In recent years, the trend in 40K tournaments in the US (I can't speak for any other game systems or countries) is to constantly push the points values used up, up, up. What started at 1,500 points nearly a decade ago is now usually 2,000 points, and with some tournaments even going up to 2,500 points. This has been in response to player demand...I know I've been in a store for many a post-tournament gatherings where the players are asking, nay begging, to have the next tournament allow higher point armies. Naturally, Tournament Organizers (TOs) wanting to please their participants have complied by pushing the points limits of tournaments up.

The problem is, while point limits can be increased arbitrarily, the time allowed in a day to complete said games generally cannot be changed. Stores holding the tournaments have to open and close at a certain time and people need to get home and get some sleep, walk the dog, etc. What that means is that although the average points limit for tournament games has increased over the years, the allotted time for said games has generally not been increased to match.

However, for many this hasn't been a problem at all, because quite a few of those who play regularly in tournaments are veterans of the game. They've been able to practice playing at a very quick pace, choose smaller armies that make it easier to complete a quicker game or if they do choose a larger army, they master playing it an extremely fast pace to compensate.

Unfortunately, not all tournament players are wily veterans who are able to put hours into practicing their speed. As with all facets of the hobby, tournaments will always draw players of a variety of skill levels. However, because of the loud desires of those who like to play with larger point values, I believe that the tournament scene as a whole has become fairly unwelcoming to new players in some regards.

The game of 40K has 15 (or so) different factions available for players to choose and it is designed with a points system to allow players to not only pick their faction but also completely customize what type of force they want to play with. In other words, players are free to take all infantry armies or on the opposite extreme pack as many vehicles into their force as possible.

Unfortunately, we've gotten to the point where the prevailing notion amongst players is that if someone wants to take a 'horde' style army (as its known when the army is made up primarily of low point costed infantry models) then that player needs to be able to play at a faster speed then someone playing an army with less models, just so they can finish their tournament games in the allotted time.

I know a lot of people reading this are saying: 'so what? Of course people playing horde armies have to play faster, they chose to use that army!'

But take a second and think about what's actually being said here: Players are consciously or subconsciously being told that they essentially shouldn't be taking certain armies unless they are skilled enough to be able to play them more quickly than the average player. In other words, horde armies are for 'advanced players' only.

Is this a good mentality for the tournament scene and if so how? Should players new to the tournament scene feel like they can't play with a certain army type or if they do, risk ending up ruining someone else's game when time is called before the game is concluded? Doesn't that help to funnel more tournament armies into specific styles of (low model count) armies?

While you're still thinking about that, let me put forth the real hypothesis of this post: That an unacceptable percentage of tournament 40K games end based on 'time' being called for the tournament round as opposed to finishing at their natural conclusion.

I'm not trying to say that most tournament games don't naturally conclude or even 1/3 of them. But I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the number is as high as 15%. I tend to use more of the 'horde' style armies in tournaments and although no one would ever mistake me for the fastest player out there, I'm also definitely not the slowest either. Yet, in every tournament there is at least one game (sometimes more) where I end up playing someone who is a bit of a slow player and/or also has a horde army and we end up having time called on us before our game ends. As I go to lunches at tournaments and listen to players tell stories about their experience it seems like nearly everybody has one game they talk about that 'only got to turn 4', or 'if only we were able to play the last turn like we should have.'

Honestly, playing a game that ends due to time constraints is NOT FUN. Sure you can have some fun moments during the game, but is there anything more frustrating then packing up your miniatures knowing that if you had gotten to play the game to its natural conclusion you totally would have pulled off a glorious victory instead of a tie or loss?

The problem is, tournament organizers are not tracking this statistic and I don't know why. This is my plea to tournament organizers. I am not saying you should change anything (at least immediately) about your events except to add one question onto your game results sheet:

DID YOUR GAME FINISH PREMATURELY DUE TO TIME CONSTRAINTS? IF SO, PLEASE LIST THE LAST GAME TURN BOTH YOU AND YOUR OPPONENT FINISHED.


And that's it! Adding that one line to your scoring sheets can make a world of difference towards making your event more fun and fair to all your participants.

How you ask? Well first you have to decide what percentage of games ending due to time constraints is a problem to you. IMHO, even 10% would be unacceptable. A tournament is supposed to be about ALL of your participants having a good time and playing games and if 10% of those games aren't actually being finished, then people aren't having as much fun as they should be.

Once you've decided upon the percentage that is unacceptable to you and now you've added this question to your scoring sheets you can now finally SEE if your event is meeting that goal. If you aren't meeting that goal, then you now have the knowledge to allow you try to fix the problem and see what effect the change has.

So if one of your tournaments is run at 2,000 points with 2 hour rounds and 15% of the games aren't being fully finished, the next time around you can perhaps try adding an extra 10 minutes to the round or dropping the points down to 1,750. And again, the beauty is with this question on your scoring forms you'll be able to see what effect the change has.

The other great thing this would allow you to do, is since you have the army lists for the players you can actually see what types of armies are involved in games that aren't finishing. Say you have a variety of players who all aren't finishing several games and they all use 'horde' style armies, then perhaps you can identify that while your tournament rounds are long enough for 'small' armies, they're punishing 'big' armies too heavily. Or if one guy comes to a bunch of your tournaments using different armies each time but he's constantly involved in games that don't finish, you can probably identify that he's just a slow player. Once you've identified a habitual slow player you can take the time to talk to them after the event about the issue, perhaps giving them pointers on how to play faster, etc.

But the point is: Until you start collecting the data, you can't know if there is a problem, and if there is a problem, what effect (if any) solutions you try to implement actually have.

My final plea would be to consider that although the majority of the people who play your tournaments may clamber for more, MORE points for their games, these are the people already attending your tournaments. The people you aren't hearing are those who aren't attending your tournaments. The reason they may not be attending your tournaments is because they don't like certain aspects of the tournament. Or perhaps they don't even have a big enough army yet to play a 2,000 point game (for example), but could totally do 1,000 or 1,500 points?

If you're *always* running 2,000 point tournaments every month, then any player who doesn't care to play that big a game is someone who isn't ever going to attend. While you should definitely continue to run 2,000 point tournaments (because most of your players enjoy that level), perhaps consider throwing in a 1,500 point event every 3rd or 4th month? IMHO, variety is the spice of both life and gaming!


In conclusion, while there are certainly some very slow players out there who will never finish a tournament game no matter how long the rounds are, I do believe that we've gotten to the point where the clock is set so that *only* players with smaller armies have the luxury of playing at a normal pace. This shoehorns 'horde' armies only into the hands of veteran gamers, which leads to less army variety then we would see otherwise. And even then, far too many games than are acceptable are ending due to time being called instead of their natural conclusion.

Until every tournament starts keeping track of how many of their games are ending prematurely, whether or not this is actually an issue cannot be identified and potentially remedied.

I believe Adepticon this year will be including that question on their score sheets, I hope that every other tournament organizer will follow suit...and if not, why not?

I think this is a great Idea.

One other thing you might see happen is that a player who is known to play slow might speed up as he/she knows that you are tracking this.

Fantastic post. For my tuppence...

I've played in five tournaments in 2010, and all but one of them was under 1250pts. I seriously believe that low points values are MUCH better for a tournament.

Not only did the vast majority of our 1000/1250pt games play out the full amount of turns, but we were able to fit more games in a day. And the more games you ft in the day, the better you can judge who is the winner. In fact, you can play LESS complicated missions, because you don't need the 'spread' of scores as much as a three-game tournament.

The smaller army size also means that people have more flexibility in their army choices compared to the amount of models they own. This means that more of the newer players can take part, and these newer players can actually make army list decisions rather than taking their entire collection.

I realise that low points values can limit some armies more than others, but I think the progress of 5ed codexes is addressing that. Also, I don't think that this is any more of a problem than the issues you list above with 2k tournaments.

To me, running a tournament of four 2000pt games over a weekend seems crazy when you could run a tournament with seven 1250pt games, and get more 'complete' games, a better spread of results, and a wider selection of armies and players.

I strongly agree with this idea. Our FLGS runs weeknight tournaments for 3 games, 1500 pts & $10. One hour games each made for a great midweek night out. They bumped up the points by 250 and everything sloooooowed down. Many games did not finish. The tactics to playing full games vs not full changes things just ever so significantly.

As well as being quicker, the thought processes for choosing a 1,000 - 1,500 point army are more challenging as you have to accept a certain amount of compromise.

Last time I played a 2,000k points game it went on for nearly 3 hours and we ended after turn 5 without rolling to see if we got another turn!

I understand this thread was created based on at least one of my responses in the other one about supposed slow-playing. Thus I will try to keep the confrontational element a bit down in order to present the contrary point of view.

yakface wrote:The problem is, while point limits can be increased arbitrarily, the time allowed in a day to complete said games generally cannot be changed. Stores holding the tournaments have to open and close at a certain time and people need to get home and get some sleep, walk the dog, etc. What that means is that although the average points limit for tournament games has increased over the years, the allotted time for said games has generally not been increased to match.

Unfortunately, not all tournament players are wily veterans who are able to put hours into practicing their speed. As with all facets of the hobby, tournaments will always draw players of a variety of skill levels. However, because of the loud desires of those who like to play with larger point values, I believe that the tournament scene as a whole has become fairly unwelcoming to new players in some regards.

Hmmm... I have not seen that. The majority of events I know of and have attended in the past few years have capped at about 1850 pts which *should* be small enough for even relatively inexperienced horde players to complete on time (except perhaps for Aard Boyz). What I do know is that after three two hours games in one day, sometimes four, I am exhausted. All I really want to do at that point is head to the bar for a beer and then relax. Adding another 30 min per game means another hour and a half to two hours added to the actual gaming day. For myself that does not appeal to me. Though I love to game, the days of me playing whatever for 20+ hours straight are long gone .

Unfortunately, we've gotten to the point where the prevailing notion amongst players is that if someone wants to take a 'horde' style army (as its known when the army is made up primarily of low point costed infantry models) then that player needs to be able to play at a faster speed then someone playing an army with less models, just so they can finish their tournament games in the allotted time.

I know a lot of people reading this are saying: 'so what? Of course people playing horde armies have to play faster, they chose to use that army!'

Indeed. Other players have to make hard choices about what to bring to the event. Why should one group of players be exempt from that restriction? I'm not trying to be mean, but that's just the nature of the beast as I see it.

Is this a good mentality for the tournament scene and if so how? Should players new to the tournament scene feel like they can't play with a certain army type or if they do, risk ending up ruining someone else's game when time is called before the game is concluded? Doesn't that help to funnel more tournament armies into specific styles of (low model count) armies?

I don't think so. I believe that constraints are there because in a lot of cases they need to be. Players, all players, need to accept that when it comes time for such an event that there will possibly be limitations. In years past such things as composition have been introduced to wedge players away from certain builds in order to facilitate (hopefully) better games for everyone involved. Some events still use it, some do not. While I am not saying horde armies should be banned, but in some cases they are a build type that is not necessarily compatible with the requirements of a tournament. Is that bad? I don't think so. To me it's just another hard choice I as a player have to make, no different than should I bring the land raider or the vindicator, the assassin or the grey knights, etc. IMO that's part of what makes tournaments what they are.

While you're still thinking about that, let me put forth the real hypothesis of this post: That an unacceptable percentage of tournament 40K games end based on 'time' being called for the tournament round as opposed to finishing at their natural conclusion.

In the past several years I can recall only a couple times where I finished all my games. Every other instance I can think of I had at least one game where time had to be called and it was *always* against someone who brought what I considered an obscene number of models to the game. I'm not bashing infantry armies at all since those are what I generally play. However, there is IMO a happy medium between an all infantry army that is still competitive and one that is just inappropriate for the venue. That is where my own bias comes from since as you said, no one likes to have their games called, especially when there is a good chance the results would have been vastly different had the game been played out.

Honestly, playing a game that ends due to time constraints is NOT FUN. Sure you can have some fun moments during the game, but is there anything more frustrating then packing up your miniatures knowing that if you had gotten to play the game to its natural conclusion you totally would have pulled off a glorious victory instead of a tie or loss?

This more than anything is the source of my discontent with *some* horde army players out there. While I have known many who are great guys and fun to game against, when I face one nowadays across the table I just groan inwardly. It is the odd (and pleasant) exception when the game goes quickly enough to finish in a timely manner.

The problem is, tournament organizers are not tracking this statistic and I don't know why. This is my plea to tournament organizers. I am not saying you should change anything (at least immediately) about your events except to add one question onto your game results sheet:

DID YOUR GAME FINISH PREMATURELY DUE TO TIME CONSTRAINTS? IF SO, PLEASE LIST THE LAST GAME TURN BOTH YOU AND YOUR OPPONENT FINISHED.

While I support the idea in principle, given the time constraints of the events plus things like setup/tear down, etc., I think the only real option would be to decrease points since time (real time) is a non-expandable resource in most cases. Maybe you have the venue for only so long or maybe your staff has to leave by a certain time due to real life concerns, etc. So for those players who want the larger games that you mention, does not decreasing point levels in some ways take away from the kind of event they want to play in? I'm not saying it does or does not, but the issue here is that in order to meet the needs of the 'horde' army players we are talking about, someone else has to give up something. The question the TOs will have to ask themselves is, how will this affect all my players? How do you tell a majority of your target audience that you cannot provide the type of event they want because you have to make sure the minority can also participate fairly? I know that's not an easy question to answer, but it is a fair one since as I said, someone is ultimately not going to get what they want.

If you're *always* running 2,000 point tournaments every month, then any player who doesn't care to play that big a game is someone who isn't ever going to attend. While you should definitely continue to run 2,000 point tournaments (because most of your players enjoy that level), perhaps consider throwing in a 1,500 point event every 3rd or 4th month? IMHO, variety is the spice of both life and gaming!

I am always in favor of different types of events. Much more interesting over the long run.

In conclusion, while there are certainly some very slow players out there who will never finish a tournament game no matter how long the rounds are, I do believe that we've gotten to the point where the clock is set so that *only* players with smaller armies have the luxury of playing at a normal pace. This shoehorns 'horde' armies only into the hands of veteran gamers, which leads to less army variety then we would see otherwise.

Tournaments by their very nature inhibit variety due to the requirements of the event. I don't see that many more 'horde' armies showing up if more time were added or point limits decreased. Granted, perhaps that's pessimistic, but that's my take on it. If that were not the case you'd not see so many leafblower guard or space wolves or whatever the flavor of the month army is.

Until every tournament starts keeping track of how many of their games are ending prematurely, whether or not this is actually an issue cannot be identified and potentially remedied.

Again, while I agree in principle about the data, I'm not sure there's much point other than to validate what we already know. I do not really see there being anything as a true solution that meets the needs of both the players who want more points and those who want to bring large armies. At best you have to accept that you will disappoint one group in order to please the other. In that there is no really good answer.

ArbitorIan wrote:To me, running a tournament of four 2000pt games over a weekend seems crazy when you could run a tournament with seven 1250pt games, and get more 'complete' games, a better spread of results, and a wider selection of armies and players.

That depends on your player base and the desires of the organizer. Not everyone enjoys smaller games. There is a reason players are clamboring to play with larger point values. It's because that's what *they* like.

JMO...

Cheers, Gary

silashand wrote:
I don't think so. I believe that constraints are there because in a lot of cases they need to be. Players, all players, need to accept that when it comes time for such an event that there will possibly be limitations. In years past such things as composition have been introduced to wedge players away from certain builds in order to facilitate (hopefully) better games for everyone involved. Some events still use it, some do not. While I am not saying horde armies should be banned, but in some cases they are a build type that is not necessarily compatible with the requirements of a tournament. Is that bad? I don't think so. To me it's just another hard choice I as a player have to make, no different than should I bring the land raider or the vindicator, the assassin or the grey knights, etc. IMO that's part of what makes tournaments what they are.

In the past several years I can recall only a couple times where I finished all my games. Every other instance I can think of I had at least one game where time had to be called and it was *always* against someone who brought what I considered an obscene number of models to the game. I'm not bashing infantry armies at all since those are what I generally play. However, there is IMO a happy medium between an all infantry army that is still competitive and one that is just inappropriate for the venue. That is where my own bias comes from since as you said, no one likes to have their games called, especially when there is a good chance the results would have been vastly different had the game been played out.

First off, I just wanted to let you know that your post had no bearing on me creating this thread. It is something I've been wanting to do for a while and quite a few of the posts in that last thread (including the original poster in that thread) spurned me to write this. Yours just happened to be the last of many that share the same viewpoint.

Above you state that a player choosing to take a horde army is facing a tough choice just like deciding what units to play with. This isn't comparable because in one case you're talking about choices that decide your army performs within the confines of a game. If a tournament doesn't have enough time for its rounds compared to its point limit then the 'hard choice' of brining a horde army can end up biting either player. As you also point out, being someone who plays against a horde player YOU can be unfairly penalized by the game finishing early. So the horde player's 'tough choice' has bitten you in this particular case.

And this is the core problem. When a tournament doesn't give enough time for a horde player to comfortably play their game at a natural rate, while the 'penalty' of not finishing games is more likely to apply to a horde player (who is may not finish more than one of their games), but it also penalizes the players who are unlucky enough to get paired against them.

Therefore, having the proper points limit vs. round times is beneficial to ALL players, but especially to those bringing the horde armies.

While I support the idea in principle, given the time constraints of the events plus things like setup/tear down, etc., I think the only real option would be to decrease points since time (real time) is a non-expandable resource in most cases. Maybe you have the venue for only so long or maybe your staff has to leave by a certain time due to real life concerns, etc. So for those players who want the larger games that you mention, does not decreasing point levels in some ways take away from the kind of event they want to play in? I'm not saying it does or does not, but the issue here is that in order to meet the needs of the 'horde' army players we are talking about, someone else has to give up something. The question the TOs will have to ask themselves is, how will this affect all my players? How do you tell a majority of your target audience that you cannot provide the type of event they want because you have to make sure the minority can also participate fairly? I know that's not an easy question to answer, but it is a fair one since as I said, someone is ultimately not going to get what they want.

A few things:


1) It really depends on the constraints on the venue. I do think in some cases round times can possibly be extended if the need is great enough...including perhaps spreading the games out to an additional day if possible. But yes, in general I would propose that if a tournament gets the data back and too many games are not being finished then points levels should be adjusted.


2) As I stated in my OP, I think variety is the spice of life. If tournament regularly provide a variety of point levels, then there is nothing wrong with a tournament running a really high points level vs. round time, *especially* if they market themselves that way (like saying 'be prepared to play fast or be left behind at this tourney!' in the rules packet).

But they key would be to take the data and KNOW what you're putting your players through by what point value vs. time limit you're setting. I think too many TOs arbitrarily set the time limit vs. the point limit without taking into consideration the negative impact that not finishing games has on its players and those who bring horde armies in particular. If that data was available to them, then it might provide a counterpoint to those players yelling for 'MORE POINTS PLEASE!'

So in short, I would hope not to 'punish' those who like events with more points, but rather convince *some* events to perhaps adjust their points levels given the constraints they have on their time.


3) Finally, you mentioned 'comp' earlier as a tool TO's used to curb what kind of armies people bring to tournaments. What I would say to that is (at least in all the US tournaments I've been to recently), comp is a quickly dying concept. And even if comp is being used, the reality is, horde armies are a major part of the game of 40K, and tournament point limits vs. time limits need to take this into consideration.

If a tournament sets its point limits properly so that the average horde player playing at an average speed can finish his games, who loses out? The smaller army players get a bunch of extra time off between rounds, true, but is that really so bad? You know when the next round starts so you can go out, relax, take a nap, etc. Is that 'penalty' really equal to the annoying situation of losing a game you should have won because you didn't get the last turn in?

The only other penalty for timing games this way is it means that larger point tournaments have to be done in situations where the start/end times can be extended, done with multi-day events or clearly billed as 'speed tournaments' so that all players (including newbies) know what they're getting themselves into.

And this is the core problem. When a tournament doesn't give enough time for a horde player to comfortably play their game at a natural rate, while the 'penalty' of not finishing games is more likely to apply to a horde player (who is may not finish more than one of their games), but it also penalizes the players who are unlucky enough to get paired against them.

This happened me at warpcon. Essentially my oppoenent didn't show up until 45 minutes after the start (not deployment time) then began to deploy a goblin army... I got to the start of my turn 2 (I went first) and half way through the movement time was called. But nothing they could do (my left skink testicle!) It was a bit gutting to be honest. I often feel that the winner of many tournaments is the person who gets luckiest with the organisation rather than tabletop lucky or army skill/tactics/list/comp

Phototoxin wrote:
This happened me at warpcon. Essentially my oppoenent didn't show up until 45 minutes after the start (not deployment time) then began to deploy a goblin army... I got to the start of my turn 2 (I went first) and half way through the movement time was called. But nothing they could do (my left skink testicle!) It was a bit gutting to be honest. I often feel that the winner of many tournaments is the person who gets luckiest with the organisation rather than tabletop lucky or army skill/tactics/list/comp

That's not really the same issue I'm describing at all. In fact I'm surprised that any player who shows up 45 minutes late to a round isn't given an automatic loss...that's what should have happened in your case. But again, that's not really the same as someone who shows up on time and plays at an average speed with a horde army and doesn't finish his game because there isn't enough time allotted for each round.

We've already included on our draft packet for this year a similar question. Not sure if we'll ask "did your game end prematurely," though ... both because it makes the statistics harder to parse than if we can simply measure how many games went less than 5 turns, and b/c in a record of 1,024 games it gets tricky when disgruntled people start saying "yes' even if it didn't "really."

It's an important thing, but one that bears thought on the back end for the metrics used. We had a game or three end too soon at the NOVA last year, at 2:15 for 2,000 + 30 minutes grace at the back end, but same as is implied here in the OP, you can't really "know" anything without the facts, jack. One could easily argue that someone who can't get a 2,000 point game done in 2:45 (max) isn't going to get a 1500 point done in 2:00, but ... metrics, metrics.


One phenomenon that's important is, many players take less time if they have less time. On our 2nd day for the finals, we gave more time for each round ... and each round still went basically until the "buzzer." That won't be the case this year - everyone plays on Day 2, all 256. The top table games will still finish in time, they'll just still use all of it. But it's not really the "best of the best" that need to be protected by appropriate round times.

MVBrandt wrote:We've already included on our draft packet for this year a similar question. Not sure if we'll ask "did your game end prematurely," though ... both because it makes the statistics harder to parse than if we can simply measure how many games went less than 5 turns, and b/c in a record of 1,024 games it gets tricky when disgruntled people start saying "yes' even if it didn't "really."

Great to hear, Mike!

The only problem with asking the general turn the game ended on is that you can't account for games that ended due to time restrictions on turn 5 or 6 even when the game would have naturally gone on longer had time not run out.

If the answer is included on the scoresheet wouldn't it be exactly the same as with any other 'score'...both players hand their slips to the judge and then he looks them over for inconsistencies between the two and then asks the players if he sees one?

It's an important thing, but one that bears thought on the back end for the metrics used. We had a game or three end too soon at the NOVA last year, at 2:15 for 2,000 + 30 minutes grace at the back end, but same as is implied here in the OP, you can't really "know" anything without the facts, jack. One could easily argue that someone who can't get a 2,000 point game done in 2:45 (max) isn't going to get a 1500 point done in 2:00, but ... metrics, metrics.

One phenomenon that's important is, many players take less time if they have less time. On our 2nd day for the finals, we gave more time for each round ... and each round still went basically until the "buzzer." That won't be the case this year - everyone plays on Day 2, all 256. The top table games will still finish in time, they'll just still use all of it. But it's not really the "best of the best" that need to be protected by appropriate round times.

That's definitely true too...when you know you have extra time then you feel like you can 'relax' a bit more even when you shouldn't. And the data may show that to be the case: that adding extra time or removing points from the game doesn't really change anything. And if that *is* the case then I'll be the first to eat some crow.

But the data needs to be collected for any of that to be discovered and most events still aren't collecting this data (hence the plea).

And especially monthly RTTs. They could get all kinds of data fairly quickly which they could then use to make important determinations about how their tournaments are run...and yet I haven't seen anything like this at any RTT!

Bingo, and that's valuable, plus the formats used, yatta yatta.

The problematic thing for an Adepticon or NOVA is a big change in points / etc. has far reaching impacts on ... well, a lot ... and when you have to run numerous years of "testing" you feel like you're guinea pigging your attendees more than helping. More statistical collection in local and smaller events would certainly help.

I have found that time limits seem shorter in RTT 1-day formats than multi-day Grand tourney formats. The multi-day formats, people are not trying to leave, store owners not closing at 7pm, it isn't a big deal as there are more games tomorrow. When gaming can go later due to the venue, it doesn't seem like as bad as an issue.

Here are the 'options' as I see it for games ending prematurely:

1.TOs increase gametime so all valid builds can finish reasonably.
2.TOs Decrease point values so all valid builds can finish reasonably.
3.TOs implement army comp to limit specific builds that may have problems finishing in the pointside/time he has set. Maybe model-count limits, number of unit limits or number of actions per turn.
4.TOs implement some sort of chess timer system that cuts turns short so actions are lost.

I would prefer 1 or 2 in some way. I think they keep the integrity of the game intact and are equally fair to everyone. I would Prefer 3 over 4, because I have yet to see a 'time' system that would work in 40k due to the interactive nature of each round. MY turn involves my opponent way to much for me to lose actions due to his reaction to my actions. I shouldn't be penalized time because he is slow in rolling cover saves or can't figure out if he gets FnP to this attack. He is burning my daylight and that is the fundamental problem with turn timers. Besides the fact it isn't part of the rules which means it has no place modifying the metagame in a competitive tourney.

Increase time or reduce point numbers. 2 hour games for 2500 points is an absurd standard for many RTTs why try 4 games in 1 day.

2500 is an absurd points value in general, IMO ... but that's for another discussion. 1500-2000, as the rulebook practically states, if you please (86brb).

One thing we're planning on implementing at the NOVA to help with game times is a more proactive judging staff, and a mini-clock/turn counter at every table. Still in its nascent stages, but the plan is to give suggested turn times in the rules packet, and have judges keep an eye on the correspondence of table turn counters with the time on the clock.

You can't cut short game turns, obviously, and comp is awful (not that I think you were suggesting that) ... the game turn thing is more b/c of the nature of the game ... cutting a turn short means cutting combat short, which has major relevance for both sides in each player turn ... you can imagine guard players dragging out shooting and move phases so that a bunch of thunderstorm terminators can't resolve combat with a squad of guardsmen, tying them up forever by gaming the system.

I think suggestions are an important key here ... I had a friend, an Ork player (26 vehicle ork), who swore to us up and down he was not the slow guy in his games that would repeatedly go 3-4 hours ... so we started recording exactly how long each turn took him and how long each turn took his opponent with a stopwatch. His game time cut in half thereafter, as he finally "realized" he was the problem. Slow players are fairly obvious, and/or are easier to catch, if the NON intentional portion of the field is "reminded" enough to keep on their toes.

None of this forgoes the value of collecting metrics, mind you, but proactive and innovative resolution of the problem can be an easier way toward keeping everyone happy (i.e. instead of dropping a points value that may have a positive impact on the draw of your event, or whatever).

Jon, well done. Very well done. One of those moments when something obvious but unthought of springs into 40k so that everyone can say, "What a great idea!"

Agree 100%. I constantly struggle to find any low-pts value tournaments. Considering that all I really want is a full, fun, friendly game; high-pts value tournaments never really seem to deliver. A unfinished game is really unsatisfying... I also find that 40k gets more competetive as pts values increase; low-pts games are generally friendlier. The solution is pretty simple: decrease the size, or extend the time limit.

I fully support your cause.

A few tournaments locally already do this - you record the turn the game finished, and whether this was early. The standard in the UK seems to also be joint slips - you both have ONE slip, you both hand it in together, which makes reconciling very quick. ALthough the number that still dont put table number / names / w/l/d on them....!

Resist comp at all turns, however. Its a caustic, horrible thing that just divides and never fixes the problem it is perceived to be needed for.

Again, this a great thread. Very interesting points. Just to reply to one...

silashand wrote:

ArbitorIan wrote:To me, running a tournament of four 2000pt games over a weekend seems crazy when you could run a tournament with seven 1250pt games, and get more 'complete' games, a better spread of results, and a wider selection of armies and players.

That depends on your player base and the desires of the organizer. Not everyone enjoys smaller games. There is a reason players are clamboring to play with larger point values. It's because that's what *they* like.

I agree. You're always going to be playing to preference, but whichever number you choose is going to have fans and detractors.

My point was rather that, leaving aside personal preference, low points games seem to fulfill the aims of a tournament better than high points ones. You play more games against more different opponents and armies, and include more people, therefore determining a 'winner' more accurately.

I agree with the OP that we would like a tournament system where everyone gets to finish their games, which means either reducing points or increasing time. Increasing time in a weekend tournament is not often practical, so the only option is to decrease points. I wanted to point out that there are lots of other advantages in decreasing points.

After having two out of four games not finish at the last major event I went to (majorly effecting the outcome of one) I have to say that time limits are the number one thing ruining tournies for me. It's hard to not feel cheated, especially in retrospect. I fully agree with the OP, fairness is a fundamental part of competition and having your game cut short just doesn't feel fair...

Agree with the OP 100%

One of the virtues of 5th, IMO, is that games finishing early is less common. Faster deployment and random game length both help here, as well as some generally simplified mechanics. I run up against time limits less often than in previous editions, but it still occasionally happens when the TO has set a 1750+ point limit and only allowed two hours for rounds.

As far as three-game single-day local tournaments go, one area impacting time allowed, where I think people expect/accept too little, is start and end times. IMO way too many local stores content themselves with a 10am or later start time; I sometimes seem 11am even, pushing closer to 11:30 or even later because of late players. There's really no good reason you can't get the first game on the road by 9:00 or 9:30am. If you start by 9:30, you can have 2.5hr rounds with an hour lunch break and still be done before 6:30. If you want a change of pace, you can even run 1500 and 2hr rounds and fit four games in a single day.

Mannahnin wrote:IMO way too many local stores content themselves with a 10am or later start time; I sometimes seem 11am even, pushing closer to 11:30 or even later because of late players. There's really no good reason you can't get the first game on the road by 9:00 or 9:30am. If you start by 9:30, you can have 2.5hr rounds with an hour lunch break and still be done before 6:30.

Note that at most venues where you are not paying, e.g. stores, them allowing you to open at 8:00am or earlier to setup so you can start playing at 9:00am is contingent solely on their good graces. All the arguments in the world about how it's "good for the store to support the event" don't mean squat when someone has to give up part of their personal time in order to allow the group to host their event. If you have one that will, great. I have seen many stores that will make allowances as best they can, but asking them for even more is IMO pushing it. JMO though.

Oh, and as to the larger game sizes being requested by lots of players, the last several events I have been to have all been 1850pt affairs which is what the "standard" tourney size has been for some time. In the latest event there was one Ork player who managed to fit 208 models in an 1850 pt list. No offense, but that's not a 'horde' army because the player simply wanted an infantry list. It was a 'horde' army with the explicit intent to see how many models he could fit into it which is what irritated me. We're not talking about the 2000+ point games mentioned by the OP which I can see possibly pushing the limits of an event. This was a smallish game size and we still could only complete four turns? At what point is it really the fault of the time limits and when is it actually the fault of the player? IMO there were plenty of ways he could have designed an all infantry 'horde' army and still kept the model count reasonable. Heck, 150 models would still be considered a decent sized 'horde' at that point value and been considerably more playable and less abusive. That he did not was my issue and I cannot say that is the only time I have faced such an opponent. Unfortunately it's far too common in my experience.

ArbitorIan wrote:Again, this a great thread. Very interesting points. Just to reply to one...

I wanted to point out that there are lots of other advantages in decreasing points.

Indeed there are. However, there are also advantages in the higher points as well in that players get to use combinations they might not otherwise be able.

A note on the OP's statement about all army types being supported. Given the different point values this is actually a red herring since an 1850 pt horde army is not the same army type as a 2000 pt list of any type. The point values allow those different combinations that you won't see in the smaller games. Thus the idea that you are somehow 'punishing' horde armies by playing large games is a lie. Regardless what size game you play you are punishing someone because they won't be able to play the army they like. I think the bias toward allowing horde armies to dictate how games are played and at what point value is misleading because it considers only the point of view of those players who field the hordes. What about those who do not? Should they be punished by not allowing all the possible options they might want to field in order to accommodate the hordes? It's a two way street and from what I have seen so far in this thread only one side's needs are being considered here. It seems accepted that it's okay to handicap other armies in order to allow people to play the larger model count armies. From my standpoint I think that's wrong. I think events should focus on what the majority of players who are going to attend want. Otherwise what's the point in holding it in the first place? I think there is a place for different styles of events with different point values, but there is most definitely no one-size-fits-all model that everyone must adopt. Unfortunately, that seems to be what the OP is suggesting. If I am incorrect, my apologies. But that's how I read the plea for TOs to change their events, i.e. that somehow the smaller sized games are always preferable to the larger ones. I personally don't agree with that. I think there is a place for all types and it is up to the players to decide which ones they want to attend and once they decide, to make whatever adjustments to their armies that are necessary to support the goals of the event. JMO...

Cheers, Gary

I completely agree that the points limit has gotten out of hand. For me its more of a tactical thing than that of a time constraint thing. (I am one of the veteran players you speak of though.) I believe the game level was made to be 1500 points. While you most certainly can play at any points limit I think the bread and butter is at 1500ish. My reasoning for liking 1500 better is units in your army actually seem to matter. I like looking through my OLD white dwarfs and seeing armies that are 3 tac squads some termies a pred and a dred a land speeder and that's a legit army. Now it seems a lot of people are going towards more spam lists and then the points limit constantly going up means we just see more spam or leafblower lists. At 1500 points you can't fill every slot on the force org chart. I stated out an army list for IG the other night for a tournament that had been 1850 for the last 6 years and they had bumped it up to 2k. I could fill almost every single slot and with optimum stuff or streamlined tourny units. at 2k+ its easy to wipe whole units at a time and its not as big a deal to loose a whole unit. At 1.5k or lower it becomes harder to wipe a whole unit a turn. Also movement gets more strategic and less cluttered when you don't have 35 damn vehicles on the board. I've been pushing for lower points locally for a while because I personally think it makes the GAME FUNNER! I like the point you raise about time constraints too. It has happened to me a couple times. 1 more turn would have turned my draw into a win. Great write up Yak face and I hope TO's take something from it.

silashand wrote:
Oh, and as to the larger game sizes being requested by lots of players, the last several events I have been to have all been 1850pt affairs which is what the "standard" tourney size has been for some time. In the latest event there was one Ork player who managed to fit 208 models in an 1850 pt list. No offense, but that's not a 'horde' army because the player simply wanted an infantry list. It was a 'horde' army with the explicit intent to see how many models he could fit into it which is what irritated me. We're not talking about the 2000+ point games mentioned by the OP which I can see possibly pushing the limits of an event. This was a smallish game size and we still could only complete four turns? At what point is it really the fault of the time limits and when is it actually the fault of the player? IMO there were plenty of ways he could have designed an all infantry 'horde' army and still kept the model count reasonable. Heck, 150 models would still be considered a decent sized 'horde' at that point value and been considerably more playable and less abusive. That he did not was my issue and I cannot say that is the only time I have faced such an opponent. Unfortunately it's far too common in my experience.

Whoa re you to tell someone how he should play his legal list? Other armies min/max like crazy... Max pieplates, max longfangs, max thunderwolves... Minimizing specific units so opponents expensive weapons are wasted. But yet when an ork player does it it is abusive?

Why should he have to keep the model count 'reasonable' to some opponents arbitrary standards? That is called ARMY COMP. 2 hours is too short for a 1850 game. If he had swapped out 60 models for some more expensive single models like dreds or kopters, then he would have given his opponent a way to remove larger chunks of points from the board faster by giving him expensive models to shoot at. The whole point is to starve your opponent of targets so his 40pt lascannon has to destroy a single 6pt boy with a 4+ cover save. If my opponent is going to max out on pieplates and long fangs with missile launchers, 10 multimeltas or 4 rounepriests then he should have no problem when I max out on warm green bodies to choke his rivers with my dead. Every army does this... 1 Dred is lascannon food. 9 kans and 2 dreds means you saturate your opponent with targets so your models survive. Marines do it with rhino rushes. I guard does it with loading up on armored company. Everyone does it all the time. Only you dislike horde, I see massive double standards here.

1850 is not 'smallish', if anything it is on the lower edge of 'large' games. 2 hours is not long enough for 1850. Arbitrary army comp by making people take less effective army lists to please people with preconcieved notions on how the game 'should' be played is still arbitrary comp.

Hordes just make the issue worse. For what it is worth, in all of the tourneys I played last year the only (and I mean the ONLY) game that I didn;'t get to finish was against a horde ork player at the invitational and that was with Bike Marines, foot marines and daemons.

edit: which isn't to say either player was doing anything wrong. The problem comes in when a player gets to dominate 65% of the playing time and then the non horde player feel rushed.

Yak's idea of collecting data is a good one - I will see if Kevin Nash wants to add that to the data he is collecting.

I understand whats being said here and have even encountered these things, I normally play 1,500-2,000 pt games in an hour time limit as I practice with my son 2-3 times a week. I have seen these slow players, as most of them are new to the game or as in my experiance just running the clock. So I have expected that a normal game starts and ends takes about 1-3 hours on a normal time span. In tourneyments I have seen the clock runners and they do not do very well, it is the guys that are fast players that tend to gain objectives and score points that win more often.

nkelsch wrote:Whoa re you to tell someone how he should play his legal list? Other armies min/max like crazy... Max pieplates, max longfangs, max thunderwolves... Minimizing specific units so opponents expensive weapons are wasted. But yet when an ork player does it it is abusive?

Do any of those players cause the game to not be completed? In an 1850 pt tournament a 2 hour time limit is entirely reasonable. If *any* player intentionally takes an army he/she knows cannot complete the games on time then no offense, I am entitled to say they are not meeting the requirements of the event. As I said, a tournament is about making hard choices about what to field. Do you take more troops choices to capture / hold objectives or do you take more elites to score kill points? IMO choosing models that will allow you to play the game in the required timeframe is ABSOLUTELY no different. Just because you want to be able to field what you like does not mean you will or even should always be able to do so. When that choice means you will impact every other player you face in the event then gee, I am exactly the person who will call you out on it and I have every right to do so.

A long time ago a friend of mine told me that "a game is a contract between two players whereby they mutually agree to help each other have fun." If you are intentionally making choices that you KNOW will make your opponents' games potentially unenjoyable then IMO you are not living up to your end of that contract. I know I would never want to face someone with that attitude across the table. Events are supposed to be about people getting together and having a good time. What part of not caring if your opponent enjoys the game do you really think is okay?

Why should he have to keep the model count 'reasonable' to some opponents arbitrary standards? That is called ARMY COMP.

No, it's called playing by the rules of the event which you seem to consistently want to ignore.

2 hours is too short for a 1850 game.

Absolute nonsense. As I said, if we are talking about the 2000+ point games mentioned by the OP then I might give you some slack. If you cannot play an 1850 pt game in 2 hours then something is wrong IMO.

Only you dislike horde, I see massive double standards here.

Like/dislike has nothing to do with it. I have 7 current 40K armies, two of which could be considered horde armies (infantry IG and lately my 2nd bug army). There is absolutely no double standard with asking players to be able to finish their games within the alloted time. If you cannot grasp that then I am fortunate I will probably never have you in any of my events because I spell out EXPLICITLY how long the games are to last and that the expectation is that if you sign up you need to be able to complete the games in time. Failure to do that is a violation of the event rules period.

1850 is not 'smallish', if anything it is on the lower edge of 'large' games. 2 hours is not long enough for 1850.

What planet are you living on? Events have been 1750-1850 for *years* and have been extremely successful at that point level with the VAST majority being played in 2 hours. In 15 years of playing in tournaments on two continents, two hours is ABSOLUTELY enough time for a 1850 pt game. If you don't like it, that's not the fault of the organizers.

Somnicide wrote:The problem comes in when a player gets to dominate 65% of the playing time and then the non horde player feel rushed.

Absolutely!

Cheers, Gary

Gary, your rhetoric about army point sizes is needlessly hostile and also doesn't take into account other parts of the country or world. As one example, 1500 has remained standard at the UK GT events for the last ten years.

Some armies can easily play 1750-2000 in 2hrs, but horde armies usually aren't among them. And that's not the really the fault of the horde player. 2.25-2.5 is a more reasonable length for a 1750-2000pt game.

I agree that players are responsible to play the game within the time limit, but it is also the organizer's responsibility to give them sufficient time. While really experienced and practiced players like you or me may have little difficulty with a 2hr limit in a 1750 game, it's not really reasonable or realistic to expect all players to match our pace.

Mannahnin wrote:Gary, your rhetoric about army point sizes is needlessly hostile and also doesn't take into account other parts of the country or world. As one example, 1500 has remained standard at the UK GT events for the last ten years.

My apologies for the hostility. I will rein it in somewhat. I do not, however, like it when a specific individual in this thread (and the other) keeps calling me biased when all I am saying is that if you sign up for an event and you know how long the games will be then you have an overt responsibility to make choices that will allow you to complete them. Anything else is sportsmanship of the poorest kind because you are saying you don't really care about how it affects the other guy. THAT is a personal pet peeve of mine and one that gets under my skin. However, I will drop the point.

FWIW, *ALL* of the GW UK Conflict tournaments I attended when I was in the UK from 1993-2005 were at 1850. Only the GTs were 1500. If that has changed since I left then I am unaware of that.

Cheers, Gary

Fair enough. I just think there's a danger of excluding horde players, especially newer ones. It's reasonable to coach them and advise them about playing faster, but I think we need to be careful about calling them bad sports or cheaters.

Like I said in the other thread. I've found hordes to be the province of old hands. Not so much newer players. I can count the number of times I've played someone who it was their 1st or second tournament running a horde (130+ models) on a single thumb. That's in 10 years of attending events.

Veterans should be able to play in a reasonable amount of time with a horde. I can do it and so should everyone else. That being said the person playing against a horde needs to speed up his game and accept that the horde player is going to take up a larger portion of the overall time. If it's important to you to finish then maybe you need to play faster as well. I know when I see a horde put down in front of me I know I'm going to be moving at a faster pace and tell my opponent so.

This does 3 things. Informs them that I'm serious about finishing the game. Shows that I'm willing to move faster to make sure that happens. And helps put them in the right frame of mind for moving quickly. With this mentality I've never not finished a game against a horde player. Though I have had some games against some people w/less than 60 models not finish...

the first thing that comes to mind when hearing time limits on table top strategy games is, working the clock. It is a tactic used in every sporting event that has a time limit. If you are ahead, eat up minutes and run the clock down. A quick example would be, if I can look at the table and all model positions and see that it would take at least two turns for my opponent to move, position themselves, and assault to change the out come of last turn, I may just run the clock down so they only get 1 turn.

Maybe handle it like chess, where each player has their own stop watch and they are only competing against their own time limit?

Mannahnin wrote:Fair enough. I just think there's a danger of excluding horde players, especially newer ones. It's reasonable to coach them and advise them about playing faster, but I think we need to be careful about calling them bad sports or cheaters.

Agreed. I reserve my labels of bad sports for those who meet the criteria I already specified, i.e. they know they can't play the type of army they want fast enough and bring it anyway. Personally I like hordes because they are very representative of what I envision armies of 'nids or Orks to be like. I get more irritated with things like Nidzilla which I cannot envision in the 40K background. However, from a game standpoint the latter fits into a tournament setting a lot easier than the horde so I make allowances based on that.

Some armies can easily play 1750-2000 in 2hrs, but horde armies usually aren't among them. And that's not the really the fault of the horde player. 2.25-2.5 is a more reasonable length for a 1750-2000pt game.

While it may be more reasonable to you, as I said before it may not be a choice the organizer can make. I will give you an example:

When I was running events for my last club we were not allowed to show up before 9am and had to be cleared out by 7pm. This includes setup / teardown, awards, etc. Figuring three games in the day at 2 hours each gave us exactly 1 hour for lunch, a 30min break between games 2 and 3 to do standings updates, etc., and just enough time to wrap everything up at the end of the day. We used 1850 points because that's what everyone wanted to play and it was understood that games had to be completed on time by everyone, even those players who showed up who weren't part of the club running the event. For us it was simple logistics and knowing several other TOs their constraints were the same as ours. Thus there is a choice, either you cater to the minority who might want to bring large armies or you play the point sizes that the majority wanted to see. There was no happy medium. While I know some people here think there is, it is my experience that such is a luxury of only the largest events where they can spread things out over multiple days. In short, someone is not going to be happy in most situations. Either it's the players who want the larger games or it's the players who want the larger armies. I could never come to a good solution except to run the smaller events once in a while as Yakface has suggested. It's not perfect, but it provided some variety and allowed all players to play their style once in a while. However, that NEVER could happen simultaneously due to the logistics issues I mentioned before. I really think people who have not run an event think that there is some magic wand the TO can wave to make everyone happy and that's unfortunately not true. I wish it were.

While really experienced and practiced players like you or me may have little difficulty with a 2hr limit in a 1750 game, it's not really reasonable or realistic to expect all players to match our pace.

I don't expect them to match the pace, but given my own experience I don't think 2 hours is unreasonable at 1850pts. YMMV I guess...

Hulksmash wrote:Veterans should be able to play in a reasonable amount of time with a horde. I can do it and so should everyone else. That being said the person playing against a horde needs to speed up his game and accept that the horde player is going to take up a larger portion of the overall time. If it's important to you to finish then maybe you need to play faster as well. I know when I see a horde put down in front of me I know I'm going to be moving at a faster pace and tell my opponent so.

This does 3 things. Informs them that I'm serious about finishing the game. Shows that I'm willing to move faster to make sure that happens. And helps put them in the right frame of mind for moving quickly. With this mentality I've never not finished a game against a horde player. Though I have had some games against some people w/less than 60 models not finish...

I agree wholeheartedly with your approach. I guess I have had the unfortunate luck to face players who even though they brought large armies were unwilling (or unable, whichever) to speed up their game in order to finish on time. Granted, I've also had the same thing happen with opponents who had small armies. "Hmmm... should I move my tac squad over there or into the woods... hmmmm.... maybe into the building..." I can't tell you how aggravating that can be sometimes!!!

Cheers, Gary

Not only are point costs going up, model costs are going down. Ork boyz dropped 2 ppm in the last edition. Guardsmen dropped 1. Rhinos dropped 15, chimeras similarly.
Gargoyles got cheap, and I think gaunts got cheaper too.


Horde or not, games are alloted too little time, most of the time. I think that's even more true in an environment that feels like it's gotten more 'competitive' over the last couple of years. When your online ranking comes down to not forgetting to move a model, you better have the time to double-check those moves.

Short time limits do discourage horde players, and as a result, skew the metagame. It's easy to say everyone is mech when those who would otherwise go horde are staying home because they can't finish their games or are docked points for being slow.

Redbeard wrote:Short time limits do discourage horde players, and as a result, skew the metagame. It's easy to say everyone is mech when those who would otherwise go horde are staying home because they can't finish their games or are docked points for being slow.

For all my b*tching about the number of MEQ armies at tourneys nowadays, I do realize the time limits can be a factor in what people choose to bring. I too am guilty of contributing to the problem, but as it's a side effect of the tournament model there's not much can be done IMO.

Cheers, Gary

I think if you want to play a horde army and want to participate in a tournament then yous hould. I think if people are worried enough not to attend then they should probably find some time to practice playing quicker. Or discuss ways to do it with others. Or time their games on fun nights to see how long it's taking. It's not a hard thing to do.

I learned to do it w/a ton of models and am building an all infantry guard army that I'll be bringing out this season. Betcha I finish 99% of my games though

Hulksmash wrote:Veterans should be able to play in a reasonable amount of time with a horde. I can do it and so should everyone else. That being said the person playing against a horde needs to speed up his game and accept that the horde player is going to take up a larger portion of the overall time. If it's important to you to finish then maybe you need to play faster as well. I know when I see a horde put down in front of me I know I'm going to be moving at a faster pace and tell my opponent so.

I agree, veterans should be able to play in a reasonable amount of time with their army. But who can guarantee that all the people at your store tournament are 'veterans'? For many people, it may be their first tournament.



There's been a few comments so far about how 'x hours is a perfectly reasonable amount of time' or 'if you can't finish a game in x hours you're doing something wrong'. The point is, while us veterans who know our armies inside out, never have to check the rules, and have planned what we're going to do may be able to finish a horde game in a certain time, there's no guarantee that EVERYONE at the tournament will be able to.

Saying 'well, they SHOULD be able to' helps nobody. It just drives people away who are newer at the game or don't get to play as much. Since one of the main points of a tournament is to play against lots of new people, this is a bad thing. The amount of time alloted to a game should be the amount of time a NON-veteran player needs to finish with a reasonably sized army (including a 'sensible' horde).

If that means the 'veteran's get to stand around twiddling our thumbs for fifteen minutes at the end of every round well hey - extra coffees for us.

Crom wrote:the first thing that comes to mind when hearing time limits on table top strategy games is, working the clock. It is a tactic used in every sporting event that has a time limit. If you are ahead, eat up minutes and run the clock down. A quick example would be, if I can look at the table and all model positions and see that it would take at least two turns for my opponent to move, position themselves, and assault to change the out come of last turn, I may just run the clock down so they only get 1 turn.

Maybe handle it like chess, where each player has their own stop watch and they are only competing against their own time limit?

Actually, various sports with a clock also have rules against time-wasting, so your point is not convincing.

In general I agree with Yak. Players should not be discouraged from attending events because the combination of point level and limited time prevents the proper use of horde armies.

@ian

You must have missed the earlier part in the same post. The part where I've never in 10 years played a horde player that it was their first event. Hordes tend to be the province of veteran players. Most new players to the game jump in with marines of some variety. In fact until 5th edition came out you very nearly never saw hordes of orks on the tables period.

In other words the people bringing the horde should know be able to play in a reasonable quick manner. As should the people who brought smaller armies. If you want to play in tournaments then take the extra time to practice with your army.

All that being said I think it's a bad thing to drop the time limit below 2.25 hours period at 2k and should stay around the 2.5 mark. I'd still finish with a horde early at those point levels/time limits so a "newcomer" should do fine.

The other option would be for tournament organizers to lower the number of games...but include more mission objectives/hidden points to differentiate the field.

For example, I stated this a couple of years ago after attending the Adepticon TT for the first time...I would much rather have 3 complete games with extra objectives than 4 rushed games (of which, some didn't finish). Especially in that format...as you have twice the number of people shaking hands/making introductions, going over terrain, rolling dice, talking to each other, etc.

Nothing worse than an incomplete 40k game and allowance for more time/less games does a few things;

1. Lets players actually 'play' the game with each other rather than rush through turns
2. Prevents time stalling
3. Allows horde armies more freedom and less back breaking rushing

Back when I played 40K at tournaments semi regularly (nearly a year ago now), I played Horde Orks. When we played at 1500 I found tournaments to be pleasant experiences and always got through all my games. When we went up to 1750, it was a lot more pressurised, and I had to work hard and develop strategies for fast deployment and movement, and against a picky player (someone who made me re-check moves often) I often found games less fun and generally exhausting. I'm a pretty fast player, and I hate to think that I'm inconveniencing my opponent at all.
Thing is, I'm not interested in switching to battlewagon rush. I used to play trukk heavy back in the day and that was fun, but if the only way to play lots of boyz is in wagons, that doesn't appeal to me much. For that reason, as well as the general meching up of 40K, I've stopped playing entirely. When I moved to the UK I didn't even take my 40K armies with me. So yeah, I'd be in favour of something being done to give horde players a bit of a break- sucks to paint over 200 guys and then get dirty looks from the dude with the spraypainted tanks and 30 models in his army.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Crom wrote:the first thing that comes to mind when hearing time limits on table top strategy games is, working the clock. It is a tactic used in every sporting event that has a time limit. If you are ahead, eat up minutes and run the clock down. A quick example would be, if I can look at the table and all model positions and see that it would take at least two turns for my opponent to move, position themselves, and assault to change the out come of last turn, I may just run the clock down so they only get 1 turn.

Maybe handle it like chess, where each player has their own stop watch and they are only competing against their own time limit?

Actually, various sports with a clock also have rules against time-wasting, so your point is not convincing.

In general I agree with Yak. Players should not be discouraged from attending events because the combination of point level and limited time prevents the proper use of horde armies.

They have some rules against it, like a play clock, but that doesn't mean there still aren't 100s of legit strategies to run down a clock. Every tournament I have ever played it had a guy or guys running it. We had no time limits and we were usually always able to finish in that weekend.

Hulksmash wrote:@ian

You must have missed the earlier part in the same post. The part where I've never in 10 years played a horde player that it was their first event. Hordes tend to be the province of veteran players. Most new players to the game jump in with marines of some variety. In fact until 5th edition came out you very nearly never saw hordes of orks on the tables period.

In other words the people bringing the horde should know be able to play in a reasonable quick manner. As should the people who brought smaller armies. If you want to play in tournaments then take the extra time to practice with your army.

All that being said I think it's a bad thing to drop the time limit below 2.25 hours period at 2k and should stay around the 2.5 mark. I'd still finish with a horde early at those point levels/time limits so a "newcomer" should do fine.

In the 10 years and 1 month of playing in tournaments I have played many first timers and many horde (mostly Nid players) first timers. It might have to do with most events in my area are part of larger conventions so these players are there not just to play 40k, but other things over a weekend. The point I think Yak is trying to make is that by pressuring people with higher points and time constraints we are forcing would be tournament players out and maybe even out of the hobby. If a players first tournament is a bad experience they will not come back and if it was really bad will turn other people away from events. So being that we still have events that cater to all players we should be consious of every type of player and not just tell them to play faster and hope for the best. Some of the best players I know take their time and win most of their games fast does not always equal good.

@Tasty

Cute Tasty.

Your point doesn't hold up. By your reasoning by imposing painting requirements we're forcing possible tournament players out. Comp does this too. You can make anything be a reason people don't attend a tournament.

Yak does have a point in regards to the timing. Some events have gone to smaller time games. The point values honestly have remained largely unchanged for the last 4 years or so. Steady between 1850-2k. But some TO's, trying to save time, have shifted to 2-2.25 hours which just can't be done with the way the new books are going. 2.25 is the minimum and 2.5 should be the standard if you wanna run anything over 1750.

Hulk, you offered anecdotal evidence that you generally only see hordes played in tournaments by veterans, and Tasty's anecdotal experience is that he's seen a bunch of newbies do it. I've seen newbies bring the hordes as much as veterans, and it's certainly my experience that the new guys are the ones who more often get pinched by the time limits.

Tasty was supporting Yak's point, and I think it's a reasonable one. If the present format of tournaments (points sizes trending upward without time limits consistently also going up) is one that makes tournaments a stressful & difficult experience for newer players, expecially guys who just own a horde army, then that will tend to discourage those guys from participating.

I'm in no way a new player and it made it stressful and difficult for me- no way could I consider travelling to a tournament regularly for a weekend of gaming when I know I've got to be ready for work on monday. It's just too tiring.

If you have people who know the game running the tournament that should mitigate longer running games. Most common time sink is looking up or debating a rule, or when a rule is in a gray area. Having people running the games at tournaments who can make a call as a non biased third party, like a referee, I think that would solve a lot of issues.

A pretty common one I've encountered when running horde is being asked to check and recheck distances to slow down my movement and stress me out.

Da Boss wrote:A pretty common one I've encountered when running horde is being asked to check and recheck distances to slow down my movement and stress me out.

That is because so many players 'rubber-band' models. At the beginning of the turn, you are barley in assault distance and most of your models are strung out behind, but by time the assault happens, somehow your whole unit was in assault distance? Where did that extra distance come from?

People measure the front and the models in the back get 9" movement phases. While this is not something that happens only in horde lists, it is a form of cheating associated with hordes which people are bothered by. Personally, I see it done a lot more against me as people like to spread out on my turn turn but bunch up and those spread out models move really fast from the back to assault crossing distances impossible for them. I almost feel like pre-measuring distance at the beginning of a turn would prevent such issues as I can clearly see which models can close the 12"-18" distance on foot and assault before a model is moved.

This is why I measure every model and use a pre-cut measuring stick. It is fast and accurate as it lies flat on the table unlike hovering tapemeasures. Accurate and fast measuring is the only way to keep it honest and clean, I am not a fan to measuring shortcuts as they are percieved as unfair many times.

I agree, but after the third recheck where it is obvious I am NOT cheating, it gets old. If I've proven my honesty a few times, continuously asking me to prove it again is a bit rude, and slows the game down.

Ironically I just got back form the local game shop to pick up some primer to paint my newest lizardmen additions, and they were running a 40K tournament. There were 2 guys running it and there were time limits on turns. I didn't get into much details because I didn't want to end up there all day watching games, but some places do enforce time limits.

Every so often they call the time and if your turn isn't finished it goes on to the next player's turn I guess is how they are running it. I saw two Ork armies there playing. I guess the rules make you get proficient with your army.

Play games that aren't 40k at tournaments. Time becomes much less an issue.

While that only solves things for people who play other games, for the remainder I think timed turns really are a good idea. When you get to the end of the game, have either a flat or scaled system where if one player took 20 minutes more overall to take his turns, the other guy gets a bonus. Hell, you might even see people "speed playing" to try to get the bonus, which will likely lead to tactical errors and create more fun all around IMO.

The only thing is, I don't see a lot of points trending upwards. Most events the last couple years are in the 1500-2000 point range, just as the 5ed Rulebook suggests. Ensuring enough time is given is fine, but ... "newbies playing hordes" don't move all that much faster at 1500 points compared to 2000 points ... and honestly, you don't have a lot of newbies at big convention GT's in the actual GT component one way or another.

You DO have them, they're just ... you don't go to Adepticon Champs or NOVA Open or Wargamescon and see the major GT's full of horde newbs ... and it's attempting to prove a negative that the reason they aren't there is the time constraint issue ... newbs wouldn't probably know to worry about that, now, would they?

There are good concerns to analyze, but let's not take it out of context with unproveables and unsupported statements, eh? Yeah, if you're clever, you're catching yourself about now with the retorts you were going to offer to me doing just the same thing in this very post. It's not especially helpful, b/c we DON'T have the stats. That's the point of the OP suggestion, natch.

1500-1750, with 2 1/4 or 2 1/2 hour game limits is the ideal size for a day tournament of 3 games or a weekend of 6 (5 if you want to have a drawn out process for Best Army on day 2). Lower time limits or higher points tends to up the number of games which don't get finished.

MVBrandt wrote:The only thing is, I don't see a lot of points trending upwards. Most events the last couple years are in the 1500-2000 point range, just as the 5ed Rulebook suggests.

I think independant events have been good about values... 'ard boyz was not. GW stuck it out there like, "Yeeeeeeeeah, 2500 point battles, hardcore playstyle, this is where the real gamers game boyeeeeeieieie!" Being a major series of events in the recent 5th edition at 2500 points makes it a pretty known point value and set a perception amongst many players that bigger is better. No hard choices what to bring, bring all your toys and full force org.

Did 'ard boyz occur because people wanted high point values? or do people want higher point values because 'ard boyz told us we did? Right now, 1750-1850 is a good game size IMHO but there are people out there who smoked the GW crack and are addicted to 2500 point games.

I don't know ... I think that's not a widespread phenomenon. I don't *know* That to be the case, but look around ... the internet, at least, has very few publicized 2500 point tournaments (they are out there, don't get me wrong), and the majority of reported on games are not 2500 anywhere, batreps/etc.

I think one way to "get" at people is to point them to the rulebook. IT flat out says that 1500 or 2000 points makes for a well balanced game that only takes a couple hours to play.

I'm not sure Ard Boyz means anything, or is routinely played, by any kind of a majority or trend.

There hasn't been a ton of point value inflation IME, but there's been some. 2000pts was a pretty common variant "bigger" game value over the last decade, but just in the last year or two it's been promoted a lot more, particularly by certain blogs. The Adepticon Gladiator was 2000 then 2200 or 2250. Ard Boyz' 2500 has also gotten some folks & stores trying to do bigger games, but not always alloting enough time.

I'm game yak. I'll put a box on the score sheet for players to note down how many turns were played in the game. I've always kept a loose running tally in my head of how many games in a given event didn't go at least five turns, but it is an interesting idea to have it accurately tracked.

We've been jimmying with the scenarios to ensure that stumbling-block games like capture and control/dawn of war don't happen, and I've got some 1500 point events planned in the coming months as well. I'll be interested to see the data after there's a few events on the books. Overall it's a good idea for a T.O., since you can use the information to find trends like players that always happen to be on short-game tables, regardless of armies played, and which scenarios are causing potential problems like the above.

-Dis.

Crom wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Crom wrote:the first thing that comes to mind when hearing time limits on table top strategy games is, working the clock. It is a tactic used in every sporting event that has a time limit. If you are ahead, eat up minutes and run the clock down. A quick example would be, if I can look at the table and all model positions and see that it would take at least two turns for my opponent to move, position themselves, and assault to change the out come of last turn, I may just run the clock down so they only get 1 turn.

Maybe handle it like chess, where each player has their own stop watch and they are only competing against their own time limit?

Actually, various sports with a clock also have rules against time-wasting, so your point is not convincing.

In general I agree with Yak. Players should not be discouraged from attending events because the combination of point level and limited time prevents the proper use of horde armies.

They have some rules against it, like a play clock, but that doesn't mean there still aren't 100s of legit strategies to run down a clock. Every tournament I have ever played it had a guy or guys running it. We had no time limits and we were usually always able to finish in that weekend.

There are legit strategies and there are illegit strategies.

Everyone else doesn't have the same experience as you in respect to finishing games. Lots of people fail to finish games because of running out of time. I've done it myself (playing Tyranids).

Whatever your personal experience, it's undeniable that plenty of games get cut short for time. Several factors control that function, two of them being time allowed, and size of armies (points value). It doesn't happen only because the horde player deliberately counts out the clock.

All Yakface is saying is that armies have expanded, and time hasn't, so it has become difficult to finish games especially for high model count armies. This spoils the game for both participants.

If you prefer a game with low model counts, that can more easily be achieved by reducing the point level than by discouraging horde players from attending. Alternatively, play high points games, but allow for the fact that they take longer.

In regards to Ard Boyz: it was designed to sell more models.

And I think that point value caught on locally. We'd been playing 2000 point games as the standard default since I arrived at Fort Bragg in 2003. After my last deployment (12 months), a lot of players were more interested in playing 2500 point games.

So, I'd say locally, the trend to play larger games has increased.

I do witness many games not being fully completed with a 2 1/2 hour time limit at 2500 points. 2 1/2 hours seems very reasonable for 1750-2000 point games.

Basically 'ard boyz set the standard (or reinforced) for many 'friendly play' locations. 2500 points and unpainted models.

2500 point game takes 3 hours. Plain and simple. But in events the standard time period is 2-2.5 hours regardless of point value.

I think 2.5 and 1750-2000 is pretty close to reasonable. If you have to have a 2-hour limit to fit 4 games into 1 day... 1500 points.

Four games a day at two hours a game is still pushing it.

You probably won't get started until 10 o'clock. People need breaks for the lavatory and meals. There is always a slight pause between games as people work out who they have to play next, where, and get their army over there.

You're probably talking about a good 10 hours to play four two-hour games. Obviously you can do all of this and play on into the evening if so inclined.

For me, I don't like to attend events which start to seem like work. I want to have an evening socialising as well as the games.

The related point is whether 2,000 or 2,500 point games are the best level to play. I know people like to play them because you can get all your toys on to the table. On the downside, it also means army selection is less challenging, because you don't have the pressure of picking one unit over another one due to limited points.

The higher points levels also subtly favour armies with good selections in all their slots. Tyranids and Tau, for instance, are highly dependent on their Elite slots for a lot of their best units. IoM armies though, have access to plentiful, cheap support weapons in Troops and Transports as well, so as the points level goes up, they can more easily add fighting power.

nkelsch wrote:Basically 'ard boyz set the standard (or reinforced) for many 'friendly play' locations. 2500 points and unpainted models.

I think this is an assumption possibly based on your local area. Of the several locations I've playing in pick-up games around the country no one has ever suggested 2500. Now that is personal experience but I rarely see the point value played at all excluding the couple months leading up to Ard Boyz while people prep.

I agree with the rest of your statement though

Hulksmash wrote:

nkelsch wrote:Basically 'ard boyz set the standard (or reinforced) for many 'friendly play' locations. 2500 points and unpainted models.

I think this is an assumption possibly based on your local area. Of the several locations I've playing in pick-up games around the country no one has ever suggested 2500. Now that is personal experience but I rarely see the point value played at all excluding the couple months leading up to Ard Boyz while people prep.

I agree with the rest of your statement though

Agreed. I can only speak for my local area, but we rarely see people playing 2500 pts except as practice for 'ardboyz. Most people are playing 1850. As to unpainted models, that's always going to be a theme. Some people don't want to paint. Ardboyz had nothing to do with setting any standard for unpainted.

I don't know if I'd say it has "nothing to do" with it. When GW runs only one official event in the US for a year, and that event doesn't require painting, I do think that can contribute to some players (especially newer ones) thinking that painting is less important.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Crom wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Crom wrote:the first thing that comes to mind when hearing time limits on table top strategy games is, working the clock. It is a tactic used in every sporting event that has a time limit. If you are ahead, eat up minutes and run the clock down. A quick example would be, if I can look at the table and all model positions and see that it would take at least two turns for my opponent to move, position themselves, and assault to change the out come of last turn, I may just run the clock down so they only get 1 turn.

Maybe handle it like chess, where each player has their own stop watch and they are only competing against their own time limit?

Actually, various sports with a clock also have rules against time-wasting, so your point is not convincing.

In general I agree with Yak. Players should not be discouraged from attending events because the combination of point level and limited time prevents the proper use of horde armies.

They have some rules against it, like a play clock, but that doesn't mean there still aren't 100s of legit strategies to run down a clock. Every tournament I have ever played it had a guy or guys running it. We had no time limits and we were usually always able to finish in that weekend.

There are legit strategies and there are illegit strategies.

Everyone else doesn't have the same experience as you in respect to finishing games. Lots of people fail to finish games because of running out of time. I've done it myself (playing Tyranids).

Whatever your personal experience, it's undeniable that plenty of games get cut short for time. Several factors control that function, two of them being time allowed, and size of armies (points value). It doesn't happen only because the horde player deliberately counts out the clock.

All Yakface is saying is that armies have expanded, and time hasn't, so it has become difficult to finish games especially for high model count armies. This spoils the game for both participants.

If you prefer a game with low model counts, that can more easily be achieved by reducing the point level than by discouraging horde players from attending. Alternatively, play high points games, but allow for the fact that they take longer.

Yeah I am not disagreeing with anyone here, but just pointing out if you put a play clock it also becomes part of the strategy. That is all I was pointing out. I do think in a tournament style play you need to have a schedule to keep and if you want to get done in a weekend's time you need to keep it. I have a Tyranid army but haven't played them since second edition. I was pretty quick with them and the only time I had issues with time is when people made me re-smeasure distances for whatever I was doing. I still think having a few referees would be ideal to make the call on certain things.

Here is a question for you guys, and sort of on the same topic, what do you do in stale mates? I was in one last week. Let me give you the quick break down.

Lizardmen Vs Chaos.

2000 point game, at the end of the game it came down to two units left. I had temple guard and a slaan in my unit with life magic, he had a chaos prince on a Juggernaut with a unit of chaos knights. He kept killing off the TG, but I kept resurrecting them every magic phase with life magic. Then when I attacked he had something that made me re-roll successful hits. So, I would only get maybe 3 to 5 hits total because I had to reroll so much. Then his armor was a 0+ so he always saved on a 2 or 3+ and the game just went on forever. We ended up calling it and just adding up victory points, which ironically came up to be even. Do you call it a tie?

Well I'm not familiar with modern WHFB, but it sounds like a situation of the immovable force versus the irresistible object.

So yes, a tie.


It does happen in history that both sides give up without a clear result, though not too common.

E.g. Battle of Borodino.
Massive casualties on both sides.
French in possession of the field at the end of day one, but only because the Russians retreated in good order, to fight again another day.
Most likely neither army could have continued the next day.

Antietam in the ACW was similar.

Shiloh nearly went the same way, except that Grant hung on and brought it back for the Union on the second day.

Crom wrote:Here is a question for you guys, and sort of on the same topic, what do you do in stale mates? I was in one last week. Let me give you the quick break down.

Lizardmen Vs Chaos.

2000 point game, at the end of the game it came down to two units left. I had temple guard and a slaan in my unit with life magic, he had a chaos prince on a Juggernaut with a unit of chaos knights. He kept killing off the TG, but I kept resurrecting them every magic phase with life magic. Then when I attacked he had something that made me re-roll successful hits. So, I would only get maybe 3 to 5 hits total because I had to reroll so much. Then his armor was a 0+ so he always saved on a 2 or 3+ and the game just went on forever. We ended up calling it and just adding up victory points, which ironically came up to be even. Do you call it a tie?

Depends on which scenario you're playing. If you scored equal VPs (or close), in a scenario where VPs determine the winner, then yes you got a Draw.

We were just playing a straight up battle, and used the victory points as a last ditch effort to figure out who won. We are just getting back into gaming after a 10 year break so we are also relearning all the new rules. So, we typically keep it simple and don't get into anything advanced just yet. The game ended with him killing off a few guys every turn, then me resurrecting them via life magic, and then my lizards not being able to hit his knights/prince hardly at all because of those dang re-rolls he forced me to do via wargear/magic standard or whatever it was.

In 40K we are starting to make up our own missions, and there is no time limit but there may be a turn limit on them. If one side doesn't complete it's mission in so many turns then the other player wins. If you finish your mission you win regardless of victory points.

We have been doing attack/defend, convoy/escort, grab and run, ambush, infiltrate and steal and it has been more fun then regular games in many cases. Though I am not sure if you could use such things in a tournament.

Heh, that's the advantage of playing regularly with a friend- you can get creative with missions and campaigns and so on. I'm a bit envious, having moved to a new area away from my old well established group!
Fantasy can end up with draws though, it happens in tournaments too. Generally both players get points for a draw.

Hey guys, thanks for all the civil conversation.

I wanted to re-iterate a few points about my original post that a few people seem to be overlooking:


1) I am not advocating that tournaments make any immediate changes to their round times and/or point values, only that they begin to collect data on the matter to make educated decisions on whether or not this is an issue for their events or not. I think collecting that data can only positively benefit the community as a whole.


2) Even if the data points out that 2,000 points in 2 hours contributes to an unacceptable level of 'unfinished games' I would still not advocate for the complete removal from this type of event...it is abundantly clear that there are a LOT of players who enjoy playing this level of game and can (for the most part) finish their games in the allotted time. The only thing I was trying to warn against was against the idea of a 'standard' tournament template being (perhaps subconsciously) put forth of 2,000 pts mixed with a short round limit. I believe that tournaments (especially those that are run on the monthly level) really benefit from running a variety of different formats, including those with less and more points.

There's nothing wrong with running a 2,000 point 2 hour round limit event as long as it is properly billed as something like a 'speed' or 'veteran' tournament and a couple of months later the store also holds a more beginner friendly style tournament. That way if somebody looks at the 2K in 2 hour event they know without even looking at the event rules that they are expected to come very much 'ready to play' quickly and conversely if this doesn't sound like their cup of tea they know they can wait a month or two to enter the 1,500 point event that has the same 2 hour round limits.


3) Hulksmash: While I agree with you that if everyone was suddenly to drop the points values to 1,500 points and raise the round time limits to 2:45 we wouldn't suddenly see a wave of newbies appearing out of thin air with their 180 model Tyranid armies...but at the same time you absolutely cannot discount the effect shorter round limits and more points have on army selection.

I have personally been witness several times to people trying to decide between what type of army to take to a tournament with the decision ultimately coming down to which army would be easier to finish their games with (i.e. the lower model count army). And look at what message you've put forth in your post: You actually say that horde armies are the domain of the veteran player at a tournament! Can you just imagine what a player new to tournaments who does have two armies (one horde and one non-horde) would think if he logs onto Dakka to get some advice on which army he should take? Everyone with half a brain would tell them to take the non-horde army for the first few tournament outings and they would be right to do so, because of the incredible strain the time limits put on an inexperienced horde player.

How is this good for the game? The answer is, it isn't! In order to help cultivate more tournament players I think it would be a great idea to counter every couple of 2,000 point tournaments a store runs with a 1,000 'starter' tournament that has nice long round times. Not only would that be a great way to ease newer players into tournaments from a time standpoint, it would also allow players who only have smaller armies (for the time being) to participate in a tournament, something they may not have yet been able to do!


4) The last point I wanted to touch on was, again, the notion that some people put forth of: 'I can play X number of points in X number of minutes, so clearly that is reasonable!' First of all, I think we can all agree that there are physical limitations to playing a game in a certain amount of time. We obviously can't possibly play 5,000 point armies in 1/2 hour, to give an extreme example. Obviously it takes longer to move 200 models in a movement phase then it does to move 10. So to simply say that someone needs to 'play faster' is ridiculous if in general there isn't enough properly allotted to finish the game...a concept that collecting data as suggested in my original post would help to achieve.

If a TO collects the data and finds out that the majority of his horde players are not finishing their games when these same players *do* finish their games in tournaments where they bring smaller armies...guess what? The problem is not with the players, the problem is that not enough time is being allotted for the games in relation to the size of the armies being used. Yeah, if its one or two guys who routinely are never able to finish when everyone else does, then the answer is absolutely 'play faster!', but to simply lay this answer out without actually having the data to back it up is just silly.

This Saturday night when we went out to Ihop after day 1 of a tournament a thought popped into my head. That thought was how video games have progressed over the years. As a video gamer, I've been part of every new trend over the years. You don't realize that one game comes out with a new advancement which every other game then starts copying and then building upon. Years later, you try to hand someone who has never played any video games a controller and you realize that they're staring at the controller and all the buttons wondering what to do.

I *know* how to control a FPS with an Xbox pad without reading any instructions. My hands know that the left stick moves my character while my right stick moves my 'vision' around. It doesn't matter *what* game it is, those controls are part of my mental vocabulary without thinking about it. But if you hand that same FPS game to my fiance, she struggles just moving the game around using two sticks at once. She hasn't had all those years of muscle memory and practice.

As veteran tournament 40K players, I think that's a perfect analogy. We seem to think that every player will be able to pick up the controller and immediately understand how to play a FPS. Not only are new tournament gamers expected to know the rules of the game, the rules for their codex, the rules for every codex they may face AND general tactics for the game of 40K but they are also expected to implement all of this at a blistering pace of play?

I just think as a general tournament scene it can't hurt to track data on this *and* regardless of what the data suggests about the players that are already attending tournaments, that throwing in the occasional low point value tournament with relaxed time limits can't possibly be a bad thing to entice a different type of crowd into the fun of playing 40K tournaments.

@Yak

I wasn't saying that Hordes are the domain of Vets as in Vets should be the ones to play them. I was simply pointing out that I've never, not once, run into a first time tournament player using a horde. Hence my assertion that at least in that area, hordes are built by veteran tournament players for the most part.

I do agree that it would be good for some places to run some smaller tournaments from time to time to ease newer tourney players into the tournament system but I don't see most of them doing it. Unless they know they have a large crowd at open gaming that isnt' attending tournaments that they can tap into I don't see most of them setting up a second tier of tournaments. Your fairly local to the LA area. I'd suggest talking to a few stores and seeing if they'd let you run a few here and there around the area.

And I whole heartedly agree with tracking the data across current tournaments. I'm glad that Nova and Adepticon are going to be doing this especially as they have the largest number of actual games played for their tournaments so it should at least give us a starting point.

@Yak

Is 2.5 hours enough time to get 5-6 turns in at 2k? I have run my wife's kan wall army (more than 150 models) and been able to get games done on time in that model during playtesting, but thats with people who I know and therefore do not have many rules discussions with during the game.

You can run a horde army and should get done in 2.5 hours for 2000 points . The problem comes when a horde army meets another horde army, and who knows how long that will take to reach it's natural conclusion.

Yak, the video game analogy is an interesting one - and it seems like the natural conclusion to that line of thought (following your points/time points above) is that video games shouldn't use all those buttons and sticks because new people can't use them.

I don't mean that in a bitchy argumentative way, it just seemed that the example was a bit counter to what you are saying.

Yeah, I like mixing things up as much as the next guy (probably more, I think I changed armies more for the Sprue Posse RTTs than anyone else) and think variety is good.

We both live in LA and know the importance of "branding". Obviously, look at what dakka has done. With that in mind it seems that a group that runs strict time tourneys targeted more to the "serious" tourney players might not be best served by running too many novice, fluff based tourneys. However, I do like the idea of running different sized competitive tourneys similar to how warmachine does now. It would be interesting seeing how 1250 or 1000 does with 5 games at 1:15 or something in a one day.

One other point of note - please don't think I am saying I am against any other tourney format - I am all for other groups running those kinds of tourneys. Heck, I even like your non-MEQ tourney suggestion.

Anyway, great topic yak and a lot of good things to think about.

yakface wrote:Can you just imagine what a player new to tournaments who does have two armies (one horde and one non-horde) would think if he logs onto Dakka to get some advice on which army he should take? Everyone with half a brain would tell them to take the non-horde army for the first few tournament outings and they would be right to do so, because of the incredible strain the time limits put on an inexperienced horde player.

Hulksmash wrote:I wasn't saying that Hordes are the domain of Vets as in Vets should be the ones to play them. I was simply pointing out that I've never, not once, run into a first time tournament player using a horde. Hence my assertion that at least in that area, hordes are built by veteran tournament players for the most part.

I think the point yakface is making, is that the current format could be leading to more new tournament players not taking their horde armies (even if they own one), and bringing smaller armies instead... and indeed, as he points out, this is the right decision with current tournament time limits.

I'm a pretty new tournament player, and have trouble finishing my games. I've made adjustments (when I was running skirmishers for fantasy, I had magnetic trays so they could slide together to fight combat, then slide back apart to be spaced out for regular movement) but it's still difficult. I recently started a new "monster heavy" army with a much lower model count. Now I stand a much better chance of finishing my games.

With current time limits / point values, I can't imagine running a horde in a tournament. So I think you are both right in a way: new players don't usually bring horde armies to a tournament. The question is whether or not this is OK, and if lower point levels would encourage more horde-type armies. Personally, I would only consider bringing a horde army with much longer time limits... I just have no chance of finishing my games otherwise.

With my smaller army, I have more time to make tactical decisions, which has translated into me enjoying the game a bit more, too!

Speaking from my own experience, I love orks for their personality. My vision on getting back into 40k last year was to run a horde army, because nothing screams ork like hundreds of models running across the battlefield.

Unfortunately, I don't see how it would ever be possible to run a true horde ork army. With a horde, I could potentially have over 200 models, almost all of which would move (and possibly run) each turn.

6x 30 boyz, nob, pk, bp, 3x big shoota
2x 5 loota
1x 12 loota
2x big mek, kff
1850

This is why I've changed to running a Kan Wall with War Buggies and Lootas, because it means I have a lot less models to move. At 1850, I'm looking at less than half the number of models moving each turn.

Even then, in a tournament a couple of weeks ago (at 2k points), I ran into the clock every game. The first was against a shooty nid player that really slow played (and admitted it was on purpose). The second was against Sisters, who fielded a reasonably high model count (around 70 models). The last was against another ork player with well over 100 models.

All of these ended on the bottom of Turn 3. I don't think I was the only one playing slowly, but 2 hours was definately not enough time. I'm sure I will get better with more practice, but I doubt I will ever be able to play a true ork horde army in a competative environment if the point level is 2k with 2 hours.

silashand wrote:Every other instance I can think of I had at least one game where time had to be called and it was *always* against someone who brought what I considered an obscene number of models to the game. I'm not bashing infantry armies at all since those are what I generally play. However, there is IMO a happy medium between an all infantry army that is still competitive and one that is just inappropriate for the venue.

You would of course be wrong. There is no such thing as an obscene amout of models- a legal army is a legal army. Inapproriate has nothing to do with it.

Blackmoor wrote:You can run a horde army and should get done in 2.5 hours for 2000 points . The problem comes when a horde army meets another horde army, and who knows how long that will take to reach it's natural conclusion.

I have been in that situation, personally (Nids vs Orks) and gotten the game done, but I admit it takes two reasonable players who agree on the rules to pull off.

There are shortcuts that can be taken (move only critical models individually and "front to back" everything else) that are not technically the rules, but often practiced. Honestly, the biggest issues I have had with time have always been horde guard players who take five million years to set up and then tons of time each turn when they have no assault or movement phase. Those are the pricks who are intentially stalling. Personally, I have never played or seen played an army at 2k that should not be able to conduct its turns in ten minutes or less, if the guy running the army knows what he is doing and the opponent cuts him a little slack.

What if players used a sort of timer for their games that would be set for the alloted turn time but the clock would be paused for rules discussions and so on? If anything, it's probably rules discussions that slow games down sometimes so that might help. Also, I have found 2.5 hours to be ideal for 2k games as even with my nids, that was ample time to get everything taken care of (but my nids only have 120ish models or so not counting MCs).

Personally, I think 1.5k is the best format. It has 3 major benefits

1) Big enough to bring some of your favorite toys.
2) Small enough that you can't bring all your toys, forcing decisions.
3) Plays out relatively quickly still, with 1.5 hours pushing it and 2 hours being more than enough for anyone.

I've played games that are bigger, but I have not much interest in playing in a tourny with larger games but not much more time. I can't imagine trying to do a 2k game in 2 hours.

With 1.5k @ 1.5 hours you can easily fit 4 fast games into a day, or with 2 hours have 6 games over a weekend. I don't know why bigger is thought to be better. Certainly it changes things up and allows more/different combinations, but it takes up much more time, and lowers the number of games you can fit in a single day of tournament play.

One thing to note is that just because I can play fast and fit 2.5k in 2.5 hours does not mean that I want to. Think of it like playing blitz chess. Sure, you can have a fast game. But the cost is that the quality of play goes down as you don't have the same kind of time to plan out and weight options. Blitz has its place, and produces some spectator worthy games, but the real championships are decided by your long (talking 8-10 hour) games.

Different games certainly, but the principle applies: forcing fast play leads to lower quality games.

Somnicide wrote:Yak, the video game analogy is an interesting one - and it seems like the natural conclusion to that line of thought (following your points/time points above) is that video games shouldn't use all those buttons and sticks because new people can't use them.

I don't mean that in a bitchy argumentative way, it just seemed that the example was a bit counter to what you are saying.

Yeah, I like mixing things up as much as the next guy (probably more, I think I changed armies more for the Sprue Posse RTTs than anyone else) and think variety is good.

We both live in LA and know the importance of "branding". Obviously, look at what dakka has done. With that in mind it seems that a group that runs strict time tourneys targeted more to the "serious" tourney players might not be best served by running too many novice, fluff based tourneys. However, I do like the idea of running different sized competitive tourneys similar to how warmachine does now. It would be interesting seeing how 1250 or 1000 does with 5 games at 1:15 or something in a one day.

One other point of note - please don't think I am saying I am against any other tourney format - I am all for other groups running those kinds of tourneys. Heck, I even like your non-MEQ tourney suggestion.

Anyway, great topic yak and a lot of good things to think about.

Ah yes, a good point and one that I meant to add into my analogy but never got to!

In the video game world this issue of games unknowingly 'expecting' players have knowledge of how to play games in general is what led to the phenomena of the Wii. While I personally don't care for the Wii, I understand that it shows people are often interested in doing something that society probably thinks they aren't interested in, if only someone takes the time to make a way around the normally steep learning curve of video games.

So just like I wouldn't want to play *only* Wii games, I also recognize that occasionally playing Wii games can be great fun...especially because its often a chance to 'game' with people that wouldn't normally otherwise play video games.

Similarly, I think having tournaments that are both more extreme and more relaxed when it comes to time limits vs. point size will offer the same kind of variety to 40K players of varying skill and experience levels.

I haven't played in a tournament in a long time but back in the day when i did, I was 12 to 16 years old back then. I was playing against adults and beating them. Not hard to do when you don't have any responsibilities and can practice war gaming all the time, and the tournaments I played in did have a time limit, and they used a point system. However, a small percentage of your points were gained by sportsmanship. Your opponent got to give you a rating of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best, and 1 being the worst on a secrete ballad type of card. So, you wouldn't know who rated you what. I think being a younger kid during those times I probably acted immaturely a bit during gaming sessions, and probably have cost me some sportsmanship points.

This was the deterrent to not be a jerk, or run down the clock on purpose, or argue over a ton of rules, or make people remeasure things 900 times. I actually got second place in a Necromunda tournament which I actually won but I was so eager to win the limited edition bounty hunter model the tournament winners got, I was sort of pushy when it came to the rules and making people measure things and such. I wasn't a horrid jerk or anything, but just overly competitive. My sportsmanship points actually cost me 1st place. I still won the limited edition Necromunda bounty hunter model, because the top 3 places won that model, but I did not win the big gift certificate, instead I won like $20 and I think first place was like $75 or something.

Now, granted I have been out of the gaming circle for 10 years now, so I have no clue how current tournaments are ran. I know that back then we had our own set of rules at the local gaming shops and most of the shops that ran official tournaments had similar rules, and they voted on sportsman ship. So, winning you get x amount of points, losing you get like a point for just playing, or maybe it was on a sliding scale of how bad you lost. Winners get maximum points. There were different brackets and at the end of the tournament the person with the most points won.

I think adding in a sportsmanship value to tournaments helps keep it civil, and stops the other player from exploiting or taking advantage of situations

As far as being a TO handling time.. I just extend rounds to reasonable degrees if people need to finish a turn. We usually end around 8-9, but the store is open later so I feel no rush

imo unfinished rounds lead to a breakdown of competitiveness as it gives people severe penalties or bonuses to their score. Games are meant to be finished and are not balanced around ending early

Just some other thoughts/pleas for TOs

1) TOs need to take the complexity of their missions into account when planning a schedule. Its one thing to play out a pitched battle KP game, quite another to read and digest a complicated P/S/T mission or something akin to the Battle Missions. These types of missions not only slow down the start of the game, but often times add extra steps and thought throughout the game, as well as extra tallying at the end.

As an example in practice, Astronomicon is a 1500 point tournament that has 2.5 hour rounds. That seems like an absurd amount of time but they have some of the most complicated missions of any tournament around. So the TOs have done the right thing and given ample time.

If time is tight due to a stores operating hours then consider keeping the missions to simple book variety ones.

1a) In addition to above, if you have a more complex mission it might be worthwhile scheduling it before a long break, that way you have a buffer for those few folks who might need extra time.

1b) Finally, make sure you've done ample time using and editing the mission. If its complicated then making it as clear as possible on paper is key. It also helps cause you will already know some common questions and can answer them easily.

2)TOs can and should encourage display boards and trays. DoP mentions them in his Tournament checklist but TOs can help to encourage these by including appearance points or even sports points for display and trays. There's nothing that slows a game down more then someone who has to move models in and out of a stack of foam. One could even provide some simple trays or cardboard flats to help with this for those without the fancy displays.

This is a BIG pet peeve of mine, as I've been sandbagged more then a few times by that guy who has to shuffle through his army bag and trays when deploying and when taking casualties.

Good points all. Also, not all Armies scale equally well to 2,000 points or higher.

nathonicus wrote:Also, not all Armies scale equally well to 2,000 points or higher.

Strongly disagree with this. All codexes scale very well to 2k. Which ones are hurt by jumping from 1750ish to 2k? Necrons are horrible at any point level. Higher point level helps WH's field more of the stuff they need. Same with point heavy chaos & eldar. Dark Eldar after their revamp don't cap their force org at 1,500 anymore so which books do you think don't scale well to 2k?

Hulksmash wrote:

nathonicus wrote:Also, not all Armies scale equally well to 2,000 points or higher.

Strongly disagree with this. All codexes scale very well to 2k. Which ones are hurt by jumping from 1750ish to 2k? Necrons are horrible at any point level. Higher point level helps WH's field more of the stuff they need. Same with point heavy chaos & eldar. Dark Eldar after their revamp don't cap their force org at 1,500 anymore so which books do you think don't scale well to 2k?

WH, Chaos and Orks are tighter at smaller point levels. WH just starts have to stack over-priced dominion squads at 2000 and their exorcists aren't as dominant. Chaos can get most of their best stuff in at 1500 although they can just stack troops to 2000 and so they aren't bad there since plague marines are so awesome. Orks start running out of slots to exploit as they near 2000 and their wagons tend to get punked earlier in the game at 2000. I prefer them at 1500 even though it means I can't really afford Ghaz.

That doesn't mean those armies don't "scale well" but I think they tend to be stronger in smaller point games than larger both for FO and durability reasons against greater volumes of firepower.

Phazael wrote:

Blackmoor wrote:You can run a horde army and should get done in 2.5 hours for 2000 points . The problem comes when a horde army meets another horde army, and who knows how long that will take to reach it's natural conclusion.

I have been in that situation, personally (Nids vs Orks) and gotten the game done, but I admit it takes two reasonable players who agree on the rules to pull off.

If I remember right we were one of the first games finished that day.

1500 is fun, but you get cookie cutter lists as this level because there is no room for customization. You MUST bring only the most powerful units at this level.

2000 allows a lot more room for customization.

I personally don't like 1750 or 1850 that much but they do seem to work out better for 2 hour rounds.

Horde armies in a tournament really are the realm of the expert. You have to be well practiced with them to not only overcome mech with any time limit, but to be able to move the models rapidly in the allotted time span.

I agree though, that variation in tournament size is a good thing. I just vote for 1K, 1.5K and 2K!

Personal preference there, though.

Interesting discussion that's also relevant to the NOVA invitational.

Strong arguments have been e-mailed to me or brought up for doing it at 1500, all the way to 2000.

2 x $1,000 cash prizes on the line, amidst 32 of the country's best players, across 5 rounds and 12 hours ... arguments aplenty for all sides of that coin.

As for armies scaling?

Yeah, some armies do scale much better than others.

IG are better the more points you have.

Chaos and Eldar peak at 1.5K, IMO.

I have not seen DE enough to really make that call yet. I think so long as you take Vect though, they scale up to 2K fine, but run into the problem of facing too many guns at higher points levels.

MEQs of every variety play well at every points level.

Crons blow until you get to 2K and higher.

I think Orks play great at 1.5K and up. It depends on the list, but BW spam rocks as you scale up.

Sisters do struggle a bit as you scale up as they have to stack massive KPs. They have awesome firepower but the lack of more Exorcists really starts to tell and they can get shot up by the increase in long range AT from the other armies.

MVBrandt wrote:Interesting discussion that's also relevant to the NOVA invitational.

Strong arguments have been e-mailed to me or brought up for doing it at 1500, all the way to 2000.

2 x $1,000 cash prizes on the line, amidst 32 of the country's best players, across 5 rounds and 12 hours ... arguments aplenty for all sides of that coin.

Take the average of all the events that give out invites to the Invitational, strange numbers and all. It'll be interesting to see what people would bring to a 1927.3 pt. tournament.

2000 points does allow for customization but IMO the lists become more homogenized. You pretty much have to fill every FO completely.

At 1500 you actually have more choices to make because you can't fit everything in. Sometimes you have to just not use fast attack at all or dump elites or heavy entirely. Or maybe you can only fit in a single landraider.

Not to mention how smaller point games impact mobility on and cover on the table.

From a purely practical point of view as a TO I think I prefer 1500. You can get in more games in less time without as much concern for the round running out of time. In a casual friends getting together kind of game I would lean towards the higher point levels.

I play Sisters a fair amount and 1500 works well enough, until you have to face down Wolves. 2k is where you get to fill out things, Immo spam or not. I find that there is one best list to take at 1500, but 2k opens up more options.

Nids, well, they are never going to beat longfang spam, but in order to have some variation they need to play at 2k, minimum. At 1500, all you will see fielded are Terv spam lists.

Eldar have enourmous holes at 1500, unless you play Eldratar Footdar, I guess. The all jet bike list fits the 1500 point level, but who thinks that thing is competitive? At 2k, you can run Mechdar, Footdar, or Bikes with lots of room for variation. Wraithzilla works better at 2k, as well.

The 1500 point level is really great for MEQs, especially the newer book ones, because you guys still can cover all of your bases at that point level. This is mostly because your troops actually have survivability and do more than just hide and try not to die (see Tau, Eldar, Nids, ect) all game. Xenos armies still have to buy units that do something in other slots after paying for enough troops to cover objective missions. The Orks are the only exception to this, really.

If time is really a concern, then 1500 it is, but its just going to be even more of a SM Fest than it already is.

I disagree at having to make choices at 1500.

You make LESS choices, IMO.

Why? Because you can only fit what is absolutely best.

For example.

Chaos at 1500.

Almost always: Dual lash prince, 2 PMs, 9 oblits. Why? It is brutal at that level. Anything else is clearly less efficient.

A lot of armies are this way 1500. I can see why people think it requires choice, but that choice is what to remove to get to the hard core. That core tends to be the same for every army with only a few exceptions.

For example, look at the UK masters lists. That is not definitive by any means, but almost all the lists are copies of each other. Why? They have to be that way in order to remain competitive.

At 2K yes you tend to see maxed FOCs, but you have a lot more room to create a custom force.

I agree with Reece...not that I make those choices (Abaddon and two land raiders at 1500?! Yes please!) but there are typically clearly better choices for a lot of codexes at lower points levels.

1500 - find the best stuff, cram it in.

2000 - crap, I am out of FOC slots that let me have the best stuff, and there's even more shooty armies...time to think! And put away these sucky armies and buy some space wolves!

Reecius wrote:I disagree at having to make choices at 1500.

You make LESS choices, IMO.

Why? Because you can only fit what is absolutely best.

For example.

Chaos at 1500.

Almost always: Dual lash prince, 2 PMs, 9 oblits. Why? It is brutal at that level. Anything else is clearly less efficient.

A lot of armies are this way 1500. I can see why people think it requires choice, but that choice is what to remove to get to the hard core. That core tends to be the same for every army with only a few exceptions.

For example, look at the UK masters lists. That is not definitive by any means, but almost all the lists are copies of each other. Why? They have to be that way in order to remain competitive.

At 2K yes you tend to see maxed FOCs, but you have a lot more room to create a custom force.

True, at 1500 points in my Space Wolves army if I field Logan Grimnar all wolf guard count as troop types and not elites. So I could field technically all wolf guard if I wanted to, along with a vehicle and some long fangs.

At 2,000 points I could still do that, by my opponent has a lot more at their disposal to take out my wolf guard if I do that. Then you have to make the decision, what do I do? Do, I go after the troops, the vehicles, etc. Since my Wolf Guard would be up against a lot more choices. Where as in 1500 points, I would probably only have to deal with one powerful unit and at 1500 points some of the over powered units can be really cheesy. Though a lot of times it will come to dice rolls...

Kevin Nash wrote:
Not to mention how smaller point games impact mobility on and cover on the table.

I think this is a good point and I agree with it completely. The more stuff there is on the table, the less mobility and cover matter. I find it interesting when people use cover and maneuver (though obviously that is my bias showing since I love bikes and they are all about mobility and cover)

edit: also, many times 1500 points feels like fun and 2000 feels like work (at least to me)