If games are not reaching their natural conclusion, there are 3 things that can be done. So the question is, which of these is the best course of action to address the problem?

#1. Lower the point limit.
Pros: It seem that lower point games take less time to finish, but how low do you have to lower points before most games finish naturally?
Cons: In the past there has been a lot of pushback with this as points started to creep up to 2000 point games. These days with 6th edition codex’s lowering point limits you get more bang-for-your-buck, but people still want to play with all of their toys.

#2. Increase the time of the games.
Pros: Although this is not a cure-all, it will help some games finish on a dice-roll instead of one where both players know it would end on turn 5, or make a 4 turn game into a 5 turn game etc. Also people underestimate how time will help because of the way that 40k works. Most of the time is spent on turns 2-4 and turns 5+ normally play much faster.
Cons: There are only so many hours in the day, and if you increase the round times you might have to drop the numbers of games. In tournaments with a win-loss format this means that a single undefeated winner might not be possible.

#3. Do not change anything.
Pros: It is easy to do.
Cons: Some games not finishing naturally.

#4. There is not an issue with time, only slow players.

At Nova only 2 of my 8 games ended due to time. No need to change anything from my perspective.

#5. Enforce rules about slow play.
Pros: minimizes the problem of deliberate stalling, allows a solution to the problem before the game reaches the time limit.
Cons: requires tournaments to provide sufficient judges who are willing to do their job properly, which may not be a viable option for smaller events.


But other than that, lower point limits. Extending game time isn't an option when you're already using up the entire available time for an event, so that leaves lower point limits. And no, wanting to play with all your toys is not a very good reason, a big part of building a list is the fact that you can't have everything you want and have to make intelligent sacrifices to stay within the point limit.

I'm strongly opposed to shortening game time as it penalizes some armies (Orks and Nids for instance, who are already at the bottom) and rewards fast playing gunlines (which are fast because they ignore 2/3 of the game)

Personally my vote is for smaller points. This game is already losing its skirmish roots, lets not exasperate the problem. Maybe even cut slots proportionately if need be.

It seems the only time this is a real problem for me is if one or both players don't know the rules or aren't familiar with the opponent’s (or their own) codex.

 MasterSlowPoke wrote:
At Nova only 2 of my 8 games ended due to time. No need to change anything from my perspective.

Some people think that not finishing 2 games in a tournament is unacceptable.

 Peregrine wrote:
#5. Enforce rules about slow play.
Pros: minimizes the problem of deliberate stalling, allows a solution to the problem before the game reaches the time limit.
Cons: requires tournaments to provide sufficient judges who are willing to do their job properly, which may not be a viable option for smaller events.


But other than that, lower point limits. Extending game time isn't an option when you're already using up the entire available time for an event, so that leaves lower point limits. And no, wanting to play with all your toys is not a very good reason, a big part of building a list is the fact that you can't have everything you want and have to make intelligent sacrifices to stay within the point limit.

I agree that penalizi slow play is part of the solution, however, I think the impetus falls on the players more than the organizers. As a judge I cannot possibly monitor time on every table, but if a player makes me aware of slow play I can intercede.

Breng, what do you think about this idea mentioned in the last thread to help alert judges to slowplay?

SCP Yeeman wrote:
I haven't been to the bigger of the 40k GTs like Adepticon or NOVA, but dont most have long posts with table numbers on them? What if along with the table numbers, you had a round counter on them as well? I think this could alert the judges as to what round some games are on and maybe they can give some encouragement to pick up the pace.

You could have rounds 1 and 2 be colored red. This would be to show that the game is in its infant stage. If 30 mins are called, and a red card is still up, the judge should go over and see what the deal is. Rounds 3 and 4 could be yellow while rounds 5-7 could be green, meaning everything is good and the game is getting to the right number of turns.

 RiTides wrote:
The idea of a red/yellow/green card per table would help there:

Red: Rounds 1-2
Yellow: Rounds 3-4
Green: Rounds 5+

A judge walking around could look for red cards with 45 minutes left and tell those players to hurry. Honestly, if "dice down" is acceptable to end a round, "dice down" to end a slow-playing turn should also be possible.

Players are resistant to chess timers but you can't have one person taking 1 hour 45 min out of a 2 hour 15 minute game. I think there are solutions: the card idea, chess timers, longer rounds, etc.

Another idea with chess timers- just have them count UP. Then you have a record of how much time a player has used. Combined with the card idea, a judge then inspecting a red card would not have to be subjective- he could call "dice down" on a player if they had used over 65 - 70% of the time and the game was still on turn 2-3 at the three quarter game time mark.

I think there are solutions and practicing timed play for 40k and making it part of the culture could be good, if applied correctly and not just copy pasting another game system's timing rules.

For the poll, I voted longer round time, but a combination of a slightly longer round time, and slightly lower point level, also works. As well as the idea posted here... I think it could really help shepherd those inevitable few tables that are far, far behind the rest (and alert TOs like Breng77 to them automatically).

1500 point GTs here and there would be a nice, refreshing change of pace!

 RiTides wrote:
Another idea with chess timers- just have them count UP. Then you have a record of how much time a player has used. Combined with the card idea, a judge then inspecting a red card would not have to be subjective- he could call "dice down" on a player if they had used over 65 - 70% of the time and the game was still on turn 2-3 at the three quarter game time mark.

The issue with chess clocks is that 40k's actions don't divide neatly. For example, who spends time when you're rolling saves against my shooting? Who spends time if you have a dispute over rules/LOS/etc? Simply counting time for each player's turn is unfair because of these factors, while trying to measure it precisely would make the chess clocks slow the game down and provide endless opportunities for arguments.

I think the issue can partially be fixed in the setup of the tournament itself. Bear in mind I'm coming from the "increase game time" camp.

1) Make sure you have a realistic expectation of how long the games will take. I've seen "we'll start at noon and end by 8 and play 3 2k games" before, and it's simply not possible. A 2k game can take 3+ hours to play, not including setup and pairings. So, when you decide your start/end times, make sure you have enough time for a full game.
2) Make the admin stuff as efficient as possible. As soon as the last game finishes, you should be able to have your pairings for the next round up within 5 minutes. Whether it's a spreadsheet or a dedicated program, it needs to happen fast so people can get on with the next game. More about why in item 3...
3) Don't take breaks. If you allow enough time per game, most tables will finish before that one that takes the full time does. So that's when everyone who just finished can go grab lunch, or use the bathroom, or smoke. If I just finished a game 30 min early, I don't need a special hour and a half break to eat. Instead, that extra time can give me a longer game or get me home earlier, both of which are very good in my book.

 greyknight12 wrote:
3) Don't take breaks. If you allow enough time per game, most tables will finish before that one that takes the full time does. So that's when everyone who just finished can go grab lunch, or use the bathroom, or smoke. If I just finished a game 30 min early, I don't need a special hour and a half break to eat. Instead, that extra time can give me a longer game or get me home earlier, both of which are very good in my book.

But then if you're one of the people playing right up until the deadline you're playing for 5+ hours without a break even if you finish your next round early. I agree that taking an hour and a half for lunch in a one-day tournament is a waste, but there needs to be at least a bit of a break between rounds and at least one break where everyone can plausibly get some food.

 Peregrine wrote:
#5. Enforce rules about slow play.
Pros: minimizes the problem of deliberate stalling, allows a solution to the problem before the game reaches the time limit.
Cons: requires tournaments to provide sufficient judges who are willing to do their job properly, which may not be a viable option for smaller events.


But other than that, lower point limits. Extending game time isn't an option when you're already using up the entire available time for an event, so that leaves lower point limits. And no, wanting to play with all your toys is not a very good reason, a big part of building a list is the fact that you can't have everything you want and have to make intelligent sacrifices to stay within the point limit.

How would you suggest doing this Peregrine?, the few ways that have been suggested locally have not been good enough IMO and I feel its a very hard thing to enforce.

I think lowering the points limit would be the way to go. I actually like 1500 more than 1850 and I bet you'd have a higher % of people finishing in 2 hour rounds with fewer points. It's not just orks or bugs, any high model count army takes a while for turns if you move, space out, and shoot/assault/run/etc bigger units, its the nature of the beast.

 RiTides wrote:
Breng, what do you think about this idea mentioned in the last thread to help alert judges to slowplay?

SCP Yeeman wrote:
I haven't been to the bigger of the 40k GTs like Adepticon or NOVA, but dont most have long posts with table numbers on them? What if along with the table numbers, you had a round counter on them as well? I think this could alert the judges as to what round some games are on and maybe they can give some encouragement to pick up the pace.

You could have rounds 1 and 2 be colored red. This would be to show that the game is in its infant stage. If 30 mins are called, and a red card is still up, the judge should go over and see what the deal is. Rounds 3 and 4 could be yellow while rounds 5-7 could be green, meaning everything is good and the game is getting to the right number of turns.

 RiTides wrote:
The idea of a red/yellow/green card per table would help there:

Red: Rounds 1-2
Yellow: Rounds 3-4
Green: Rounds 5+

A judge walking around could look for red cards with 45 minutes left and tell those players to hurry. Honestly, if "dice down" is acceptable to end a round, "dice down" to end a slow-playing turn should also be possible.

Players are resistant to chess timers but you can't have one person taking 1 hour 45 min out of a 2 hour 15 minute game. I think there are solutions: the card idea, chess timers, longer rounds, etc.

Another idea with chess timers- just have them count UP. Then you have a record of how much time a player has used. Combined with the card idea, a judge then inspecting a red card would not have to be subjective- he could call "dice down" on a player if they had used over 65 - 70% of the time and the game was still on turn 2-3 at the three quarter game time mark.

I think there are solutions and practicing timed play for 40k and making it part of the culture could be good, if applied correctly and not just copy pasting another game system's timing rules.

For the poll, I voted longer round time, but a combination of a slightly longer round time, and slightly lower point level, also works. As well as the idea posted here... I think it could really help shepherd those inevitable few tables that are far, far behind the rest (and alert TOs like Breng77 to them automatically).

I think instead of cards something that might work is a turn counter, think A frame design with cards for each player with turn number on them, have the cards collored (as you described), that way the players can just use it as a turn counter while also communicating some to the judge. I think the issue with just having cards is that it adds something for players to try to remember that is not integral to their game (oh yeah we reached the end of turn 2 time to change our card.), if it is a turn counter so at the end of the turn I flip the card to turn 2 it is a bit more natural. You could also design it so that each player has a counter and they flip it at the end of their turn, that way the judge can even tell top or bottom of some turns.

It is an interesting idea and I might try to work it out for my GT next year. That said it is also important that players take responisbility for themselves, if they feel they are getting slow played they should call a judge early, so that he can be aware.

Still not a fan of chess clock, I have considered timers for each table just to make it obvious to players what the remaining time is. I find when you keep players up to speed on the time they finish more consistently.

Okay, just a turn counter, no chess clock then . I'll be thinking about the design of one, that the players could see the turn number as well as the judges (ie the number facing in and out). Should be doable they might even make something as a teaching aid that would work.

The problem is the number of players that don't even realize how slow they play.

The turn counter I was thinking about would be something likehttp://soccer.epicsports.com/images/detail/13620/view.html The idea would be to have the numbers colored, on the side facing the players it would be numbered 1-7, then color code the numbers to let the TO know what round they are on ( you could either use the red, yellow, green, suggested or different for each turn) Then have the players flip the numbers over the top, once fliped the color on the back would let the To know what round it was

SO Tun 1 would be red (so nothing flipped or red is round 1-2) , turn 2-3 would be yellow (that way yellow would be turn 3-4) Turn 4+ green, that way green is turn 5+.

You need to add an option for both, more time & less points. A mix of both would probably yield the best results. I would say a turn timer would be good ala chess, but then how would you handle things like tau overwatch etc? 3hr rounds minimum are a must at 1750.

My personal opinion is that games are in fact much slower due to 6th, for a number of reasons:

-More interactions between players during the game (overwatch, interceptor, etc)
-Intense pace of releases means people don't have ready-set solutions to new books, and take time figuring it out (or trying to) during the game
-Premeasuring leading to some players measuring inordinate amounts of potential angles and movements in order to make a decision, rather than just moving and getting going

In 6th I've had 2 games called due to time up until NOVA, one went to 5, the other went to 5 but went significantly past time. However, in that game we were told not to worry about time and just to play to finish, so we went played carefully/joked around more than we should have admittedly.

At NOVA, I felt I got slow played by opponents who I consider friends/I know in 4/9 games I played, with all of those ending on 4. I timed my turns to ensure it wasn't me, but opponents took ridiculously long turns 1 and 2 (45 minutes + for their half) due to indecision primarily. If I were to receive a penalty for slow play in these games (with how sour i already was that I couldnt get my opponents to hurry up) I may have lost it :-p.

Overall I feel the solution is a bit of everything:

-Lower the point values to 1500-1850 at the very most. Some events are still 2000. The higher point limits were justified by folks in 5th as "you need higher points to balance codexes which are older and overpriced, so that they can also take answers to everything". With the rapid codex updates, lowering of point values, and allies in particular, any army can pretty much take an answer to anything at almost any points value - the "balance" between 1500 and 2000 is no different in my eyes.

-Extend round times to 2.5-3 hours. It aids in games finishing, it makes the day feel better and you get to know your opponent without feeling like you're sprinting.

-In the opening remarks of a GT, as a judge/organizer, make a little comment/speech about what slow play is and how it won't be tolerated. From what I've seen, when this is done it's in everyones mind while they play, and the players who don't realize they play slow will intentionally speed up to avoid this label (enacting some self policing).

Just my thoughts!

I think day 1 you play 3 games at 3hrs each. Get your top players in a bracket using some combo of BP & WL. Then do what you gotta do single elimination style to get your 1 winner. Or some other hybrid format. Note this is a response to both your polls.

I also agree that 2k is too much for a single player tournament. More LOS blocking terrain would also help cut back on indecisive players.

I voted that there really isn't a problem with the games, just slow players or situations that drag play (rule hangups).

If I had to choose between option 1 and 2, I think lowering the points is the most effective solution. I hate it because even at 1850, I have a real hard time getting the toys in to get a list to do what I want it to do, but I'd rather make that sacrifice than drag tournaments out longer.

Here is the thing about slow play penalties though.

Would you be upset after 2 games you got docked point because you got slow played?

Sure of course you would.

Would this (I hope) cause you to inform a judge about the slow play prior to the game ending?

The thing I keep hearing is "I got slow played" but having run events, players never seem to bring this up until the game is over.

If you knew you would get penalized more than likely when your opponent was taking a 45 min turn you would get a judge, because you don't want to get penalized.

I agree that this should be combined with events making changes to make sure ample time to finish games is available (currently I run 2k points with 3 hour rounds).

Saying slow play won't be tolerated is meaningless if there is no penalty in place for dealing with it.

If a player comes to me after a game, and claims they got slow played what as a TO do I do about it?

DQ the opponent? Only Dock them points?

If I tell people, we don't tolerate slow play, you will have x penalty assessed for each game you don't finish.

Say -5 Battle points for first game
-10 for second etc..

Then players will self police.

If I say slow play won't be tolerated and no players come forward and complain that they are currently being slowplayed. As a TO my hands are tied.

What you need to provide is both incentive for players to complete games, and incentive for players feeling that they are being slow played to speak up about it when it is occuring.

Part of this is having appropriate time, part of it is sending the message, that penalites will occur for slow play, part of itis making sure players are made aware of the round time, and part of it is following through with those penalites if need be.

Players don't self police, in theory including sportsmanship is supposed to be self policing...people don't take it seriously. They need to be given a reason to self police.

"Hey, if you don't finish your games, and you don't let me know about the slow play, you get hit for it just like your opponent."

That said an increasing penalty should mean that if you get slow played 1-2 games it is not a huge deal if you slow play 8 games....you won't place.

Good ideas in the forum:

Smaller points are good, to not be able to take all the toys and make tough decisions.

The card system or at least some easily seen turn counter and some guidelines of where people should be at a given time.

Many of these games should go smoothly, new players in tournaments WILL drag the game on, it is just identifying those intentionally trying to slow the game not someone new to the rules (who deserve some mercy).

It is the large use of contentious rules and strange combinations to exploit that cause the biggest slow downs as rules and FAQ's are referenced.

Hi

While the net effect would be the same, isn't it psychologically better to award a bonus for reaching natural completion than issuing a penalty for not reaching that conclusion?

For example, the tourney I used to run awards 5 points if you submit your army list one week early for review. If you want the points, send it in.

Spit-balling:
What if you awarded points for each turn completed. It would probably have to be a sliding scale with a bell shape. It would need to be significant enough for players to desire to play to at least turn 5 when evaluated against a sure turn 4 victory. I should note that it does nothing for pure-win loss formats unless you had a threshold that would result in disqualification at a certain point.

Assume 30 battle points per round as the comparative value.
Points per turn:
turn 1 complete: 1 points
turn 2 complete: 2 points
turn 3 complete: 3 points
turn 4 complete: 6 points
turn 5 complete without die roll finish: 12 points
turn 6 complete without die roll finish: 13 points
turn 7 complete: 15 points
die roll finishes on turn 5 or 6 and tabling: 15 points.

This incents players to reach turn 5 consistently with a moderate bonus for making it farther than that. In a points based-event, there is a significant impact on placement for failing to complete games.

The downside is that you could end up with group of players deliberately dragging other down threats to their favorite player by aiming for a 3 turn tie, in the same way that you get block voting for painting at some events, and sportsmanship sandbagging of people as well. On other words, the typical horror stories for BP tournies.

Of course, there is always the issue of mutually beneficial dishonesty on the part of players, but *shrug* there isn't much to be done about that.

Other comments on comments:
Peregrine - can you ball park for me the ratio of tables being played on to judges you envision for there to be an adequate number there to oversee slow-play and all other issues? Is it one for two, one for five, one for ten? I am trying to assess whether this is a realistic expectation or not. (BTW, I agree with you on the chess-clock stuff 100%)

Cheers,
Nate

I have several issues with awarding points rather than a penalty.

1.) It ammounts to the same thing. If I don't get the points it nets out to being a penalty if everyone else does. Say other max point winners get 20 for the win + 15 for finishing naturally they max at 35. If I only get to turn 4, because I get slow played it costs me 9 points even if I max out.

2.) I would need to rework battle points entirely to make the point spread meaningful. I work with a 20 point max. So if I were to award 15 points for finishing your game 42% of the total score gets awarded for finishing games.

3.)I'm morally opposed to providing incentive for doing something people are supposed to do. You don't deserve a bonus for finishing your games, you are expected to finish, finishing should be the norm.

4.) It is does not really increase for repeat offenders. My current penalty gets worse for each game you don't finish. This system is likely to cost someone an event by failing to finish one time.

5.) Harder to police. It is easier to track then games don't finish, than it is to track natural conclusions.

Essentially either the award for finishing has to be so significant that it takes over the game, or it won't matter.

Either way could work but the ammount of book keeping is larger for awarding points to everyone rather than penalizing the (hopefully) few people failing to finish.

Pretty simple answer in my opinion...

Lower the points limit to 1500.

There are multiple benefits to this:
1. This disallows unit spamming and forces players to make hard choices with their army composition.
2. Games will go quicker.

In my opinion the only reason tournament players whine, bitch and moan about lower points is because it forces them to make the hard choice (#1) and significantly drops the power level of most, if not all of the staple tournament lists being played.

 oni wrote:
In my opinion the only reason tournament players whine, bitch and moan about lower points is because it forces them to make the hard choice (#1) and significantly drops the power level of most, if not all of the staple tournament lists being played.

Or perhaps they recognize that lowering points levels increasingly emphasizes the rocks-paper-scissors aspect of the game.

 Danny Internets wrote:

 oni wrote:
In my opinion the only reason tournament players whine, bitch and moan about lower points is because it forces them to make the hard choice (#1) and significantly drops the power level of most, if not all of the staple tournament lists being played.

Or perhaps they recognize that lowering points levels increasingly emphasizes the rocks-paper-scissors aspect of the game.

I don't know Danny, most people would consider me in the tournament player camp I'd imagine, and I don't think the game gets any more RPS at 1500 versus 2000.

Yeah 1500 points won't have the effect people claim on the top armies. IT certainly does not discourage spamming.

Eldar serpent spam at 1500 looks much the same as if does at 2k.

Tau don't lose a whole lot.

What 1500 really cuts down on is allies in a lot of cases.

I agree with Danny though that 1500 leads to less TAC lists and more extreme builds.

 Danny Internets wrote:

 oni wrote:
In my opinion the only reason tournament players whine, bitch and moan about lower points is because it forces them to make the hard choice (#1) and significantly drops the power level of most, if not all of the staple tournament lists being played.

Or perhaps they recognize that lowering points levels increasingly emphasizes the rocks-paper-scissors aspect of the game.

Or perhaps higher points that make the game into a math equation and not a tactical exercise. I rather take my chances losing (still have a chance) to a bad match up, instead of having to deal with a opponent winning in the list building phase of the game because he maxed out the number of dice necessary to table me if he goes first. All the while taking about 45 mins to finish his top of turn 1. Then again some so called competitive players think the game is just about list building and that is the tactical part of the game. I can see why you would want as many points possible in that case. Of course these folks would never admit to it.

 tastytaste wrote:

 Danny Internets wrote:

 oni wrote:
In my opinion the only reason tournament players whine, bitch and moan about lower points is because it forces them to make the hard choice (#1) and significantly drops the power level of most, if not all of the staple tournament lists being played.

Or perhaps they recognize that lowering points levels increasingly emphasizes the rocks-paper-scissors aspect of the game.

Or perhaps higher points that make the game into a math equation and not a tactical exercise. I rather take my chances losing (still have a chance) to a bad match up, instead of having to deal with a opponent winning in the list building phase of the game because he maxed out the number of dice necessary to table me if he goes first. All the while taking about 45 mins to finish his top of turn 1. Then again some so called competitive players think the game is just about list building and that is the tactical part of the game. I can see why you would want as many points possible in that case. Of course these folks would never admit to it.

Way to troll!

Personally I don't think anything needs to change except adding 15 minutes to the prep stage where we get to roll warlord traits and powers. This wouldn't count for the gAme time.

Breng77 wrote:
Yeah 1500 points won't have the effect people claim on the top armies. IT certainly does not discourage spamming.

Eldar serpent spam at 1500 looks much the same as if does at 2k.

Tau don't lose a whole lot.

What 1500 really cuts down on is allies in a lot of cases.

I agree with Danny though that 1500 leads to less TAC lists and more extreme builds.

I was going to comment about it discouraging allies a little bit, too. That might not be a bad thing... certainly, a few 1500 point tournaments would be a welcome addition / change to the current lineup of GTs in the US, which is mostly 1750 - 2000.

Longer time. From what I've understood (feel free to correct me), most tournaments in the US run 2h 30 minute or less rounds for 1850+ point games. All the tournaments I've attended have had 3 hours for 1750 points and the only game I've seen that ran out of time was artillery artillery/foot guard vs. artillery/foot guard, who got to turn 6. If it means cutting down on rounds, so be it.

Target wrote:
I don't know Danny, most people would consider me in the tournament player camp I'd imagine, and I don't think the game gets any more RPS at 1500 versus 2000.

Would you say that the game gets any more RPS at 1000 points? What about 500 points?

I think the fewer resources one has to work with the harder it is to build an take-on-all-comers list that can readily deal with the variety of extreme builds that exist, even in the competitive field. The concept is better illustrated at lower points values (e.g., 1000 or even 500) where a single unit can dominate an entire match simply because the opponent's list doesn't have the tools to deal with it. There’s no single points value below which we can say that RPS becomes a factor and above which we can say that it ceases to be one--if one is to concede that such a relationship exists at all then it would necessarily be gradated.

Two other points that are worth discussing, though not necessarily in support of or opposition to lowering points:

Lowering points values will probably have disproportionate effects on the success of particular armies and list archetypes. With fewer points to spend, I imagine that the practical value of multi-purpose units would increase (it’s usually cheaper, when the option is available, to purchase one unit that does two things than two units that each do one thing). Consequently, this would give a boost to armies that can field generalist (as opposed to specialist) units.

Similarly, deathstars become significantly stronger at smaller points values. This is in part due to the RPS effect, but also due to the fact that many deathstar armies are designed around a particular super unit. Theoretically, deathstar units should function optimally at the minimum points value that permits their practical use, since the accompanying units are usually of peripheral importance (though still necessary, e.g., 3-man jetbike units in a Seer Council list).

EDIT: Regardless of my personal feelings about games at 1500 points, I actually think it's a great idea for some 1500 points GTs to exist. I think it's really important to have some variety in the tournament scene. This is the chief reason that the BFS GT (http://www.battleforsalvation.com/) is sticking with 2000 points next month.

 RiTides wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
Yeah 1500 points won't have the effect people claim on the top armies. IT certainly does not discourage spamming.

Eldar serpent spam at 1500 looks much the same as if does at 2k.

Tau don't lose a whole lot.

What 1500 really cuts down on is allies in a lot of cases.

I agree with Danny though that 1500 leads to less TAC lists and more extreme builds.

I was going to comment about it discouraging allies a little bit, too. That might not be a bad thing... certainly, a few 1500 point tournaments would be a welcome addition / change to the current lineup of GTs in the US, which is mostly 1750 - 2000.

I personally have no issue with 1500 points, I just think the game is more fun above it, but variety is the spice of life.

Or perhaps higher points that make the game into a math equation and not a tactical exercise. I rather take my chances losing (still have a chance) to a bad match up, instead of having to deal with a opponent winning in the list building phase of the game because he maxed out the number of dice necessary to table me if he goes first. All the while taking about 45 mins to finish his top of turn 1. Then again some so called competitive players think the game is just about list building and that is the tactical part of the game. I can see why you would want as many points possible in that case. Of course these folks would never admit to it.

This is just humorous, as if those same players cannot do the same thing at 1500 points. The reality is a good player/list builder will be as good at 1500 or 2k. You are just as likely to get blow off the table at 1500 as you are at 2k. People often act like at 1500 points some how firepower is greatly diminished or something. It is not, what is diminished is the ability for some armies to deal with multiple types of threats successfully. As Say eldar I can still run 5-6 Wave serpents which put out enough fire power to blow people away early in the game, and still have 400+ points to spend. The belief that small points is some how making every army make tough choices and that it somehow makes the game less list and more tactical is a false one.

Breng77 wrote:
Yeah 1500 points won't have the effect people claim on the top armies. IT certainly does not discourage spamming.

Eldar serpent spam at 1500 looks much the same as if does at 2k.

Tau don't lose a whole lot.

What 1500 really cuts down on is allies in a lot of cases.

I agree with Danny though that 1500 leads to less TAC lists and more extreme builds.

I am not so certain that it does lead to more RPS.

With more points you get to dominate even more certain aspects of the game. If you have fewer choices then it might have the opposite effect of limiting extreme builds.

There are certain armies can spam very powerful units. So your opponent can either deal with these units and win, or not be able to and lose. That is why the games seems so RPS sometimes. Now with less points these armies might not be able to spam those units and thus there is more balance. To give an example, at 2000 points Tau can run a lot of riptides, but at lower points they can't without losing a lot elsewhere.

True, while possible to dominate more in certain aspects, you are also able to cover your bases. I can dominate that aspect just as well at 1500 points. Where I typically see points cut are: War gear, troops (minimum squads etc.), list variety. If you think that the core of a list runs say 1250ish points, any points above that lead to variety. Running closer to that means that optimized lists are just that skin and bones optimized with little variation.

I.e. see eldar still spamming out serpents at 1500, just instead of maybe taking some wraith guard, or fire dragons, it is DAVU serpents, with minimal upgrades, bare bones HQ etc.

I have also always felt that armies with good troop choices (i.e. Eldar Serpents, Tau...) do better at lower points. Armies Like say Daemons end up giving up their hitting power while eldar and Tau largely maintain their potency.

The problem with chess timers is two-fold.

1. Someone already brought up the fact that you can't really count rules discussions or arguments against any one person since both are involved.

2. This one I think is the biggest. If I assault you in my turn and sweep a squad, the time in the assault counts against my time. Whereas, you might not be in assault the next turn, therefore not taking up much time. Because i assaulted you and killed you in my turn, I will be using up more clock because of how slow the assault phase is. Now I could not be slow playing but still be docked because I initiate assaults and in my opponents turn they did not have to assault or resolve any CCs? No way.

Chess clocks won't work because armies all have different playing times. There are hundreds of variables (Psychic powers, assaults, hordes, to name a few) which will take up time but doesn't mean the person is playing slow.

With the color card thing, you could have the table number card be the color card. This way you don't have two cards, one for the table number and one just to indicate what round you are in. If you can laminate the table number with the 3 different colors and put them on a ring, I believe this will be easier.

 Danny Internets wrote:

Target wrote:
I don't know Danny, most people would consider me in the tournament player camp I'd imagine, and I don't think the game gets any more RPS at 1500 versus 2000.

Would you say that the game gets any more RPS at 1000 points? What about 500 points?

I think the fewer resources one has to work with the harder it is to build an take-on-all-comers list that can readily deal with the variety of extreme builds that exist, even in the competitive field. The concept is better illustrated at lower points values (e.g., 1000 or even 500) where a single unit can dominate an entire match simply because the opponent's list doesn't have the tools to deal with it. There’s no single points value below which we can say that RPS becomes a factor and above which we can say that it ceases to be one--if one is to concede that such a relationship exists at all then it would necessarily be gradated.

Single units that dominate also tend to chew up enormous amounts of points - which means less leftover in deathstar mcgee's army to actually win the mission (multiple scoring units) or the ability to tackle an msu army. Sure, you can field O'vesa star or triple riptides and min troops at 1000, but if your opponents think about it, they'll easy get you on objectives.

 Danny Internets wrote:

Two other points that are worth discussing, though not necessarily in support of or opposition to lowering points:

Lowering points values will probably have disproportionate effects on the success of particular armies and list archetypes. With fewer points to spend, I imagine that the practical value of multi-purpose units would increase (it’s usually cheaper, when the option is available, to purchase one unit that does two things than two units that each do one thing). Consequently, this would give a boost to armies that can field generalist (as opposed to specialist) units.

Similarly, deathstars become significantly stronger at smaller points values. This is in part due to the RPS effect, but also due to the fact that many deathstar armies are designed around a particular super unit. Theoretically, deathstar units should function optimally at the minimum points value that permits their practical use, since the accompanying units are usually of peripheral importance (though still necessary, e.g., 3-man jetbike units in a Seer Council list).

Here's the thing though - you're guessing about the impacts it has on lists. Try building balanced lists at 2000 and 1500, in my experience of doing so you can build perfectly acceptable lists at BOTH values. I also disagree that deathstars become stronger, deathstars need a critical mass in order to function, and are generally fairly locked into a high points value in order to function. O'Vesa star built the way cook did comes in at approximately 850 points. At a lower points value, his scoring (which was already quite sad) becomes anemic, or he loses both of his extra riptides, and now he has okay scoring, and one unit able to "do" anything. Screamerstar is also locked in at needing to spend 800-850 points, if you cut it's points value, it now has the same choice as ovesa - lose it's other real units which present a threat, or lose it's ability to score/hold objectives. This goes on and on for Jet-Seer Council and others.

Of the current "big" lists, other than the deathstar approaches I listed above (and gave reasoning why I feel they actually get worse at winning), here's what I see as the current common lists we see:
-FMC Circus - (Similar to Nick N's) the list doesn't really change from 1850 - 1500, it drops an FMC or two, and plays the same way (every list will "feel" as if it's losing power because mentally we're comparing it to what it did at 1850 or 2000, against 1850 or 2000 point lists)
-Wave Serpent Spam or 5-6 Serpents + Tau or 5-6 Serpents + Wraithknight: They cut a couple serpents, or they cut an MC (riptide or wraithknight), but the lists stay effectively the same, they're not losing any "tools" if they don't want to
-IG Blobs - these play just as well, if not a bit better at 1500 from a power standpoint, but they dont lose tools
-Typical Tau (Triple Riptide, heavy support of 1-3 skyrays and 1-3 units of broadsides, ~60 kroot). You cut (from 1850) a unit of broadsides and 1 scoring unit and you're down to 1500. The list hasn't changed. Or cut 2 riptides (to 1) and beef something a bit. The tools don't go away.

So none of the big lists currently would change (and I'm more than willing at some point to physically edit some lists if people feel it'd be a useful exercise), do you see any lists that would become unplayable or that would change in a large way in terms of the tools they can bring? Because what I see is at 2000, we all have a toolbox, except instead of having a hammer, a phillips screw driver, and a flathead, we have 3 of each (or more).

 Danny Internets wrote:

EDIT: Regardless of my personal feelings about games at 1500 points, I actually think it's a great idea for some 1500 points GTs to exist. I think it's really important to have some variety in the tournament scene. This is the chief reason that the BFS GT (http://www.battleforsalvation.com/) is sticking with 2000 points next month.

Agreed on variety, however with the # of games commonly increasing at GT's, and the speed of the game decreasing, I'd like that variety to be downward of 1850 rather than up - mind you you guys did something I am super pumped to see in changing to 3 hour rounds, which was part of what got my keister off the fence and put a ticket in my hand.

I saw an interesting solution in the rules for a tournament not long ago.... Any pair of opponents who did not finish at least 4 full turns in the time limit received no points for the round. None. Sounds like good incentive for both to play at a decent speed.

Coldsteel wrote:
I saw an interesting solution in the rules for a tournament not long ago.... Any pair of opponents who did not finish at least 4 full turns in the time limit received no points for the round. None. Sounds like good incentive for both to play at a decent speed.

If this was instituted, both players would just say they got to round 4 and count up their score as such. This would be a very poor rule, and still would not stop the issues that are being discussed. I could not see any players letting this rule happen in their games.

I know I would talk with my opponent beforehand to tell him that if we dont get to turn 4, (has only happened once in all tournaments I have been to) we will write our score down as if it ended on turn 4 so that way one of use still received points.

I also disagree that deathstars necessarily become stronger at winning games at lower point levels. As stated, you have less points available to make a truly scary deathstar, and also include enough scoring troops and the like.

My gut feeling would be that it's actually easier to make a deathstar build at higher point levels that can win on objectives, since you can make the scary unit and have enough points leftover for the other list elements that you need.

Target wrote:

Here's the thing though - you're guessing about the impacts it has on lists. Try building balanced lists at 2000 and 1500, in my experience of doing so you can build perfectly acceptable lists at BOTH values. I also disagree that deathstars become stronger, deathstars need a critical mass in order to function, and are generally fairly locked into a high points value in order to function. O'Vesa star built the way cook did comes in at approximately 850 points. At a lower points value, his scoring (which was already quite sad) becomes anemic, or he loses both of his extra riptides, and now he has okay scoring, and one unit able to "do" anything. Screamerstar is also locked in at needing to spend 800-850 points, if you cut it's points value, it now has the same choice as ovesa - lose it's other real units which present a threat, or lose it's ability to score/hold objectives. This goes on and on for Jet-Seer Council and others.

Well, of course I'm just guessing (we both are). Without a body of data about outcomes from games at 1500 points in 6th edition (European GT results aren't necessarily useful for a variety of reasons that go beyond the scope of this thread), any forecasting of the possible effects of dropping standard games to this points level will require a good deal of guessing. What matters is whether or not said guessing is backed up by sound reasoning (I think it is on both sides of the argument).

I agree that deathstars need a critical mass in order to function. My point was that they function best at a points level close to that critical mass for two reasons, (1) fewer points decreases the likelihood that an opponent will field a counter, and (2) deathstar units tend to be exceedingly effective/efficient and somewhat inflexible in terms of cost, so in smaller games these units represent a larger portion of the army. Defining exactly where that critical mass is may be where we differ, but I believe it's at a value less than the current 6th edition tournament standard of 1850. (I would consider that critical mass to be a points level that allows for the fielding of the deathstar itself and sufficient supporting units, not just the Deathstar + minimal FOC selections.) That being said, my sentiments are more relevant to traditional deathstars (Seer Councils, Screamer Councils, Draigowing, etc.) than O'vesastar.

I'm still curious whether or not you think the game becomes more RPS-oriented at 1000 or 500 points though. It may have sounded rhetorical, but I'm genuinely curious whether you think there exists a connection between points level and the ability to build an effective TAC list at all (I think this point frames the discussion).

Of the current "big" lists, other than the deathstar approaches I listed above (and gave reasoning why I feel they actually get worse at winning), here's what I see as the current common lists we see:
-FMC Circus - (Similar to Nick N's) the list doesn't really change from 1850 - 1500, it drops an FMC or two, and plays the same way (every list will "feel" as if it's losing power because mentally we're comparing it to what it did at 1850 or 2000, against 1850 or 2000 point lists)
-Wave Serpent Spam or 5-6 Serpents + Tau or 5-6 Serpents + Wraithknight: They cut a couple serpents, or they cut an MC (riptide or wraithknight), but the lists stay effectively the same, they're not losing any "tools" if they don't want to
-IG Blobs - these play just as well, if not a bit better at 1500 from a power standpoint, but they dont lose tools
-Typical Tau (Triple Riptide, heavy support of 1-3 skyrays and 1-3 units of broadsides, ~60 kroot). You cut (from 1850) a unit of broadsides and 1 scoring unit and you're down to 1500. The list hasn't changed. Or cut 2 riptides (to 1) and beef something a bit. The tools don't go away.

I agree on most except the Daemons, dropping 1-2 of 4-5 FMCs is a big change, to how the list will perform. Compared to Eldar essentially giving up nothing.

Essentially I feel that some books lose more than others at 1500. Again it is just different though. I prefer tournaments to just decide what point level/round length they are comfortable with, and adjust accordingly.

If they only want to play 2:15 rounds then 1500 sounds great. If they go 3 hours then they staying at 2k is fine.

SCP Yeeman wrote:

Coldsteel wrote:
I saw an interesting solution in the rules for a tournament not long ago.... Any pair of opponents who did not finish at least 4 full turns in the time limit received no points for the round. None. Sounds like good incentive for both to play at a decent speed.

If this was instituted, both players would just say they got to round 4 and count up their score as such. This would be a very poor rule, and still would not stop the issues that are being discussed. I could not see any players letting this rule happen in their games.

#1. It has an impact right away because both players know that they will get a loss if they do not get to turn 5, so there is a lot of motivation at the start for both players to play fast. ‘

#2. If you are slow playing me and we get less than 4 turns in and I lose, why should I say we got to turn #4?

I know I would talk with my opponent beforehand to tell him that if we dont get to turn 4, (has only happened once in all tournaments I have been to) we will write our score down as if it ended on turn 4 so that way one of use still received points.

If that was the case, I would tell you that I would mark you down as a loss as well as myself if we do not get to turn #4, so you better play fast to make sure that doesn't happen.

Otherwise, what is motivating you to play as fast as possible? If I lose to slow play who cares is a get a couple of points out of the game or not? Why would I want to reward a player who is stalling?

In my last round of the Nova Open I played against a player who slow played me (rolled saves one at a time etc.) We got to the end of turn #3 and they said do not play another turn. He wins because I am off all of the objectives (not thinking that this will be the last turn). Why on earth would I give this guy a win?

On Danny's point about points level I think what points levels introduce as far as balance is this. At lower points values randomness matters more. At 500 points a Flyrant can single handedly (assuming average rolls) dominate an opposing army. But having your points invested in that way means that a few bad rolls can screw your entire army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
as for both players "losing" if we don't finish, that only works assuming no sore losers. If we get to bottom of 2 and it is obvious I am going to lose, what is to stop me from screwing you out of a win?

In the end some combination of incentive + players involving judges early in these cases is the best solution. MY quesiton remains to those who are saying they got slow played, how many of you asked your opponent to speed up and if they did not went and got a judge to speed things along?

There is no system (short of having a judge for every table or 2) that will fix slow play without invlovement from the players. The issue is that far to often people are afraid that their opponent will get up set if they accuse them of slow playing, and do nothing.

#1 the impact could be nothing as i described.

#2 If you wouldn't agree to do that, then don't agree to do that. I guess it would give you one less thing to complain about.

Who cares about a few points? I guess not you, but some players do. If a few points don't matter, then don't agree to it, pretty simple solution.

Everyone gets slow played at some point, hurting both players for not getting to Turn 4 is not the answer.

Well, it's caused by players adjusting to new editions and not knowing the rules of their opponent's army. While it would be great if that could be changed, it simply can't. Lowering points values has to increase the likelihood that games finish on time, and should be the best solution. 1500 points is a great value, and I still think it's up for debate whether the extra 350 points actually encourages diversity with new units or simply adds 1-2 more of the spammable units.

I really wish rounds would be extended to 3 hours. If were there to game, I dont see an issue with going from 9 am to 10 pm (hour for lunch) for 4 round days, and for 3 round days 10 hours of gaming is totally feasible.

From what Mike Brandt said (from memory on 11th co), it sounded like a majority of games at NOVA did NOT meet their natural conclusion, with some not even making round 5 at 2.5 hours. By Natural conclusion I mean roll dice for turn 6 and 7... in 2.5 hours you can plan on playing ONLY to turn 5, really changes the way games are played AND makes armies like tau that much stronger (as they know when they have to expose weak scoring units, etc).

The issue is with slow players and rules questions. No need to change, only thing to do is have TO's roaming about watching for it.

2.5 hour rounds really really benefit some of the current stronger armies (in my opinion) as they know exactly when they have to expose their weaker units, which tend to be their scoring units. Without random game length (as there usually isnt in 2.5 hours round tournaments) the current Tau and Eldar armies know exactly when they have to push their relative small and vulnerable points investments (usually 2-3 squads of kroot or guardians) onto the objectives, with the rest of their points able to be spent on further bolstering their offensive output. Additionally, denial units can play for turn 5 (such as a riptide), able to stay out of assault range for most the game only to jettison onto an objective turn 5 with only the possibility of a 1 round assault phase (if they went 1st). This is really troublesome for some other armies which have to make greater points investments into scoring units (which typically don't have the strongest offensive capabilities) or fear loosing them quickly to the fire/range capabilities of the current top armies.

 Danny Internets wrote:

Target wrote:

Here's the thing though - you're guessing about the impacts it has on lists. Try building balanced lists at 2000 and 1500, in my experience of doing so you can build perfectly acceptable lists at BOTH values. I also disagree that deathstars become stronger, deathstars need a critical mass in order to function, and are generally fairly locked into a high points value in order to function. O'Vesa star built the way cook did comes in at approximately 850 points. At a lower points value, his scoring (which was already quite sad) becomes anemic, or he loses both of his extra riptides, and now he has okay scoring, and one unit able to "do" anything. Screamerstar is also locked in at needing to spend 800-850 points, if you cut it's points value, it now has the same choice as ovesa - lose it's other real units which present a threat, or lose it's ability to score/hold objectives. This goes on and on for Jet-Seer Council and others.

Well, of course I'm just guessing (we both are). Without a body of data about outcomes from games at 1500 points in 6th edition (European GT results aren't necessarily useful for a variety of reasons that go beyond the scope of this thread), any forecasting of the possible effects of dropping standard games to this points level will require a good deal of guessing. What matters is whether or not said guessing is backed up by sound reasoning (I think it is on both sides of the argument).

I agree that deathstars need a critical mass in order to function. My point was that they function best at a points level close to that critical mass for two reasons, (1) fewer points decreases the likelihood that an opponent will field a counter, and (2) deathstar units tend to be exceedingly effective/efficient and somewhat inflexible in terms of cost, so in smaller games these units represent a larger portion of the army. Defining exactly where that critical mass is may be where we differ, but I believe it's at a value less than the current 6th edition tournament standard of 1850. (I would consider that critical mass to be a points level that allows for the fielding of the deathstar itself and sufficient supporting units, not just the Deathstar + minimal FOC selections.) That being said, my sentiments are more relevant to traditional deathstars (Seer Councils, Screamer Councils, Draigowing, etc.) than O'vesastar.

I'm still curious whether or not you think the game becomes more RPS-oriented at 1000 or 500 points though. It may have sounded rhetorical, but I'm genuinely curious whether you think there exists a connection between points level and the ability to build an effective TAC list at all (I think this point frames the discussion).

Sorry I thought the RPS at 1k or 500 was more rhetorical than a question!

As to traditional deathstars - my post addressed both jetseer (my name for jetbike seer councils) and screamerstar (screamer council). I didn't address draigo because to be perfectly honest I don't really consider it a viable army anymore at the upper rungs of competition. That being said it would suffer the same issue, as draigo, 10 paladins and upgrades clocks in at 900 ish points, at 1500 that only leaves 600 for the entire rest of your army, and you're unable to handle MSU. Id say this keeps them fairly balanced like the others if not toning down deathstars at abit at 1500.

At 1000: You start flat out ruling out some builds, for instance most of those deathscars purely couldn't function at this level as they need 800-900 points to work properly. I think this would overall be "bad" as while I personally don't like deathstars, I also don't want to rule out any specific build archetypes due to points level. At this points level, the builds that are going to begin to dominate are those that can spam MSU as cheaply as possibly (imo) . You might see armies like GK Razor spam come back a bit, tau kroot horde + skyrays/ would fit a bit too well, etc etc. I'd say you start losing a fair bit of balance at 1000 because you truly can't at this level take a viable answer to extreme builds. You may be able to be balanced with some books (not all I'd guess), but you wont be able to handle the extremes.

At 500: It's a bit silly because this is just a completely different game, we're essentially talking a skirmish/kill team game at this level.

1500 Is where most things converge/stabilize imo, and is chosen partly because its a convenient/acceptable/roundish number thats historically been played. Im sure 1400 or 1550 or 1600 wouldn't be very different either.

At 1500 you can do (all points super super rough to be polite to posting exact values)
Eldar Farseer
4x Dire Avenger/Wave Serpent
2x6 swooping hawk
1x wraithknight
3x Shadowweaver
-some change.

Functionally this is very unchanged from an 1850 eldar build which merely takes more of everything. You could also trade the wraithknight and shadoweavers, or a serpent/something for a tau detachment if desired.

Tau Example:
Ethereal
Commander
6x10+1 hound kroot
2x Riptide with whatever
2x Skyray
1x Broadside unit with some drones
1500

Looks identical and has the same variety of answers as an 1850 version we see all the time

Screamerstar:
4 Heralds on discs with the usual crap
9 Screamers
3x Troops
1x 10 Cultists
CSM Sorcer or something
Heldrake
100 points left to take something, thats your typical screamerstar with CSM allies, if you don't want csm, spend the points on some fleshhounds, or an fmc, etc etc

Khan Bikers:
Khan+ Bike
4x5 Bikes with 2xGrav/Combi Grav/Melta bomb
Libby on Bike
Thunderfire
1 Stormtalon, skyhammer

Company Command Squad
Platoon Command Squad
40 Guardsmen
1 Vendetta

That's 1500 (plus or minus a couple points as always)

The list goes on - the armies really don't change, they just get less of the big expensive choices (wave serpents, wraithknights, riptides, broadside units, 1 less FMC, only 1 guard blob instead of 2, 1 less tervigon and some other small units, etc.) than at 1850.

Also list building is like crack to me. I don't know why.

Nice post, Target, and yeah you seem to have a thing for list-building . It's very pertinent to the topic, though... so thanks for posting them

I also agree that 1500 could be a nice sweet spot. That's a 19% difference in points with an 1850 point list... whereas a 1000 point level would a 46% difference in points. One is obviously going to affect list building a LOT more than the other!

With 19% less points to spend, imo you can make largely similar lists to what you can with 1850. You might see a few less uber-expensive toys, but most builds should still be viable (as Target, who knows a lot more about this, lays out examples of above).

 RiTides wrote:
Nice post, Target, and yeah you seem to have a thing for list-building . It's very pertinent to the topic, though... so thanks for posting them

I also agree that 1500 could be a nice sweet spot. That's a 19% difference in points with an 1850 point list... whereas a 1000 point level would a 46% difference in points. One is obviously going to affect list building a LOT more than the other!

With 19% less points to spend, imo you can make largely similar lists to what you can with 1850. You might see a few less uber-expensive toys, but most builds should still be viable (as Target, who knows a lot more about this, lays out examples of above).

As Target showed 1500 means you take 1-2 of the "good units" rather than spamming 3-4. I find my 1500 lists are just smaller versions of my larger lists.

Oh man... My personal experiences at 1500 back in the days of 3rd Ed tell me that you make huge sacrafices to be a take all comers list... While the rps players don't sacrafice as much. That said.... Missions were very different and lead to IMHO less Death Star builds. Perhaps we should be looking at missions that speed up play as opposed to slow it down?

MarkyMark wrote:
How would you suggest doing this Peregrine?, the few ways that have been suggested locally have not been good enough IMO and I feel its a very hard thing to enforce.

You have to give the judges the ability to make the call. In MTG there is no explicit definition for slow play, if a player feels like their opponent is playing too slowly then they call a judge and it's up to the judge whether or not they should enforce the penalty (usually after watching the game for a while). There's really no way around it being a judgement call, if you define slow play as A, B and C then the people who are deliberately stalling will just use D instead. You just have to have confidence in your judges.

A lot of TO's don't even get it. I was getting slowplayed at an RTT the other day so with 20 minutes left, I asked the judge before we started turn 4 if it was ok to split the remaining time evenly.. 10 minutes each. He said no, he'd never heard of that before. If I didn't think we'd finish another turn, then to end the game there because he was very strict about dice down.

Of course, my opponent was almost tabled with only a few models remaining here and there. All I needed to do was move three inches to get into contact with the Relic, but my opponent was content shuffling around worthlessly clocking me out for the win. I barely got the 30 seconds I needed after making a much bigger deal than I should've had to.

In other words, in order to get the attention of the TO on the issue of my opponents purposefully slow play, I was made out to look like the bad guy. That's the big reason noone ever brings it up in game. It's ridiculous.

1500, 1750, 1850, 2000, it's all 40K to me, personally. List building is more fun at higher points for sure as it feels more "complete" but it really doesn't make much difference. The best players still win at any points levels.

1500 is infinitely more realistic from a logistical point of view. You can provide time for a leisurely game with less time than a round at a higher points level allows for.

 Reecius wrote:
1500, 1750, 1850, 2000, it's all 40K to me, personally. List building is more fun at higher points for sure as it feels more "complete" but it really doesn't make much difference. The best players still win at any points levels.

1500 is infinitely more realistic from a logistical point of view. You can provide time for a leisurely game with less time than a round at a higher points level allows for.

Reecius, big fan (love the battle reports, jealous i don't live near your shop), but I have to disagree a little in terms of the best player mostly winning... Most of the best players will bring the best armies, so naturally they compete. With that said, here are my thoughts on why longer rounds are needed at higher point levels (and im afraid this same problem exist at lower point levels for the reasons below):

2.5 hour rounds really really benefit some of the current stronger armies (in my opinion) as they know exactly when they have to expose their weaker units, which tend to be their scoring units. Without random game length (as there usually isnt in 2.5 hours round tournaments) the current Tau and Eldar armies know exactly when they have to push their relative small and vulnerable points investments (usually 2-3 squads of kroot or guardians) onto the objectives, with the rest of their points able to be spent on further bolstering their offensive output. Additionally, denial units can play for turn 5 (such as a riptide), able to stay out of assault range for most the game only to jettison onto an objective turn 5 with only the possibility of a 1 round assault phase (if they went 1st). This is really troublesome for some other armies which have to make greater points investments into scoring units (which typically don't have the strongest offensive capabilities) or fear loosing them quickly to the fire/range capabilities of the current top armies.

I don't think slow play is nearly the issue people are making it out to be. Of the games that I've not finished, deliberate slow play really has not been a factor.

What has been a factor is how many extra rolls are required in 6th, and certain armies that exacerbate this. IG can get pretty bad, especially with 1st rank/2nd rank on blob squads, and then rolling all those dice again the next turn as they get charged. In one tournament game, between the two phases, my opponent rolled somewhere over 200 dice to-hit, plus all the subsequent wounding, saves and FnP rolls, to deal something like 2 wounds to my unit of plague drones (in cover, with endurance cast on them).

I don't want to see events get to the point where you can't introduce yourself to your opponent or make any small talk without being accused of slow-play. Gaming is primarily a social activity, and we shouldn't be forced to be heads-down all game because some people want more points in the game.

Target wrote:
1500 Is where most things converge/stabilize imo, and is chosen partly because its a convenient/acceptable/roundish number thats historically been played. Im sure 1400 or 1550 or 1600 wouldn't be very different either.

...

The list goes on - the armies really don't change, they just get less of the big expensive choices (wave serpents, wraithknights, riptides, broadside units, 1 less FMC, only 1 guard blob instead of 2, 1 less tervigon and some other small units, etc.) than at 1850.

Thanks for taking the time to actually write out example lists--I think it really helps to articulate your position. I think that we just disagree on the point where most things converge/stabilize. I still feel like that point is closer to 1750, but perhaps that's just where I feel satisfied with my ability to take all of the tools I want as opposed to just the tools that I need (and, after all, 1750 and 1500 aren't *that* far apart). My main reservation about this theorizing though is the implicit assumption that building an army of 1500 points is simply a matter of scaling down an army built for 1750/1850/2000. I think that a meta built around 1500 points could reveal significant differences about what works or does not work on a smaller scale.

1500 points is plenty for a Grand Tourney and would change little from 1850. Would it change the Meta, Mabey but no where near as much as 6th edition is changing it anyway ..as to playing with all your toys ..the only time any long time gamer can do this is at an APOCOLYSE Game ..Where 5,000+ points is on the board for each side ..

Slow play points deductions..pick up the pace I play Orks full on green tide and move and shoot rounds are under 10 minutes for me during turn one and time drops as the game progresses ..(fewer models make for faster moves)

I have to say that the lower points really make sense. I have been able to finish all my games when at 1500. I still see 5 IG flyers on the board, so spam is still there, ugh. I wish my FLGS did more creative events with prizes. I really like the 555 point games, they mix stuff up.

 Danny Internets wrote:

Target wrote:
1500 Is where most things converge/stabilize imo, and is chosen partly because its a convenient/acceptable/roundish number thats historically been played. Im sure 1400 or 1550 or 1600 wouldn't be very different either.

...

The list goes on - the armies really don't change, they just get less of the big expensive choices (wave serpents, wraithknights, riptides, broadside units, 1 less FMC, only 1 guard blob instead of 2, 1 less tervigon and some other small units, etc.) than at 1850.

Thanks for taking the time to actually write out example lists--I think it really helps to articulate your position. I think that we just disagree on the point where most things converge/stabilize. I still feel like that point is closer to 1750, but perhaps that's just where I feel satisfied with my ability to take all of the tools I want as opposed to just the tools that I need (and, after all, 1750 and 1500 aren't *that* far apart). My main reservation about this theorizing though is the implicit assumption that building an army of 1500 points is simply a matter of scaling down an army built for 1750/1850/2000. I think that a meta built around 1500 points could reveal significant differences about what works or does not work on a smaller scale.

Here's my stumbling block though - you seem to agree roughly now that there is a range below 2000 (and 1850) where the meta and lists are largely unchanged, and all we're doing is scaling back the extras. And while I agree there would probably be some minor differences at 1500 (you might see some new builds/some of the current truly dominant ones might not be as prolific as they are) I don't think you'd actually lose any, as all of the current ones that are big scale down just fine (as seen in my example lists), except that they start having to make harder choices about troops versus quality units while not losing their deathstars.

So why not try the change to 1500 (or heck even 1750, I'll take any lower I can get!) if there's no reason other than the potential of unintended consequences (which is always there) versus the current issues with games finishing and such? We know that 1850 and 2000 are largely unnecessary balance wise and add time in already tight tournament schedules.

Sidenote:

One build you might see me toss down for a few laughs at 1500:

Coteaz
6x3 Acolyte + Psybolt Razor
3x5 Purifier, Hammer, 2 Incinerator + Psybolt Razor
3x5 Purgation, Hammer, 4 Incinerator, Psybolt/Dozer/Razor

Has a few spare points for upgrades still, this is at 1477 Flame on!

Side-Sidenote: While I said "why not try the change" I just meant in general/in a philosophical support of the change sense, not for BFS, thats way too close obviously

@Target

Stop copying my lists man!

But seriously, I wouldn't mind a 1,500pt GT. Do I want them all to be 1,500pts? No! But I'd be fine with some of the bigger ones dropping down a bit to ensure the game gets completed in time. Especially considering we're looking at Tyranids and Orks likely in the next 6 months which means more hordes a comin.

 Hulksmash wrote:
But seriously, I wouldn't mind a 1,500pt GT. Do I want them all to be 1,500pts? No! But I'd be fine with some of the bigger ones dropping down a bit to ensure the game gets completed in time. Especially considering we're looking at Tyranids and Orks likely in the next 6 months which means more hordes a comin.

Oooh, that's a good point. And it'd make players like myself, who are not that fast (okay, sometimes I think I'm genuinely slow... working on it!) feel a little more confident in taking a higher model count army. I have been dreaming of running nids once Trollforged gets their stuff into production, and I feel like it'd be more feasible at a 1500 point event (although I still likely wouldn't run pure swarm).

Getting more excited about the lower point levels the more it's discussed actually . Seems well worth trying!

Lowering the standard tournament point also has the added benefit of making the game more accessible to new players. I have two or three friends half way interested in the game at any given time. Telling them it will take $400-$600 and 50-70 models for a standard tournament army is an easier sell than $600-$800 and 70-120 models.

Makes it easier to get an army painted up for a GT, to boot (unless going the afore-mentioned horde route, which is going to be hard almost no matter the point level).

 RiTides wrote:
Makes it easier to get an army painted up for a GT, to boot (unless going the afore-mentioned horde route, which is going to be hard almost no matter the point level).

Too true.

1500 is faster to play, easier to paint, cheaper to build, easier to transport, and with the general downward trend in point costs isn't even that much different than 1850 two or three years ago.

The only downsides to it are pretty heavy speculation about how it will influence the meta (but the meta isn't balanced now anyways) and people just liking higher points for whatever personal reasons. But logically I think the practical considerations come down strongly in favor of 1500. I only wish more TOs would break the mantra of "it's what we've always done".

Reecius wrote:1500, 1750, 1850, 2000, it's all 40K to me, personally. List building is more fun at higher points for sure as it feels more "complete" but it really doesn't make much difference. The best players still win at any points levels.

1500 is infinitely more realistic from a logistical point of view. You can provide time for a leisurely game with less time than a round at a higher points level allows for.

So what I am hearing you say is the BAO will be 1500 points this year.

Redbeard wrote:I don't think slow play is nearly the issue people are making it out to be. Of the games that I've not finished, deliberate slow play really has not been a factor.

What has been a factor is how many extra rolls are required in 6th, and certain armies that exacerbate this. IG can get pretty bad, especially with 1st rank/2nd rank on blob squads, and then rolling all those dice again the next turn as they get charged. In one tournament game, between the two phases, my opponent rolled somewhere over 200 dice to-hit, plus all the subsequent wounding, saves and FnP rolls, to deal something like 2 wounds to my unit of plague drones (in cover, with endurance cast on them).

I don't want to see events get to the point where you can't introduce yourself to your opponent or make any small talk without being accused of slow-play. Gaming is primarily a social activity, and we shouldn't be forced to be heads-down all game because some people want more points in the game.

Slow playing has only ever been an issue in 3 of my tournament games in all the years I have been playing. The vast majority of games that don't finish are unrelated to slow playing. Some of the assertions made about needing to be stricter about slow playing "cheaters" are coming from non-tournament players. The issue with slow games is the game itself is slower, not that players are purposefully slow playing.

One thing to consider that is not on the list is simplifying missions. At least for the W/L GT's. I think if missions were straight up book missions you wouldn't always see the dominance of the newest armies at the top as well as the time needed to play missions would speed up.

Players wouldn't need to think about 2-3 levels of objectives (KP/objectives/value of units in table quarters). They would have one thing on their mind........KP............Relic...........Objectives. Perhaps that would speed things up.

When there is just one mission, an army that doesn't have all the fat trimmed out of it can compete against the net lists because there is one thing to worry about. They don't need to worry about KP, and getting my HQ to enemy deployment zone, AND grabbing the relic.

I know playing the book missions seems a little boring at first, but Ive played a lot of 6th edition, and generally playing straight up book missions has produced the closer games, and closes the gap of codex creep a little bit compared to the multi-tier missions.

I don't want to de-rail the thread too much, but simplifying missions is something to consider, I figured Id throw some points out there why book missions are ok as Im sure some folks would be opposed to it right from the suggestion.

Norbu the Destroyer wrote:
One thing to consider that is not on the list is simplifying missions. At least for the W/L GT's. I think if missions were straight up book missions you wouldn't always see the dominance of the newest armies at the top as well as the time needed to play missions would speed up.

Players wouldn't need to think about 2-3 levels of objectives (KP/objectives/value of units in table quarters). They would have one thing on their mind........KP............Relic...........Objectives. Perhaps that would speed things up.

When there is just one mission, an army that doesn't have all the fat trimmed out of it can compete against the net lists because there is one thing to worry about. They don't need to worry about KP, and getting my HQ to enemy deployment zone, AND grabbing the relic.

I know playing the book missions seems a little boring at first, but Ive played a lot of 6th edition, and generally playing straight up book missions has produced the closer games, and closes the gap of codex creep a little bit compared to the multi-tier missions.

I don't want to de-rail the thread too much, but simplifying missions is something to consider, I figured Id throw some points out there why book missions are ok as Im sure some folks would be opposed to it right from the suggestion.

You do actually bring up a good point. Mission complexity can add a lot of time to a game. In 5th we had lots of complex missions but 5th played faster than 6th. 6th has slowed the pace of the game down significantly and by not adjusting mission design at tournaments to reflect this TOs may be exacerbating the issue without even realizing it.

I for one have always been in favor of simpler missions.

Simpler is fine however several book missions as written are terrible for tournament play. Relic is bad, scouring is bad, big guns is not significantly different than crusade.

Some of the book missions just require a minor tweek to make them tourny compatible. The scouring you just require each player places an objective in their own deployment zone, one in opponents, and one in no mans land. Big guns and the other multi-objective mission could just have the rule, you have (x) amount of objectives, and could be tweeked further that they are put in specific place (center of the 4 table quarters for example).

I dont really think any of the book missions are bad, they just require folks to play differantly. The relic seems to be what most folks are afraid to play, and it is a very extreme mission (as there is one sole objective you either have or you dont), but that doesnt make it bad per say. This mission I enjoy because you are faced with the dilemma of going after the relic early and risk being shot dead after making that move, or waiting till late game......but your opponent may grab it before you your plan can completely unfold. The entire mission you also have first blood in the back of your head as the game may come down to that. If you lose first blood, now you have to figure out how to get line breaker/slay the warlord as well as keep your opponent from getting any of the other bonuses.

I think the scouring is actually one of the most interesting to play as not only do you have the multi ponted objectives, but the 3 bonus points (line breraker etc...) as well as the Fast Attack kills give up a point towards scoring as well. In fact if a few friends and I get together for a team game over some beers, the scouring is usually what we play as the game can change dramatically in the last couple turns as small scoring units hop out to try to grab objectives hoping for the game to end.

When you play the scouring with hammer and anvil deployment with 2-2-1 on your side, you'll know why some don't like that mission. It wouldn't be as bad on a long edge deployment but it can be quite a hike across a long board to contest/take objectives while still holding yours.

ForgeMarine wrote:

 Reecius wrote:
1500, 1750, 1850, 2000, it's all 40K to me, personally. List building is more fun at higher points for sure as it feels more "complete" but it really doesn't make much difference. The best players still win at any points levels.

1500 is infinitely more realistic from a logistical point of view. You can provide time for a leisurely game with less time than a round at a higher points level allows for.

Reecius, big fan (love the battle reports, jealous i don't live near your shop), but I have to disagree a little in terms of the best player mostly winning... Most of the best players will bring the best armies, so naturally they compete. With that said, here are my thoughts on why longer rounds are needed at higher point levels (and im afraid this same problem exist at lower point levels for the reasons below):

2.5 hour rounds really really benefit some of the current stronger armies (in my opinion) as they know exactly when they have to expose their weaker units, which tend to be their scoring units. Without random game length (as there usually isnt in 2.5 hours round tournaments) the current Tau and Eldar armies know exactly when they have to push their relative small and vulnerable points investments (usually 2-3 squads of kroot or guardians) onto the objectives, with the rest of their points able to be spent on further bolstering their offensive output. Additionally, denial units can play for turn 5 (such as a riptide), able to stay out of assault range for most the game only to jettison onto an objective turn 5 with only the possibility of a 1 round assault phase (if they went 1st). This is really troublesome for some other armies which have to make greater points investments into scoring units (which typically don't have the strongest offensive capabilities) or fear loosing them quickly to the fire/range capabilities of the current top armies.

First off, thanks for the nice letter! I appreciate it.

You make some excellent points. Game length is one of those very nebulous topics that is hard to nail down as every person you ask has a different idea of how to do it. For example, Blackmoor has been quite vocal on his belief that games need to be longer. I understand and agree to a point but the view we have as TOs is a lot different that the view players have. Players think about the immediate here and now of playing a game and wanting it to be as competitive and fair for them and their specific play style as possible. I totally get it as I was a very vocal tournament goer before becoming a TO.

The issue is that as a TO you are faced with the realities of logistics. You have the space to run the event for X hours, you have X amount of rounds you want to play, you have X players, you have X players that are new and going to play slow no matter what, etc. etc. etc. At the end of the day you are left with having to create an arbitrary time limit that fits into the limitations you are working with. We do our absolute best to provide the best ratio of time to rounds but sometimes we simply don't have a choice on the matter. It comes down to the players to be conscious of the time limit and learn to play within it to the best of their ability. Otherwise, we end up changing the time limit every time someone makes a valid point about why it should be changed (and there are lots of them).

I don't think changing time limits to be a bit longer, or point levels to be a bit lower, would be reacting to "every time someone makes a valid point about why it should be changed", though.

This is more like a critical mass of 6th edition + codexes that take longer in certain phases + point costs of units in general going down = need a bit more time, or a bit less points, to fit the constrained schedule limitations that you refer to.

If time is the limiting factor, or number of rounds, then that just leaves reducing point levels. I'd be up for changing any of those factors, whatever each TO prefers really... as long as it's not stressful to fit a game in within the time limits for the average tournament player. At Nova, it sounded like it was a bit stressful, so that's just a good piece of feedback / datapoint to take and improve upon for future events now that it's showing itself to be an issue with the current 6th edition meta.

Hopefully I'm not talking out of school here, a lot of folks posting here are more "intense" tourney players, but many are also voicing similar views... and as a "casual" tourney player, not being rushed and stressed out to finish a game is one of the most important factors for me, even though I'll prepare as best I can to be ready to play quickly.

I'm also a fan of 1500 point tournaments because I would like to go to Grand Tournaments solely as a modeler and painter, and I want to converse with each of my opponents during the game. I'm the guy who always asks 'what toughness are your space marines?' many times during a game. Then I like to ask about really cool models in my opponent's army and how he converted, painted, based them and so on. I think we could actually finish a game in two hours if the points were lower.

Also, the argument that we will be seeing a lot more horde armies with the release of new Ork and Tyranid books is a good one, and those armies definitely take more time to play.

 Reecius wrote:

ForgeMarine wrote:

 Reecius wrote:
1500, 1750, 1850, 2000, it's all 40K to me, personally. List building is more fun at higher points for sure as it feels more "complete" but it really doesn't make much difference. The best players still win at any points levels.

1500 is infinitely more realistic from a logistical point of view. You can provide time for a leisurely game with less time than a round at a higher points level allows for.

Reecius, big fan (love the battle reports, jealous i don't live near your shop), but I have to disagree a little in terms of the best player mostly winning... Most of the best players will bring the best armies, so naturally they compete. With that said, here are my thoughts on why longer rounds are needed at higher point levels (and im afraid this same problem exist at lower point levels for the reasons below):

2.5 hour rounds really really benefit some of the current stronger armies (in my opinion) as they know exactly when they have to expose their weaker units, which tend to be their scoring units. Without random game length (as there usually isnt in 2.5 hours round tournaments) the current Tau and Eldar armies know exactly when they have to push their relative small and vulnerable points investments (usually 2-3 squads of kroot or guardians) onto the objectives, with the rest of their points able to be spent on further bolstering their offensive output. Additionally, denial units can play for turn 5 (such as a riptide), able to stay out of assault range for most the game only to jettison onto an objective turn 5 with only the possibility of a 1 round assault phase (if they went 1st). This is really troublesome for some other armies which have to make greater points investments into scoring units (which typically don't have the strongest offensive capabilities) or fear loosing them quickly to the fire/range capabilities of the current top armies.

First off, thanks for the nice letter! I appreciate it.

You make some excellent points. Game length is one of those very nebulous topics that is hard to nail down as every person you ask has a different idea of how to do it. For example, Blackmoor has been quite vocal on his belief that games need to be longer. I understand and agree to a point but the view we have as TOs is a lot different that the view players have. Players think about the immediate here and now of playing a game and wanting it to be as competitive and fair for them and their specific play style as possible. I totally get it as I was a very vocal tournament goer before becoming a TO.

One of the reasons why I make these posted to make TOs aware of the issues out there.

Most TOs run one event a year and they are isolated (for the most part) from other tournaments so they might not be aware of the issues until after their tournaments and at that point it is too late.

The problem is that the game changes and TOs think that they will just do the same thing that they did last year and everything will be ok.

A lot of things have changed in the game in just the last few months (think about how many codex releases we normally get, and think about how many we have had this year) and now round times are a lot larger issue than it was in the past. TOs do not realize what problems are out there until after their events, and I would like to make them aware of the issues before hand.

When you spend $50- $100 for a tournament you want to play games of 40k. A tournament is pointless if you do not get full games in and players are just winning by who has the last turn.

The issue is that as a TO you are faced with the realities of logistics. You have the space to run the event for X hours, you have X amount of rounds you want to play, you have X players, you have X players that are new and going to play slow no matter what, etc. etc. etc. At the end of the day you are left with having to create an arbitrary time limit that fits into the limitations you are working with. We do our absolute best to provide the best ratio of time to rounds but sometimes we simply don't have a choice on the matter. It comes down to the players to be conscious of the time limit and learn to play within it to the best of their ability. Otherwise, we end up changing the time limit every time someone makes a valid point about why it should be changed (and there are lots of them).

That is what I was talking about in my first poll. Is it better to have 6 full games, or 8 games that end on turn 4-5?

The 'best way' to make sure more tournament games come to their natural conclusions will vary by tournament. For some events this will mean significantly reducing points values; for some it will mean extending round length; and for others it will be implementing battle point systems that allow for a clear winner with fewer total games played.

The GTGT 2013 used a multi-layered approach to protecting the integrity of game results:

-At 2000pts with Forge World and dual force org, we used 3-hour rounds.
-We were and continue to be firmly against a hard 'dice down' rule, so when time is called at the top of a turn the full game turn is still finished.
-Players who failed to finish a game within their allotted time limit were given a warning; additional failures to complete games resulted in escalating penalties.
-To make things fun and comfortable for everyone, there were 3 rounds per day in our Swiss format. Top players going into the second day were the only participants who might have been required to play four rounds in one day. In the case of up to 124 players we could've determined a single winner based on Swiss games by requiring only 16 players to play an additional round on Sunday.

This strategy created a situation where participants were given generous time allowances, slow play was discouraged through tournament policies, and only those players with a legitimate shot at becoming our overall Tournament Champion faced the possibility of a four-round day (although the possible extra round ended up not being required). We had very few games fail to reach their natural conclusions as a result of these efforts.

 RobPro wrote:
When you play the scouring with hammer and anvil deployment with 2-2-1 on your side, you'll know why some don't like that mission. It wouldn't be as bad on a long edge deployment but it can be quite a hike across a long board to contest/take objectives while still holding yours.

Precisely it is the random objective points that is the issue of the scouring. When 2 objectives in your deployment zone are 1 and 2 points and your opponent gets 3 and 4. The way to fix it is have fixed objectives with fixed values or at least fix the 1 and 4 and have each player place a 2 and 3 pointer.

So we have a few ideas running through this topic at this point. I like all these points and want to respond in detail but this leaves this post a bit long since this thread has gone in so many directions. For those wishing to focus on a particular point, 1 is about balance and point limit, 2 is about tournaments and missions, and 3 is about slow players and time limits.

1: Balance and points limits. In 5th ed and earlier editions, as put forth by MVBrant and others at the time, larger point games benefited the game because the best FOC in a codex would get maxed early forcing players to spend on the weaker FOC, which toned the best codexes back a little. Now this is not the case, as the allies rule grants a HUGE amount of slots for your primary army so you never run out of 'good' FOC slots. Like Target said, 1850-2000 is not enough to prevent spamming the best FOC slots in this edition, unlike in 5th.

We would need ~2500 points with no second primary detachment to balance the game in 6th ed like 2k did in 5th. Since this is not feasible in a tourney setting, 1500 has no real downside other than the psychological effect of having veteran players trying to cut some of their tried and true 1850 lists down to 1500. While you can play the same style of list at 1500, it needs to be done from the ground up. Trying to cut 350 from an existing list will mean you are never going to be satisfied with the final result unless you lucked out and had exactly 350 points in a redundant FOC slot. What does it mean? The first 1500 'BIG' tourney will suffer some flak, but once people have 1500 point lists made up the second 'BIG' tourney to run 1500 will not really have any issues.

2: Mission style in tournaments. I believe book missions rolled randomly played between 2 identical people over multiple games are extremely balanced. So if you and your friend play a lot of games with the same armies, the random missions generate a lot of balance over multiple games as while one person may suck at relic he may be awesome at the scouring, keeping the play interesting between you two over a series of games.

However, in tournaments we do not have the luxury of multiple games versus the same opponent to produce a winner of a series of different games. This means that a mission that favors one list style over another can not be used in a tournament, as while the relic mission may be balanced as one in a series of 6 games normally, because the players and list change each round during tournies the series counter is effectively 'reset' making each book mission on its own inherently unfair for single game tournament play.

This means that tournament mission goals needs to be very similar to each other to minimize the bad match up effect, and the missions need to be known ahead of time so no player gets surprised with a mission win condition they can not possibly win. Yes, we all like variety, but they play football and soccer with the same win condition each match for a damn good reason.

So for example, some of the Nova missions succeeded here and some failed. Nova had some missions where if you won objectives, literally nothing else mattered--not the secondary, not the tertiary, not the bonus points. Thus armies designed to win only on objectives and only when lucky enough to be going second beat armies that were much more balanced with a single die roll--the roll to see who goes first. This may be fine if the defeated armies had some chance to come back from this loss in later rounds after the unbalanced army fails to advance further, but in Nova style a single loss can knock you out of placing ANYTHING--Bracket, overall or ren man.

Thus, missions with balanced victory conditions played over and over are the best for tournament play. I like kill points, standard objectives and some alternate (Relic/scouring/Emp will) objectives all being played at once personally. BAO has a pretty good setup I believe personally, but I am sure there is room for some kind of improvement somewhere.

3: Slow players. Here there is no 'correct' answer because the solution is an interpersonal one. No one wants to be the bad guy for rushing a player, but some people WILL be offended if labeled or punished for slow play, and their entire tournament experience can be ruined as a result. Whether this comes from a judge or another player doesn't matter, whether it's warranted or not also doesn't change the fact that you ruined a paying customers fun. It should be noted that some people do require a little more time, or perhaps there is a bit of a language issue requiring slower verbal communication but their opponent doesnt get it, and talks faster and faster in an effort to hurry the other along. Thus blanket sanctions against slow players can never work, and rushing someone can have an opposite effect to finishing a game on time.

On the other hand, yes some people intentionally slow play, but what about SPEED play. If you are literally on the cusp of starting another turn depending if you rush through your current turn or play normally, and if by playing normally the game will end leaving you the victor/loser, are you obligated to cut corners during your turn so your opponent will win/lose?

IE, you find out there is 5 minutes before the 15 min dont start a new turn warning. You have 90% of your shooting but are off the objectives, your opponent has only a handful of models left but they are on the objectives, scoring him the win. If you were to shoot, based on previous turns it will take over 15 minutes to resolve everything, thus causing the game to end. If you were to play normally, taking your shooting phase, you would lose the game. Instead you simply move and end your turn, knowing with next turn's movement you can win the game and your opponent has no shooting to speak of so their turn should only take a minute since he has no actions.

In this situation, one player still changed his play style to manipulate the time left in a round to secure a win. This isnt slow play, but such a practice is surely not what a TO wants happening.

While not ideal for 40k, only a dice down time limit for each players turn will ensure that every single game finishes on a random turn length in an allotted time. AKA, if you have 15 minutes per player turn, and half way through your shooting phase your 15 minutes are up, all the hits you just rolled dont get to roll to wound, and that close combat your models are locked in doesnt happen this turn. Your opponent immediately begins their movement phase. Now, this is a terrible way to play the back and forth nature of 40k, but by god the games would finish on time every time.

@DevianID

1.) Points limits are mostly similar at 1500+ it just shifts the meta and makes it more difficult for some armies to make a TAC list depending on the points.

2.) On missions, every mission type (especially repeated similar missions) can be gamed, i.e. I build a list to specifically win those missions. THE whole point of the Tiered NOVA missions is that if you don't think you can win primary you play for a tie, and try to win secondary or so on...this is no different from BAO where if I build an army that is good at KPs and can tie down the other 2 objectives I win. There is no perfect mission set up, but I prefer variation from round to round because if forces armies to be good at everything not just one or 2 things.

3.) People going to tournaments need to be expected to be able to finish their games in the alotted time. If you go to an event knowing you cannot do this, you are a slow player, even if you are not purposefully "slow playing" if you expect not to get in a full game and play as such you are at an advantage. Turn time caps don't work....at all. Turns in 40k are not even length, turn 1 or 2 typically takes more time than turn 5-7 might take because less models are on the table. Furthermore, it allows for all kinds of abuse. Say I am nearing the end of my turn time limit and declare a charge, lets say you then take a long time to overwatch and so my turn ends before I can roll for my charge....how is that fair? Or say I do make the charge but no one gets any attacks...I can hide in close combat, but then say you time it out so there is no assault phase on your turn....horrible horrible idea. The only way 40k can ever work by timing people (and it is very wonky) is to use chess clocks for each player, and have the time alternate everytime a person is acting (moving models, rolling dice, etc.) That said no one plays like this, noe one practices this way etc...so it won't happen.

Essentially the real solution is that we all act as adults, stop trying to slow play, learn to be able to play our armies in a way where we finish games in the apporpriate length of time. AS I said before...the best solution right now is this.

1.) TOs match up points level with round time (2k should not be under 3 hours, I would say 1500 should be at least 2:15 if not 2:30).
2.) TOs need to make sure players are aware of time remaining in the round.
3.)TOs need to make sure there is enough time between pairings being posted and the round start time.
4.)TOs should incentivise finishing games (either through reward, or penalty)
5.) Players need to be proactive in addressing percieved slow playing. IF it has take your game an hour to reach turn 2 in a 2.5 hour game, you might want to let a TO/Judge know so they can monitor your game.

COuld rushing a slower player ruin their fun..sure...will that player winning the game on turn 3 ruin other peoples fun yes...which one of these things is against the format of the event?

Blackmoor,

For AdeptiCon, we talk about all this stuff all the time internally, and specifically lowering the point value to 1500 has been a hot topic of discussion for the AdeptiCon 40k crew going for well over a year. It was heavily debated in 2013 and again now for AdeptiCon 2014. For all the reasons and more discussed here. These discussions never really go away, just like Forgeworld inclusion..

Additionally, besides all the changes to 40k that have happened during the past year, a lot of changes will occur before the next AdeptiCon. Frankly changes that can have huge impacts on game play 6+ months into the future. While not being privy to the details and gazing into our crystal ball we have to make event decisions now, and in many cases live and defend them, for an event that will not occur for another 197 days.

It is easy to say, just add 15 minutes to the rounds or to the prep. But for established events, or really any event those 15 minutes have to come from some place. For an event that has 8 rounds that is an additional 2 hours you have to find in an already demanding schedule. So why 15 minutes does not sound like much, 2 hours over an event weekend is a huge chunk.

So I think you are on track, there is a definite cost associated. It is either time, point values, comfort levels, or living with a percentage of games that do not come to a natural conclusion. So it is about finding a balance that is acceptable given the current state of a changing game.

I think the largest issue is that people _think_ they can play a full game (or perhaps just do not care) when playing horde, when they are simply incapable of doing so. These people need to know their limits and either practice or play a more streamlined army. If I am capable of finishing all of my games in a 7 round tourney with 180 model guard army, as an infrequent 40k tournament player, then there is no reason tourney vets cannot do the same.

I do think there are a subset of people who design armies for the sole purpose of playing to a turn three win by first blood stall out, but those buttmunches are easily spotted. The onus is on the organizer to crack down on these guys.

By finishing all our games do you mean the games finish or you only use 1/2 the allowable time? Futhermore, what is the round length for these events. While agree that people need to practice playing their army as quickly as need to finish the game (practice speed rolling, group dice, make sure you have good measurement tools etc.)

As for the second part of your statement this is where I disagree. The onus is on the opponents of these players to make sure the organizer is aware of the issue. IF that play is in my event, and his first opponent says, nothing, then his second opponent only complains after the conclusion of their game, there is really not much I can do.

This is one reason why I have slow play penalties at my events. IF you bring an army that you know won't finish your games, you won't be able to win the event.

Well Blackmoore was one of the people who played against me in that tourney, he could give you an accurate picture. I did time myself the round I played a BA guy, since Blackmoore raised this exact question, himself, and I was taking shorter turns than he was. Of course I was consciously pushing myself to be as fast and efficient as possible and had practiced the list prior to the tourney, basically avoiding doing non critical things that had no impact on the game. I think the round length was 2 1/2 hours (4 games one day, 3 the next) and that's certainly what I practiced at. For posterity, I will state that my army was 2 decked out blobs, 2 penal legion units, two units mounted in Vendettas, an ADL, and one Manticore. I kept blobbed up all day and avoided moving the blobs, unless I had to. They also saw close combat nearly every game I played, except the one against Blackmoor (and we were the first people done that round).

As for where the onus lies, a good TO is walking the room and checking all the games. I really do not want some unobservant guy without the experience to recognize slow play making rules calls in a tournament, personally. You are correct in that if a player waits until after the game to complain, then there is nothing a TO can do, but such is the nature of passive aggressive players. Really, any TO worth his salt either knows who the problem players are in advance, or can spot them a mile away. Its all about having the testicular fortitude to step in and say "Hey, taking this long on your turns is unacceptable. Step it up, please." to keep the intentional stallers in line.

I have no problem saying that the problem I have is with players expecting a TO to pick slow play out of 16-120 tables, when they are unwilling to bring it up themselves. IF I am walking around and letting you know how much time has passed, is it that hard for a player to turn to me and say, "hey this guy is playing a bit slow." or "I fear we might not finish, can you watch for a second."

The notion that upon glancing at a table for 30 seconds to 2 minutes, I should instantly see the slow players is obtuse. I need to watch play for a bit, what if they are just now playing slowly to make an important decision.

Sure at a local event I might know which guys notoriously slow play. But at larger events where players I am not 100% familiar with show up how do I know that?

Essentially what I am saying is that if you as a player are unwilling to turn to a judge and try to do something about slow play, how does that suddenly make it my responsibility? Sure late in a round, if I see a guy rolling one save at a time, I might say, hey, pick it up you guys need to finish. But why have you as his opponent not been saying that all along.

Even at a smallish GT (say 32 Players) with long rounds (3 hours) I as a TO can spend on average 11 min viewing each game, this assumes, I don't spend any time on rules issues, communicating with other tournament staff etc. So if I view your game for 11 min broken up into 1 or 2 min chunks who is better able to make the slow play call? You who are part of the game for 3 hours, or me who is there for 11 min?

I find it insulting from players that assume the TO should handle everything. I have put enough time in the schedule to finish games, a penalty in place for those who don't consistently. After that it is up to the players (unless I see something obvious) to come to me and say..."hey this guy is slow playing can you do something about it." At which point I will do so, and I will be more attentive to that player.

I can be as observant as you want, but if the player does not slow play when I am at the table, or it is your turn, or any number of other things I will not be able to accurately make any call other than a blanket "you guys need to play faster" when I find the game on turn 2 after an hour +.

To me players really need to step up their responsibility for finishing games. Be proactive, and you will get results.

Breng, if a mission is solely won on a single primary mission, and you lose that mission because of an odd match and your opponent going second despite your best effort to try to tie it, that mission is not balanced for win loss tournament play. A mission where all secondary win conditions are rendered pointless if you meet one primary condition simply punishes some armies and rewards others. In a win loss format each match needs to be fair for players. It's like a football playoff game granting 8 points for field goals for 'variety.'

As for timed player rounds, I made it clear in my post its a horrible idea. However, the part you missed was that if someone pays you to play in your tournament but has a handicap meaning he plays a bit slower, rushing them or forcing them out of the hobby is bull crap. A solution that punishes people not intentionally slow playing but instead just trying to have fun is no solution.

Also, a game that ends on turn 4 misses assault phases and shooting phases the same way a timed player round game misses combats and such. As for your criticism that players will 'game' a timed player round system, again the point was that they are already 'gaming' time limit games. The advantage of player timed rounds is that they 1) always finish and 2) provide more chances to identify a slow player as 'slow play' will have to occur at obvious times, such as when rolling overwatch to stall a close combat.

An actual solution to slow play needs to first remove the win loss format. If you lose to a slow player in round 1, and complain, its too early to tell if your opponent is certainly a slow player. If that slow player is discovered on round 3 to definitely be slow playing people, the bracket win loss system is too damaged at this point to retroactively grant players from rounds 1 and 2 who won their other games a 3-0 record. Now with a battle point system, you can add in a few points here and there to people who lost to players who, over the course of 8 games did not finish a majority of them. Sure it doesn't make up for losing the game, but in a battle point system it can be enough so that if you won your other games the loss to a slow player can put you in position to still win the event.

DevianID wrote:
Breng, if a mission is solely won on a single primary mission, and you lose that mission because of an odd match and your opponent going second despite your best effort to try to tie it, that mission is not balanced for win loss tournament play. A mission where all secondary win conditions are rendered pointless if you meet one primary condition simply punishes some armies and rewards others. In a win loss format each match needs to be fair for players. It's like a football playoff game granting 8 points for field goals for 'variety.'

It's nothing like changing field goals, that's a really poor analogy.

Perhaps the real point here is that win/loss isn't the only way to play. That combining book missions isn't actually playing 6th ed, and likewise rewards some armies and penalizes others.

I remember in 5th, all the people playing the parking-lot armies complaining about the kill point missions because they'd lose those ones. They argued that kill point missions were inherently unbalanced, tried to add caps, tried all sorts of things. When the real problem was their perception of how the game should work. They'd convinced themselves that MSU shooty was the best army, so they then argued to remove the mission that hurt MSU-shooty.

Whatever. If your army can't handle "the relic", it's not a good 6th ed army. All combining missions does is provide alternate ways for the same army to win each match, without having to alter itself to handle the outlier missions. Is it any wonder that we see the same lists at the top of tournaments that run this way? "I didn't bother to plan for how I'd win "the relic", because I knew I could ignore it and win on secondaries."

 Redbeard wrote:

DevianID wrote:
Breng, if a mission is solely won on a single primary mission, and you lose that mission because of an odd match and your opponent going second despite your best effort to try to tie it, that mission is not balanced for win loss tournament play. A mission where all secondary win conditions are rendered pointless if you meet one primary condition simply punishes some armies and rewards others. In a win loss format each match needs to be fair for players. It's like a football playoff game granting 8 points for field goals for 'variety.'

It's nothing like changing field goals, that's a really poor analogy.

Perhaps the real point here is that win/loss isn't the only way to play. That combining book missions isn't actually playing 6th ed, and likewise rewards some armies and penalizes others.

I remember in 5th, all the people playing the parking-lot armies complaining about the kill point missions because they'd lose those ones. They argued that kill point missions were inherently unbalanced, tried to add caps, tried all sorts of things. When the real problem was their perception of how the game should work. They'd convinced themselves that MSU shooty was the best army, so they then argued to remove the mission that hurt MSU-shooty.

Whatever. If your army can't handle "the relic", it's not a good 6th ed army. All combining missions does is provide alternate ways for the same army to win each match, without having to alter itself to handle the outlier missions. Is it any wonder that we see the same lists at the top of tournaments that run this way? "I didn't bother to plan for how I'd win "the relic", because I knew I could ignore it and win on secondaries."

A huge +1 to this.

My point about changing field goal points still stands. If in the playoffs 1 playoff match has substantially different rules, whether in the NFL with 8 point field goals or in 40k with the 'relic' as the only win condition that mattered, and your playoff match consists of only a single game before never be used again in the rest of the playoffs, its a terrible addition.

Your point about an army not being able to handle the relic being a bad 6th ed army is not true. If you built a list by sacrificing a lot so you can do well in 5 out of 6 mission types you have a good army. Someone who is amazing in 1 out of 6 mission types and terrible at all the others has a bad army. Do you honestly believe the 1 in 6 person who won the relic was the better player? If the point of a particular tournament is to find the best player, and your missions dont allow that, then you have bad missions.

In battle point missions, relic (or 5th ed kill points as the only win condition) is fine, as over the course of the event the better balanced army will win despite losing bad matchups by keeping their losses to a minimum. In win loss events, the only round that matters is the one you are currently playing. Effectively win loss is many 1 game tournaments, thus each game needs to be balanced.

A good pass/fail test for a win loss format is that if a particular mission was duplicated for all the games, would the winner be determined fairly or would the winner have had an unfair advantage.

In 5th I really liked using all 3 missions at once. Kill points hurt MSU parking lots, Emp Will was considered a drawfest, and objectives favored the MSU. With all 3 equally in play at once, you had an advantage, a neutral, and a disadvantage mission condition at the same time. Thus MSU or Deathstar or whatever, the mission would balance out overall allowing playskill and luck to determine the outcome.

Now note that only a select few Nova style missions were formatted in such a way that the winner of a single primary invalidated the rest of the objectives on the mission sheet. Those are the missions that I dislike. If you have relic, objectives and quarters, but really just winning the relic is enough to win the entire game despite anything else the opponent does, then certain armies will have an overwhelming advantage in that mission. With a win loss format that bad match will knock out better balanced armies, and those armies can effectively just stop playing the rest of the many game event. That is simply not acceptable if you want a fair event.

I disagree. 5/6 missions are not non-relic. There are only 3 mission types. Objectives, kill points and the relic. All others are variations of that. An army that can not do well with the relic is not deficient at 1/6 missions, they are deficient at 1/3rd of the missions and yes they are then a bad tourney army.

Redbeard is dead on when he says tourney organizers have been pressured to eliminate, or at least minimize, non objective based primary missions and it is having an amazing affect on the meta.

 Redbeard wrote:

DevianID wrote:
Breng, if a mission is solely won on a single primary mission, and you lose that mission because of an odd match and your opponent going second despite your best effort to try to tie it, that mission is not balanced for win loss tournament play. A mission where all secondary win conditions are rendered pointless if you meet one primary condition simply punishes some armies and rewards others. In a win loss format each match needs to be fair for players. It's like a football playoff game granting 8 points for field goals for 'variety.'

It's nothing like changing field goals, that's a really poor analogy.

Perhaps the real point here is that win/loss isn't the only way to play. That combining book missions isn't actually playing 6th ed, and likewise rewards some armies and penalizes others.

I remember in 5th, all the people playing the parking-lot armies complaining about the kill point missions because they'd lose those ones. They argued that kill point missions were inherently unbalanced, tried to add caps, tried all sorts of things. When the real problem was their perception of how the game should work. They'd convinced themselves that MSU shooty was the best army, so they then argued to remove the mission that hurt MSU-shooty.

Whatever. If your army can't handle "the relic", it's not a good 6th ed army. All combining missions does is provide alternate ways for the same army to win each match, without having to alter itself to handle the outlier missions. Is it any wonder that we see the same lists at the top of tournaments that run this way? "I didn't bother to plan for how I'd win "the relic", because I knew I could ignore it and win on secondaries."

Pretty much agree with Redbeard here, but this is tangential to actually finishing games. Altered missions are a form of comp as they alter which lists are successful in a similar fashion as hard comp restrictions or soft scores alter a meta.

I play tyranids, gk, eldar, dark eldar, and csm in roughly ten 3 round RTT's a year and one GT. Since 6th came out, I've finished approximately 25% of my 1850pt games due to random game length in a timed setting (2.5hrs). About 75% of my 1500pt games finished naturally (2hrs), and 100% of my 1000pt games finished naturally. I read dozens of competitive 40k blogs and have watched all the live streams from adepticon and NOVA. I can honestly say the guys who claim "I always finish my games naturally in a timed tournament" are the minority.

Games may have been decisive by the end of turn 4, with one player seriously crippled, but that is not the same thing. I would gladly play every game at 1500pts if that meant more natural finishes. With point costs decreasing, new codexes can fit nearly as much in 1500 as 4th/5th ed at 1850. Like others have also said, knowing turn 5 is the last due to time is a massive benefit over the possibility of playing 5-7 turns randomly.

 Redbeard wrote:

DevianID wrote:
Breng, if a mission is solely won on a single primary mission, and you lose that mission because of an odd match and your opponent going second despite your best effort to try to tie it, that mission is not balanced for win loss tournament play. A mission where all secondary win conditions are rendered pointless if you meet one primary condition simply punishes some armies and rewards others. In a win loss format each match needs to be fair for players. It's like a football playoff game granting 8 points for field goals for 'variety.'

It's nothing like changing field goals, that's a really poor analogy.

Perhaps the real point here is that win/loss isn't the only way to play. That combining book missions isn't actually playing 6th ed, and likewise rewards some armies and penalizes others.

I remember in 5th, all the people playing the parking-lot armies complaining about the kill point missions because they'd lose those ones. They argued that kill point missions were inherently unbalanced, tried to add caps, tried all sorts of things. When the real problem was their perception of how the game should work. They'd convinced themselves that MSU shooty was the best army, so they then argued to remove the mission that hurt MSU-shooty.

Whatever. If your army can't handle "the relic", it's not a good 6th ed army. All combining missions does is provide alternate ways for the same army to win each match, without having to alter itself to handle the outlier missions. Is it any wonder that we see the same lists at the top of tournaments that run this way? "I didn't bother to plan for how I'd win "the relic", because I knew I could ignore it and win on secondaries."

To be fair I rarely agree with Redbeard, nothing personal we just end up on the opposite side of things a lot, but in this I agree 100%. One of the reasons the local Meta in our area is healthy and armies that are considered "dead" like DE can compete is we don't shy away from playing the missions in the book. Including the Relic.

Relic is a crap mission, plain and simple. You might as well call it "first blood wins" when the players are of equal ability, because that's what happens almost all the time if you play it by the book. The previous version of it (take and hold) was a much better mission and when they test ballooned early versions of this turkey at Hard Boys a couple of times, people hated it. You can get the same blood bath in the middle of the board just by counting all scoring units within 6inches to determine victory. Hell, add elites into the scoring bracket for this one since they are the only slot to get no love elsewhere.

Scouring is not a bad mission, per se, but the set up for it is very lengthy and the random objective thing is just plain stupid if one guy ends up with all the good objectives on his side of the board. There were a lot of faster and more intelligent ways to do this type of mission, mostly by giving each player a 3/2/1 objective and having alternating placements requiring at least one each in no mans land. That was me after a post work cocktail and it took me all of 20 seconds to come up with a better version of that one.

The rest of the missions are solid as written, though.

None of these have anything to do with this discussion, however.

Started a new topic for mission discussion: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/553151.page#6064318

People here are pointing to things they feel slow down the game now. On the flip side pre measuring and shooting over melee should help speed up the game. There is no way an FMC heavy list should slow down the game. Think about it.

There's a lot of assertion that is blatantly false. For instance, claiming the Relic is 1/3 of Missions b/c there are "lots of Objective missions which are all the same" is ... bizarre as an arguing tactic. Relic occurs 1/6th the games played, so it stands to reason it should be primarily important 1/6th the time in a tournament situation. The same is true of KP. And NO, Big Guns / Scouring are not even remotely Kill Point missions, for reasons that are too OT to enumerate here.

Tiered and Cumulative Missions designed correctly reflect the import and play style of things like stock standard Relic if designed well enough, which they are in the case of more than one tourney environment. They are NOT, however, exact replicas of the missions in the book. Nor should they be required to be ... even scoring and formatting at ALL in 40k is not "standard" 40k. It's tournament 40k, which these days is more or less entirely player invented.

Surprisingly, wild assertions that TO's are "pressured" to use Objective heavy situations, instead of the reality that we playtest thousands of games across a global contingent of gamers stress-testing the effectiveness of common armies in the "stock" book missions alongside their tournament counterparts to ensure similar performance ... just seems like strawman argument.

More "complex" seeming missions may slow the game down; that's totally legit. Guessing badly at the motivations behind mission design = not legit. It's strawmanning. I don't see someone going "Hey, TO, why did you design your missions?" Instead, I see "THEY JUST DESIGNED THEM FOR THIS MADE-UP REASON THAT SOUNDS BAD."

It's TOTALLY not about satisfying some competitive win/loss obsessed group that has a different viewpoint than you. Which is why it doesn't make that subset entirely happy.

PS - I totally feel on a personal level that Relic is a terrible mission, poorly designed, and I think that's a quite broadly held view. The majority isn't always right, but it's right fairly often. That said, the game of 40k uses the Relic, and often in a pretty "win or lose" kind of way. Completely eliminating the value of Relic, therefore, is as NOT 40k as making it more common than 1/6th the time. The same can be said of KP for those who don't like KP. The same can also be said of Objectives (Which, whether you like it or not, are the 67% majority of 6th Edition Missions). If you have 2 KP missions, 2 Relic missions, and 2 Objective missions in a 6 round tournament, you aren't playing 6th Edition 40k. The same is true if Relic and KP are primary or parallel major win conditions in every round. Also not 6th Edition 40k. But tournaments in general aren't 40k. What they are ... is a ton of fun, where the vast majority of attendees have a blast getting in games of 40k with people from all over (in some cases) the world.

Edited 11:05-ish for overly reactive initial language.

Pre-measuring actually slows down the game, if used to its full advantage. Whereas before, I might guesstimate some things and then move my guys, now I'm free to measure each potential move before deciding on my course of action. It takes more time to do all these measurements, and with more information, I can take longer to make the decisions.

Also, while some FMC lists play quickly, they can also take a lot longer to set up. Daemons, especially, can take ten to fifteen minutes to make all your gift and power rolls, if you are playing an opponent who is not overly familiar with that codex, or what all those things do. Against an opponent familiar with daemons, it might only take a minute per FMC to roll and record what they have, but not everyone knows that codex well.

 Redbeard wrote:
Pre-measuring actually slows down the game, if used to its full advantage. Whereas before, I might guesstimate some things and then move my guys, now I'm free to measure each potential move before deciding on my course of action. It takes more time to do all these measurements, and with more information, I can take longer to make the decisions.

Also, while some FMC lists play quickly, they can also take a lot longer to set up. Daemons, especially, can take ten to fifteen minutes to make all your gift and power rolls, if you are playing an opponent who is not overly familiar with that codex, or what all those things do. Against an opponent familiar with daemons, it might only take a minute per FMC to roll and record what they have, but not everyone knows that codex well.

Again I agree 100%. I play FMC Daemons and while in game it can go quickly the pre game is slow. The other thing is with pre measuring I find myself in clutch positions taking quite a while to decide just how to move those 3-4 FMC. With low model count armies every move is that much more important, you can't afford to be sloppy so while it may only be 4 models carefully measuring it all out takes a long time in certain situations.

MVBrandt wrote:
There's a lot of assertion that is blatantly false. For instance, claiming the Relic is 1/3 of Missions b/c there are "lots of Objective missions which are all the same" is ... bizarre as an arguing tactic. (

Edited 11:05-ish for overly reactive initial language.

Thanks for the strawman attack. Your ears must have been on steroids yesterday because I didn't even type the words NOVA. Maybe you didn't read what I wrote. I said the relic is 1/3rd the mission type. Objectives, kill points and the relic. All book missions are variances of those three.
.

i don't see how people have issues. alot of the time i either table or get tabled (Damn you dark eldar). Its about knowing the rule and not having to refer back to your rule book.

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:

DevianID wrote:
Breng, if a mission is solely won on a single primary mission, and you lose that mission because of an odd match and your opponent going second despite your best effort to try to tie it, that mission is not balanced for win loss tournament play. A mission where all secondary win conditions are rendered pointless if you meet one primary condition simply punishes some armies and rewards others. In a win loss format each match needs to be fair for players. It's like a football playoff game granting 8 points for field goals for 'variety.'

It's nothing like changing field goals, that's a really poor analogy.

Perhaps the real point here is that win/loss isn't the only way to play. That combining book missions isn't actually playing 6th ed, and likewise rewards some armies and penalizes others.

I remember in 5th, all the people playing the parking-lot armies complaining about the kill point missions because they'd lose those ones. They argued that kill point missions were inherently unbalanced, tried to add caps, tried all sorts of things. When the real problem was their perception of how the game should work. They'd convinced themselves that MSU shooty was the best army, so they then argued to remove the mission that hurt MSU-shooty.

Whatever. If your army can't handle "the relic", it's not a good 6th ed army. All combining missions does is provide alternate ways for the same army to win each match, without having to alter itself to handle the outlier missions. Is it any wonder that we see the same lists at the top of tournaments that run this way? "I didn't bother to plan for how I'd win "the relic", because I knew I could ignore it and win on secondaries."

To be fair I rarely agree with Redbeard, nothing personal we just end up on the opposite side of things a lot, but in this I agree 100%. One of the reasons the local Meta in our area is healthy and armies that are considered "dead" like DE can compete is we don't shy away from playing the missions in the book. Including the Relic.

Holy crap, I'm in agreement with Redbeard! Sorry, doesn't happen often as we tend to have differing views but since I know he's a swell guy I accept his often wrong viewpoints This however isn't one of them......I'm gonna go check my temperature and make sure I'm not sick

I am not sure how the argument can be made that pre measuring slows the game down. First, it cuts out a billion arguments, because you know what you need to roll to hit the charge. Second, it eliminates that long pause while a player was trying to guestimate if he was 23 1/2" away or 24 1/2" away from his shooting target. The release of 6th edition has done a lot of things that slow down the game, but pre measuring is actually the one thing they did that sped it up.

DarthDiggler wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:

DevianID wrote:
Breng, if a mission is solely won on a single primary mission, and you lose that mission because of an odd match and your opponent going second despite your best effort to try to tie it, that mission is not balanced for win loss tournament play. A mission where all secondary win conditions are rendered pointless if you meet one primary condition simply punishes some armies and rewards others. In a win loss format each match needs to be fair for players. It's like a football playoff game granting 8 points for field goals for 'variety.'

It's nothing like changing field goals, that's a really poor analogy.

Perhaps the real point here is that win/loss isn't the only way to play. That combining book missions isn't actually playing 6th ed, and likewise rewards some armies and penalizes others.

I remember in 5th, all the people playing the parking-lot armies complaining about the kill point missions because they'd lose those ones. They argued that kill point missions were inherently unbalanced, tried to add caps, tried all sorts of things. When the real problem was their perception of how the game should work. They'd convinced themselves that MSU shooty was the best army, so they then argued to remove the mission that hurt MSU-shooty.

Whatever. If your army can't handle "the relic", it's not a good 6th ed army. All combining missions does is provide alternate ways for the same army to win each match, without having to alter itself to handle the outlier missions. Is it any wonder that we see the same lists at the top of tournaments that run this way? "I didn't bother to plan for how I'd win "the relic", because I knew I could ignore it and win on secondaries."

A huge +1 to this.

A huge +1 for both of these...so...+2? LOL.

Pre-measuring can slow things down for people who can think 1-2 turns ahead and weigh all options like a chess match.

Watch the ustream video from NOVA where Ben plays Nick (necrons + orks vs daemons + csm). Even though Nick only has FMC's, heldrake, and a couple minimum scoring units on the table, there's a couple points where he takes 5-10 minutes just thinking and pre-measuring all his options.

This is a "pro-gamer" who plays half a dozen GT's a year and has been to europe with our ETC team. Sometimes two pros on a top table can actually play slower because they're that much more cautious to not make errors. I could be wrong but their game may have ended on turn 5 or 6 due to time without rolling for another turn.

I think that getting rounds done in a timely manner needs a three point approach to solving the issue:

1) Player Practice/Preparation-
More players need to do practice games with their army to get a higher level of familiarity with them, especially anyone playing a horded out army. People have gotten lazy, mostly because in 5th, aka Mech is King, edition most of the models sat on your tray representing the contents of your transports. The amount of models that actually moved around on the table, even in large guard armies, was fairly small. The new shooting allocation rules have aggravated the situation, by making the placement of individual models incredibly important. These things speed up with practice.

Also, having pre sorted color blocks of dice in the right quantities, markers for wounds/hull points, psychic power cards, and your own objective markers cuts down on a lot of time consumption and confusion. I would also add that 6" tactical ruler that GF9 puts out, because using that thing instead of a tape measure all the time saves tons of time as well. These sorts of small preparation speed up the game a ton.

2) TO Pro active Enforcement-
If you are the TO, you need to roam the hall and be watching like a hawk. If you see IG Gunline guy pulling his models out of the bag before every game and putting them back, then you know this jackwagon is eating 30 minutes of every game doing this and there is a good chance he is doing other things to slow games down to three turns. Tell this guy that he needs to go steal a tray from McDonalds or something, because he is being disrespectful to other players.

If you see Nid guy slowly moving individual gants around and his opponent looks like he wants to commit seppuku out of shear boredom, then maybe you need to go have a chat with that table. If Tau guy is taking longer in his own movement phase to move two riptides than the assault army that is bum rushing him, then you should probably come talk to that table, as well. It is actually really easy to see where the problems lie in a room, assuming you have not overloaded yourself and have other people handling scoring and so on. People's body language can tell you a lot and alert you to potential drama before it happens. Certainly by the third round you should have an idea of who the potential problem people are and be encouraging them to play more briskly. In fact, lots of potential issues can be headed off simply by a TO actively letting players know he is eyeballing certain things, because people doing it intentionally do not want to get caught and the unintentionally slow players do not want to be labeled as such.

3) Tournament Design-
If you are going to have a billion rounds and complex multi tiered missions, then you need to cut corners elsewhere, like preset terrain, disregarding mysterious objectives, or extending time limits. The simpler (and closer to the book) the missions are, the less time consuming games are. If, as a TO, you want to reinvent the wheel, you need to trim in other areas to keep people on pace and (ideally) make your players aware of those changes as far in advance of the event as you can, so they can be prepared for the additional in game decisions they will have to make (see step 1). Basically, you cannot realistically have complex missions and every single bell and whistle and expect even modest sized games to end on time consistently, so pare it down to what is most important to you as a TO.

 Phazael wrote:
I am not sure how the argument can be made that pre measuring slows the game down. First, it cuts out a billion arguments, because you know what you need to roll to hit the charge. Second, it eliminates that long pause while a player was trying to guestimate if he was 23 1/2" away or 24 1/2" away from his shooting target. The release of 6th edition has done a lot of things that slow down the game, but pre measuring is actually the one thing they did that sped it up.

I'm guessing you have not watched very many top players use pre-measuring then. All the time during movement I see guys measure distance, check LOS, re-measure slightly differently, re-check. Measure Distance between various units, measure full move + charge, measure distances to various objectives.....

What pre-measuring has done is that it allows players to check themselves more often rather than estimating and moving.

Interesting discussion.

Book missions are varied to encourage well rounded lists, I agree. When taken in that limited context, it sounds like a 100% positive.

However, in the context of 2 players playing a game with specific lists with specific terrain, missions like the Relic and Kill Points, can be an almost auto-loss scenarios. And while yes, book missions when taken as a whole may have an over-arching balancing effect from a 30,000 feet above perspective, on the level of actually paling them they can be horribly unbalanced.

For example, when you draw Tyranids in the Relic, or Bikers, etc., and they go first, your odds of winning are reduced down to damn near zero for the majority of armies in the game. I have never, ever lost the Relic with my nids, not even remotely close, against any other army. I actually feel bad for person across from me as I know based simply on my army's characteristics, I have almost no chance of losing. That isn't a real competition in my mind, and not fun.

That's not to say Nids (or any army) can't be beaten in that scenario, just that it is improbable. An army has such a big advantage due to starting conditions neither player had control over serves only to make the mission both unfair and--more importantly--unfun. A tournament is supposed to be fair and fun competition, that should be the overriding principle when making any tournament structure decisions, IMO.

Therefore, the argument that using book missions encourages players to build "better" lists or more balanced lists or what have you, is flawed. All is does is alter what is optimal, just like comp.

Furthermore, book missions are so wildly varied that if your list is weak in any one of the 6, you really reduce your odds of being able to win a tournament and you will subsequently see certain armies that are better equipped to do all 6 rise to the top. The meta simply shifts as it always does whenever a change is introduced into the system.

That is just one example and I am sure you can make arguments both for and against this with examples to back it up. In the end, we have found that layering missions, using the book missions as a base, creates more complex, and balanced missions that tend to level the playing field for the widest variety of armies and lists. It allows, in general terms, the better player to win by playing to objectives, while still playing the list they want to play.

Is it perfect? No. Does it allow players to game the system? Yes. However, we as gamers will ALWAYS game the system and when you have a game where each faction is intentionally different, there will always be those with an advantage--or perceived advantage--within a given system. It is unavoidable and honestly, who'd want to change it? If you want total equality, play chess. We will never have it in 40K.

Therefore, we do the best we can to create missions and time limits and systems that create as much fairness as possible, accepting that while we will always strive for that goal, we will never achieve it.

I agree with everything except the kill points statement. As an MSU player, KP are there specifically to limit the more abusive MSU builds that exist (Tervispam, Parking Lot Guard, certain DoC builds) and this is a good thing in the same way that the bulk of the other missions emphasize core troops.

I also think tiered missions tend to facilitate weird builds that only work in that format, but that's not necessarily bad as long as its fostering diversity. If your top 10% lists all look the same, then your tiered system likely needs some tweaking to bring it in line, as what I felt happened at Nova this year. BAO last year had some diversity issues, but that I feel mostly had to do with the choice to include forgeworld without any comp to counterbalance it and not the mission structure, which is a completely separate argument.

As someone who loves tossing odd missions out there for play, I am not going to argue against tiered missions. I do think that when you do this that there needs to be relative representation of the base mission types, at least on some level. So, in a six game format, KP should be emphasized once, table center once, and standard objectives the other four games.

And again, this has zero to do with time consumption. The BAO did have measures to shorten things up, but I think if you are doing a 7 round in two day event, it needs to have certain shortcuts like static terrain placement, no mystery objectives, and perhaps bonus battle points for reaching a natural game conclusion.

We had the most diverse top 10% of any major GT this year by a very large margin, actually on the 40K side of things.

Here's our data accounting for allies as a half army:



Compare that to some of the more recent results such as NOVA where 7 of the top 10 were Tau.

Now, the meta then and now are different and we had different structures so it is apples and oranges, but all of our events this edition have been similar.

And hell, while I'm at it, here's some more data from the BAO pertinent to this conversation. Bare in mind we ran 1750pts with 2 hour 15 minute rounds.



And when asked about points values that players wanted:

 Reecius wrote:
We had the most diverse top 10% of any major GT this year by a very large margin, actually on the 40K side of things.

]Compare that to some of the more recent results such as NOVA where 7 of the top 10 were Tau.

Now, the meta then and now are different and we had different structures so it is apples and oranges, but all of our events this edition have been similar.

All of your events were pre-Eldar/Tau. What armies are played are based on what codexs are released prior since those are often the new hottness. I think the BAO was after the CSM codex so you had a lot of different armies since allies leveled the playing field. I would like to point out that 4 out of the 6 top armies had IG because of the inclusion of Forge World.

And hell, while I'm at it, here's some more data from the BAO pertinent to this conversation. Bare in mind we ran 1750pts with 2 hour 15 minute rounds.

Pre-6th edition codexes, and even then 40% of the games are not finishing.

Forge world also rendered any flyers a huge liability and note that if you lumped all MEQs together, they only barely outnumbered IG. So, looking at the actual breakdown of numbers in the pie chart you provided, it certainly appears that 3/4 of the top ended up being some form of MEQ with Hyperions, IG with Sabers/ect, or Helldrake Spam with a side of Flamer Spam. This does not seem to differ from what I saw when walking around that weekend, as the IG/SW Kopach copy cats were out in force and you could barely walk two feet without tripping over helldrakes or air defense forgeworld pieces.

But yes, your top end was certainly much more diverse than what Adepticon or Nova ended up being this year, aside from the IG spammage (Tau and Necrons have more or less taken over that role).

The troubling thing to me is that 40% of your games did not finish, which is startling even if you assume most people were being completely honest. If you take concessions and low model count shooting fests that were happening (as they always do), that number is fairly staggering. I have heard that Nova was even worse in that regard, but they do not have the exact numbers you do, so that could be purely anecdotal.

I guess the question is, are you guys really ok with nearly half of the games not getting finished? I mean, if I was Alan and running Draigowing all weekend and not getting past turn three, I would be fairly irritated at my opponents and probably displaying that irritation a little more visibly. I know its not Alan's fault, because I have in the past played him with my 180 foot guard army and we were done first in the room, playing six full turns. And his army NEEDS six turns to win most book scenarios and even more so on the tiered ones. Right now the system you guys have in place is incentivizing win in three turns gunlines, which is probably why IG were all over the place at BAO and Taudarcrons were all over the place in the Adepticon and Nova top brackets.

Again, not trying to be disrespectful (Frontline has done a lot for the 40k scene on the west coast), just a serious question about the direction the competitive end of the game is heading.

 Blackmoor wrote:

 Reecius wrote:
And hell, while I'm at it, here's some more data from the BAO pertinent to this conversation. Bare in mind we ran 1750pts with 2 hour 15 minute rounds.

Pre-6th edition codexes, and even then 40% of the games are not finishing.

 Phazael wrote:
The troubling thing to me is that 40% of your games did not finish, which is startling even if you assume most people were being completely honest. If you take concessions and low model count shooting fests that were happening (as they always do), that number is fairly staggering. I have heard that Nova was even worse in that regard, but they do not have the exact numbers you do, so that could be purely anecdotal.

I guess the question is, are you guys really ok with nearly half of the games not getting finished?

...

Right now the system you guys have in place is incentivizing win in three turns gunlines, which is probably why IG were all over the place at BAO and Taudarcrons were all over the place in the Adepticon and Nova top brackets.

Again, not trying to be disrespectful (Frontline has done a lot for the 40k scene on the west coast), just a serious question about the direction the competitive end of the game is heading.

I'm also curious about TO thoughts on this... the graph that Reecius showed looks, to me, to be way too many games not finishing, and that was even before the more recent codexes that seem to be time-consuming to play. Seems like it's at least worth considering 1500, since the poll also showed support for that point level, or longer rounds (and perhaps, gasp, less of them ).

@Blackmoor

No, all of our events were not pre-Eldar or Tau. Anime Expo was after both and we still had a very diverse field, although the sample size was much smaller.

There are several considerations to keep in mind about games not finishing.

1.) The green games were games reported as not finishing due to one of the players being inexperienced. Those you can not attribute to the system as those games will ALWAYS go slow. You always get inexperienced players at tournaments whom do not finish games because they are inexperienced. It is a constant, it is something that can not be helped. Look only at the games that did no finish in the red section. Everyone has to start somewhere and we encourage new players to come out which means, we accept that they won't always (or even usually) finish their games on time.

2.) The BAO had logistical issues with overcrowding. Anime Expo ran smooth as silk, with only a few games not coming to a natural conclusion, which again, were almost always new players.

@Phazael

Buddy, you're killing me with this misinformation, haha! The top 10% had flyers aplenty, and Forgeworld was fairly thinly represented, actually. FW didn't dominate nor did it render flyers obsolete, that is simply not true.

And we always strive for games to finish but the thing is, not many TO's have the data we collect and not many of them will so openly and honestly share it. That is not a dig at anyone else at all, it's just that we showed the data we gathered even if it wasn't flattering, because we felt it could help the community as a whole.

Even when you remove the games that didn't finish due to inexperience from the mix, it is a large portion of games. We recognize that. However, as we run additional events this year, we are seeing that with adequate spacing between tables and informing the players of the time limits better, games flow right along and our completion ratio has gone way up.

We have Duel Con next weekend and then Comikzae in November, so that will give us a lot more data, and in the current meta, too. I think that will be very revealing.

Misinformation is a strong word, but this is what I observed and feel free to correct this somewhat anecdotal data. The flyers in the top ten were generally either Helldrakes or FMCs, both things that are pretty resistant to FW anti-air units, or capable of hovering in cover to gain some resistance. In fact, Helldrake bitching was the primary topic of conversation among 40k players that weekend. And with good reason, as there were more of those than the Cron fliers that all the pro-FW people were moaning and groaning about on dakka in the lead up to BAO. That's not really pertinent to the discussion, however, so I don't want to derail the topic nitpicking what was otherwise the top 40k event of the pacific time zone.

But no, not many TOs collect that sort of data and fewer still make it available for public consumption. Again, not being critical, just seriously asking if you are ok with a 40% incomplete rate on tournament games. That's really the main question I would like to hear you (and MVB) comment on in more detail. I know in the little 10-20 man things I run I have started awarding a point for completing games to at least turn five, so I have an idea of what the completion percentage is like, and its not very good, though it has steadily improved. In the three RTTs I have run since tracking this information, 72 out of the 134 games reached at least turn five, which means that at best I am seeing something like a 60%ish completion rate this year (ironically close to your large event). I saw dramatic improvements in the RTTs where I dumped random objectives and kept to the simpler book missions (like nearly all games completed in those RTTs) with preset terrain. The one constant is that the horde staller guys never seem to get past turn three and armies using lots of psychers (new elder especially) slow the game to a crawl.

I would really like to see Brandt's information on this topic, as its the most directly comparable to BAO in terms of game logistics and general format.

My opinion?

Trying to correlate tourney data between events that span significant time and changes to the game is dubious at best in evaluating or attempting to ascribe any meaning or value.
The data is fantastic for understanding what happened at any particular event over a 3 day period as a snap shot in time sort of analysis. But beyond that it is pretty meaningless.

For the AdeptiCon Championship at 1,850 pts with 2.5 hour rounds we asked the following question on all result sheets:
FINISH? Yes or No *
* Finished games are those that are ended by a Variable Game Length die roll (pg. 122) or where all 7 game turns were fully played out.

We had every round between 92-94% of the results sheets marked Yes.

Now of course that data isn’t scientific in the least, but it shows that people felt like they were getting in full games. That said, we are always looking at way to tweak the events to better accommodate the current state of the game.

A 90%+ completion rate would be fantastic! That seems really high. I don't know if MVBrandt has collated the data from Nova yet or not, or if he's willing to share it, but my impression was that 90% was not the norm (but a "norm" would require comparing events, and you make a good point on that ).

If most events were seeing that high of a completion rate, this topic would be a non-issue. Perhaps it is, but that's not what seemed to be the consensus coming out of the most recent event (Nova). Again, very curious about the data there once it is compiled, if you can share it!

In regards to pre-measurement I don't care if it was Jesus across the table... if they are standing around contemplating for more than say two minutes I will get a judge and put a stop to crap like that. There is also classic stuff like the guy with ONE drop pod who walks around and around the table for over 15 minutes deciding where to place it.

It's TOTALLY not about satisfying some competitive win/loss obsessed group that has a different viewpoint than you.

QFT!

People are posting subjective experience instead of objective data because there is no available objective data.

When players turn in their score cards and sportsmanship the tie the game finished should be recorded with the battle points and sportsmanship. Include 3 questions.

Exact time the game finished.

Turn the game finished.

Did the game conclude.

Objective data can then be analyzed by TOs and the player base to determine if there is enough time for the round at the point value played.

It's also good for diagnosing who the slowest players are and informing them in a non judgmental way that they are playing too slow and need to find a way to speed up their game.

 Phazael wrote:
Misinformation is a strong word, but this is what I observed and feel free to correct this somewhat anecdotal data. The flyers in the top ten were generally either Helldrakes or FMCs, both things that are pretty resistant to FW anti-air units, or capable of hovering in cover to gain some resistance. In fact, Helldrake bitching was the primary topic of conversation among 40k players that weekend. And with good reason, as there were more of those than the Cron fliers that all the pro-FW people were moaning and groaning about on dakka in the lead up to BAO. That's not really pertinent to the discussion, however, so I don't want to derail the topic nitpicking what was otherwise the top 40k event of the pacific time zone.

But no, not many TOs collect that sort of data and fewer still make it available for public consumption. Again, not being critical, just seriously asking if you are ok with a 40% incomplete rate on tournament games. That's really the main question I would like to hear you (and MVB) comment on in more detail. I know in the little 10-20 man things I run I have started awarding a point for completing games to at least turn five, so I have an idea of what the completion percentage is like, and its not very good, though it has steadily improved. In the three RTTs I have run since tracking this information, 72 out of the 134 games reached at least turn five, which means that at best I am seeing something like a 60%ish completion rate this year (ironically close to your large event). I saw dramatic improvements in the RTTs where I dumped random objectives and kept to the simpler book missions (like nearly all games completed in those RTTs) with preset terrain. The one constant is that the horde staller guys never seem to get past turn three and armies using lots of psychers (new elder especially) slow the game to a crawl.

I would really like to see Brandt's information on this topic, as its the most directly comparable to BAO in terms of game logistics and general format.

Our completion percentage as far as people REPORTED on their scoresheets was very high, on the order of somewhere between 85-90% I think. I didn't think Reece's comment about more diversity than NOVA meant anything, because Eldar/Tau weren't out for the event he's quoting; meaningless comparison, so I thought he was just saying it to say it.

My opinion is people at the least felt rushed, and plenty of players didn't finish at least a game or two it seems like. If 85-90% of games finished, that doesn't mean 85-90% of players finished all their games. Some miserably low % even may not have finished ALL their games, and that's annoying even if the net game-by-game completion % was more akin to AdeptiCon's than BAO's.

Personally I am already on record either here or elsewhere saying we're going to try to add more functional time for players, including 15-minute lead from when pairings go up to when the actual clock starts. We'll look at points changes as well, and that's really too soon / tbd at this point.

 Reecius wrote:


Even when you remove the games that didn't finish due to inexperience from the mix, it is a large portion of games. We recognize that. However, as we run additional events this year, we are seeing that with adequate spacing between tables and informing the players of the time limits better, games flow right along and our completion ratio has gone way up.

Why do games not finishing due to inexperience not count to you?

I played one of them in the first round of the BAO and ended up in a tie because my game only lasted 4 turns. If you are not getting in the full game it does not matter why

 schadenfreude wrote:
When players turn in their score cards and sportsmanship the tie the game finished should be recorded with the battle points and sportsmanship. Include 3 questions.

Exact time the game finished.

Turn the game finished.

Did the game conclude.

Objective data can then be analyzed by TOs and the player base to determine if there is enough time for the round at the point value played.

It's also good for diagnosing who the slowest players are and informing them in a non judgmental way that they are playing too slow and need to find a way to speed up their game.

This would be awesome, imo!

Also thanks to the TOs posting here (Reecius, MVBrandt and muwhe being the big ones, but all the TOs!) for taking an interest and sharing your thoughts / data, it is truly appreciated

"Why do games not finishing due to inexperience not count to you?

I played one of them in the first round of the BAO and ended up in a tie because my game only lasted 4 turns. If you are not getting in the full game it does not matter why."

I agree 100 percent. I had a game a year ago in a major event where my opponent said he hadn't played in a long time. He had a solid list in my opinion. As the game progressed he played slower and slower. It only went four turns and I would have most likely won if it had gone one more turn but ended as a draw.

The other thing is in large scale tournaments you basically HAVE to adhere to a very strict time schedule, especially with as many rounds as the bigger ones have been cramming in. RTTs can slop around a little bit and extend the round a little here and there, but the monster ones with 4 games packed into a single day pretty much have no wiggle room. I think once the numbers climb to BAO and Nova levels, you really need a judge or two just roaming the hall and prodding the lethargic guys.

 Phazael wrote:
The other thing is in large scale tournaments you basically HAVE to adhere to a very strict time schedule, especially with as many rounds as the bigger ones have been cramming in. RTTs can slop around a little bit and extend the round a little here and there, but the monster ones with 4 games packed into a single day pretty much have no wiggle room. I think once the numbers climb to BAO and Nova levels, you really need a judge or two just roaming the hall and prodding the lethargic guys.

Tasers for the TO's then for slow players?

 RiTides wrote:

 schadenfreude wrote:
When players turn in their score cards and sportsmanship the tie the game finished should be recorded with the battle points and sportsmanship. Include 3 questions.

Exact time the game finished.

Turn the game finished.

Did the game conclude.

Objective data can then be analyzed by TOs and the player base to determine if there is enough time for the round at the point value played.

It's also good for diagnosing who the slowest players are and informing them in a non judgmental way that they are playing too slow and need to find a way to speed up their game.

This would be awesome, imo!

Also thanks to the TOs posting here (Reecius, MVBrandt and muwhe being the big ones, but all the TOs!) for taking an interest and sharing your thoughts / data, it is truly appreciated

When we made score cards for last weekend's local con, I actually updated them to include a question on whether the game timed out or not. From my subjective observation of the tournament in progress, the newer players were going to time (we had one that Round 1 was about their 4th game of 40k, and one younger player that had never played with 1850 in a tournament before), and the more experienced ones were finishing within the round time alloted. I don't think the top table ever timed out. I don't have the objective data yet, because I wasn't the one running the tournament software, but I'll make sure to get it soon. It wasn't a large event, but it's a start.

Because of fatigue, both player and TO, we're probably going to look at lowering points for next year, and with that the round time as well. It'll be fun once I get the objective data to see if the % changes from year to year with this.

That's great, Derek, thanks for adding in the question!

Got access to the timeouts info today. Over 25 games, six didn't finish. Of those six, the two new players accounted for four of them. 6/25 is roughly 1/4th of the games, but if I remove the games played by players with less than 10 games under their belt, it's a much better 2/25. I know one of the time outs posts here, so I'll see if I can't have him pop in to explain what went on.

 derek wrote:
Got access to the timeouts info today. Over 25 games, six didn't finish. Of those six, the two new players accounted for four of them. 6/25 is roughly 1/4th of the games, but if I remove the games played by players with less than 10 games under their belt, it's a much better 2/25. I know one of the time outs posts here, so I'll see if I can't have him pop in to explain what went on.

Can you give some more information on those numbers?

How many points?
How long where the rounds?
How many players?
How many Demons, Tau, and Eldar players?

Thanks!

I always thought points inflation was ridiculous. Troops over time have been getting cheaper, not more expensive...more points just means you can take all the crazy destructive toys.
I hear this bullcrap about how the game isn't balanced at low point...uh...it's way better balanced at 1500 than it is at 2000 or 2500. You see way more spam at 2500 because you have the points for 3 land raiders or 3 whatever.

At 1500, you have to make some tough choices when designing your army.

I played a game yesterday with six psykers in my army. All were either level 2 or 3. We timed it out... Under two minutes to roll for all the spells.

 scuddman wrote:
I always thought points inflation was ridiculous. Troops over time have been getting cheaper, not more expensive...more points just means you can take all the crazy destructive toys.
I hear this bullcrap about how the game isn't balanced at low point...uh...it's way better balanced at 1500 than it is at 2000 or 2500. You see way more spam at 2500 because you have the points for 3 land raiders or 3 whatever.

At 1500, you have to make some tough choices when designing your army.

You say that but some armies need to make much tougher choices than others. Armies with Good troops really benefit from lower points than do armies with meh troops. I also still disagree with the you see more spam at higher points argument. You will see just as much at lower points, but it will be more focused on armies that can spam good things with troops

Cron Flyers
Serpent Spam

etc.

I would lean towards increasing the time of the games. 6th Edition has so many rules that require multiple things to be done in a turn that normally were not an issue.

An easy example:
Crisis suits, riptides, and/or jetbikes can now move 3 times in one turn.

Move, run/turbo, assault moves. All of which require thought on where to place those models. Add this to the fact that some people have multiple of these.

 Blackmoor wrote:

 derek wrote:
Got access to the timeouts info today. Over 25 games, six didn't finish. Of those six, the two new players accounted for four of them. 6/25 is roughly 1/4th of the games, but if I remove the games played by players with less than 10 games under their belt, it's a much better 2/25. I know one of the time outs posts here, so I'll see if I can't have him pop in to explain what went on.

Can you give some more information on those numbers?

How many points?
How long where the rounds?
How many players?
How many Demons, Tau, and Eldar players?

Thanks!

Sure, I'd posted the time and points in the other thread, but forgot to repost it here. It was an 1850 point tournament, with 2.5 hour rounds, with a free 15 minutes of set up with your game starting the moment you were set up (so no waiting for an official start).

We had 10 players. Of that field, 2 were demons (both without allies), and one was Eldar (again no allies) . The Eldar player never timed out. Of the Demon players, only one had a game time out. There were two Tyranid players. One timed out once, the other timed out twice (new player). There were two IG, with one of those (who was allied with Space Wolves) timing out three times (this was also a newer player). The timeouts that didn't happen amongst newer players was Tyranids against CSM/Necrons, and Space Wolves (no allies) against Demons.

This might seem like a stupid suggestion, but putting a cap on total number of units (in larger points) is likely away to shut down a lot of time outs (plus making it harder to stall). Of course you are cutting out a few builds in that instance, though not many of those climb above 12 KP. Its generally the MSU spam lists, particularly with assault elements, that eat clock.

This kind of dove tails with my point about inexperienced players (and intentional slow players) causing issues with larger armies. I do not think it is unreasonable to tell people with >15 KP in a list that they are being held to a higher standard for completing their games. It still requires some proactive work by event organizers, though, which I think any solution to this issue is going to ultimately need. I don't think its fair to eat a loss at an event because Timmy NidNewb decided it was a good weekend to try out Tervi-spam and its really the TOs job to nip that in the bud, when possible.

 Phazael wrote:
This might seem like a stupid suggestion, but putting a cap on total number of units (in larger points) is likely away to shut down a lot of time outs (plus making it harder to stall). Of course you are cutting out a few builds in that instance, though not many of those climb above 12 KP. Its generally the MSU spam lists, particularly with assault elements, that eat clock.

This kind of dove tails with my point about inexperienced players (and intentional slow players) causing issues with larger armies. I do not think it is unreasonable to tell people with >15 KP in a list that they are being held to a higher standard for completing their games. It still requires some proactive work by event organizers, though, which I think any solution to this issue is going to ultimately need. I don't think its fair to eat a loss at an event because Timmy NidNewb decided it was a good weekend to try out Tervi-spam and its really the TOs job to nip that in the bud, when possible.

This is silly.

You can have "Timmy Nidnewb" make a tervigon spam list with only 10 KP, that blooms into 20, how would you handle this, tell him he can't spawn? Or alright, I'll run a low KP list - blob guard. Or my list with 120 kroot, 3 riptides, and 3 skyrays - no worries, all low KP guys!

There isn't any miracle cure or catch all or composition requirement that will fix this. The game currently takes longer than it used to, and armies (esp. basic troops) have went down in cost. More models + slightly slower system + no change in time limits = games aren't finishing. Lower the points values or extend round times, those are the only two real solutions from an organizers perspective. All players need to practice and become quicker with their armies, yes, but from a TO perspective if you're concerned your games aren't finishing "players need to play faster" isn't a solution (I've seen one or two guys in this thread mention that essentially).

You are pummeling a strawman here. The basic principle is that someone who is a newer playing a high kill point Army is likely doing a disservice to other players by creating negative experience for everyone they play. Aside from Seer council list, its always the high unit count lists that create the issues. It was a very basic idea I tossed out for discussion, but I think one tervigon generally equates to three actual units in play, so a triple tervy list with ten kp is really more like a sixteen kp army, in terms of speed of play. Probably worse since it is likely to have several cc elements.

This isn't meant as a hard and fast rule but more of a guideline on how to narrow down which players are likely to cause a problem with time

 Phazael wrote:
You are pummeling a strawman here. The basic principle is that someone who is a newer playing a high kill point Army is likely doing a disservice to other players by creating negative experience for everyone they play. Aside from Seer council list, its always the high unit count lists that create the issues. It was a very basic idea I tossed out for discussion, but I think one tervigon generally equates to three actual units in play, so a triple tervy list with ten kp is really more like a sixteen kp army, in terms of speed of play. Probably worse since it is likely to have several cc elements.

This isn't meant as a hard and fast rule but more of a guideline on how to narrow down which players are likely to cause a problem with time

Except that it is not true at all, it is high model count not high unit count armies that take a long time to play, or armies that have units that do a lot (cast psychic powers, move, shoot, Run, assault, JSJ...)

I could make a really high unit count army (say Razor Spam, or Cron Flyers) that plays very quickly for instance

Cotaez

6 x 3 acolytes in Razorbacks
3 x 5 Purifiers in Razorbacks
3 x 5 Purgation in Razorbacks

Company Command Squad in Chimera
2 x Vets in Chimera

31 KPs and Probably plays much faster than many armies out there as I'm only moving 15 Models most turns, usually only during 1 Phase, I have 6 units that really don't contribute much to the game at all. I'm casting Max 2 powers each turn during movement (more other times but not that often)
5th Ed had lots of vehicle spam, which also helped make the game faster. If I need to measure and move 180+ models each turn, that is far slower than moving 15 models.

 Phazael wrote:
You are pummeling a strawman here. The basic principle is that someone who is a newer playing a high kill point Army is likely doing a disservice to other players by creating negative experience for everyone they play. Aside from Seer council list, its always the high unit count lists that create the issues. It was a very basic idea I tossed out for discussion, but I think one tervigon generally equates to three actual units in play, so a triple tervy list with ten kp is really more like a sixteen kp army, in terms of speed of play. Probably worse since it is likely to have several cc elements.

This isn't meant as a hard and fast rule but more of a guideline on how to narrow down which players are likely to cause a problem with time

It sounds like you're suggesting making some sort of use of comp. Not so much as a hard requirement or score (so you could play a low comp army with no penalty to your standings), but as a guideline for TOs to keep an eye on certain matches and make sure the games aren't being dragged out. It doesn't address what the TO is going to do about someone playing slow (intentionally or not,) but it may not be a bad way to help a TO know where to look.

As far as lower points or longer rounds go, as an exceptionally casual occasional tournament player I'd rather see lower point games than longer rounds. These things tend to eat up most if not all of the day, and have relatively sparse breaks (a lot of the 30 minutes will get eaten by dealing with my score sheet, getting my army organized back on its tray, grabbing a bathroom break, etc... if I get 10 minutes to actually relax it's an exception.) Making the rounds longer is just going to make that worse. As a more casual player, I don't see a problem with going down to 1500 points (or, heck, even 1000 but that's unlikely.) Sure it's going to change which armies and which builds are competitive, but so what? At 1850 some builds are better than others, at 1500 you'll have the same thing. At least at 1500 points you have a slightly shorter, more relaxed game, with more time to BS with your opponent and enjoy the game.

Has anyone given some evidence that the game doesn't work at 1500 points?

Here is the thing though with longer rounds. In my experience with 3 hour rounds most players finish early. So if most players are finishing games with 15 to 30 min left in the round, then spend 5-10 min scoring the round, and then have 30 min post round. You end up with longer breaks on average. Furthermore, with shorter rounds more games run into the break (finishing the final turn) and eat into your break time.

As for lowering points...I don't find it effects time as much as people claim. Droping from 2k to 1850 or 1750 does not reduce the time it takes to play the game significantly, 1500 helps but not by as much as you would expect.

Let me put it this way. Say we accept that 1500 points is say 15 min shorter than 2k or 1850. And our standard round is 2.5 hours. So say 2k is running just over, and 1500 is finishing 7 turns. Then if I add half an hour (still keeping breaks at 30 min) and then most people are finishing in 2.75 hours I then most players have a longer break.