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There's a general debate that GTs & tourneys should be 1500 and no more, as bigger games impact logistical game times. That is, it makes for a long damned day with 3 or more games. You're lucky to start at 10 AM, play 2 hours 15 minutes, squeeze in lunch (30 minutes?) & two short (15) breaks, play 3 games. Dice down by 5:30 (if all is on schedule) and be done by 6 PM after prize announcements.

To help TOs and for 40k players everywhere, there's a good bit of data to look at from the BAO, having 144 players attend that GT. Good for us to look at as well as a very large piece of info.

So, would the players who attended the BAO, mind chiming in their game times?

I think you can vote more than once, right? And yes, this is *not* a 'poll' as much as it is a survey, but I think the website's mechanism will work to collect the data. If this doesn't work, then we can try again, only with single votes of average times.

Thanks!

One problem will be if you have 3 games go for 5 turns, you can only vote for 5 turns once. You'll have to trawl the comments to ensure you don't miss results like this.

Awright. This won't work as you can't vote multiple times for turn 5 or 4 or whatever.

Perhaps just something like this:

Game 1 - Turn 4
Game 2 - Turn 4
Game 3 - Turn 4
Game 4 - Turn 6
Game 5 - Turn 1 (opponent conceded)
Game 6 - Turn 5
Game 7 - Turn 3

Game 1- Turn 3 (Ran out of time)
Game 2- Turn 2 (Conceded)
Game 3- Turn 6
Game 4- Turn 5 (Conceded)
Game 5- Turn 6 (Conceded)
Game 6- Turn 5 (Conceded)
Game 7- Dropped Out

I would love to see the points go down to 1500 if the community would accept it. Sooooo much faster and less stress, too. Games go at a much more relaxed pace.

You got my vote for 1500 pts. Tournaments Reece. Duel Con ran smoothly and I really enjoyed it.

All of my games went to at least turn 5 except the last game. I was pared with Dave in game 7. Since we played each other alot over the past few years, droe up and roomed together at the Ramada, and neither of us was up for an award...we called it a draw and got a 3 hour head start on the drive back to SoCal.
1500 would be OK, although I think 1750 can still work...but require at least 1 unit from every FOC slot (except forts). That would help keep the Spam down.

Round 3 my opponent conceded on turn 4
Round 4 I conceded on turn 3

All my other games went the full distance. 3 Games to turn 7, 1 to turn 6 and 1 to turn 5 all on die rolls.

This might sound a little funny but what about running games at 1550 ,1600 or , 1650? I know some people might have trouble making armies that work at 1500 that don't feel like you have a glaring weakness with some books(mainly old expensive codices with odd costing)while other books/builds work at whatever points level without much compromise . Raising/lowering the points to a middle ground might make people more accepting to play lower points and make things run more smoothly for TOs. I believe Reece said that going from 1850 to 1750 was a game compilation rate increase of about 25% .If dropping the points another 100 would yield the same return, why not?

 Reecius wrote:
I would love to see the points go down to 1500 if the community would accept it. Sooooo much faster and less stress, too. Games go at a much more relaxed pace.

You have my vote on that too!

The problem with even a vote like this if it worked is that a game that goes till turn 5 or 6 can be one that finished naturally when the variable game length roll is failed, or it can be a game where time ran out and both players knew it was going to be the last turn so that the game had an artificial conclusion.

So number of turns played is really immaterial. All that matters is whether your game was played to its NATURAL conclusion or not.

So is the problem a potential loss of attendance if you made the points total 1500? Or is their some points minimum to actually be a GT?

 MightyGodzilla wrote:
So is the problem a potential loss of attendance if you made the points total 1500? Or is their some points minimum to actually be a GT?

There is no point requirement. A GT is generally 5+ games over 2+ days.

I think a lot of people do not travel to tournaments and so they only go to one or two a year when one within driving distance is being held. So what happens is that you get a lot of people who have not played in a tournament in 6 edition yet wanting to play at the old 5th edition point levels, but not knowing all of the subtle changes to 6th edition that makes the game play much longer than it did in 5th edition.

So people will either get angry before the tournaments because the point limits are lowered, or afterward when all of their games only go to round 4.

Game 1- Turn 4
Game 2- Turn 4 or maybe 5
Game 3- Turn 5 (Ran out of time without rolling for 6)
Game 4- Turn 6 (Game ended normally)
Game 5- Turn 4 or maybe 5
Game 6- Turn 4
Game 7- Turn 3 or maybe 4

I typically play pretty fast, but in a GT environment a lot of choices need to be made. I would support either increasing the time per game or decreasing the points total. 2 hours 15 minutes seems like not enough time and it definitely influenced the results of some of the games. In particular, I won game 5 by the skin of my teeth and probably would have lost if the game had gone on.

3 games were 1 sided extra time would not have mattered.
2 game went to the bitter end on turn 5 extra time would not have mattered.
2 games were 1 sided and the extra time would have turned a 5 point win into a 10 point win.

Could I have placed higher with more time? Maybe, and it doesn't matter. 143 other players have the same clock which can cause them to gain or lose points.

Would 2 hours and 15 minutes be less stressful at 1,500? Yes it sure would be less stressful. It would also create a different meta.

This issue isn't going to be affected by a dakka thread. There are too many variables you can't account for, well beyond what even yak wants to capture. Additionally, there's obvious dramatic bias by almost everyone involved (i.e those who finish their games and are "sure" there's enough time and it's just newedition syndrome, and those who "just know" only 1500 works for tournaments now and the game is too slow). If you want to poll the BAO attendees more accurately, use kwiksurveys. Most of them probably don't visit dakka, and randoms won't be able to vote.

I played in a GT this weekend. The Indy Open. 1,750pt lists. 2 hour and 15 minute rounds. I played with 2 large guard blobs in my army with prescience on them. I finished all but one game to natural conclusion and the one game we didn't finish to a natural conclusion went to turn 5.

Personally I've found 6th plays faster than 5th.

But yeah, I agree with the above that you're probably not going to get a proper response here. A survey should go out from the organizers.

There were several GTs last weekend:

Bay Area Open (Antioch, CA)
Indy Open (Indianapolis, IN)
Railhead Rumble (Dallas, TX)
Battle for Stones River (Murfreesboro, TN)

Yak or someone should contact the organizers and have them e-mail all of their attendees to see how big of a factor time was. This might be a major issue that is not getting enough exposure.

@Blackmoor

Do you really feel that 6th plays slower than 5th overall? Or do you feel it might be due to new edition syndrome?

I'm curious as to your take since the survey is about game time I figure it's on topic to so I didn't pm you

i think the big problem was that when you posted the pairings, you started the time for the round. if you post the pairings, allow for 5-10 minutes for people to find their names (hopefully on something other than one projector) and get to their tables. With all of the rolls that need to be made and the explanation of army lists those extra minutes will enable a game to actually be played for 2 hours and 15 mins.

It only happened in one of my games, but, I heard from multiple others that when Reece or another person would come by and announce 1 hour and 30 mins left in the round, most people weren't done with their 1st turn yet.

I think the main reason for this was that when you announced postings were up, you started the timer for the round. Too often people would be in the parking lot, outside in the grass, or just unable to see their names, so 15-20 mins would go by and people hadnt even exchanged army lists yet. Allowing for 5-10 mins for people to get set up would be nice and allow for the games to be played out I believe.

 Hulksmash wrote:
@Blackmoor

Do you really feel that 6th plays slower than 5th overall? Or do you feel it might be due to new edition syndrome?

I'm curious as to your take since the survey is about game time I figure it's on topic to so I didn't pm you

Is that the question, or is it: How long should the game take to reach its natural conclusion in 6th ed.? To find the real tournament winner, players shouldn't be rushed into decisions or games ended short. If, in your experience in the BAO, you did not finish one game and that holds true for every player, there would be 1/7th of the games that did not finish. That could change the winner.

Perhaps a better question would be to ask: how many of your games ended due to time constraints?

SCP Yeeman wrote:
i think the big problem was that when you posted the pairings, you started the time for the round. if you post the pairings, allow for 5-10 minutes for people to find their names (hopefully on something other than one projector) and get to their tables. With all of the rolls that need to be made and the explanation of army lists those extra minutes will enable a game to actually be played for 2 hours and 15 mins.

It only happened in one of my games, but, I heard from multiple others that when Reece or another person would come by and announce 1 hour and 30 mins left in the round, most people weren't done with their 1st turn yet.

I think the main reason for this was that when you announced postings were up, you started the timer for the round. Too often people would be in the parking lot, outside in the grass, or just unable to see their names, so 15-20 mins would go by and people hadn't even exchanged army lists yet. Allowing for 5-10 mins for people to get set up would be nice and allow for the games to be played out I believe.

That's a really good point. And on top of that, the hall was so crowded, it physically took some time to get from A to B.

Also, as most folks were not finishing their games until time was called (or past) we didn't get results in until the last minute for the majority of players which meant Frankie was rushed to log them and get the pairing data uploaded. Then there was the crush at the projector to see the pairings and then the migration throughout the hall.

The issue though is that if we add even 10 extra minutes to the break between rounds, that adds 40 minutes to the day.

Hmmm, we will have to try out a few solutions. Better inform the players of time, smoother and faster reporting of results to the data entry persons (and have more than 1), easier movement to each table, and more visible table numbers on the tables.

I think if we do that, we can solve these issues relatively easily. I would still like to go down to 1500 (or even 1650 as was mentioned) but I am putting together a poll (thanks for the suggestion, Mike, I will look at the software you mentioned. Google just came out with one too, FYI, in Google Drive). I will post the results of a lot of this stuff so everyone can see it.

Well I also think with more staffing, you can post more papers with matchups on them or have multiple projectors. So I know the staffing was an issue. i know it adds 40 mins onto the day, but I think things would run smoother and people will be happier as the result.

I have also heard you guys plan on moving to a hotel so logisitics could be remedied depending upon the size of the hall and what not.

I feel like I was a lucky one and did not have any games that did not go to the natural end. 4 of my opponents called games early as they realized the game could not end. My other 3 games went to turns 5-6 and ended with the dice roll.

 Hulksmash wrote:
@Blackmoor

Do you really feel that 6th plays slower than 5th overall? Or do you feel it might be due to new edition syndrome?

I'm curious as to your take since the survey is about game time I figure it's on topic to so I didn't pm you

I play a very fast army (Paladin star) and in the last couple of weeks I played in 2 GTs and the time limit impacted at least 3 games.

6th edition plays a lot slower than 5th edition.

There several factors for this:
A lot more rolls on tables, e.i. psychic powers, warlord traits, chaos boon tables, demon warp storm, random objectives, random terrain, etc.

There is a lot more going on now before the game in 6th edition that the game itself is starting a lot later.

The meta shift away from mech armies to horde armies. It takes a lot longer to shoot an infantry blob with prescience and first rank fire, second rank fire than it does for a few chimeras, yet alone moving them.

Another thing that slows the game down in 6th edition is the movement phase. You use to be able to move your models around all willy-nilly and it did not matter. Now is is very important where all of your models are placed which slows down the movement phase.

To give you more examples:
You get the warlord trait that give you FNP. Those are a lot of rolls that you have to take that you did not get in 5th.
The widespread use of Prescience means many re-rolls.
Even charges take longer now and assaults. You use to be able to just charge 6" and that was it. Now you have to roll for charge range, and then move guys in each inititive step.
Play a Tyranid player and see how long it takes them to roll their psychic powers.


I could make the argument that the time limits in 5th edition were not enough in a lot of tournaments, The problem is that TO do not realize that 6th edition plays a lot slower than in 5th and tournaments are keeping the same point limits and round times that they had last year.

At the GTs that I have been to there were a few games that were ending on 3 turns, and a lot more that were ending after 4. That does not include those games that the playes knew were going to end on round 5 because of time.

And yes, I realize that people who have their act together can finish a 6th edition game on time even with a horde army. I played Phazel who could run his foot IG horde on time, and Mike Fox who had a great system for his orks, but they are the exeptions not the rule.

Hmm, maybe we should do a poll on Dakka too, about points limits in tournaments.

As others have said, this could be as a result of people still just acclimating to 6th ed, but I agree with Blackmoor that the game is flat out slower now than in the past simply because of all the extra steps required. Overwatch, 2 rolls to go first, psychic powers, warlord traits, boon table, warp storm table, random effects, ongoing effects (soul blaze, etc.) that have been introduced into the game. it really does take longer as there is more to do in a game compared to 5th.

All of my games came to a natural conclusion or concession.

Posting the matchups on google drive would be excellent Reece. Not only would it be freely accessible to everyone to check on their phones, but it would also provide a clear match history for those of us who would be interested in writing about such things.

Some way to submit results in a timely fashion would be pretty excellent also. I know in the past, you just had people drop them off in the box, but this year Frankie had to do them real time for whatever reason. Maybe there's an electronic solution for that as well.
Or maybe get another guy over there, haha. I know Frankie's a superstar, but give the man a hand!

I know right? We are changing his Nick name to "Frankie Fast Fingers!" haha, he couldn't even take bathroom breaks he was so overwhelmed. That was a serious choke point which will be addressed.

Posting pairings on Google Drive is a GREAT idea! We can then send an email invite to everyone and they can simply check their email to see pairings and also see that they results were recorded accurately. Boom, nice one!

Not everyone has a smart phone, but that helps to speed things up a ton!

Frankie had to record results on two spreadsheets this year, which is why it slowed down. One for points, one for pairings. That was never a problem before, but we were dealing with a LOT less people, 60 or less.

If we can find a way to speed that up with multiple data entry people, or some type of electronic solution, that would be amazing. Hell, if we could have people email us their results, or shoot them a poll, fill it out on their smart phone, and send it back I could actually have that data fed right into a spreadsheet! That would be sweet, people could report their game from their table, never have to move, and get pairings emailed back.

Hmm, that requires having a smart phone and knowledge of how to operate within the system, but it would at the very least cut down on choke points and speed things up.

Certainly something to think about and try out in test tournaments on a smaller scale. Thanks for the suggestion!

 Blackmoor wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:
@Blackmoor

Do you really feel that 6th plays slower than 5th overall? Or do you feel it might be due to new edition syndrome?

I'm curious as to your take since the survey is about game time I figure it's on topic to so I didn't pm you

I play a very fast army (Paladin star) and in the last couple of weeks I played in 2 GTs and the time limit impacted at least 3 games.

6th edition plays a lot slower than 5th edition.

There several factors for this:
A lot more rolls on tables, e.i. psychic powers, warlord traits, chaos boon tables, demon warp storm, random objectives, random terrain, etc.

There is a lot more going on now before the game in 6th edition that the game itself is starting a lot later.

The meta shift away from mech armies to horde armies. It takes a lot longer to shoot an infantry blob with prescience and first rank fire, second rank fire than it does for a few chimeras, yet alone moving them.

Another thing that slows the game down in 6th edition is the movement phase. You use to be able to move your models around all willy-nilly and it did not matter. Now is is very important where all of your models are placed which slows down the movement phase.

To give you more examples:
You get the warlord trait that give you FNP. Those are a lot of rolls that you have to take that you did not get in 5th.
The widespread use of Prescience means many re-rolls.
Even charges take longer now and assaults. You use to be able to just charge 6" and that was it. Now you have to roll for charge range, and then move guys in each inititive step.
Play a Tyranid player and see how long it takes them to roll their psychic powers.


I could make the argument that the time limits in 5th edition were not enough in a lot of tournaments, The problem is that TO do not realize that 6th edition plays a lot slower than in 5th and tournaments are keeping the same point limits and round times that they had last year.

At the GTs that I have been to there were a few games that were ending on 3 turns, and a lot more that were ending after 4. That does not include those games that the playes knew were going to end on round 5 because of time.

And yes, I realize that people who have their act together can finish a 6th edition game on time even with a horde army. I played Phazel who could run his foot IG horde on time, and Mike Fox who had a great system for his orks, but they are the exeptions not the rule.

Hmm...Interesting. Not my experience at all at GT's and RTT's since 6th hit but I mayb events I attend and people I discuss the game with are exceptions to the rule instead of the rule. I've found that not having to wound allocated for combat and shooting has sped things up insansely. I've also found that the increase in dice has led to an increase in death on the table making the games play faster as well. Always interesting to see a different take.

 Reecius wrote:
Frankie had to record results on two spreadsheets this year, which is why it slowed down. One for points, one for pairings. That was never a problem before, but we were dealing with a LOT less people, 60 or less.

If we can find a way to speed that up with multiple data entry people, or some type of electronic solution, that would be amazing. Hell, if we could have people email us their results, or shoot them a poll, fill it out on their smart phone, and send it back I could actually have that data fed right into a spreadsheet! That would be sweet, people could report their game from their table, never have to move, and get pairings emailed back.

If you are using spreadsheets, I would probably suggest a simple database system. Have the players assigned a player number at registration. Create a simple Access database with forms for entry of data.

Player 1 Number
Player 1 Points
Player 2 Number
Player 2 Points

etc.

Then have X laptops/computers connected to a dumb hub and host the database on one of them. You could then have multiple people entering data into the same spot.

Also, create very easy to read/fill out sheets that are visually the same as the form that your data entry person uses to make entry errors less likely.

Create queries to output rankings at the end of each round or create pairings or whatever.

I would recommend against e-mail or smartphone solutions as that would probably make things harder and lead to more 'but I sent you the X'

Word, having the pairings available as read-only on google drive would definitely cut down on the glut of people by the projector. Unfortunately, you would still need the projector to accommodate people who didn't have fancy phones, but you already have that system in place, so no big deal. This is pretty straight forward and would be a big help imo. (The only problem I foresee here is people's phones dying towards round 4 after multiple hours of gaming.)

The real problem lies in reporting. That would require a system designed to validate the results or having people sift through emails to ensure accuracy. Kind of a pain in the ass, but not that different than what you're dealing with now. you would just have to keep the paper slips and the email results straight.

I would very much like to see something like that happen. Also, just in my opinion, taking out one row of tables up the middle would have made a world of difference. I know you want to sell as many tickets as possible to include everyone/make that scrilla, but there was a lot of dirty gamer ass rubbing going on in there. I'm surprised nurgle didn't come down and boogie with us.