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Made in us
Stern Iron Priest with Thrall Bodyguard






San Diego

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?

"Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather."

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Made in us
Stabbin' Skarboy







Looks like it would be difficult to manage. Also some rounds take longer than others. Turn 1 and turns 6 or 7 can be very fast. Having 30 minutes per round is too long for some rounds and possibly not enough time for others. Fixed game length is also a bad idea as it impacts strategic decisions in 5th edition 40k. I also don't know how you time the assault phase since it requires both players to heavily interact with models and dice. Even the shooting phase requires some of this.

This kind of timing system won't work for 40k. If you want judges to enforce rules against slow play or stalling and penalize players with game losses for basically cheating that's a lot more reasonable and realistic than a system that basically dramatically changes the game of 40k even further than a normal tournament time limit.


   
Made in us
Archmagos Veneratus Extremis






Home Base: Prosper, TX (Dallas)

Honestly how many "new" players are getting into tournaments with horde IG/Nids/Orks? I've found that almost no game I've ever played against a new tournament player has been against one of these armies. Horde armies generally are the baliwack of more experienced, hardcore gamers. That being the case why can't they play to the speed I myself do when I run a horde?

I think that's part of the fallacy of the arguement. Yak, your saying it could be keeping people out of the tournament scene that would like to play with these armies but don't due to time. I've played in tournaments regularly from 1,500-2,000. I've watched the norm shift from 1,750 (the majority of events in 2001) to the 2k mark. In that time I've rarely run into a horde player. I've played horde (130+ foot models) myself several times in that span though and have never failed to finish turn 5 and i'd say 99% of the time in 5th I've finished when I was suppose to.

I do feel slightly for people running hordes because a few bad apples have poisoned that well. But honestly I don't see the problem expecting people to play faster. That being said 2.25-2.5 hours is the minimum required time I think personally in 40k for a 2k game for a horde player. I do think 2 hours is to tight.

The problem you run into is that 2 hour 1750-1850 games generally don't change the model total much in a horde army. They just drop an add-on and keep the core of the massive amounts of models. Which means that even though it should play faster at lower point levels it really doesn't.

Basically if you're gonna run hordes play it faster. But if you see a horde army going down across the table from you then you need to play faster too. Whenever I play a horde player they take up the majority of the game (as is fair since they have the most stuff to do). As long as we finish on time I don't care how long their turns take and I play faster knowing my opponent is going to need that time.

So if you see a horde army plan to play your game faster. If you are running a horde army for the love of god figure on being able to play out 5-6 turns in 1.5 hours (in a 2.25-2.5 hour game). If you can't keep yourself to an average of 15-20 minute turns then you shouldn't bring the army. It's pretty much that simple.

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Made in us
Fixture of Dakka






I thinkt he simple act of having a timer at the table probably can help change perceptions. Some people lose track of time as well and if they didn't hear someone yelling "15 minutes left' they would have never known the game was slow.

I would rather every table has a timer that just quickly and clearly shows how much time has gone by and maybe makes beeps every 15 minutes. Then it isn't judging, isn't game impacting, but keeps both players on task and aware of time in general.

I think that is 100 times more useful than a draconian, game impacting chess time system which will probably cause more issues and waste more time than it helps.

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Confessor Of Sins






Scranton

how about a projector making a huge clock on the wall with the game time remaining?

 
   
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Stern Iron Priest with Thrall Bodyguard






San Diego

I like the ideas of timers on the table. Some kind of clock that monitors game time remaining and beeps at intervals should give players a good idea of how quickly their game is progressing. I tend to use the stopwatch on my phone to track the time taken by each player in each turn, but if there was some kind of visual representation of the time left it could help discourage slow play and keep things moving.

Good suggestions!

"Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather."

Proud supporter of Scott the Paladin. Long Live Scott! 
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut



Rochester New York

frgsinwntr wrote:how about a projector making a huge clock on the wall with the game time remaining?


That is what the DaBoyz GT did and we stole the idea from Adepticon. We ran 1850 points with 2 ½ hour limits. We have very few players not finish there games.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/01/21 19:27:15


 
   
 
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