In my other thread about slow play (found
here) there was quite a heated discussion about the fairness of imposing timed turns, and on how best to implement a fair timing system that allows a full game to be played, but does not penalize a player for having a large model count more than a player with a smaller model count.
I would like to open discussion on various systems for imposing time limits, and if anyone has any ideas or comments please post them here:
I've had some thoughts on this myself, and I wanted to chime in with time limit system I've been bouncing around for the last few days.
-Each game lasts for 150 minutes (2.5 hours).
-For that game to go 5 complete rounds, each round must be limited to 30 minutes.
-In each 30 minute round, both players must move, shoot and assault with their forces in a timely manner.
-Each player is assigned a portion of that 30 minutes based on the total number of models they bring.
-Each player is given 8 minutes out of the 30 as a base for their turn.
-The remaining 14 minutes are divided up proportionally by taking each players percentage of the total models (Add up the total models and divide each players model count by the total). For example, Player 1 has 50 models, and player 2 has 150 models. Player 1 has 25% of the total models in the game, and player 2 has 75%. Player 1 receives 25% of the 14 minutes (3.5 minutes) added to the 8 minute base, and player 2 receives 75% of the 14 minutes (10.5 minutes) added to his 8 minutes, giving player 1 11.5 minutes per turn and player 2 18.5 minutes per turn, which is reasonable considering their relative army sizes.
-Round times are best, so all times would be rounded to the nearest 30 seconds in order to keep things easy.
-The base turn limit can be adjusted according to the
TO's taste. A 10 minute base turn could be granted to each player giving player, adjusting the above example to 12.5 minutes for player 1 and 17.5 minutes for player 2. It can also be adjusted for game size.
-Players keep time themselves, and if players finish early the unused time is lost. At the end of 5 turns the game ends. No random game length. Similarly, if a player does not finish in his allotted time, he must put down his dice and pass when time is called.
This system grants larger armies a reasonable amount of extra time due to their large model count while guaranteeing that the game will go a reasonable number of turns. It also ensures that the clock weighs fairly on both players since the person with the smaller army has limited time as well, and it forces both players to decide what's most important to accomplish in their turn and focus on that, possibly at the cost of not accomplishing a secondary goal or moving units that will not affect the outcome of the turn. Deployment could use a similar system, but cut to 15 minutes instead of 30 and any units not deployed on time go into reserve, which allows the
TO's to control the clock and start the games all at the same time.
Thoughts?