cards or whatever. And if you have an important call to take, that's one thing. But yeah, some people just can't leave their phones alone even when they should be paying attention to what's going on in the game. I don't see if often myself, but I have seen it.
  • Leaving revealed cards on the table when possible. In serious tournaments, most players take notes anyway. But who wants to take notes in a casual game? Not me! I used to be pretty good at memorizing what was in hands I'd seen with Duress and such, but it's a skill I've apparently lost somewhat over the years. A skill that requires exercise? Or a sign of my latent dementia? Who knows? Not me! Anyway, I have a friend who, in casual games, leaves revealed cards on the table for as long as it is feasible to do so. He tries to demarcate between cards in hand that are known only to him, cards in hand that have been revealed, and cards that are on the battlefield or in other zones. I found it a bit strange at first, but got used to it pretty quickly. I've adopted the practice myself and I've been encouraging others to do so. I wouldn't go so far as to chastise players who refuse to play this way, because it's definitely not in the rules or anything. But I try to make it clear that it's a more comfortable casual atmosphere if we all just play that way, rather than breaking out my pen and notepad.
  • For one that's more of a grey area, another one I've been dealing with recently is graveyard order. Some opponents in EDH like to rearrange their own graveyards. This is technically against the rules in a very real sense, but many players are apparently unaccustomed to this. While I don't have Bone Dancer or Phyrexian Furnace in any of my current decks, the habit annoys me in principle and feels like a kind of accidental barrier against playing those cards. So I try to be tactful about it, but I do kind of press people to follow the rules on this point. I think this is kind of a mixture of both technical details (the rules) and etiquette (because in the minds of a lot of people, it's either not well-known as a rule or not important as one).
And I could imagine others, ranging from mundane to downright bizarre. Like, I'd be surprised if people insisted "No red decks on Thursdays" or something like that. But this stipulation about when it isn't socially acceptable to concede is a different animal. On the one hand, it's out-of-nowhere enough that I initially reacted to it like if they'd said, "No red decks on Thursdays." It seemed like a bizarre, random demand. But then they went into detail about it and used terms like "earn." So after trying to give them a fair hearing, I saw that at least this is a real issue for them, that they have some sort of rationale, just not one I was familiar with or could really empathize with. I do suspect that I have a different understanding of the word "earn" than the guys who made the video and that perhaps this is a kind of irreconcilable difference between us in that sense. But it's also a minor point and I'd think, if it came down to it, if I was in a playgroup and they established some "house rule" about this, it wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me. I find it strange, but it's not likely to come up much anyway and the difference isn't worth worrying about in the long run, in my estimation.

Probably part of my motivation for starting this thread in the first place was some slight paranoia that I'd been committing an occasional faux pas all these years. That somehow I was one of the only people who didn't know it was rude to concede "at instant speed" and that everyone was just too polite to tell me. OK, realistically, almost all of the times I've seen it happen were so long ago that EDH wasn't even a thing. But still...
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
I actually remember running into the opposite situation in a tournament where my opponent was running a Turbo Stasis deck. I forget what I was playing (I think it was white weenie with a splash of blue), but we were 1-1 when we ran out of time with him having me in a somewhat lock state. I wouldn't concede (cause decks like that used to irritate me), and the judges ruled the game a draw, so my opponent was VERY unhappy with me.

I didn't care though, because, as I said, decks like that used to irritate me a LOT...:p
I hadn't thought about it, and that's in a tournament setting instead of a casual multiplayer game, but it does strike me as similar. I've long been critical of the tournament players who try to bully people into conceding. And both "You shouldn't concede when I don't want you to" and "You should concede when I want you to" are demands to control an opponent's concession, something one cannot actually control.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Oversoul: Ah, okay. Then really it just comes down to people's expectations of the game and how they play it and etiquette and how what one person's (or I guess "group", since it sounds like in the video it's more than one person) views might clash with another and how to resolve it.

As for the video specifically, again, just going by what you're relying, but it more sounds like those players are trying to make it "a thing" to get others not to concede and hope it will spread so it will become commonplace, I guess. A "social movement", if you will.
 

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
I did play with some people who would become recklessly aggressive at the first person who attacked them in a multiplayer game, potentially throwing away their own chances to win all in order to punish the person who started a battle with them.
I have seen this happen a lot in multiplayer games. Even had people who only played in the game to take out one specific player. Seems odd to me, since politicking is a big part of multiplayer/choas games and I love that aspect of the game. I had one player using a relentless rats deck, focus only on me, but with Wound Reflection and some politicking, I managed to get the other players to take out the relentless rats deck and then I outlast them all.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Ha, and then that player probably told the others at the end "See? I knew he [you] should have been taken out first." :)
 

Ferret

Moderator
Staff member
Reminds me of when I used to play with my friends on Wednesday nights...there was sort of politics - mostly people screaming "Your mother!" when we attacked other people - except for one of the guys who always had out a Forcefield that would just sit there watching us kill each other...
 

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
Ha, and then that player probably told the others at the end "See? I knew he [you] should have been taken out first." :)
Nah, he knew what he was doing, but talked aout his demise for quite a while. It wasn't his deck. I only won by some horrible plays of a few players that gave me like 90 life. The deck I played was based on life loss, not damage. I think I still have it somewhere.
 
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