There was no US Nationals in '95. If you played Ichabod at the '96 Nationals then Ichabod played correctly. There was no basis for your protest in the rules. The Gorgoroth rule was not implemented by the Council of Lorien until 1997 and Ichabod was the one announcing it.Thuarval wrote: ↑Tue Nov 15, 2022 3:02 pmAbsolutely this. I played in US Nationals back in... 95/96? against Ichabod, who, despite my (rules-based) protestations ruled in the instance that he could indeed move to Mount Doom with Starter Movement and dunk the Ring... which he did. Lol. I wasn't as amused then as I am now.Konrad Klar wrote: ↑Fri Nov 11, 2022 12:41 am As a player I would want an arbiter other than my opponent.
I find that recognizing the history of the changes and clarifications overtime was essential in understanding how the rules work. Not just in understanding what the correct version of the rule is and how it works compared to past versions, but in understanding how the Designers themselves interpreted the game mechanics and rules and how they adapted the changes to fit those.
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But I agree. It looks bad when top tournament players are the ones making the rules. And it wouldn't be so bad if they top tournament players were not deliberately distorting or ignoring the rules and past ICE rulings (for their own gain?)
- CoE NetReps ignore the past ICE rulings (which they knew of) and clear lack of the words "orc" or "troll" on Thrall of the Voice and instead rule that Troll-chief can be played with Thrall so they can squat at Ettenmoors. This type of deck was played by competitive players.
- CoE NetRep deliberately misunderstand rules on passive conditions to pretend that In The Heart of His Realm can be stopped by Marvels Told. As if they NetRep knew game design better than the designers themselves. This gave an advantage to One Ring decks used by some competitive players.
- Minion and Balrog decks are ever popular and big surprise, the NetRep ignores the text of River, doesn't even look at the most recent version of the card, misconstrues a play condition as an effect, and then lets minions incorrectly move to a second site to bypass river's effect. Heroes can do this too but not as easily as minion and balrog
- The rules clearly state that playing an ally requires an untapped site. ICE ruled on Black Horse this way. The CoE NetRep rules that Radagast's Black Bird can be played at a tapped site by making up a rationale the directly contradicts rules he is presented with.
Even assuming that people had good motivations (though some clearly wanted to go against ICE's rulings as stated on the old mailing list posts), it looks bad and shows a poor understanding the rules. But then these are the people that the CoE makes their NetRep? It looks like 6 best friends want to keep playing the same decks together so they make up bogus rules that casual players have never heard of to ensure that they get to the finals even if some casual has really good dice rolls.
There is an appearance of impropriety.
And 20 years later I thought "oh, maybe they just didn't know the ICE rulings because know one remembers now." But no. Back when ICE was around, Brian Wong and a few other CoE councilmembers and even someone from BYU had been emailing the ICE NetRep and asking questions on the mailing list. And then for about a year after ICE folded, Ichabod and Van were still on the mailing list helpfully answering questions until the players decided that they didnt like (or understand?) the ICE rulings and they wanted to change things. And they basically ran Ichabod out of town. So no wonder the rules are so confusing when the original CoE wanted to create contradictions on purpose.
And now again, the CoE appoints top competitive players, who can't be bothered to read or understand how ICE issued rulings, and can't be bothered to read page 20 of the METW rulesbook to come in and helpfully make decisions.
I can't ever know peoples true motivations. I just know that people misunderstood the rules, created contradictions that didnt need to be there, most of these contradictions favored competitive decks, and my time and the time of plenty of other players was wasted because of it. And new players have been put off from the game because of it as well.