I think that Brandon has more arguments on how education without fairness is bankrupt then I do. However, I can still see his point. What is the point of doing all the research for debate we do if in rounds it doesn’t make a difference because you dropped fart turn number #97#98^#62*? Then all that education you already did doesn’t really matter because instead of being upfront about something someone has to sneak in a trick/gimmick to win.

What is worse then that, younger people see that is how they are supposed to win. Having an ability to go fast enough to make people like critical happy doesn’t mean that you are increasing clash. We are teaching younger debaters that the way to win is through deceit and trickery, not hard work and dedication. Debate should be about clash, not finding new ways to avoid clash so you can win. I don’t see my friends that are rolling through tournaments making “hidden” turns so they can win. They just win by being right.

Your job as the aff is to refute neg arguments, right? Well if thats the case then you do what you can to answer it, if that means dropping a turn at the bottom of the block. The negs job is to answer your arguments, if they don’t do that they shouldn’t win the round. If you win a game of cards because your opponent makes a mistake, thats no one elses fault except their own.

@Ralph: the wikispaces link to the right of the page does an adequate job imo. Sure there are other affs but whatevs. Just show up to a tourney and watch. I went to PCC today and just watched rounds and made strats I can use next time and checked links.

back to Ryan…
I know I am alone in what I am about to say. However, I am going to say it anyways, winning an argument because it went dropped by an opponent is a way to win, but it is a shitty way to win. “Extend the 7*(3^8%$* turn I made at the bottom of the 12th off case where I say ‘farts smell bad – vote neg’” sucks. I do not want to win because my opponent didn’t have time to answer all my arguments. Sure, if they ignore the argument that is one thing, but if there are hundreds of arguments and they can’t get to all of them I would rather compare my 25 args vs your 25 args and see who has better warrants/analysis.
Hiding something in there so you can extend it is strategic, yes but really? Really?
maybe I have been hanging around to many older ex-debaters but I think maybe they are onto something…

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I also think that in the last aff speech you shouldn’t go for every argument. Its just like when you are on the neg extending just one of your large amount of solvency turns. You extend the arguments you are winning.

I find it weird that in a policy-focused round that someone ran the K of T against you. In order to win that you have to win discourse comes first, and after reading a policy based aff I find that to be too risky. I’ve never heard of anyone saying topicality is racist. My scenario is that its censorship.

What K did you run in round 1?

1) I only advocate not taking prep if you already know what you’re going to say – i.e. if your arguments are all offcase or if you already have blocks to oncase. I know I definitely try my best to block out answers to everything and flow my offcase positions beforehand (pre-round prep wins rounds, folks). But if the 1AC is the first time I’ve heard the affirmative, obviously I do take prep time.

2) I’m not just talking about my aff rounds, I’m talking about the neg rounds I had (where people expected me to go for T) and the two rounds I watched as well. But yes, I’m considering switching to a more obviously topical aff or at least making the aff slightly less nontopical.

Mat – my plan doesn’t scan cargo ; )

Oh yeah, IVC was today. Alex Lamascus went 4-0 for the gold, I went 3-1 for the silver. Strangely there were only 5 entries in open but we didn’t debate each other.

Although honestly the round I dropped was in front of a critic who had literally never judged any format of debate before, ever, and her RFD was literally “I thought this was a great round” with no further explanation. And she gave me 18 for speaks when I’d gotten 29′s the other rounds. But eh, whatever.

Brandon, no one writes their answers! That is so last year, didn’t you hear?

Like I said, I don’t kut krit T responses to not use them!
that was a hot round!

“I am of the belief that the 1NC should never require prep time unless the affirmative is somewhat out of box.”

I have to disagree big time here. The 1NC is the ONLY chance the neg has to generate offense. This should be spent flowing ALL of your arguments (because if you forget you make one on the fly you might not noticed it was dropped), and making sure your strat is coherent. All goes well, and you’ll collapse in the 1NR, which means you need less prep.

Second, I can’t reconcile these two statements:

“It’s a pretty decent case on the merits of its harms, but it does have some potential issues with topicality.”

and

“but to hear it in the last rebuttal of almost every single round is just far too much, because, hey, we never debate about anything else!”

If even you acknowledge it’s not complete topical, you should expect T. I run a VERY topical case, and I’ve only seen T like once against my case over the course of 3 LD tournaments. I understand you want to run the case you want to run, but if it’s not completely topical, you open yourself up to the T debate.