This forum's LVO 2016 thread generated valuable discussion on tournament games exceeding duration. A plurality of that thread's participants agreed that shrinking armies down to 1500 points is best solution to this problem. I wanted to poll the rest of this forum:

How should your Tournament Organizer best ensure games finish on time?

Providing timely announcements and maybe a timing outline in the packet can help too. Only announcing 20 minutes left is often too late if the game was running slow. Still mostly on the players, but it's something simple that can help players be aware of time.

I'd love a shift to 1500 - the timing seems right for such a change, making the game for accessible for new players and letting tournament games play to completion in much greater numbers.

Start with 1650. Perhaps we might swing that pendulum a little more slowly, so the Great Unwashed Masses won't get whip-lashed so hard that it snaps their necks while sitting at Army Builder.

Start with 1650 for a few months until summer. Then 1500.

I did put in my votes above.

I voted for 1500 points.

I think the pre-game rolling can also be simplified to waste less time. In 5th edition you just showed up with your list and after determining turn order you started deploying. Now we spend a good chunk of time rolling on various charts. Not only is that a time suck, but the fact that commanders show up to a battle without knowing what their command benefit is or that psykers spend their entire lives training, but have no idea what powers they will have has never made sense to me.

I think players should just pick their psychic powers and warlord traits before the tournament and note them on their list. It would of course make more sense if the good powers and traits cost more points than the crappy ones, but putting these choices back in the player hands directly allows both parties to use tools that work for their army. That seems more fair than someone rolling a good trait/power and the opponent getting crap. Whenever that happens it further makes sure that one person's points go much farther than the others and 1500 v 1500 is not really equivalent.

If it's deemed that the strategic traits are too powerful, I think it's reasonable to at least pick warlord traits from your own codex.

I really don't think that letting opponents pick their power would be a good idea. It would allow you to take less psykers thus lowering the cost for certain powers plus I think it would increase the amount of deathstars built around a set of powers. I also voted for 1500.

Yah that idea scares the crap out of me, and I play psyker heavy armies haha.

I voted for keep the status quo. I've literally never had a game end before turn 5 in tournament play so I'm probably biased. But I like what's happening with the game ATM. As a tournament player though I would certainly adapt to any changes made to format.

Yes to 1500. When you get to 10 minutes left and take a scan around the room and notice like 90% of the games are rushing trying to fit in that last turn (and they're not going to roll RGL)...we have a problem. This is even the case on high level events streaming games.
The average game should be finishing naturally, obeying random game length roll, and still have some wind down time before pairings for next round are up. I'm just not seeing that happen currently.

That and the pretty nice wave of pro's has solidified my stance on it. New entrants getting into the tournament scene easier, shorter rounds making for a more entertaining spectator sport...Like the only thing I don't like about it is that I love giant games. Oh well. There's always side events and flgs get-togethers for that.

Yes to 1500. Penalizing for turn 5 is too harsh in all likelihood and will lead to players just "agreeing" that they got to turn 5 to avoid penalties.

Penalize if they don't reach turn 4, and this will hit the truly problematic games. Providing time announcements (via loudspeaker or giant projected round timer) to let players know when the round started, the remaining time, and updates on the hour (2hours remaining, 1 hour, 30 minutes, dice down). A lot of time you see players just not realizing until it's too late that they've wasted the majority of their time.

The points limit probably needs a reduction.

At the very least there needs to be a standard penalty for not finishing 4 turns and a system in place to track and warn players who consistently cannot, or will not, complete games.

I am not sure that 1500 points will solve the problem.

I am in favor of chess clocks. If you are worried about your opponent monopolizing time bring your own and have it approved by the TO. Everyone use to say that chess clocks break down in the assault phase, but I have not seen one of those in a while, and even then I do not think it will be too much of an issue.

 Blackmoor wrote:
I am not sure that 1500 points will solve the problem.

I am in favor of chess clocks. If you are worried about your opponent monopolizing time bring your own and have it approved by the TO. Everyone use to say that chess clocks break down in the assault phase, but I have not seen one of those in a while, and even then I am of with it.

Precisely this. If you can slow play at 1850 you can slow play at 1500. The number of points makes literally no difference, it comes down to the players making effective use of their time.

ebay yields a couple chess clocks at ~ $13, but the rest of the ones I found (in 60 seconds of internet shopping) shows them to be $40+.

*I* am not going to buy one and I doubt we'd see small RTT hosts buy them, let alone GT organizers. Chess Clocks are a dead end on our timing issue ... unless there's a Chess Clock app for Smart Phones?

(60 second internet search comes up dry for that one)

There are lots of apps out there, nearly all of the local Warmachine folks use an iOS app for it outside of actual tournament play.

wait, dont smartphones have a chessclock app?
Several things I think we can do, the biggest is a giant clock projected with stuff like "You should be deploying now" and "you should be in turn 3" and stuff like that to help

 Brothererekose wrote:
ebay yields a couple chess clocks at ~ $13, but the rest of the ones I found (in 60 seconds of internet shopping) shows them to be $40+.

*I* am not going to buy one and I doubt we'd see small RTT hosts buy them, let alone GT organizers. Chess Clocks are a dead end on our timing issue ... unless there's a Chess Clock app for Smart Phones?

(60 second internet search comes up dry for that one)

So what you are saying is that a good chess clock costs as much as 5 assault marines or 3 jetbikes?

That said it should be optional. If you want to bring one, bring one. I also do not want to use an app, but I want a chess clock so I can see the time and not fiddle with a phone.

1/2. Around my area everyone plays 1500/1650 points. Apart from a few Daemon players games pretty much always come to their natural conclusion. Nobody pines for 1850.

3. Penalize players whose games did not finish 5 turns.
I think this has been tried and as both players in a game will be punished, they simply collude and pretend they got to turn 5.

4. Provide "chess clock" timers purchased by entry fee.
Could work but 1. Expensive. 2. It's an easy thing to forget in a game which already has too many things to remember. 3. There are many actions which occur in the other persons turn: Saves, DTW, Interceptor, Warp Spiders, etc.

5. Schedule more time to play each game.
I think 2h30 or 2h45 is enough. Longer games can just get tiresome and not enjoyable.

6. Limit unit and/or model count.
I don't think people should be punished for their army choice, but there should be an expectation on players to be able to play their army efficiently.

Other.
I think 'cheat sheets' should be mandatory for psychic heavy armies.
i.e. You have a Daemon Prince army where each Prince has 3/4 powers, 2/3 gifts, etc. Players with such an army should Having a cheat sheet or equivalent system to efficiently record and remember their powers. One friend who plays Flyrants has magnetised discs with the powers written on that he can attach to the wings of each Flyrant.

I also do not think that 1500 points or longer rounds will be a panacea to not finishing games.

Here is the problem, there is no incentive to finish your games on time, and in fact, often an incentive to slow play.

Until there is a disincentive to slow play, it will continue no matter the time or the points.

This is beginning to sound like a bad political debate "Look, you can't prove lowering points cost will make every game finish on time, so we shouldn't change points cost!"

If you're opposed to lower points, please explain why, it might help people understand your opposition to lowering points. Because lowering points can *only* help. Will it cause every game to finish on time? Of course not. Will it cause more games to finish on time? Yes.

Reducing points is not trying to tackle the issue of intentional slow play, that has always and will always rest in the hands of the players to identify it, and the judges to penalize it. But smaller games are just flat out faster.

Target wrote:
Reducing points is not trying to tackle the issue of intentional slow play, that has always and will always rest in the hands of the players to identify it, and the judges to penalize it. But smaller games are just flat out faster.

Frankly, if you aren't finishing at least 5 rounds in 2h30, you or your opponent are intentionally slow playing (even if not maliciously). You need to be prepared to play out your full game in the time allotted. Easily 75% of game time is not spent moving models/rolling dice, but rather thinking about what is going to be done, even with high model count armies.

The blame lies solely on the players, IMO, once you get to 2h30 or longer rounds.

My main argument against lower point counts is not really the meta shift (though it will severely hurt my wallet and soul to see my second Stormsurge up on the shelf collecting dust), but rather that it does not address the actual problem of not finishing games in the time allotted.

You hit a few scenarios:

Lower points + less game time = same problem.
Lower points + same game time = same problem with sampling size for results, malicious slow play unaffected.
same points + same game time = same problem.
same points + more game time = malicious slow play unaffected.

I can only say what I have experienced at tournaments I've been to. At 1500/1650, we finish games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I will also say the other thing we don't generally do in my area is dual missions. A tournament may have both Maelstrom and EW missions but not both in the same mission. I think this helps increase the speed of games.

Target wrote:
This is beginning to sound like a bad political debate "Look, you can't prove lowering points cost will make every game finish on time, so we shouldn't change points cost!"

If you're opposed to lower points, please explain why, it might help people understand your opposition to lowering points. Because lowering points can *only* help. Will it cause every game to finish on time? Of course not. Will it cause more games to finish on time? Yes.

Reducing points is not trying to tackle the issue of intentional slow play, that has always and will always rest in the hands of the players to identify it, and the judges to penalize it. But smaller games are just flat out faster.

I am all for trying everything to get games to finish. I would like to see some TOs try lower point costs or have longer rounds.

My fear is that TOs are very slow to change. They like the status quo and do not want to rock the boat because they want to keep everyone happy and they are worried that lowering the points will impact their ticket sales. They also want to try to find a "true winner" of their tournaments and so when these tournaments get larger and larger they try to cram as many rounds as possible into a weekend.

The rules and format for LVO, Adepticon, and Nova have already been announced for 2016 so changes to large tournaments will be 2017 at the earliest. Chess clocks can have an impact this year.

 1PlusLogan wrote:

Target wrote:
Reducing points is not trying to tackle the issue of intentional slow play, that has always and will always rest in the hands of the players to identify it, and the judges to penalize it. But smaller games are just flat out faster.

Frankly, if you aren't finishing at least 5 rounds in 2h30, you or your opponent are intentionally slow playing (even if not maliciously). You need to be prepared to play out your full game in the time allotted. Easily 75% of game time is not spent moving models/rolling dice, but rather thinking about what is going to be done, even with high model count armies.

The blame lies solely on the players, IMO, once you get to 2h30 or longer rounds.

My main argument against lower point counts is not really the meta shift (though it will severely hurt my wallet and soul to see my second Stormsurge up on the shelf collecting dust), but rather that it does not address the actual problem of not finishing games in the time allotted.

You hit a few scenarios:

Lower points + less game time = same problem.
Lower points + same game time = same problem with sampling size for results, malicious slow play unaffected.
same points + same game time = same problem.
same points + more game time = malicious slow play unaffected.

I don't think there's a form of intentional slow play that isn't malicious - if you're doing it on purpose, you're doing it to penalize your opponent or benefit yourself - both are malicious. I respect the fact that you don't think there's a problem, but it doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of games at LVO (and this is not a phenomenon restricted to LVO) did not roll for random game length - and I'd also wager the vast majority of players had at least one game not make it to five. Of the 10 people I know who went, all of whom are extremely experienced tournament goers, every one of them had one or more games not finishing, and most of their games not rolling for RGL. Lowering game points is not a solution to malicious slow play - nor should it be. It's an attempted solution at improving the overall speed of games for the majority of the tournament. Intentional slow play can only ever be addressed by judges and by turn-based penalties for not finishing.

You can say blame the players, you can say people just need to play faster, but that essentially equates to "do nothing, tell people to be better". It won't change anything, and the fact remains that it is currently a problem.

That being said, I'm not saying the ONLY thing that should be done/tried is lower point values, just that it is one of the things that should be done, and it can only be positive in terms of game duration.

bogalubov wrote:
I voted for 1500 points.

I think the pre-game rolling can also be simplified to waste less time. In 5th edition you just showed up with your list and after determining turn order you started deploying. Now we spend a good chunk of time rolling on various charts. Not only is that a time suck, but the fact that commanders show up to a battle without knowing what their command benefit is or that psykers spend their entire lives training, but have no idea what powers they will have has never made sense to me.

I think players should just pick their psychic powers and warlord traits before the tournament and note them on their list. It would of course make more sense if the good powers and traits cost more points than the crappy ones, but putting these choices back in the player hands directly allows both parties to use tools that work for their army. That seems more fair than someone rolling a good trait/power and the opponent getting crap. Whenever that happens it further makes sure that one person's points go much farther than the others and 1500 v 1500 is not really equivalent.

If it's deemed that the strategic traits are too powerful, I think it's reasonable to at least pick warlord traits from your own codex.

WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY too powerful. However perhaps rolling for spells and warlord traits when you turn your list into the TO. Then you keep those same spells/traits for the entire tournament.

Does 1500 exacerbate already powerful lists? Certain powerful lists will be hurt, like IKnights or Superfriends who are packing in the points. But Eldar can still easily fit a WK with mass bikes, Gladius can still take Battle Company with mass vehicles, and Summoning will still be strong.

While that's fine to have strong armies, you're also taking away 350 points of answers from other armies, which is where the real detriment can lie.

I'm all for shaking up the meta, so we'd have to see what happens, but I do have somr concerns.

 quickfuze wrote:

bogalubov wrote:
I think players should just pick their psychic powers and warlord traits before the tournament and note them on their list.

WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY too powerful. However perhaps rolling for spells and warlord traits when you turn your list into the TO. Then you keep those same spells/traits for the entire tournament.

I play eldar. I have a wraithknight. The Devil tempts. I might always show with Invis, Fortune and Prescience.

So, nope. Quickfuze is right.

On the serious side, it is fun and strategic to alter might Psy choices based on a completely different opponent Rounds 2 and 3, so choice is always better, despite the few minutes of rolling them up, finding the card and informing the opponent.

Requizen wrote:

While that's fine to have strong armies, you're also taking away 350 points of answers from other armies, which is where the real detriment can lie.

Yes you are correct you take away 350 points (of solutions) which also mean you take away 350 points (of problems) that now dont need solutions.

As it is now we have people throwing 2K+ on tables and every horde is unplayable, and some people feel its a form of cheating when another player takes any more then 1/2 of the allotted time regardless of model count, questions, ect.

When its literally 4 second per model per phase at a meager 100 model count total assuming a *perfect* 2.5 hours (which does not happen) it is amazing to me that many simply state "go faster L2P nub" (not ness you requizen) or that 4 seconds per model is more then enough time.

 Blackmoor wrote:
I am not sure that 1500 points will solve the problem.

I am in favor of chess clocks. If you are worried about your opponent monopolizing time bring your own and have it approved by the TO. Everyone use to say that chess clocks break down in the assault phase, but I have not seen one of those in a while, and even then I do not think it will be too much of an issue.

A chess clock is not fair because not all 1,850 point armies are equal. The bottom line is that it takes longer for armies with more models and/or armies that do things in multiple phases to play, period, end of story.

The only thing that adding a chess clock would do is to drive those types of armies out of tournaments, and force even more people to play the same types of armies (small, easy to play).

Why would you want that? The whole point of 40k is that you should be able to see and play against a wide variety of armies, and players who choose to play an army with a high model count shouldn't have to be some uber-trained guy who thinks and moves faster than everyone else in order to finish in the allotted time.

If people are not finishing on time, then round times need to be extended or points values need to be lowered (or any combination of those two).

It is a very small percentage of people who willingly slow-play, so there is simply no need to punish everyone because of them.

Instead, players should be tracked from tournament to tournament, and a record kept of how often they fail to finish their games. If they are far and above the normal average, then the TO should warn and eventually punish them for that continued behavior.


It's really that simple. In descending order, you fix this 'problem' by:

1) increase round times (where able).
2) lower army point values.
3) keep track of a player's record of not finishing their games all-time, and discuss/punish them when necessary.

Lowering points doesn't fix anything in my opinion UNLESS changes are made to armies that bring extra points to the table. I am talking about you battle company, war conclave, piranha drone farm, demon summoning, re-spawning heretics and tyranids. I think the biggest offender to not making it to turn 5 are armies that bring extra models to the table coupled with players who are not mindful of the time constraints.

This year at LVO my army consisted of 35 models spread across 10 units. I played Tau. Every one of my units had interceptor and moved in the movement and assault phase. Every one of my games made it to at least turn 5. Only 2 of my games were pressed for time. One game being against eldar scat pack spam and the other being against space marine battle company. In both of my games I made sure both myself and my opponent finished turn 5. It meant me spending a combined 20 minutes my last 2 player turns, but together we were able to get it done.

Looking around the floor after games from my perspective it looked like maybe 20 to 25% of tables were were still playing when time was called. I have no idea if they made it to turn 5 or not.

IMO chess clocks don't work well for 40k.
40k's variety comes from many different armies doing many different things and behaving in very different ways.

You have some armies that just sit still & shoot. You can field armies that have literally 5 models. You can field armies that have over a hundred models! You have armies that don't do assault or psychic, and some armies that operate in all 4 phases!

Couple that with the amount of interaction on each player's turn that is allowed in 40k. Yes, I know 40k is horribly IGOUGO compared to some games, but still:
Eg. In your movement phase, I might be able to overwatch.
In your psychic phase, I can deny, and need to roll saves.
In your shooting phase, I need to roll saves.
In your assault phase, I get to overwatch, roll saves, and roll attacks.
* Rolling saves can be non-trivial for forces with eg mixed save units / look out sir / re-rollables / feel no pain.

Compared to Warmachine where chess clocks ARE used, the times you do anything in your opponents turn are so rare that its feasible to switch timing while you do it.



IMO lower points sizes would be better. Additionally I think it helps with things like tournament attendance, and in reducing the overall power level of armies to a more even playing field.

GreaterGouda wrote:
Lowering points doesn't fix anything in my opinion UNLESS changes are made to armies that bring extra points to the table. I am talking about you battle company, war conclave, piranha drone farm, demon summoning, re-spawning heretics and tyranids. I think the biggest offender to not making it to turn 5 are armies that bring extra models to the table coupled with players who are not mindful of the time constraints.

That doesn't make sense to me. Less points is less points. In the case of battle company that means there are less units that can generate free transports. For war convocation, same thing. Less points to generate new units that in turn create new points. For daemons, you have less room to take psykers to get warp charges to bring more units on the board. For tau, heretics and tyranids, you have less points to round out your list so you're stuck with mostly the recyclable units. That makes players rely on the naked free units and usually they are not very good.

 Brothererekose wrote:

 quickfuze wrote:

bogalubov wrote:
I think players should just pick their psychic powers and warlord traits before the tournament and note them on their list.

WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY too powerful. However perhaps rolling for spells and warlord traits when you turn your list into the TO. Then you keep those same spells/traits for the entire tournament.

I play eldar. I have a wraithknight. The Devil tempts. I might always show with Invis, Fortune and Prescience.

So, nope. Quickfuze is right.

On the serious side, it is fun and strategic to alter might Psy choices based on a completely different opponent Rounds 2 and 3, so choice is always better, despite the few minutes of rolling them up, finding the card and informing the opponent.

I saw one opponent with his cards labeled and in a sheet and he would circle in dry erase marker the ones he has and the ones he doesnt.

How about "No More Free Units", summoning, formations, etc...

 FeindusMaximus wrote:
How about "No More Free Units", summoning, formations, etc...

I would honestly love for the competitive scene to adopt a "back to the basics/no formations" approach. I think formations by themselves took the game's imbalance and amped it up to 20.

Of course without them, very few people have a way to fight eldar, so it's not a magical fix-all, but rather just part of one. Further tinkering would still be needed.

The issue with banning free points is - how do you define free points? Many of the new formations benefits aren't "you get x unit for free" but instead are "you get x tremendous benefit for free". By banning only the ones that give free units, you're drastically altering the game state. For example, marines would be darn near unplayable competitively except in the form of allies for thunderstar, and potentially the skyhammer formation.

Eldar would remain on top, and if anything get further ahead of the rest of their books as they don't get any free units - they just have multiple severely undercosted ones and a bunch of free rules. Tau would be relatively (in the scheme of the change you're talking) unharmed, you'd just be targeting one specific formation.

Etc. etc.

Before you try something like this, you'd be better served trying to just lower the size of the games we play, instituting a penalty system for turn 4 or less, and improving the way events communicate round time during games.

Lower points is probably the most realistic option that could have a significant effect

tournament organisers should clearly call out times and suggested turn number eg we're an hour in so everybody should be finishing up turn 2, if you're not pick up the pace

also worth considering refunds if a tournament has say (picking a number out of the air) 30% or more games not finishing turn 5 in the allocated time. It would incentivise organisers to have realistic points limits/missions etc and people would be more likely to attend as there'd be a stonger belief theyd be abel to play their games to the end

I think 1500 is a great idea. I get the impression over the last few years that GW has been increasing the model size of armies (decreasing points on basic troops, allowing free stuff) and this might counteract that a bit.

Plus, it makes it easier for people to build and paint the army in time, and less of a financial issue to build a new one next year!

As someone who was heavily opposed to dropping points I've come around in the last 2 years. The number of games that don't finish is staggering. I went from it being a rarity, to it only happening at one event I attended, to it happening to people across the board in the course of 2 years. I keep a time sheet for my games to ensure I'm not absorbing more than half (generally substantially less) of the time but it's gotten to be a problem.

I say to hell with it. Let's drop the pts to 1,500 and see what happens.

 niv-mizzet wrote:

 FeindusMaximus wrote:
How about "No More Free Units", summoning, formations, etc...

I would honestly love for the competitive scene to adopt a "back to the basics/no formations" approach. I think formations by themselves took the game's imbalance and amped it up to 20.

Of course without them, very few people have a way to fight eldar, so it's not a magical fix-all, but rather just part of one. Further tinkering would still be needed.

I'm actually leaning the opposite way: ban CADs for factions that can take formations and/or Decurion detachments. It seems a little counter intuitive at first, but what it would really do is prevent the easy access to HQs for special rules/ability stacking for many armies. It also removes the most efficient psychic heavy builds and forces more unit diversity into the game.

 Hulksmash wrote:
As someone who was heavily opposed to dropping points I've come around in the last 2 years. The number of games that don't finish is staggering. I went from it being a rarity, to it only happening at one event I attended, to it happening to people across the board in the course of 2 years. I keep a time sheet for my games to ensure I'm not absorbing more than half (generally substantially less) of the time but it's gotten to be a problem.

I say to hell with it. Let's drop the pts to 1,500 and see what happens.

So exalted! Would love to see this gain momentum, and might prompt me back into a 40K GT after only playing Warmachine this year. Already started working out lists, and I really like what can be done with it.

I'm okay with dropping the pts to 1500, but I'd prefer it to staying at 1850.

Maybe this, or a combination of timesavers ideas:

1) Before, the tournament starts and in *front* of tournament officials, roll your powers, warlord and random gears for the rest of your tournament games. Take that part out of having to do that randomness before each and every game. That'll cut down the pre-deployment time a bit.

2) Keep the same Primary/Maelstorm points designation, but add a tournament "tie breaker" one to facilitate fast play. Something like for a 2 hr 30 min round both players get 'x' tiebreaker points for completing a game turn before each round's "milestone". Here's an example:
Rnd 1 milestone 50 min mark. (includes deployment and generally the "longest" turn)
Rnd 2 milestone 1 hr 25 min mark. (35 minutes later)
Rnd 3 milestone 1 hr 50 min mark. (25 minutes later)
Rnd 4 milestone 2 hr 10 min mark. (20 minutes later)
Rnd 5 milestone 2 hr 30 min mark. (20 minutes later)

Something like that... or, change out the incentives and maybe add 'x' points to total score.

Just spit balling here.

I voted for other points drop. I like the idea of trying 1650 points. I think 200 points is substantial .

Before, the tournament starts and in *front* of tournament officials, roll your powers, warlord and random gears for the rest of your tournament games. Take that part out of having to do that randomness before each and every game. That'll cut down the pre-deployment time a bit.

How are TOs going to track and enforce that for 50 players, let alone 300? Honest question.

You could just let people pick and put it on their lists, but that's a fairly significant change to the game's balance.

 DarkLink wrote:

Before, the tournament starts and in *front* of tournament officials, roll your powers, warlord and random gears for the rest of your tournament games. Take that part out of having to do that randomness before each and every game. That'll cut down the pre-deployment time a bit.

How are TOs going to track and enforce that for 50 players, let alone 300? Honest question.

You could just let people pick and put it on their lists, but that's a fairly significant change to the game's balance.

Yeah, neither one of those will work well, I'd agree.

1) How are you going to have 300 people roll and document in front of the ~5-10 staff
2) Guess what, you rolled, you missed invis. You missed your key power for the entire tournament. Guess you're out before the event begins!
3) You don't really save much time.

And as to just picking powers, its insanely imbalancing. You now can guarantee psychic powers and don't even have to invest to get them. We tried this at a team america practice one year to practice "worst case scenario" games and it just ended up being silly, as every psyker having perfect powers impacted what they rolled on and didn't produce a realistic game - they just cherry picked one from each chart to have exactly what they needed.

There are plenty of games that don't finish on time between players without psychic powers, with set warlord traits, etc. While these things may take up time, they're not causing the problem.

Look at it this way:
1) Over the last 5 years, every event has gradually extended round times to accommodate games not finishing
2) Over the last 5 years, we've remained relatively locked in point values (baubling from 1750-2000, spending the vast majority of it at 1850)
3) Over the last 5 years, progressively less and less games have been finishing (this is the reason events have increased round times over the years - that they have is the proof)

Round times used to be 2 hours flat and that was considered a great amount of time - some ran a bit less! Now events run about 3 hours - Nova does, Adepticon does, LVO ran 2h45 this year.

Possible reasons for things slowing down:
1) The game has changed (rule complexity) - true, the rules have gotten more complex and lengthy over time (look at the size of our rulebooks and the amount of sources we have)
2) The game has changed (how things are costed) - true, units have gotten much cheaper over time (can be proved by looking codex to codex), and army model counts on average are much larger.
3) It's the players - they need to learn to play faster. This implies you think the current population of tournaments is that intrinsically different from the old population of tournaments.

I agree with those who say that game complexity is the prime driver of game length. This makes an even bigger impact at RTTs, where you might not have all the rules memorized or be testing a different list than your norm...you'll be looking stuff up in 3 different books. Simply adding the table for perils of the warp has added a couple minutes to all my games. In addition there are now so many formations and units that the answer to "what does that do?" is a lot more complicated. That said, I DO NOT in any way shape or form want to see points costs lowered because:

1. It reduces variety in the game. We all know what the optimum builds for certain armies, at lower points values efficiency becomes a much bigger factor. In current Eldar lists a core is often 3 squads of warp spiders...those won't get cut, the vaul's wrath batteries and wave serpents will. The "cookie cutter list" will be a bigger problem.

2. The Rock-Paper-Scissors factor of the game increases as you decrease points. At lower points values you simply don't that the resources to make something close to a TAC list (unless your units themselves are TAC). In order for your list to function, you have to cut stuff out...stuff like skyfire, melta bombs, etc. It becomes much more meta-driven, and there will be an increase in the number of "bad matchups" as points values decrease.

3. Some points are worth more than others. What I mean by this is that 295 points of Eldar buys you a lot more than 295 points of Grey Knights. If there is something in your list I need to kill, chances are that I may need to dedicate more than it's cost to kill it, especially if I didn't bring quite the right tool for the job. As points costs decrease, I simply don't have the points to take down some of the "needs-to-die" units that my opponent brings to even the score. When unit efficiencies are factored in, the imbalance between armies grows; and that's not even taking into account the impact of "free" units. Now I'll go ahead and discredit myself by saying that I believe that the near-universal drop from 2k to 1850 was because TauDar in 6th hit their max efficiency at 1850 and certain TOs wanted to win with that; that said we can all attest to what happens in small games when hyper-efficient units fight ones that aren't as good.

4. Army tiers aside, deathstars get a lot more powerful at lower points (or any high-damage/high durability unit). An invisible centstar can kill 1-2 units a turn; in a 5 turn game that's 5-10 units. In a 1500 point game, 10 units may be all that you have...you can't ignore it anymore, and you don't have the points to kill it cause 145 for a culexus isn't in your budget anymore. So you tailor, or you lose. The same could be said of any deathstar, which will exacerbate the RPS problem.

I think the best solution is to extend the game length...assuming that most games do in fact reach turn 5 (which has generally been my experience), then what is wrong with adding 20-30 minutes to each round? It only adds 1-1.5 hours to a standard 3 round day, and gives a bigger break to players who finish early. A 2:45 round assumes approximately 20 minutes per game turn for a 5 turn game; simply adding another 20 minutes gives you an extra turn which may be all you need. I understand that TOs have schedules they want to maintain, but the radically simple solution of just giving more time could solve the issue without changing anything else about the tournament scene. That's just my 2 cents.

ryuken87 wrote:
I can only say what I have experienced at tournaments I've been to. At 1500/1650, we finish games.


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I will also say the other thing we don't generally do in my area is dual missions. A tournament may have both Maelstrom and EW missions but not both in the same mission. I think this helps increase the speed of games.

1500 points used to be standard for UK GTs, back in the mid 2000s. I think the USA has always tended towards higher point limits, and things probably have got worse thanks to changes in the game, meaning GW's encouragement of using more stuff.

Clearly a lower point limit would help, in the same way that a higher point limit would make things worse. It won't automatically cure the problem, because if TFG wants to take 10 minutes moving every Termagant, it won't make a lot of difference if he has to move 50 of them instead of 55. But that is not the only aspect of the issue. Part of the issue is horde armies literally being too big for the player easily to be able to move all his units in the time limit, even going at a proper pace with good will.

This aspect of the problem has often been discussed in the past, because clearly it is a genuine problem with big games.

If that part of the problem could be cured by a slightly smaller game, the TFG part of the problem would be more obvious to TOs, also, it could be addressed by using chess clocks. You can buy a chess clock for about £15 t0 £20. Although not a trivial investment, it would be relatively minor compared to the amount of money needed to hire the hall and provide all the other equipment for a large tournament.

If chess clocks are to be used often, it would make sense for TOs to require players to bring one. That way everyone has to equip themselves with a clock, and the individual tournaments don't have to buy them.

How about requiring all games have to complete turn 5 before anyone can move on. I imagine by round 3, anyone slow playing would be murdered by the other participants. So it works it self out naturally.

Im gonna come out and say it. I think the ITC missions and their format have slowed the game down considerably with one main problem, the viability of MSU armies and how much you need to take them Its a big problem and one that needs to be adressed. I would very much think it would be good to go back to where you where running 2 missions at once and that would speed up the game considerably IMO.
I love the ITC missions, but I think there needs to be more balance to them to not favoring slowplaying MSU missions

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Im gonna come out and say it. I think the ITC missions and their format have slowed the game down considerably with one main problem, the viability of MSU armies and how much you need to take them Its a big problem and one that needs to be adressed. I would very much think it would be good to go back to where you where running 2 missions at once and that would speed up the game considerably IMO.
I love the ITC missions, but I think there needs to be more balance to them to not favoring slowplaying MSU missions

I massively agree with this.

Last time I attempted to play a big US tournament (NOVA 2014) I hadn't a clue what was going on. Optional missions, multiple missions to complete at once, choose your secondaries, etc. It all adds to the prep and the general stress of trying to play a game.

I'd much prefer a nice selection of regular missions, where both players are trying to achieve a simple objective.

regarding chess clocks, which I am not totally in agreement that we need.

Wouldn't it be a simpler solution to adopt chess clocks as part of your playing materials such as dice, tape measures ect ect. Of course TOs would have to have a few of them on hand for those forgetful players. But it would mitigate the cost of providing them.

Another thing I see that should be enforced instead is TOs should be very proactive in having judges for there tournaments be a presence at games where people are either slow players or have large armies and are not finishing games. Judges should be standing by and "enforcing" there own timing clock on the game that seems reasonable for that game to finish to at least 5 rounds. This is especially true at the top tables. Judges can time figure out the remaining time and do a quick calculation as to how much time it will take per player round to finish the game to at least 5 round completion. At the end of that time limit. play moves on to the next player. This becomes Judge enforced and takes away the animosity there may be between players.

Is this perfect?...no but it does help we have enforced this at times.

zedsdead wrote:
regarding chess clocks, which I am not totally in agreement that we need.

Wouldn't it be a simpler solution to adopt chess clocks as part of your playing materials such as dice, tape measures ect ect. Of course TOs would have to have a few of them on hand for those forgetful players. But it would mitigate the cost of providing them.

Chess clock apps, people. Free. Every table can have 2 of them for no cost. Not that I think they would work in 40k, but cost is the least of the worries for them.

zedsdead wrote:
regarding chess clocks, which I am not totally in agreement that we need.

Wouldn't it be a simpler solution to adopt chess clocks as part of your playing materials such as dice, tape measures ect ect. Of course TOs would have to have a few of them on hand for those forgetful players. But it would mitigate the cost of providing them.

tape measure: 3-15 dollars
dice: ~7 dollars
chess clock: ~40 dollars

one of those things are not quite like the other


Honestly, looking at it from a non-tournament player point of view, I'd have to blame that fact that MSU lists are basically a 'must' with an ITC ruleset, and with ITC being the most common, this is leading to longer play times.


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Trasvi wrote:

zedsdead wrote:
regarding chess clocks, which I am not totally in agreement that we need.

Wouldn't it be a simpler solution to adopt chess clocks as part of your playing materials such as dice, tape measures ect ect. Of course TOs would have to have a few of them on hand for those forgetful players. But it would mitigate the cost of providing them.

Chess clock apps, people. Free. Every table can have 2 of them for no cost. Not that I think they would work in 40k, but cost is the least of the worries for them.

assuming everyone has a smart phone, which makes the game a bit more exclusive.

I'd point out that in 5th (when MSU was king) games finished in 2 hours or less. 2 Hours was the time frame for many a larger event with 2.5 being abnormal.

The idea that MSU is to blame is silly. While MSU armies now are larger than in 5th it's not by that great of a degree. Game complexity, mission complexity, rule dispersement. and speed of change have far, far more to do with it than MSU.

pre-game rolls plus cheaper models. The regular ork boy went from 9 points to 6 points a model with grenades from the mid-2000's to now!

I think those two factors are making the games take longer, someone put it earlier "Everyone used to finish games and now they don't, did EVERYONE decide slow playing is to their advantage? Is the current crop of players that different?"

You can't generate powers at the beginning of the tournament or worse, have people choose because it changes everything way too much. I love playing psychic armies because I can choose what I want to roll for depending on my opponent. And if you let me choose? Holy cow that would be game breaking. Also make several independent characters utterly pointless.

I think calling pacing marks for everyone is definitely the best way to go. Let people know that they're behind schedule when they're 20 minutes into their game and they're not deployed, not when they have 20 minutes left. I've started setting a clock NOT A CHESS CLOCK just a clock and say, hey, we're behind schedule here, lets pick up deployment. That's done wonders. completely anecdotal I understand but there you go. I play green tide and summoning so that's gotten me to almost always getting through turn 5.

I'm not a fan of dropping to 1500 for the same reasons others have said. I think it limits diversity of lists and tools you can bring.
Think about it like this, would you rather play to a game ending at time on turn 5 without rolling for random game length, or have every game end in one of the players getting tabled? That's the comparison I see. I hate it when a player gets tabled so that's why I want to see the points stay on the board.

As someone who made the argument for years about more tools=better game play I've shifted my stance from 5th to now.

In 5th it felt like you needed the points to combat certain styles of list. But from my read that isn't the case anymore. Deathstars need certain units to function that eat points. When most deathstars run you around 1k with all the add-on just for the unit (not the compulsories) you don't get the tools to help the army function and support the star.

I mean, lets be real, you can't under the current structure build true all taker armies. You build an army designed to mitigate potential bad matchups but you still to an extent play the meta. That is no different than 1500.

I guess it comes down to a few things for me;

-Games are already pretty much at their max time frame. Going to 3 hours a game isn't feasible for most events unless you drop a game from the weekend.

-Increasing time has been happening for 2 editions and 4 years now and hasn't resolved the problem. It's actually gotten worse.

-If increasing time isn't working, and hasn't been working, why would it work now? And if it won't work it's time to consider something new. Dropping points is something that, while it won't 100% fix the problem, will directly impact it.

-It lowers the bar of inclusion and the strain on attendees. Most other suggestions don't. Making tournaments more of a slog and harder to get to and lessening desire.

Just my thoughts. They pretty heavily mirror Target's. We're in a rut and doing the same thing we've been doing isn't going to get us out of the rut.

I don't think chess clocks will really fix the issue. They help deter slow play, yeah, but I don't see slow play happen all that much. What I see more often is both players moving at decent speed and making it to turn 5, but not having time for t6 or 7, because the game is just too damn fat to fit in that little time window anymore. It really let itself go.

All I think chess clocks would accomplish is that you'll get to turn 5, run out of time, and the clock will generally show that both people used the same-ish amount of time. (If one person got run-away board control superiority, he may use up a bit more.) In which case we still have the same problem: the games aren't finishing naturally and its not usually the fault of the players.

It's a solution for a different problem than the one we're having.

The game should be in a state that average knowledgable players going at "serious but not rushing" speed should finish a typical game naturally with a good 10-20 wind down break after putting models back in the army tray, scoring the game and turning it in, etc. There shouldn't be more than a small handful running to time, like say 5%. There should be rounds here and there at events where no one hits the time wall at all, and the next round actually starts on time.

The only real solution to that issue is to get the game on a damn treadmill and cut some food to get it down some weight.

Ideally if we could house rule a few things we could really shave time. Things like: Models moving in move, shooting, AND assault phase, complicated wound pools with look out sir in squads, anything involving multiple blasts scattering, close combat in general... All of those eat huge chunks of time.

I think if we had a good way to house rule some of the clunkisness away and also lowered points a bit, we'd actually be in the situation from above; Where most games finish naturally with enough time to catch a breath before the next round.

I like the idea of chess clocks just to see who is taking more time in an event, and then you can look at lists and decide, based on the army and feedback, if they were slow playing or not.

But it's quite the hassle for the normal TO to parse through. Heck, it sounds like LVO didn't even collect lists to check, reading through feedback any more complicated than great/good/bad sportsmanship is pretty unlikely to happen. Unless there were some automated way to put in a complaint about a player and get it resolved, it's unlikely to mean anything. Just the clock running out doesn't exactly mean much, it could just mean they had a lot of hard choices to make, or they were playing an army with an extreme amount of pre-game rolls, or a Horde, etc. As has been said in this very thread, there are dozens of reasons for someone to need more time that aren't attributed to malicious play.

I think a lot of things have come together to make the games longer since 5th.

1.) Less Mechanized armies. It takes a lot less time to move 10 metal boxes than it does to move 10 squads of 6 guys. So while MSU may not have changed much, it used to be MSU in boxes, now it is less so. Throw in the initiative step pile in for assault and now you are moving more models more often.

2.) Increased volume of dice rolling. We roll a lot more now. Random charges, more shots (a unit of guys shoots way more times than a single tank), overwatch, re-rolls (shooting, saves etc.), Psychic powers, random tables in some books.

3.) Speaking of Psychic powers, they get used way more now than back in 5e. Most books had so-so powers at best until nearly the end of the edition, now there are a ton of great powers available. This began in 6e and continued on.

4.) The Pre-game phase- rolling powers, warlord etc. As well as some missions requiring more player choices at this time.

5.) Reduced reserves (elimination of Dawn of War deployment, or change to it at least) In 5e it was not uncommon for little to happen turn 1 as more armies used null deployment, and 1/3rd of games started with little on the table for either player.

All these things combine to make the game longer. I agree with those who say reduce points (though I'm not certain how much it will help.) I don't think chess clocks are the way to go. I think TOs keeping on top of players knowing how much time they have is more important than having each player have exact equal time.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
How about requiring all games have to complete turn 5 before anyone can move on. I imagine by round 3, anyone slow playing would be murdered by the other participants. So it works it self out naturally.

No it won't. Some people are slow and give no feths about who they inconvenience.


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 whembly wrote:

1) Before, the tournament starts and in *front* of tournament officials, roll your powers, warlord and random gears for the rest of your tournament games. Take that part out of having to do that randomness before each and every game. That'll cut down the pre-deployment time a bit.

I know you're just tossing ideas out, but, as mentioned above, in large tournaments with 300+ people and only 5 staff, that will actually take MORE time if they have to witness it all.

 kronk wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
How about requiring all games have to complete turn 5 before anyone can move on. I imagine by round 3, anyone slow playing would be murdered by the other participants. So it works it self out naturally.

No it won't. Some people are slow and give no feths about who they inconvenience.

This is a bit of a touchy subject, but I think it's one that needs to be talked about at least a little bit.

Punishment. There seems to not be much or any in many tournaments. To me, there are a couple factors:

1) People are shy to come forward and point fingers at their opponents. No one wants to be that guy who threw a fit over his opponent's gameplay, even if said opponent was slowplaying/fudging measurements/misplaying on purpose. Everyone wants to be friendly and all, and it can be hard to "snitch" on the guy who gave you a bad game. With the Adepticon format, where you have to mark Great/Good/Bad sportsmanship before signing, it's even worse, because no one wants to be like "Hey can you sign this sheet that says you're a jerk? Thanks."

2) Not enough TOs/Judges/etc to enforce everything. Once you open the floodgates of bringing up complaints of bad play or (Emperor forbid) cheating, then TOs suddenly have to constantly patrol and hand out judgements as soon as they come up.

3) Events are just afraid to punish. As soon as you're an event that punishes someone or has to go all the way of banning someone, there's a bit of a mark on you as an organization. People may avoid because they don't want to chance getting kicked out, even if they aren't the sort of people who would act in that way.


But honestly even with those, I think something needs to happen. If you want to keep people from slow playing, don't put in more rules. They'll find ways to circumvent them, or new ways to gain advantages that are just as annoying/bad sportsmanship. Enforce the rules that exist. Someone is slow playing or fudging things to their advantage? Dock them points. It keeps happening? More serious consequences, such as preventing them from any sort of placement or award, or even expulsion.

I'm not saying every instance of a player playing slow needs to have a consequence. Some people take a while to think, or have armies that necessitate more time for deliberation or just numbers. But I feel like there really is nothing in place to punish the people who are being malicious, which isn't good.

 kronk wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
How about requiring all games have to complete turn 5 before anyone can move on. I imagine by round 3, anyone slow playing would be murdered by the other participants. So it works it self out naturally.

No it won't. Some people are slow and give no feths about who they inconvenience.

Yeah, and they would be dead. The only trouble would be body removal.

I've been out of tournaments for awhile, so I'm super out of the loop. But when I played alot in tournaments in 5th ed they were usely 1500 or 1850.

What exactly is the Standard in 40k Tournaments as of late? 2000? 2500 like 'ard boys?

Because 1850 is usely the max size I ever do for pick-up games.

+1 for 1500, or 1650. If it doesn't help..at least we tried.

There is literally nothing wrong with giving it a try. 12 hrs straight of 40k is starting to fee more like a job then, then a hobby. You know its bad when in test games you don't usually plan on finishing past 5.

 kronk wrote:

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 whembly wrote:

1) Before, the tournament starts and in *front* of tournament officials, roll your powers, warlord and random gears for the rest of your tournament games. Take that part out of having to do that randomness before each and every game. That'll cut down the pre-deployment time a bit.

I know you're just tossing ideas out, but, as mentioned above, in large tournaments with 300+ people and only 5 staff, that will actually take MORE time if they have to witness it all.

Yeah... I was spitballing.

It seems to be that it's the first turn that's really the bugaboo as it takes way too long to roll all the random abilities and then start the game.

In a beers & pretzel setting, it's all kosher. But, in a 2.5 hour time lime, if you're spending more than 10 minutes to start the game... you're well on your way in painting yourself in the corner.

How 'bout this for an idea. A flat bonus points for both players for reaching turn 5? At LVO, I believe the W/T/L was 1000/500/0 ??? Right? And that there were plenty of ties? With this turn 5 bonus, it could break those ties.

The votes for 1500 does not even come to 50%. This seems like a desire for old hammer . This just further increases the gaps between old vets and people who started playing back in 6th edition. I remember once as a third edition player reading rants by some second edition players who absolutely hated third. As a relatively new player it seemed absurd tbh.

Also I feel a drop in points is less competitive and more geared towards casual gamers. God bless them but this is supposed to be a top competitive event.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
The votes for 1500 does not even come to 50%. This seems like a desire for old hammer . This just further increases the gaps between old vets and people who started playing back in 6th edition. I remember once as a third edition player reading rants by some second edition players who absolutely hated third. As a relatively new player it seemed absurd tbh.

Also I feel a drop in points is less competitive and more geared towards casual gamers. God bless them but this is supposed to be a top competitive event.

Didn't realize 45% in a multi selection poll was not significant enough to show a leaning. Not to mention the votes for another lower point value.

Honestly, the idea that lower points is more casual is entirely unfounded.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Also I feel a drop in points is less competitive and more geared towards casual gamers. God bless them but this is supposed to be a top competitive event.

What event? And lower point games will be just as competitive, imo - it just shifts things, and players will adapt and find the best lists, like always.

@dozer blades

So a bunch of competitive players (from all over the country) think 1500 to 1650 is at the very least a help and you call it less competitive. I know which camp I fall in.

Also instead of basically slamming pepole trying to find a solution feel free to present one and lay out how it will work. Go...

 Brennonjw wrote:


tape measure: 3-15 dollars
dice: ~7 dollars
chess clock: ~40 dollars

one of those things are not quite like the other


Honestly, looking at it from a non-tournament player point of view, I'd have to blame that fact that MSU lists are basically a 'must' with an ITC ruleset, and with ITC being the most common, this is leading to longer play times.

assuming everyone has a smart phone, which makes the game a bit more exclusive.

Windrider jetbikes $41 (x6 = $246)
Riptide - $85 (x3 = 255)
tactical squad - $40 (x6 = 240)
codex - $50 (x2 = 100)
Tournament tickets - $75 +
First chess clock result on eBay - $20 free delivery

The total kit out for attending a tournament - models, materials, codexes, rulebooks, dice, templates, transport cases, tickets, hotels, travel, food... a chess clock is going to be less than buying water at LVO. Its an extremely minor additional cost IF you feel the need to buy one.

Plus do you really think that, well, anyone who is playing this game in a tournament would be excluded because they can't afford a smartphone? Its an expensive hobby, playing in tournaments makes it even MORE expensive, *nearly* everyone (especially in our demographic) has a smartphone anyway, and those playing 40k that don't is by choice not because of affordability. Plus you can literally get $10 Android smartphones, so cheaper than some chess clocks anyway...

Around 40% of those who have voted opted for less points. It's the majority for sure but doesn't have a quorum.

I have played at many events where the majority of the games were played to conclusion in 2.5 hours or less at 1850 points.

It's sounds to me one of the major constraints was players reaching their assigned tables in a timely manner.

Another solution is add 1/2 hour to each round and stsrt earlier each day.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Around 40% of those who have voted opted for less points. It's the majority for sure but doesn't have a quorum.

I have played at many events where the majority of the games were played to conclusion in 2.5 hours or less at 1850 points.

It's sounds to me one of the major constraints was players reaching their assigned tables in a timely manner.

Another solution is add 1/2 hour to each round and stsrt earlier each day.

The term quorum doesn't really apply. Quorums establish minimum numbers to begin debate and voting. It might not be a majority, but it's certainly a significant plurality. Especially when considering that no single answer has a majority.

45% of folks selected 1500 points at the time of this post.

Next highest selected options: chess clocks (14%) and more time (13%)

To suggest adding 30 minutes per game (making rounds at most major events 3 hours and 30 minutes!!) would be going with something only suggested by 13% of people, so it's odd to at the same time point to lack of support for the highest voted option!

The main point is the majority is not in favor of 1500 points and desire alternatives.

If looking for a simple majority, there would likely be clearer results from a poll with less options... it will be interesting to see what the results are from the Frontline poll (which I'm guessing will have less than 9 options although folks could select more than one here).

But the majority, as of this post, 45% + 6% = 51% do favor a reduction in points below 1850.

45% of them want 1500

6% of them want something less than 1850, but more than 1500.

I guess it's safe to say a majority favor reduced points.

Some of these options are not mutually exclusive and could be combined to make the best timed tournament game experience for everyone.

In my opinion higher point levels unlock more options for players to explore and lower point costs don’t always solve time issues in tournaments.

I think everyone on this thread can agree that if tournaments are going to use timed rounds than something needs to change so that games finish naturally.

I think the most unbiased solution that treats both players equally is using a chess clock.

You can get a great chess clock for under $20 dollars on amazon. It’s the one I use:

http://www.amazon.com/inkint-Professional-Electronic-Competition-Tournament/dp/B00X77IVK4/ref=sr_1_32?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1455673273&sr=1-32&keywords=chess+clocks&refinements=p_n_feature_eight_browse-bin%3A3239672011

That’s full retail, so that means these clocks can be bought in bulk for less than $10 dollars. A savvy TO could easily include one of these in the cost of admission and break even or possibly profit if that is their goal.

This version I have been told does negative time:

http://www.amazon.com/DGT-1001-Digital-Chess-Clock/dp/B016E3WSVA/ref=sr_1_48?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1455673273&sr=1-48&keywords=chess+clocks&refinements=p_n_feature_eight_browse-bin%3A3239672011

With the intention of adding constructive substance to this conversation I am going to re-post just a few of the many benefits of chess clocks here from a thread that was closed for being repetitive.

Why Chess clocks:

1. It resolves all time-related disputes in 40k tournament games because it makes time equal for all players.

2. You control your own time.

2. It adds another level of strategy.

3. It’s exciting.

4. It’s easy once you get used to it.

5. Games always end the way they should.

In conclusion, if it is not the intention of timed round tournaments to treat all players equally and fairly in respect to time, then a chess clock system isn't necessary. However, if tournaments are going to use timed rounds and the organizers want to treat all players equally and fairly in respect to time, then they must use chess clocks. A chess clock system is equal and most importantly fair to both players because they control their own time.

40k is way to interactive for chess clocks to work well, especially in a tournament setting. Not to mention adding that kind of complication is going to lead to driving people away instead of toward tournaments.

@hulksmash have you tried it using the simple rules proposed in the rules thread or is this just your gut feeling?

From my experience in practice games played as if they are tournament games, I can tell you that the rules work very well. They work so well that it is now hard for me to play a timed game without them.

You only spend a few seconds per game turn passing the clock and it becomes second nature after a game or two.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Around 40% of those who have voted opted for less points. It's the majority for sure but doesn't have a quorum.

I have played at many events where the majority of the games were played to conclusion in 2.5 hours or less at 1850 points.

It's sounds to me one of the major constraints was players reaching their assigned tables in a timely manner.

Another solution is add 1/2 hour to each round and stsrt earlier each day.

That poll is terribly written. Biased options, mixed issues, and given in a context in which only certain groups are likely to make the effort to vote. Reducing points isn't a bad idea, but I wouldn't use this poll as an argument.

IMO having players roll psychic powers before the tournament and they keep powers for the duration of the tournament is a good time saver. I have seen demon armies waste 45min-1hr of game time each game of a tournament determining and noting psychic powers and setting up. If a game is 2h:30min more than 25% of the game was done before it started from one player.

It also prevents people from being able to list tailor psychic powers versus certain opponents, which is balanced as players don't have the option to swap out heavy/special weapons versus certain opponents keeping similar points costs and all.

Some people do intentionally slow play, especially shooty armies. They are often benefited by maximizing the first few turns of shooting, then setting up for a good position to grab objectives on what they plan will be the last turn due to "slow play" Have seen it happen a few times, not terribly often.

If chess clocks get involved players should have an overall time pool they use up- not a turn or phase based one necessarily- as some players are more active in some phases, or will do more in certain turns -ie assault armies are more likely to spend more time playing on turn 3+ than turn 1-2.

blaktoof wrote:
IMO having players roll psychic powers before the tournament and they keep powers for the duration of the tournament is a good time saver. I have seen demon armies waste 45min-1hr of game time each game of a tournament determining and noting psychic powers and setting up. If a game is 2h:30min more than 25% of the game was done before it started from one player.

It also prevents people from being able to list tailor psychic powers versus certain opponents, which is balanced as players don't have the option to swap out heavy/special weapons versus certain opponents keeping similar points costs and all.

Some people do intentionally slow play, especially shooty armies. They are often benefited by maximizing the first few turns of shooting, then setting up for a good position to grab objectives on what they plan will be the last turn due to "slow play" Have seen it happen a few times, not terribly often.

If chess clocks get involved players should have an overall time pool they use up- not a turn or phase based one necessarily- as some players are more active in some phases, or will do more in certain turns -ie assault armies are more likely to spend more time playing on turn 3+ than turn 1-2.

Chess clocks solve all these issues. If a player wants to use an hour of his clock determining psychic powers, he can.

You do have a pool, it is not turned based. As an example, if you are playing in a tournament that has three hour rounds then each player gets one hour and thirty minutes to use as they wish. That is what makes the system so fair. Each player gets equal time to spend as they wish. Take a look in the rules thread for how the system works and try a few games.

Remember you control your own time when using a chess clock.

t wrote:
@hulksmash have you tried it using the simple rules proposed in the rules thread or is this just your gut feeling?

From my experience in practice games played as if they are tournament games, I can tell you that the rules work very well. They work so well that it is now hard for me to play a timed game without them.

You only spend a few seconds per game turn passing the clock and it becomes second nature after a game or two.

It may be simple to you, but if would be a huge disincentive to attendees, particularly more casual ones. I don't consider myself a casual player, but would personally think twice about travelling to attend an event requiring the use of chess clocks.

How do you control time when your timer is on and your opponent is flicker jumping in your turn and over watching (a whole army like tau) in your turn? What about different saves like in a wolf star, look out sirs and ofcourse rolling 2 save at a time. Chess clocks DO NOT WORK in 40k as people can still abuse them and make it look like you've spent ages on your turn.

 DarkLink wrote:

That poll is terribly written. Biased options, mixed issues, and given in a context in which only certain groups are likely to make the effort to vote. Reducing points isn't a bad idea, but I wouldn't use this poll as an argument.

Yes, you got me; this thread is as political as any other. It's not pretending to be otherwise. This poll and its results are only an argument for a more official poll. Specifically, I hoped to get this question into the ITC poll. It sounds like that will happen next week. Thank you everyone for voting!

And I think the results speak for themselves. Look how few votes there are for the status quo! If the poll was reduced to two options, 1500 yes or no, what might the results be? 1500 may not be everyone's first choice, but clearly a significant majority of this forum want a solution, and there's a clear favorite.

I intentionally did not include my own arguments here yet. Of all the options, reducing army size is the only one that evenly lowers barriers to entry, and I value this highly for the sake of the hobby community.

Mission design is an interesting idea I wish I'd included in the poll, even if I wouldn't vote for it myself.

 FTGTEvan wrote:

t wrote:
@hulksmash have you tried it using the simple rules proposed in the rules thread or is this just your gut feeling?

From my experience in practice games played as if they are tournament games, I can tell you that the rules work very well. They work so well that it is now hard for me to play a timed game without them.

You only spend a few seconds per game turn passing the clock and it becomes second nature after a game or two.

It may be simple to you, but if would be a huge disincentive to attendees, particularly more casual ones. I don't consider myself a casual player, but would personally think twice about travelling to attend an event requiring the use of chess clocks.

This. I've been trying to snag people into the tourney scene lately. I've gotten a couple by convincing them that even tourneys are fairly "newbie-friendly" and not all serious business. Chess clocks run very VERY counter to that feel. They enhance an elitist competitive atmosphere instead of a friendly competitive atmosphere.

@t: I can tell you right now that not only would clocks convince my fledgling players to stay home, I would also duck out of the competitive scene if they became widespread.

The points drop is the only solution that makes sense. That will cause more (not all) games to finish naturally in a timely manner, make it more difficult to slow play without being obvious, and as others have said, lower the barrier of entry for people getting into the scene, which is quite possibly the most important aspect of the change. You can't keep up a competitive scene without players. People die, retire from the game, etc etc. For anything to thrive, there ALWAYS needs to be a fresh stream of youth incoming.

It was said before, points reduction will not make a huge difference. E.g. Moving 4 Knights instead of 5, basically no difference in time.
If you think it will become more competitive, i don't see how. Low model count armies will be hurt even more and will have to adapt thus increasing army size thus taking longer to move. And as another example, Eldar will still take Scatterbikes/Wraithknights/spiders (and rightfully so) and be as strong if not stronger than before compared to the meta.

1650 is fine been playing that a lot and it saves about 20-30 minutes of time. The difference of 400 points from both sides is around 3-4 units that no longer moves, shoots, assault, or deploys saving 20-30 that helps finish games. If more time is needed to be removed can always vote again next year. The people against point reduction can't even say it won't help because they know it will they just keep saying it won't stop slow play or all games finishing on time. Point reductions are not meant to remove all unfinished games just that more will finish. Lower point costs also make the game more accessible. Easier transportation, cheaper entry cost, and help eliminates cheesy gimmicks like using mass units to block reserve entry by taking over the board edge.

X078 wrote:
It was said before, points reduction will not make a huge difference. E.g. Moving 4 Knights instead of 5, basically no difference in time.
If you think it will become more competitive, i don't see how. Low model count armies will be hurt even more and will have to adapt thus increasing army size thus taking longer to move. And as another example, Eldar will still take Scatterbikes/Wraithknights/spiders (and rightfully so) and be as strong if not stronger than before compared to the meta.

You used the most extreme example where 350 points = 1 model. A player is losing basically 20% of their army if we drop to 1500. That's 20% fewer models to move, make decisions regarding, take saves for, etc. It's silly to say it wouldn't make a difference in time, as many of us have played smaller games and it is most definitely quicker.

To provide the opposite end of the spectrum "350 points means my guard army loses an entire platoon! I lose a pcs, 2 infantry squads, 50 conscripts, and a wyvern! (30/100/150/65 = 345). 75 Models and 4 blasts from a multiple barrage unit, that saves a ton of time!.

No one is saying it will be more competitive - they're saying that competitive players shouldn't care, because 1) it won't functionally change the meta much and 2) even if it did, it wouldn't matter, because competitive players adapt to the meta anyways to remain competitive. What was competitive 6 months ago is not now, that's always the case.

X078 wrote:
It was said before, points reduction will not make a huge difference. E.g. Moving 4 Knights instead of 5, basically no difference in time.
If you think it will become more competitive, i don't see how. Low model count armies will be hurt even more and will have to adapt thus increasing army size thus taking longer to move. And as another example, Eldar will still take Scatterbikes/Wraithknights/spiders (and rightfully so) and be as strong if not stronger than before compared to the meta.

So because it won't speed up the smallest army in the game to play reducing the time is bad?

Less scatterbikes and spiders (for example, LVO's winner would have had 30 or so less spiders) makes the armies stronger? If anything less of the MSU that elder can bring to the table enhances quite a few other armies as elder have the ability to scale up msu wise in a way most armies don't. A lot of armies peak MSU much sooner than Eldar.

It would be just as competitive as now. And I say this as someone who was making your arguments in 5th and even early 6th edition. We're basically at a point where we need to do something and the something we have been doing (increasing round times) is no longer a viable option. Chess clocks are not friendly to growing 40k for the numerous reasons posted above and that doesn't even consider the amount of interaction between players on their turns and the issues that raises. So we're left with lowering the points (basically bringing us back to 5th/early 6th sized armies) or changing rules and creating strict comp for what can be brought.

I vote points lowering is the thing to try now.

Target wrote:

...To provide the opposite end of the spectrum "350 points means my guard army loses an entire platoon! I lose a pcs, 2 infantry squads, 50 conscripts, and a wyvern! (30/100/150/65 = 345). 75 Models and 4 blasts from a multiple barrage unit, that saves a ton of time!...

Still thats one platoon/unit/group/etc of many and true you will probably save time with horde armies. But my point is you might already be taking an overly long time by using a horde army so even by dropping 350p i am not sure the time saved is adequate enough to justify it. Maybe we need to drop 500p to be able to handle a game in 2h45m , who knows, and that's the problem.

First of all, it's a combined 700 point drop. Remember, both players are going down in points, and the combined total is a fairly significant difference.

Secondly, and someting that seems to be frequently overlooked, not all points are the same. Most armies have at the very least some sort of HQ and a unit to put him in. In 1850 as well as 1500 point armies. Take the battle company as an example; there are, at minimum, two 90 point guys, as well as usually two 140 point Devastator squads. Now you're 460 points along the way, regardless of what point level you're playing at, with units that, on a relative level, don't take a lot of time during your turns. The difference between 1850 and 1500 is that you have comparatively much less leeway to squeeze in tons of MSU/psykers/hordes/complex deathstars etc, which are the things that really take time.

Or, to use Imperial Knights in a different perspective; a single Knight (which is, according to serious, peer-reviewed research, approximately five million times more common than a pure IK army) leaves you with a lot less room for time-intensive units at 1500 points compared to 1850 points.

X078 wrote:

Target wrote:

...To provide the opposite end of the spectrum "350 points means my guard army loses an entire platoon! I lose a pcs, 2 infantry squads, 50 conscripts, and a wyvern! (30/100/150/65 = 345). 75 Models and 4 blasts from a multiple barrage unit, that saves a ton of time!...

Still thats one platoon/unit/group/etc of many and true you will probably save time with horde armies. But my point is you might already be taking an overly long time by using a horde army so even by dropping 350p i am not sure the time saved is adequate enough to justify it. Maybe we need to drop 500p to be able to handle a game in 2h45m , who knows, and that's the problem.

Your point was that you felt lowering points wouldn't change anything - that is not true as shown above and acknowledged by you. Your new point is that "horde armies don't count because they take too long and shouldn't be played anyways". Again, the meta needs diversity and so does the game to be healthy and to not turn away players. We both chose opposite ends of the spectrum, which is why this example feels silly.

More pertinent example, in Alex's LVO winning list - 350 points is 3x6 warp spiders. Cutting out 18 warp spiders will save a significant amount of time as they move three times per turn and have to be deepstruck, shot, shot at, rolled for, etc. The thing is, experienced, very focused players can generally get a fully completed game (one that isn't just a one-sided tabling, or doesnt involve two very low-count/fast armies) done in 2h45m.

But:

1) Is 2h45m an enjoyable or tenable game state for us to be in? 5 Years ago tournaments ran and completed more games with 1h45m/2h rounds in the US. We havent changed the point values since then, we've just slowly crept round times higher and higher.
2) Currently at 2h45m many, many games aren't finish even among focused players (ending on 5 without rgl) or even earlier. Is this enjoyable?

Lowering points is not a magical cure all, but it *will* decrease game length by a measurable amount for the majority of games. This will mean more games finish, round times don't need to get extended, etc. All good things.

blaktoof wrote:


IMO having players roll psychic powers before the tournament and they keep powers for the duration of the tournament is a good time saver. I have seen demon armies waste 45min-1hr of game time each game of a tournament determining and noting psychic powers and setting up. If a game is 2h:30min more than 25% of the game was done before it started from one player.

This is a total nerf to the psychic phase. I doubt the majority of tourney players would buy into this one.

I worry that lower points will just exacerbate the points issues in the game, pushing us even closer to an all-Eldar meta.

That book already has shockingly under-costed units, and the smaller the game, the more their "bang for the buck" will be exaggerated.

At 1500pts, a WraithKnight is still affordable, only the other armies answers may not always be, etc...

That's a really good point. As I said I think lower points is more appealing to casual gamers but that is not the purpose of a competition.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
I worry that lower points will just exacerbate the points issues in the game, pushing us even closer to an all-Eldar meta.

That book already has shockingly under-costed units, and the smaller the game, the more their "bang for the buck" will be exaggerated.

At 1500pts, a WraithKnight is still affordable, only the other armies answers may not always be, etc...

Counter-point...

All the new codices have shockingly under-costed units. Moreso, formations provide most armies with shockingly FREE rules or free units, consider for a moment the 4 major formations that get free things (Gladius, War Convo, Firestream, SW Free Pod formation) none of them will be hurt by a move to 1500. Gladius fits comfortably within that limit and has roughly 400 pts to spend on upgrades for weapons or extra units, War Convo fits in nicely and still ends up with around ~400 pts of free upgrades. Firestreams run less than 400 pts most of the time so can easily fit into 1500 lists. Theres also daemon summoning providing free units.

If anything, I'd argue that Eldar will be weakened by the points drop as armies that benefit from free units/rules will still be getting almost the same amount of free stuff at 1500 that they do at 1850.

Under-costedness/points efficiency is all over the place in the newer codices. As long as you don't ban formations, the Eldar issue will remain mostly moot (I agree they are a slight step above other codices, but not to an absurd extent).

 Dozer Blades wrote:
That's a really good point. As I said I think lower points is more appealing to casual gamers but that is not the purpose of a competition.

Lower points values actually make the game *more* competitive as now more army options are available and it becomes a game where you have some time to think about decisions and more plans can be made with a larger variety of armies. Many excellent and viable counters to current powerhouse lists simply cannot be taken due to time constraints, that is the antithesis of competitive.

Skill at the game is not measured in clicks or actions per second, but at 4 seconds per model per phase at relatively low model counts, that sure seems like what a small amount of people think it may all be about it would seem.

It in no way decreases the competitiveness, and it makes list building less of a "take all the things" situation for some armies with multiple excellent formations.

This is speaking as a competitive player myself.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
That's a really good point. As I said I think lower points is more appealing to casual gamers but that is not the purpose of a competition.

You keep repeating this mantra but have yet to provide any solid evidence that this may in fact be the case.

Plus the repeated veiled insults toward casual gamers and the "us vs. them" mentality of the posts are grating.

 Dozer Blades wrote:

blaktoof wrote:


IMO having players roll psychic powers before the tournament and they keep powers for the duration of the tournament is a good time saver. I have seen demon armies waste 45min-1hr of game time each game of a tournament determining and noting psychic powers and setting up. If a game is 2h:30min more than 25% of the game was done before it started from one player.

This is a total nerf to the psychic phase. I doubt the majority of tourney players would buy into this one.

I'm just spitballing here ya'll.

Yes, that would be a nerf.

Can we at least acknowledge that in a tournament setting, eating away ~25% of the round time with pre-game rolls for random powers isn't a *good* thing?

I've been playing a lot lately, and I can't recall ever completing the 4th game turn against a psyker heavy list within 2.5 hours that includes the pre-deployment activity.

Yes, it's a large part of the game now, but we're talking about ITC rules, that's optimized for better/fun tournament play... maybe we ought to look at addressing these pre-game rolls before each game?

Maybe cap the total psyker levels? Shoot, at this point, I'd be curious what the ITC voters would say that if we cap it at "x" total levels, then the trade off would be that you can choose the powers before the tournament, and that's what you'd play throughout the tourny.

 whembly wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:

blaktoof wrote:


IMO having players roll psychic powers before the tournament and they keep powers for the duration of the tournament is a good time saver. I have seen demon armies waste 45min-1hr of game time each game of a tournament determining and noting psychic powers and setting up. If a game is 2h:30min more than 25% of the game was done before it started from one player.

This is a total nerf to the psychic phase. I doubt the majority of tourney players would buy into this one.

I'm just spitballing here ya'll.

Yes, that would be a nerf.

Can we at least acknowledge that in a tournament setting, eating away ~25% of the round time with pre-game rolls for random powers isn't a *good* thing?

I've been playing a lot lately, and I can't recall ever completing the 4th game turn against a psyker heavy list within 2.5 hours that includes the pre-deployment activity.

Yes, it's a large part of the game now, but we're talking about ITC rules, that's optimized for better/fun tournament play... maybe we ought to look at addressing these pre-game rolls before each game?

Maybe cap the total psyker levels? Shoot, at this point, I'd be curious what the ITC voters would say that if we cap it at "x" total levels, then the trade off would be that you can choose the powers before the tournament, and that's what you'd play throughout the tourny.

As someone who routinely plays with Tigurius and/or a Librarius Conclave I would be in favor of something like this. Speeding up the psychic pre-game non sense would be nice. As a former Daemon player, with lots of rewards and powers to roll for, I would again be in favor of this.

Does dropping points really do anything?

What's to prevent TOs from shortening the game time after dropping the points? We're back to square 1 with the same problem...too many points per unit time allotted.

Why can't we just use 10 minute egg timers, where each player has 10 minutes to move, psych, and shoot, and if the time runs out they don't get as much shooting. Assault would not be timed.

Egg timers are way cheaper than chess clocks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

blaktoof wrote:
IMO having players roll psychic powers before the tournament and they keep powers for the duration of the tournament is a good time saver. I have seen demon armies waste 45min-1hr of game time each game of a tournament determining and noting psychic powers and setting up. If a game is 2h:30min more than 25% of the game was done before it started from one player.

It also prevents people from being able to list tailor psychic powers versus certain opponents, which is balanced as players don't have the option to swap out heavy/special weapons versus certain opponents keeping similar points costs and all.

Really? If I rolled bad powers, I should be able to cancel my tournament fee and get a full refund on the hotel room, etc. Why would I want to play a tournament with a crippled army?

 JimOnMars wrote:
Does dropping points really do anything?

What's to prevent TOs from shortening the game time after dropping the points? We're back to square 1 with the same problem...too many points per unit time allotted.

Why can't we just use 10 minute egg timers, where each player has 10 minutes to move, psych, and shoot, and if the time runs out they don't get as much shooting. Assault would not be timed.

Egg timers are way cheaper than chess clocks.

Doesn't work straight out like that. Do you stop the time for your opponent doing Interceptor, counter deploy (Deathmarks intercepting Deep Strikers), Deny the Witch, Saves, Overwatch, Flicker Jump, Reanimations, Counter Charges (new SW), or anything else that might come up?

Chess timers sorta work because you can pass to your opponent as soon as it's time for them to do their stuff in your turn, but even then it's not a perfect system. Assault becomes really confusing (going at different Initiatives, then saves, then special rules, etc), so the rules for using the chess clock might be confusing enough to just add time on top of the problem.

I hate it when people use things like this to bias the game in their favor. This should be as unbiased as possible to derive the best results for everyone possible.

I think in addition to a drop to 1500, a few Army Comp issues need to be addressed.
1) Battle Company (Gladius). They have problems finishing games because they have too many units, and they do better when games fail to finish so they don't have an incentive to try to finish them. This formation has got to be adjusted or limited in some way for the good of competitive play.
2) The Psychic phase. It takes forever for some armies, and it also disrupts the flow of events. A simple limit on the maximum number of warp chargers per psychic phase would help out here a lot.
3) Overly Complicated War Gear (Like War Convocation). Can slow the game down. A limit on that formations like that might make sense.
4) In the ITC, Void Shield Generators are too good. They slow games down by reducing casualties significantly. Changing it so that Models under the void shield are protected rather than units would help a lot.
5) Formations that bring back and/or duplicate models (Endless Swarm, Drone Farm, Renegades) slow the game down, and could be limited in some way.
6) The ITC missions are geared towards MSU / Reserve oriented armies. Lowering the points levels will help with that, but also tweaking the missions might help.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
The main point is the majority is not in favor of 1500 points and desire alternatives.

Your Math isn't right. I voted for 2 of the options including 1500 points. If everyone voted for 2 options, then not only does 1500 points not only has a majority, it is favored by 88% of voters.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
That's a really good point. As I said I think lower points is more appealing to casual gamers but that is not the purpose of a competition.

What are you talking about? Have you ever met a casual gamer? The type of gamers I know that frown on competitive play all play huge games. It is only the competitive crowd that plays smaller games. Furthermore, the current system isn't effectively as competitive because games aren't finishing. If you want a more competitive system, you've got to get the games done. Beyond that, the idea that tournaments should intentionally try to alienate casual gamers is hugely problematic. That is a bad thing, not a good thing. A drop to 1500 will almost certainly drive away a few casual gamers, and that is the biggest argument against it from my point of view. Competitive gamers will do just fine. Better in fact, because event where more games finish will be more effectively competitive events.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dozer Blades wrote:
I hate it when people use things like this to bias the game in their favor. This should be as unbiased as possible to derive the best results for everyone possible.

I actually agree with you here. The Goal of the points decrease is to create a more competitive tournament environment, that is more enjoyable for those who attend.

There are a some gamers that like really big games, and feel like our games are already too small, or too restrictive, so i really think we should have separate formats for different types of gamers.
A Big format with:
2,500 Points.
Unlimited Detachments
No Ban List
3+ Hour rounds.

A Small Format with:
1500 points.
Restrictions on Detachments, and formations.
A Ban list and restrictions on SHV / GC
2:30-2:45 hour rounds

That way, people can vote with their feet, and play in a format that better suites their interests. I kinda think this is inevitable, and now is as good a time as any.

tag8833 wrote:
I think in addition to a drop to 1500, a few Army Comp issues need to be addressed.
1) Battle Company (Gladius). They have problems finishing games because they have too many units, and they do better when games fail to finish so they don't have an incentive to try to finish them. This formation has got to be adjusted or limited in some way for the good of competitive play.
2) The Psychic phase. It takes forever for some armies, and it also disrupts the flow of events. A simple limit on the maximum number of warp chargers per psychic phase would help out here a lot.
3) Overly Complicated War Gear (Like War Convocation). Can slow the game down. A limit on that formations like that might make sense.
4) In the ITC, Void Shield Generators are too good. They slow games down by reducing casualties significantly. Changing it so that Models under the void shield are protected rather than units would help a lot.
5) Formations that bring back and/or duplicate models (Endless Swarm, Drone Farm, Renegades) slow the game down, and could be limited in some way.
6) The ITC missions are geared towards MSU / Reserve oriented armies. Lowering the points levels will help with that, but also tweaking the missions might help.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
The main point is the majority is not in favor of 1500 points and desire alternatives.

Your Math isn't right. I voted for 2 of the options including 1500 points. If everyone voted for 2 options, then not only does 1500 points not only has a majority, it is favored by 88% of voters.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
That's a really good point. As I said I think lower points is more appealing to casual gamers but that is not the purpose of a competition.

What are you talking about? Have you ever met a casual gamer? The type of gamers I know that frown on competitive play all play huge games. It is only the competitive crowd that plays smaller games. Furthermore, the current system isn't effectively as competitive because games aren't finishing. If you want a more competitive system, you've got to get the games done. Beyond that, the idea that tournaments should intentionally try to alienate casual gamers is hugely problematic. That is a bad thing, not a good thing. A drop to 1500 will almost certainly drive away a few casual gamers, and that is the biggest argument against it from my point of view. Competitive gamers will do just fine. Better in fact, because event where more games finish will be more effectively competitive events.

If Battle Company is too good, then why did only 1 make the top 8 at LVO? I keep hearing folks complain about BC and War Convo, neither did overwhelmingly well. ITC has 2 missions that are damn near impossible for BC to win depending upon matchup (KP and Relic and really they are unlikely to ever win KP). Add KP to too many missions and I promise you it will be bad for the game. I know, I for one, would switch right back to playing a deathstar army. More than one KP mission would effectively render the BC unplayable at a GT.

Punishing MSU will be bad for the game as all you will do is push people towards deathstar/sh/gmc 40k.

Also, if you nerf BC/War Convocation you will remove those armies completely and totally from competitive play. Prior to new codex, marines were fielded for bikes, centurions and deathstars. I'd rather play against BC every day of the week. And if you are going to remove the free units formations, youll have to do the same for the free rules formations. Necron Decurion has the same effect as free transports and they can run MSU very well if they'd like, with that MSU being nigh unkillable for most armies. You'll also have to further punish Tau formations that give them free special rules that are quite powerful. See the slippery slope here? Units, just like abilities have value in the game.

I'd argue that top armies (Eldar, Necrons, SM, Tau, Daemons and War Convo) are all relatively well-balanced vs one another and need no modification as is.

Requizen wrote:


Doesn't work straight out like that. Do you stop the time for your opponent doing Interceptor, counter deploy (Deathmarks intercepting Deep Strikers), Deny the Witch, Saves, Overwatch, Flicker Jump, Reanimations, Counter Charges (new SW), or anything else that might come up?

Chess timers sorta work because you can pass to your opponent as soon as it's time for them to do their stuff in your turn, but even then it's not a perfect system. Assault becomes really confusing (going at different Initiatives, then saves, then special rules, etc), so the rules for using the chess clock might be confusing enough to just add time on top of the problem.

This is the main problem. Chess Clocks work great in Warmachine because there is very little player interaction. If you trust your opponent, you can leave the table and they can finish their turn without you being there (unless you have Tough or Counter-charge). In 40k, both players are active in psychic, shooting, and assault, and depending on army, are active in each movement phase too.

Is it fair that a Necron army has to double-dip for time where he/she must spend time in their own turn moving, shooting, etc, and then have to burn time making saves and reanimates? What about a green tide with a Painboy for FnP saves? What about Tau for interceptor? White Scars for Hit and Run?

40k has far more player interaction at different steps. If you watch high level warmachine, flipping the clock between players is a big part of the game when time is low, and it would become obtrusive to the game to have in 40k when the clock is being slapped back and forth, which will be constant. It also heavily penalizes some armies for no other reason than that they get to have saves or do things out of sequence, which should be their strengths.

Enforcing a blanket ruling of penalizing games that do not finish just encourages those players that would maliciously slow-play to continue slow-playing if they thought they were going to lose. It also has the negative impact of penalizing newer players who are just a bit slow, especially if they are also playing a newer player. While winning tournaments is the focus of the most competitive, I'd wager a good chunk of tournament goers are looking to play and do not realistically think they have a chance at the top spot. The best players rise to the top, and so while they may get the awards, it is the rest of the players that make up the attendance of the event, and penalizing some of them for not being "pro" is likely to hurt the overall health of an event.

A simple stopwatch could help in identifying intentional slow-play. If each player times their turns, then there is some evidence to suggest who is purposely taking the lion's share of the time. I'd be hesitant to have any blanket ruling here as it is likely that most slow-play is not intentional and shouldn't necessarily be punished; however, it is also each player's obligation to alert a judge if they feel that they are not getting adequate time to play the game.

All in all, cutting points shifts the meta, and it forces plenty of folk to redo a lot of hard work tuning lists, but it is the least disruptive option, assuming that the rounds are also not shortened. It could also be paired with other changes, but the impact of these changes have to be carefully considered.

 LValx wrote:
If Battle Company is too good, then why did only 1 make the top 8 at LVO?

Its not too good. It is too slow to play. I don't think the issue is game balance. The issue is completing games in the allowed timeframe.

tag8833 wrote:

 LValx wrote:
If Battle Company is too good, then why did only 1 make the top 8 at LVO?

Its not too good. It is too slow to play. I don't think the issue is game balance. The issue is completing games in the allowed timeframe.

Its only too slow to play for a player that is slow playing. If the game is taken down to 1500 itd be plenty easy for good players to complete games using BC.

By your logic you may as well ban AM, Orks and any other horde army.

It is like a said - 1500 points limit is a throwback to old hammer since it keeps a lot of newer aspects out of the game. I have been to plenty of GTs with 1850 points where time was not an issue - I really don't think it is the points limit why some games did not make it to RGL or were rushed to complete. Going to 1500 points is a simple solution which may not even actually fix the real problems.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
It is like a said - 1500 points limit is a throwback to old hammer since it keeps a lot of newer aspects out of the game. I have been to plenty of GTs with 1850 points where time was not an issue - I really don't think it is the points limit why some games did not make it to RGL or were rushed to complete. Going to 1500 points is a simple solution which may not even actually fix the real problems.

Agreed that it might not work, but we cant know if we don't try. and it doesn't hurt for one event to try this out.

No to me it's a really big deal - the difference between attending and not.

DCannon4Life wrote:
With regard to considering a point reduction vs. implementing incentives (and dis-incentives) for timely play, perhaps it is time to introduce the concept of the 'Reserve' section of a tournament. Since we've already looked at chess clocks, let's look at how chess tournaments are organized. A chess tournament of any decent size has two sections: Open and Reserve. Reserve players are grouped with other players in their rating range where players in the Open are in the mix with everyone (Grandmasters and U1400 alike). Yes, the Reserve is divided into even smaller subsections, but let's ignore that aspect as it doesn't translate to 40K.

The winner of the Open is the tournament champion. The winner of the Reserve section is the reserve section champion.... Prize support is awarded accordingly. When you sign up, you choose which section you want to play in. Perhaps the Open is 1850 with strict incentives/dis-incentives (and clocks/timers) while the Reserves is 1500 points. Games are scheduled for the same amount of time, whether in the Open or in the Reserves. If you choose to play in the Open section, you are accepting a higher standard of play (efficiency-wise, etc.). If you are a newer or more casually minded player, you are encouraged to play in the Reserve section.

Reposting from the LVO thread.

I fall under the 'other solution' heading.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
No to me it's a really big deal - the difference between attending and not.

There's nothing quite like the "my way or the highway" attitude. It's always nice to see someone use the old Appeal to Force fallacy though.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
No to me it's a really big deal - the difference between attending and not.

the community will live and move on without you.

really don't see how dropping 350 pts would make someone not want to play at an event, but hey, that's just me!

 Dozer Blades wrote:
I hate it when people use things like this to bias the game in their favor. This should be as unbiased as possible to derive the best results for everyone possible.

Higher points has the bias... Im not sure why you are so opposed to allowing more usable armies... there is literally no army invalidated by a pts reduction, and plenty that are invalid at that pts level (hordes)

Yes it requires a "change" to larger armies to scale them down, but you can in fact, scale them down. There is nothing new that is cut out by reducing pts, please cite a specific "new" thing that cannot be played at 1500.

Conversely, you simply cannot scale lots of armies up to 1850 without them becoming unplayable, and 1850 favours small model count armies with cookie cutter lists. After all wWho has time to explain how an esoteric list works, let alone move more then 100+ models when only 50 models per side means less then 4 seconds per model per phase. 1850 greatly favours lists that are fast to play and penalizes horde armies, 1500 still lets elite armies do their thing but also allows for hordes to affect the meta.

My IK do fine at 1850, as well as at 1500, my SW the same, my orks are fethed at 1850 and unplayable for most builds, same with my IG.

Try it out for a year, you will still see the same names in the top 20 of ITC, but the average gamer will likely have a lot more fun with games that are not uber focused on actions per second as opposed to a relaxed game that almost always plays to completion and even has time for talking, ogling models, ect

 JimOnMars wrote:
Does dropping points really do anything?

What's to prevent TOs from shortening the game time after dropping the points? We're back to square 1 with the same problem...too many points per unit time allotted.

That's not square one, then we have enough time to fit in another round!

DCannon4Life wrote:

DCannon4Life wrote:
With regard to considering a point reduction vs. implementing incentives (and dis-incentives) for timely play, perhaps it is time to introduce the concept of the 'Reserve' section of a tournament. Since we've already looked at chess clocks, let's look at how chess tournaments are organized. A chess tournament of any decent size has two sections: Open and Reserve. Reserve players are grouped with other players in their rating range where players in the Open are in the mix with everyone (Grandmasters and U1400 alike). Yes, the Reserve is divided into even smaller subsections, but let's ignore that aspect as it doesn't translate to 40K.

The winner of the Open is the tournament champion. The winner of the Reserve section is the reserve section champion.... Prize support is awarded accordingly. When you sign up, you choose which section you want to play in. Perhaps the Open is 1850 with strict incentives/dis-incentives (and clocks/timers) while the Reserves is 1500 points. Games are scheduled for the same amount of time, whether in the Open or in the Reserves. If you choose to play in the Open section, you are accepting a higher standard of play (efficiency-wise, etc.). If you are a newer or more casually minded player, you are encouraged to play in the Reserve section.

Reposting from the LVO thread.

I fall under the 'other solution' heading.

I think this is a great idea !

 Dozer Blades wrote:

blaktoof wrote:


IMO having players roll psychic powers before the tournament and they keep powers for the duration of the tournament is a good time saver. I have seen demon armies waste 45min-1hr of game time each game of a tournament determining and noting psychic powers and setting up. If a game is 2h:30min more than 25% of the game was done before it started from one player.

This is a total nerf to the psychic phase. I doubt the majority of tourney players would buy into this one.

I completely disagree.

This is no more than a nerf than requiring people to select wargear/units/formations with the knowledge they cannot switch it out between battles.

The chance of rolling good powers with few dice is low, so rolling bad powers is the norm. The chance of rolling the powers you want with lots of mastery levels is high, so you are very unlikely to roll bad powers.

The basic rules for 40k are not built for taking a single army list through consecutive play, and just as you make one army list to play a game, you roll psychic powers for said army list. If the army list has to play multiple games, then so should the rolled psychic powers.

It's no more an issue than opting to take a lot of heavy bolters on razorbacks over assault cannons or lascannons because you are betting that most of the attendees wont run heavy armor. Then being stuck with your "tactical" decision.

Or rather, allowing players to roll new psychic powers (which is essentially part of army creation) not only wastes time but gives unfair advantages to some armies. Yes the powers are random, but being able to pick between different masteries to suit your needs for a specific opponent/table is an unfair advantage- and having multiple rolls often guarantees getting most of the powers you want.

I also advocate all pre-game army rolls done 1 time at the begining of the tournament. Warlord trait, chaos boons, whatever.

It is not selecting - it is totally random. What you should be saying is let them pick the powers they want, right ? Or are you wanting to nerf the psychic phase ?

lemurking23 wrote:

Requizen wrote:


Doesn't work straight out like that. Do you stop the time for your opponent doing Interceptor, counter deploy (Deathmarks intercepting Deep Strikers), Deny the Witch, Saves, Overwatch, Flicker Jump, Reanimations, Counter Charges (new SW), or anything else that might come up?

Chess timers sorta work because you can pass to your opponent as soon as it's time for them to do their stuff in your turn, but even then it's not a perfect system. Assault becomes really confusing (going at different Initiatives, then saves, then special rules, etc), so the rules for using the chess clock might be confusing enough to just add time on top of the problem.

This is the main problem. Chess Clocks work great in Warmachine because there is very little player interaction. If you trust your opponent, you can leave the table and they can finish their turn without you being there (unless you have Tough or Counter-charge). In 40k, both players are active in psychic, shooting, and assault, and depending on army, are active in each movement phase too.

Is it fair that a Necron army has to double-dip for time where he/she must spend time in their own turn moving, shooting, etc, and then have to burn time making saves and reanimates? What about a green tide with a Painboy for FnP saves? What about Tau for interceptor? White Scars for Hit and Run?

Yes actually that is what makes chess clocks completely fair. You spend your time doing the actions that you choose. Rule 1 from http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/679969.page is the most important of all.

1.The player is responsible for their own time. It is the players right but not their obligation to make sure that their time is being handled properly. A player can always pass a phase, action or even a turn.

What this means in practice is that an opposing player cannot waste your time because you have the right but not the obligation to pass the clock to them.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
It is not selecting - it is totally random. What you should be saying is let them pick the powers they want, right ? Or are you wanting to nerf the psychic phase ?

it is controllably random and if you follow anyone who goes to any tournament and posts any battle report on any site you will see that the main powers the psykers go for they get- Due to ML2-3 getting multiple rolls and psychic heavy armies having more than one psyker they player always gets the key powers. The players who do not get the key powers are people who take 1 ML2 psyker, in which case the chance they are relying on psychic powers in the first place is pretty low.

When was the last time you saw a battle report where a daemon factory army complained they didn't get their key powers and that cost them the game? When was the last time you saw a player post their weapons were useless because they were fighting against a knight army and they took a TAC and it cost them the game.

It is not a nerf.

It is balancing the armies against each other. Rolling psychic powers per game is similar to letting people have different army lists each game as far as the rulebook is concerned as each game is supposed to be in a vacuum. That players do not have different lists per game is a tournament convetion, just as players not rolling new powers could be a tournament convention.

blaktoof wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:

blaktoof wrote:


IMO having players roll psychic powers before the tournament and they keep powers for the duration of the tournament is a good time saver. I have seen demon armies waste 45min-1hr of game time each game of a tournament determining and noting psychic powers and setting up. If a game is 2h:30min more than 25% of the game was done before it started from one player.

This is a total nerf to the psychic phase. I doubt the majority of tourney players would buy into this one.

I completely disagree.

This is no more than a nerf than requiring people to select wargear/units/formations with the knowledge they cannot switch it out between battles.

The chance of rolling good powers with few dice is low, so rolling bad powers is the norm. The chance of rolling the powers you want with lots of mastery levels is high, so you are very unlikely to roll bad powers.

The basic rules for 40k are not built for taking a single army list through consecutive play, and just as you make one army list to play a game, you roll psychic powers for said army list. If the army list has to play multiple games, then so should the rolled psychic powers.

It's no more an issue than opting to take a lot of heavy bolters on razorbacks over assault cannons or lascannons because you are betting that most of the attendees wont run heavy armor. Then being stuck with your "tactical" decision.

Or rather, allowing players to roll new psychic powers (which is essentially part of army creation) not only wastes time but gives unfair advantages to some armies. Yes the powers are random, but being able to pick between different masteries to suit your needs for a specific opponent/table is an unfair advantage- and having multiple rolls often guarantees getting most of the powers you want.

I also advocate all pre-game army rolls done 1 time at the begining of the tournament. Warlord trait, chaos boons, whatever.

There is no practical way to enforce this. It's way too much work for the TOs to ever hope to directly check each list, and unless you felt like wasting time interviewing each opponent's previous opponents you'd be taking their word for it. Requiring them to write something down leaves it open to cheating by forging their powers, and what happens if a player loses their sheet, either accidentally or "accidentally"?

As dozer said, you could just let people pick powers and traits, but that's a pretty big can of worms in regard to game balance.

Saying there is no way to enforce is is very similar to saying there is no way to enforce a player having the same army list each game.


Yes what is to stop a player from saying they have different powers.

What is to stop a player from adding an extra model to their army for some game, or switching the weapons on their dev squad?

Alternatively having pre army rolls (warlord, psychic powers, boons, etc) count as play time for a player using chess clocks would be acceptable.

There are apps to roll powers, can be done at registration and linked to player name, and can even spit out rolls for each game all at once.

takes no time, no extra manpower (during the event, OFC, someone still sets it up on the ipad)


Counting it against player time on a time clock is basically putting demerits against players who bring hordes/psychic/close combat heavy armies and benefiting those who choose smaller model count armies that don't participate in most phases.

Yeah right I'm sure that's going to be happening.

I guess the real poll will be out soon... Can't wait to see the results.

I use psykers a lot... and I've gotten pretty quick at rolling my powers.
Normally I take 4 daemon princes with 3 powers + 2 gifts each, and 2 heralds with 3 powers + 1 gift.
I have plastic cards with the powers and gifts listed on them that I mark with dry-erase markers. All my powers are rolled as soon as my opponent shows up to the table (most don't bother watching me do it and so they can set up/unpack their army) and done within 2 minutes.
Its just one of those things that you need to learn how to do fast in a tournament, just like moving models quickly, or rolling dice quickly, or knowing the rules. Its not something that needs to be singled out and changed.

Alan used a small white board to keep track of all his psychic powers. I think this is a good solution too.

As an Ork player, I often can't even consider running at 1850 or 2k without running out the clock. Moving 180 dudes every round is a total bitch.

t wrote:
Yes actually that is what makes chess clocks completely fair. You spend your time doing the actions that you choose. Rule 1 from http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/679969.page is the most important of all.

1.The player is responsible for their own time. It is the players right but not their obligation to make sure that their time is being handled properly. A player can always pass a phase, action or even a turn.

What this means in practice is that an opposing player cannot waste your time because you have the right but not the obligation to pass the clock to them.

But all this chess clock talk seems to resting on an assumption that doesn't work for 40k - that both players SHOULD take the same amount of time. In chess, that's fine because both players have the same amount of pieces and moves to make, with greater variation as the game goes on and pieces are removed. Even in Warmachine, this difference isn't huge.

40k is, quite deliberately and explicitly, a game where model and unit count is massively different across armies. One army might have 5 models, another might have 100. That is very much one of the selling points of 40k. In that situation, it's perfectly reasonable to expect one player to take less time per turn and one player to take more. As long as both players are attempting to play efficiently, it's totally fair for the player with the bigger army to take up more of the game.

Introducing chess clocks will certainly speed up play, but it will do so by encouraging people to take only small armies, and knock a ton of armies and builds out of the meta. Many people don't want this.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Also I feel a drop in points is less competitive and more geared towards casual gamers. God bless them but this is supposed to be a top competitive event.

Apologies as this is from a few pages ago, but i'd love to see some evidence that large tournaments are mostly attended by 'competitive' players.

In my experience of playing large US tournaments, the VAST majority of the people there are people who have bought what they consider a 'reasonably good' army, but are mostly there to enjoy playing a load of new people over the weekend, have no serious expectation of winning the tournament, and are probably about to play more games in that one weekend than they've played in the last few months! The people on the top tables, with a perfectly optimised army for this year's meta, who have practised and practised to be the best at the game, are usually the minority.

The rules for the event should reflect the wishes of the majority of players. I don't agree that there is a difference in 'competitiveness' between 1500 and 1850. However, even if there was, if more people would rather drop the points level than get up early/rush through games/use a chess clock, then that's what the tournament should do.

 ArbitorIan wrote:

Apologies as this is from a few pages ago, but i'd love to see some evidence that large tournaments are mostly attended by 'competitive' players.

In my experience of playing large US tournaments, the VAST majority of the people there are people who have bought what they consider a 'reasonably good' army, but are mostly there to enjoy playing a load of new people over the weekend, have no serious expectation of winning the tournament, and are probably about to play more games in that one weekend than they've played in the last few months! The people on the top tables, with a perfectly optimised army for this year's meta, who have practised and practised to be the best at the game, are usually the minority.

The rules for the event should reflect the wishes of the majority of players. I don't agree that there is a difference in 'competitiveness' between 1500 and 1850. However, even if there was, if more people would rather drop the points level than get up early/rush through games/use a chess clock, then that's what the tournament should do.

Amen brother.

blaktoof wrote:
Saying there is no way to enforce is is very similar to saying there is no way to enforce a player having the same army list each game.


Yes what is to stop a player from saying they have different powers.

What is to stop a player from adding an extra model to their army for some game, or switching the weapons on their dev squad?

Alternatively having pre army rolls (warlord, psychic powers, boons, etc) count as play time for a player using chess clocks would be acceptable.

You pick your armylist but you can't pick your powers. You're limited by planning to assemble, transport and paint models the models in your list, and if you add an extra model or change upgrades you'd better be real careful the points add up because people will occasionally check. Because you chose your list, it doesn't take much integrity to stick to it, and only someone who is actively and seriously trying to cheat will go to the effort necessary to fudge things.

Random powers, though, are so easy to cheat and have such a huge effect on the game that it takes much more integrity to not cheat. People get pissed off when they don't see their opponent's rolls for their powers, and that's even when they just look away for a second. There will be a few people who show up with a bunch of ML1 psykers who just got "lucky" and rolled up invisibility multiple times, and/or people who call bs on said players, and no one will have any idea who's right and wrong. It probably won't be common, but setting up the format like that is asking for trouble that the TOs don't have an easy means to resolve. All for saving, what, a couple minutes per game for most players? It's not worth the potential trouble.

I would prefer having the different tournaments for point values maybe 1250, 1500, 1850 and 2000

Most games in the UK are 1500, with the exception of ITC games/tournaments.

1850 is such an odd number too.

I would like 1500. It's what I build my lists towards.

1650 is about as low as I like simply because there are still so many codexs that can't use thier armies well at 1500pts. Many formations and decorians now have such a high buy in cost that it becomes impossible to fit those armies into 1500.

These are not strong codexs either. Armies like eldar and necron have extremely low cost and flexible decorians with many small formations that allow them to optimize for thier best units or msu spam.

However the Astra Militarum decorian, ork decorian, ad mech and battle company all fall apart or are completely unfieldable at 1500. Ad mech and skitari are honestly not a good army except for a single formation called war convocation. Battle company just becomes a large spam army with no bite once they lose the option of placing grav or other heavy weapons into thier list. The ork and Astra Militarum formations don't even fit in 1500. 1650 I think gives there armies a chance to field them but forces them to make choices on what they can bring. Ad mech loses its culexus, loses a lot of drop pods. Battle company loses its psyker conclave, and loses some heavy weapons. I just find 1650 a more ideal fit for everyone.

Introducing chess clocks will certainly speed up play, but it will do so by encouraging people to take only small armies, and knock a ton of armies and builds out of the meta. Many people don't want this.

Going to 1500 pts does the same thing. I'd argue 1650 and 1750 do the same.

Man up and play faster.

Get rid of random rolls for powers, WL traits and gift. Pick them and have them recorded on your army list. We've already got rid of random deployment and missions in a competitive environment, time to drop the rest of the pointless dice rolling.

I would not care to play in an event where you rolled once for psychic powers and we're stuck with the result for the entire event. Some armies absolutely rely on psychic abilities for basic army function, and one set of dice rolls cold ruin the event for them.

As for points costs, I prefer 1850 as it let's you bring more toys, but this is personal preference and I understand the problems that come with higher points.

I don't think anyone can predict what shifting to 1500-1650 would do to the meta. With little parity between armies in unit cost/power level, there are many units that are easy to exploit. Not everyone has easy access to the same tools.

What gungo said !!

gungo wrote:
1650 is about as low as I like simply because there are still so many codexs that can't use thier armies well at 1500pts. Many formations and decorians now have such a high buy in cost that it becomes impossible to fit those armies into 1500.

These are not strong codexs either. Armies like eldar and necron have extremely low cost and flexible decorians with many small formations that allow them to optimize for thier best units or msu spam.

However the Astra Militarum decorian, ork decorian, ad mech and battle company all fall apart or are completely unfieldable at 1500. Ad mech and skitari are honestly not a good army except for a single formation called war convocation. Battle company just becomes a large spam army with no bite once they lose the option of placing grav or other heavy weapons into thier list. The ork and Astra Militarum formations don't even fit in 1500. 1650 I think gives there armies a chance to field them but forces them to make choices on what they can bring. Ad mech loses its culexus, loses a lot of drop pods. Battle company loses its psyker conclave, and loses some heavy weapons. I just find 1650 a more ideal fit for everyone.

The Ork and IG combi detachments are pretty terrible, so I'm not sure why you would take them. Ork one would fit, I'm pretty sure, despite how taxing the core is. War Convocation fits in 1,500, barely, but loses flexibility. Considering it still gets several hundred in free points, I'm not terribly upset about that.

 FTGTEvan wrote:

gungo wrote:
1650 is about as low as I like simply because there are still so many codexs that can't use thier armies well at 1500pts. Many formations and decorians now have such a high buy in cost that it becomes impossible to fit those armies into 1500.

These are not strong codexs either. Armies like eldar and necron have extremely low cost and flexible decorians with many small formations that allow them to optimize for thier best units or msu spam.

However the Astra Militarum decorian, ork decorian, ad mech and battle company all fall apart or are completely unfieldable at 1500. Ad mech and skitari are honestly not a good army except for a single formation called war convocation. Battle company just becomes a large spam army with no bite once they lose the option of placing grav or other heavy weapons into thier list. The ork and Astra Militarum formations don't even fit in 1500. 1650 I think gives there armies a chance to field them but forces them to make choices on what they can bring. Ad mech loses its culexus, loses a lot of drop pods. Battle company loses its psyker conclave, and loses some heavy weapons. I just find 1650 a more ideal fit for everyone.

The Ork and IG combi detachments are pretty terrible, so I'm not sure why you would take them. Ork one would fit, I'm pretty sure, despite how taxing the core is. War Convocation fits in 1,500, barely, but loses flexibility. Considering it still gets several hundred in free points, I'm not terribly upset about that.

Great so your debate is screw Astra Militarum and Orks because you don't play them and don't see the value in thier army lists... Good job there
The ork one doesn't fit unless you don't take ghaz council which is the only good thing about it.
I'm sorry I rather have everyone enjoy the game and have a chance at fielding thier list instead of telling many army lists to shove it because your eldar/necron/tau army works fine at 1500. I'm glad you can still fly your scat bike spam list with your super heavy wraithknight. I'm Lukky to field 6x boy squads in trukks with a single pk nob each with the ork decorian for 1500.

If war conv losing some flexibility means all mobility and psychic defense and taking lesser and cheaper units then sure but that isn't less flexibility that's making two codexs into a non competitve option.

Again 1650 is more then fair and allows a lot more army lists the ability to play.

Keep it civil please - thanks all.

gungo wrote:

 FTGTEvan wrote:

gungo wrote:
1650 is about as low as I like simply because there are still so many codexs that can't use thier armies well at 1500pts. Many formations and decorians now have such a high buy in cost that it becomes impossible to fit those armies into 1500.

These are not strong codexs either. Armies like eldar and necron have extremely low cost and flexible decorians with many small formations that allow them to optimize for thier best units or msu spam.

However the Astra Militarum decorian, ork decorian, ad mech and battle company all fall apart or are completely unfieldable at 1500. Ad mech and skitari are honestly not a good army except for a single formation called war convocation. Battle company just becomes a large spam army with no bite once they lose the option of placing grav or other heavy weapons into thier list. The ork and Astra Militarum formations don't even fit in 1500. 1650 I think gives there armies a chance to field them but forces them to make choices on what they can bring. Ad mech loses its culexus, loses a lot of drop pods. Battle company loses its psyker conclave, and loses some heavy weapons. I just find 1650 a more ideal fit for everyone.

The Ork and IG combi detachments are pretty terrible, so I'm not sure why you would take them. Ork one would fit, I'm pretty sure, despite how taxing the core is. War Convocation fits in 1,500, barely, but loses flexibility. Considering it still gets several hundred in free points, I'm not terribly upset about that.

Great so your debate is screw Astra Militarum and Orks because you don't play them and don't see the value in thier army lists... Good job there
The ork one doesn't fit unless you don't take ghaz council which is the only good thing about it.
I'm sorry I rather have everyone enjoy the game and have a chance at fielding thier list instead of telling many army lists to shove it because your eldar/necron/tau army works fine at 1500. I'm glad you can still fly your scat bike spam list with your super heavy wraithknight. I'm Lukky to field 6x boy squads in trukks with a single pk nob each with the ork decorian for 1500.

If war conv losing some flexibility means all mobility and psychic defense and taking lesser and cheaper units then sure but that isn't less flexibility that's making two codexs into a non competitve option.

Again 1650 is more then fair and allows a lot more army lists the ability to play.

As someone who plays gladius, 1500 is fine. Yeah, I lose some upgrades, but I can still take plenty of them as the base cost for the Gladius is cheap.. including Khan and Suppression force (which I use at 1850) it comes to: 1090. For that you get 22 total ob sec units (24 total units) consisting of 50 marines, 10 transports, 2 ICs, 2 artillery pieces and a fast skimmer. So with nearly 1/3 of your points remaining you can buy upgrades and weapons and probably add a command squad, or 2 for another 1-2 free ob sec transports.

War Convocation works fine at 1500, they dont require pods or anti-psyker. No army requires the Culexus assassin, its just a nice addition..

I can't speak to the other two decurions.. but I have to imagine that the minimum buy-in would still make them logistically fit into 1500 (whether its optimal or not is a different discussion).

I'd rather move to 1500 than 1650, it takes an additional 300 points out of the game. Anything to speed up tournament games is nice, because at this current point level games either do not come to natural conclusions, or players are trying to rush games to get there (in the process increasing likelihood of mistakes and generally looser play).

To cry that Orks and Guard are unplayable at 1500 is disengenious ar best and a flat out lie at worst. CAD are available for both along with several formations.

Complaining that 1500 is unfair to oversized and unplayable decurions is like saying we need to up the game to 2700pts cause Blood Angels can't fit an Archangels formation into the game.

There are plenty of winning guard and Ork army lists out there without their special snowflake decurions.

Something I see with a lot of lists....basically it's already a 1500 pt list, with maybe 1 or 2 100 or so point characters. Take away those characters and chop a few models off to make way for a cheap HQ, you're not really changing anything.

It's not the game, it's the players.

It has been quite a while since I played competitively; however, I have enjoyed 1500 as a game size better than 1850+. A smaller game is a quicker game, and that's good when time pressure exists.

DarthDiggler wrote:
To cry that Orks and Guard are unplayable at 1500 is disengenious ar best and a flat out lie at worst. CAD are available for both along with several formations.

Complaining that 1500 is unfair to oversized and unplayable decurions is like saying we need to up the game to 2700pts cause Blood Angels can't fit an Archangels formation into the game.

There are plenty of winning guard and Ork army lists out there without their special snowflake decurions.

An army that can't play its decorian style detachment is not the same as the inability to play a single oversized and poor quality formation.
It's like claiming that your armies shouldn't be able to use a CAD because you already have other formations that fit.

If you don't know about other armies lists you probably shouldn't be posting about stuff you have no clue about. Again 1650 allows everyone to play whereas 1500 subjectively limits entire codexs main army detachements. There is a huge problem with that if you don't see that problem then you don't play those armies and only care about your own self interests. How about this if you ban every other armies decorian. Style detachment than 1500 pts is fine by me because that's fair and balanced right!

I do find it funny those that are for 1500 pts are the same players who claim to have no clue about the army decorians I am talking about. This only further reinforces the fact your opinion is subjective to your own self interest.

gungo wrote:
An army that can't play its decorian style detachment is not the same as the inability to play a single oversized and poor quality formation.
It's like claiming that your armies shouldn't be able to use a CAD because you already have other formations that fit.

If you don't know about other armies lists you probably shouldn't be posting about stuff you have no clue about. Again 1650 allows everyone to play whereas 1500 subjectively limits entire codexs main army detachements. There is a huge problem with that if you don't see that problem then you don't play those armies and only care about your own self interests. How about this if you ban every other armies decorian. Style detachment than 1500 pts is fine by me because that's fair and balanced right!

I do find it funny those that are for 1500 pts are the same players who claim to have no clue about the army decorians I am talking about. This only further reinforces the fact your opinion is subjective to your own self interest.

Ok. So, not sure what a 'decorian' is, but let's say 'Mixed Detachments'.

I assume you are saying that it is IMPOSSIBLE to build an Ork list using their specific Mixed Detachment at 1500 points. Like, it cannot be done. If that is the case, then that's a good argument - there are always gonna be certain formations that can't fit in 'x' point limit but completely disallowing one codex's primary method of army building would be a bad thing.

Or are you saying that it IS possible to build their Mixed Detachment, but it's not as powerful or flexible as you'd like? Because that is the case with lots of things, at any points level.

Sounds like a challenge to me. Any Ork players wanna attempt this?

gungo wrote:

Great so your debate is screw Astra Militarum and Orks because you don't play them and don't see the value in thier army lists... Good job there
The ork one doesn't fit unless you don't take ghaz council which is the only good thing about it.
I'm sorry I rather have everyone enjoy the game and have a chance at fielding thier list instead of telling many army lists to shove it because your eldar/necron/tau army works fine at 1500. I'm glad you can still fly your scat bike spam list with your super heavy wraithknight. I'm Lukky to field 6x boy squads in trukks with a single pk nob each with the ork decorian for 1500.

If war conv losing some flexibility means all mobility and psychic defense and taking lesser and cheaper units then sure but that isn't less flexibility that's making two codexs into a non competitve option.

Again 1650 is more then fair and allows a lot more army lists the ability to play.

Haha, no. My point was that their mixed detachments don't fix the problems they have. They add little value while carrying exorbitant taxes. Orks and Guard are better off taking a CAD and cherry picking the best formations.

They are actually perfect examples of GW taking a decently executed idea and over doing/monetizing it. The first few combi detachments were of manageable size, but a lot of the more recent ones are hilariously bloated. Even the Space Marine one is arguably bloated, but it also won the dart board lottery and got amazing bonus special rules. IG and Orks did not, therefore their bloated combi detachments don't seem worth it.

 Blackmoor wrote:
I am not sure that 1500 points will solve the problem.

I am in favor of chess clocks. If you are worried about your opponent monopolizing time bring your own and have it approved by the TO. Everyone use to say that chess clocks break down in the assault phase, but I have not seen one of those in a while, and even then I do not think it will be too much of an issue.

This. Reducing points only handicaps those armies that can't spam free stuff even more. 1500 points of DE would be a joke.

 Fishboy wrote:

 Blackmoor wrote:
I am not sure that 1500 points will solve the problem.

I am in favor of chess clocks. If you are worried about your opponent monopolizing time bring your own and have it approved by the TO. Everyone use to say that chess clocks break down in the assault phase, but I have not seen one of those in a while, and even then I do not think it will be too much of an issue.

This. Reducing points only handicaps those armies that can't spam free stuff even more. 1500 points of DE would be a joke.

Not sure I agree. First, pure DE already struggle at 1,850. One thing going for DE is that they're relatively points efficient (IMO). If anything I think they benefit at 1,500, as do some other underperforming armies. I would love to be able to get data and see whether or not my assumption or yours would bear out. Unfortunately, I don't know of any large data set we can pull from and do some comparative analysis on.

 ArbitorIan wrote:
Ok. So, not sure what a 'decorian' is, but let's say 'Mixed Detachments'.

Thank you, that was getting me, too

Is "Decurion" the official term for these types of detachments? In the end the slight distinctions between formations, detachments and now possibly another demarcation of the structure has always felt like needless distinctions when they're all performing a similar function (providing army structure).

 RiTides wrote:

 ArbitorIan wrote:
Ok. So, not sure what a 'decorian' is, but let's say 'Mixed Detachments'.

Thank you, that was getting me, too

Is "Decurion" the official term for these types of detachments? In the end the slight distinctions between formations, detachments and now possibly another demarcation of the structure has always felt like needless distinctions when they're all performing a similar function (providing army structure).

Same. I generally use Combi-Detachment, though I've seen mixed detachment, multi-detachment, and meta-detachment. Decurion bugs me if only because it's a similar misuse of terms that I think lead to a lot of the confusion about army building to kick off 7th edition (Formation vs. Detachment vs. CAD vs. Dataslate).

I too would love to see some data on that. I play DE (shelved in tournament scenarios as my Coven list no longer has teeth) and in comparison to other armies they are very over costed,IMO. Add to that their inability to psyker without allies, no access to free stuff, and an inability to summon or add units post game start and they are uncompetitive. Compare to marines that get free stuff and can summon and things get way out of wack. If Coven for instance received free transports and every enemy model killed created a new wrack added to the closest wrack unit then we might see a comparison.

If you think balance is to lower points then you simply make summoning armies and armies with free stuff that much better. Marines would become uber top tier (but I think that is what ITC wants anyway). I also think Alpha strike becomes dominant as there are fewer units to kill and fewer units to retaliate. This also plays into marine armies.

The real problem right now is free stuff for some armies and the continuance of death star combos. Tau had a fix for the death star but ITC nerfed that.
The fix is to make kill points tie more heavily into victories. This will reduce min/max and number of units thereby decreasing turn time. I played an ITC style event where my first opponent had 36 kill points. His set up time took 45 minutes. The psychic phase with heavy psyker armies slows the game down a lot right now, both pre game and during game.

I think chess clocks are a great fix and better balance. It forces streamlining of armies and game play but at the players level.

Invalidating army lists is fine, detachment and LoW restrictions often do that. But we don't want to invalidate models themselves.

So can anyone name a detachment or formation that literally costs between 1500 and 1650 points? That's pretty narrow and I don't think there's any. What's the minimum size for that huge infantry Cadian detachment? I think it's closer to 1000

I think 1,500 is more limiting than you think for Gladius. That said, yes, the free points become a larger percentage boost. Summoning becomes a bit more powerful, and it already is, but armies would have 350 less points to generate their dice battery to begin. Not gonna say it's a perfect solution, but I also don't think it would unbalance the meta more than it already is.

 FTGTEvan wrote:
I think 1,500 is more limiting than you think for Gladius. That said, yes, the free points become a larger percentage boost. Summoning becomes a bit more powerful, and it already is, but armies would have 350 less points to generate their dice battery to begin. Not gonna say it's a perfect solution, but I also don't think it would unbalance the meta more than it already is.

I think Battle Company and War Convocation players have nothing to complain about. The ratio between free points and paid points becomes much bigger. These lists will become more powerful, in the new smaller meta, not less.

So that's a good reason to go to lower points ? I'd like to see some actual results for the purpose of verification.

 axisofentropy wrote:

 FTGTEvan wrote:
I think 1,500 is more limiting than you think for Gladius. That said, yes, the free points become a larger percentage boost. Summoning becomes a bit more powerful, and it already is, but armies would have 350 less points to generate their dice battery to begin. Not gonna say it's a perfect solution, but I also don't think it would unbalance the meta more than it already is.

I think Battle Company and War Convocation players have nothing to complain about. The ratio between free points and paid points becomes much bigger. These lists will become more powerful, in the new smaller meta, not less.

War Convocation really gets hurt at 1,500. It's I believe minimum 1,435 or something, and cannot fit a dual-dakka knight at 1,500, or any expanded units. By a similar token, while Gladius will have ~400 points to add equipment and allies, that's still a lot less of a punch than they currently have at 1,850. So yes, the ratio of free points is greater, but they lose some of their teeth and become even more of a survive and grind out a win with bodies than a punchy, dangerous enemy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dozer Blades wrote:
So that's a good reason to go to lower points ? I'd like to see some actual results for the purpose of verification.

"It won't definitively solve all the problems with the game so we shouldn't bother."

The meta will shift, for sure, but going to 1,500 will NOT suddenly make the game unplayable or uncompetitive or something else. You can't have any "actual results" until you try it out.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
So that's a good reason to go to lower points ? I'd like to see some actual results for the purpose of verification.

We can't try it out unless we have verification from actual results
We can't have actual results until we try it out

Your actual results have been presented in this thread or others, best stated in the comments on the FLG post, from all the Euros - they play almost exclusively 1500 and sometimes 1650, and are getting along just fine.

You can fit the dual dakka knight. Barely. I think it's basically like 1485 for the detachment with the dual dakka knight. Which means no pod/anti-psyker support for the War Convo which is fine.

 Hulksmash wrote:
You can fit the dual dakka knight. Barely. I think it's basically like 1485 for the detachment with the dual dakka knight. Which means no pod/anti-psyker support for the War Convo which is fine.

Yeah I'm still going to build a War Convocation this year after Adepticon and I'm looking forward to the efficiency at any point value. who needs psykers when you've canticles? Who needs a Culexus when you've SO MUCH DAKKA.

Anyway, this is not an argument for 1500, but it's important to make sure that popular collections are not totally invalidated. I mean, 1000 points would be bad because war convocation and maybe other popular detachments would be impossible. The meta will inevitably shift and that's fine because it's always shifting and it doesn't prevent good players from doing well.

If all the rolling random powers and stuff for peoples lists takes up too much time would people accept the TO doing it for them before hand if the alternative is games not finishing?

I suspect not both because people like to roll their own dice and will get grumpy (especially if the results are bad)

and because some will just not trust the TO not to rig things for their mates


or is there a way for the TO to connect his game to an online random number generator that the players themselves can 'roll' on before hand when they submit their lists so they are the one who's done the 'rolling' with the results being private (except for the TO) until the day, but again that bit is done by the time people start playing?

would players go for that?

would players who rolled badly just not show up thus messing up the match ups and numbers for everybody else?

What was the time limit for the 1850 games at this year's LVO? (Work Blocked for me, sorry).

Increasing points will not make IG / CSM / Orks more competitive - their army cores still suck and taking more bad stuff against more good stuff is still bad vs good. The balance remains the same, but the game is still slower.

People need to separate balance from play time. If the intent is to adjust points for balance, then make Decurion armies play at 1400 pts, mixed armies play at 1500 pts and junk armies like IG play at 1600 pts.

Or, revise the rules packet so that the armies play at 1500 pts, but IG get to choose all of their powers and traits, whereas Decurion has to roll randomly.

 kronk wrote:
What was the time limit for the 1850 games at this year's LVO? (Work Blocked for me, sorry).

2:45 I believe (other events do 3 hours, but that's got to be about the max right?)

 RiTides wrote:

 kronk wrote:
What was the time limit for the 1850 games at this year's LVO? (Work Blocked for me, sorry).

2:45 I believe (other events do 3 hours, but that's got to be about the max right?)

NOVA last year was 3:30, and will be this year as well.

Target wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:
So that's a good reason to go to lower points ? I'd like to see some actual results for the purpose of verification.

We can't try it out unless we have verification from actual results
We can't have actual results until we try it out

Your actual results have been presented in this thread or others, best stated in the comments on the FLG post, from all the Euros - they play almost exclusively 1500 and sometimes 1650, and are getting along just fine.

Spoiler alert from Europeland: what's good and what's bad at 1500/1650 is pretty much the same as at 1850.

 FTGTEvan wrote:

 RiTides wrote:

 kronk wrote:
What was the time limit for the 1850 games at this year's LVO? (Work Blocked for me, sorry).

2:45 I believe (other events do 3 hours, but that's got to be about the max right?)

NOVA last year was 3:30, and will be this year as well.

3:30 hours? Ugh. 2:45 is fine. For a 3-game day, that's 8.25 hours of gaming. That's a long damn time. Longer than that, I'd be fatigued. At 3:30 per round, that's 10.5 hours.

This is just my opinion obviously, but I'd much rather go to a 1500 point game at 2:45 than 1850 at 3:30.

I'm apparently insane and it was 3... don't know why I was so convinced it was 3:30.

I see. 3 hours is close enough to 2:45. I can dig it. 3:30 is a bit much.

Thanks for the correction.

 FTGTEvan wrote:
I'm apparently insane and it was 3... don't know why I was so convinced it was 3:30.

It was all that rum heheh.

I think back to the days when we played 2000 points in two hours at tournaments and almost always finished games. To me what has changed more than anything else is the psyker phase (including pre game) and the spamming of min units for max objective securing. Back then kill points were a big part of the game too. I have seen tournaments go from 1750 to 1850 to 2000. I would hate to see a drop to 1500 or even 1600.

I'm not sure that spamming Min units has changed, it was a thing back in 5th as well. I think the move away from Mech has changed it a lot more than simple min maxing. Moving 8 vehicles is much faster than moving 8 units of guys on foot. Though I do agree the psychic power part of the game has added a lot of time. In 5th most armies cast maybe 1 or 2 powers a turn and it was fast, but most powers were meh. In general there is a ton more dice rolling than there used to be, more shots, more re-rolls, etc.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Increasing points will not make IG / CSM / Orks more competitive - their army cores still suck and taking more bad stuff against more good stuff is still bad vs good. The balance remains the same, but the game is still slower.

People need to separate balance from play time. If the intent is to adjust points for balance, then make Decurion armies play at 1400 pts, mixed armies play at 1500 pts and junk armies like IG play at 1600 pts.

Or, revise the rules packet so that the armies play at 1500 pts, but IG get to choose all of their powers and traits, whereas Decurion has to roll randomly.

I'd like to actually see how an ork warband (multi detachment decorian) with a ghaz council does before you blow it off as uncompetitive. That list just will not fit in 1500 and is at least usable at 1650. But that combination goes a long way to fixing certain issues with Orks, army wide fearless (removes the mob rule), first turn assaults, and a near unkillable warlord with a 2+ invul, 2+ armour, 5+ fnp with reroll, eternal warrior (means even str d has issues vs him). It's a good list for a specific type of ork play style of trukk spam, but completely unplayable at 1500. Heck it barely works in 1650 but at least it's something. It's kinda like the battle co. And war convocation issues. It makes them make hard choices but keeps them relative and competitive. 1500 Just makes many lists unplayable.

The Astra Militarum is the same as Orks except while they are cheaper then. Orks and Around 1200 so they actually fit under 1500 it's all but useless however since you don't have any weapons either. Which is the only really thing Astra Militarum is good for is spamming special weapons.

The problem is people who don't play these armies feel they should discount the opinions of those who do.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

People need to separate balance from play time.

Exactly. The points drop was never supposed to make the game more balanced. It's just a consideration to make the game go quicker. Going up or down 200-300 points is not going to make IG any better compared to eldar.

 Fishboy wrote:

 FTGTEvan wrote:
I'm apparently insane and it was 3... don't know why I was so convinced it was 3:30.

It was all that rum heheh.

I think back to the days when we played 2000 points in two hours at tournaments and almost always finished games. To me what has changed more than anything else is the psyker phase (including pre game) and the spamming of min units for max objective securing. Back then kill points were a big part of the game too. I have seen tournaments go from 1750 to 1850 to 2000. I would hate to see a drop to 1500 or even 1600.

More than just the psychic phase has changed. Pre-game in general (not just psykers), Psychic Phase, the equivalent of an 1850 Gladius or Daemon army actually putting more than 2500pts into play and that 2500pts would have been 3k at the end of 5th/early 6th. Also rules bloat, it's nearly impossible to know all the rules anymore between GW's constant infusion and the Forgeworld books people find themselves asking "What does that do?" quite a bit more.

Essentially there are a ton of things that have occurred that have cause time to creep upward. The only option is to adjust the game to cut those out or lower point values and have less things that cause time to creep upwards.

gungo wrote:

The problem is people who don't play these armies feel they should discount the opinions of those who do.

I play IG and the Cadian detachment is horrible. Plus you can already take all those units in the quantities available. The IG CAD allows you to take 678 or more guardsmen if you were so inclined. And those would be objective secured. Still doesn't mean it's a good idea.

 Fishboy wrote:

 FTGTEvan wrote:
I'm apparently insane and it was 3... don't know why I was so convinced it was 3:30.

It was all that rum heheh.

I think back to the days when we played 2000 points in two hours at tournaments and almost always finished games. To me what has changed more than anything else is the psyker phase (including pre game) and the spamming of min units for max objective securing. Back then kill points were a big part of the game too. I have seen tournaments go from 1750 to 1850 to 2000. I would hate to see a drop to 1500 or even 1600.

Oh man get with the programme...

gungo wrote:

I'd like to actually see how an ork warband (multi detachment decorian) with a ghaz council does before you blow it off as uncompetitive. That list just will not fit in 1500 and is at least usable at 1650.

Great! This is a ~*testable hypothesis*~ and it's important. Does 150 more points really make the difference between using the new Ork detachment of formations?

Breng77 wrote:
I'm not sure that spamming Min units has changed, it was a thing back in 5th as well. I think the move away from Mech has changed it a lot more than simple min maxing. Moving 8 vehicles is much faster than moving 8 units of guys on foot. Though I do agree the psychic power part of the game has added a lot of time. In 5th most armies cast maybe 1 or 2 powers a turn and it was fast, but most powers were meh. In general there is a ton more dice rolling than there used to be, more shots, more re-rolls, etc.

I would go further back to 3rd ed where there were percentages to force org and a lot less min/max. You did still see min max but it was mainly for a shooting weapon where people were only using the shooting phase anyway. I agree with the rules bloat comment as well. How much time is now spent looking things up? I often find myself telling my opponent to keep playing while I will look their rule up so we don't waste time.

I think in general people don't spend any more time than they did say five years ago looking up rules. It is just some times something tricky will come up that takes some time to resolve.

gungo wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Increasing points will not make IG / CSM / Orks more competitive

People need to separate balance from play time.

I'd like to actually see how an ork warband (multi detachment decorian)

1500 Just makes many lists unplayable.

The problem is people who don't play these armies feel they should discount the opinions of those who do.

WTF is a "decorian?" Is that the janky Orkified version?

Making lists unplayable at 1500 is too darn bad. Everybody gives up the same 350 points going from 1850 to 1500, and everybody loses some bells and whistles.

Or, maybe the problem is people relying on the same old crutches...

 axisofentropy wrote:

gungo wrote:

I'd like to actually see how an ork warband (multi detachment decorian) with a ghaz council does before you blow it off as uncompetitive. That list just will not fit in 1500 and is at least usable at 1650.

Great! This is a ~*testable hypothesis*~ and it's important. Does 150 more points really make the difference between using the new Ork detachment of formations?

Yes that's 5 nobs with powerklaws. That's the difference of a green tide without nobs and klaws and with. The difference is one is competitve and the other is not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

gungo wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Increasing points will not make IG / CSM / Orks more competitive

People need to separate balance from play time.

I'd like to actually see how an ork warband (multi detachment decorian)

1500 Just makes many lists unplayable.

The problem is people who don't play these armies feel they should discount the opinions of those who do.

WTF is a "decorian?" Is that the janky Orkified version?

Making lists unplayable at 1500 is too darn bad. Everybody gives up the same 350 points going from 1850 to 1500, and everybody loses some bells and whistles.

Or, maybe the problem is people relying on the same old crutches...

It's a new formation and its Orks there are no same old crutches.

I think a lot of people forget that some 40k players and people in general are just kind of slow moving, slow talking individuals. There is a local guy that sometimes gets complaints about slow playing but everything this guy goes is slow, like a turtle making his mind up. In that respect chess clocks would hurt these individuals who have a great passion for the game and love to attend events but will be penalized for the way they act. Just my 2 cents on that.

 Kimchi Gamer wrote:
I think a lot of people forget that some 40k players and people in general are just kind of slow moving, slow talking individuals. There is a local guy that sometimes gets complaints about slow playing but everything this guy goes is slow, like a turtle making his mind up. In that respect chess clocks would hurt these individuals who have a great passion for the game and love to attend events but will be penalized for the way they act. Just my 2 cents on that.

I agree, chess clocks are a terrible idea for 40k. It penalizes certain armies and individuals from the word go.

Also, as someone who has played this game passionately since 2nd I think people need to dig back though their pile of old books and realize just how much cheaper units have gotten. This means a huge difference when people are talking about how 2000pts were fine 3 editions ago since :

A. they were more like 1850 now

B. They didn't also get free rules and upgrade or units (summoning) making them more like 1500

Just something to keep it real here.

The added dice rolling also does make a huge difference, I have personally noticed how much longer any game against Tau lasts since they shoot in the enemy movement and assault phases and move in their own move, shoot and assault phases. For feths sake, that isn't even factoring the rerolls. Not to single out tau either, the new ultramarines reroll everything all day every day as well! I wish any instance something got a reroll it just added +1 to its to hit or wound to a max of 2+ but this particular critique is aimed at GW not TO's for a fix/change.

Update: thank you everyone for voting in this informal poll. The more official ITC poll is now open: https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2016/02/22/itc-2016-season-q1-update-poll/

From what we've seen in this thread, I predict the motion for 1500 points will win in a landslide, at least 2:1. We'll find out next week.

I have seen internet discussions on the optimal point size outside of Dakka and IMO it's not nearly as clear cut here.

 axisofentropy wrote:
Update: thank you everyone for voting in this informal poll. The more official ITC poll is now open: https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2016/02/22/itc-2016-season-q1-update-poll/

From what we've seen in this thread, I predict the motion for 1500 points will win in a landslide, at least 2:1. We'll find out next week.

I don't think you realize how polls work.
First people who vote here are inclined to vote because they already agree with the topic of the post
Secondly It's a two vote question.
First you have the yes and no vote which even if we you have enough people voting to reduce points
You have a second vote which will include everyone who didn't want to lower the points voting for the highest point limit.
Whereas your poll is an either or choice.

I wouldn't call it a landslide since a lot of people don't want to lower points. In fact your own vote has 60% of the people voting not for 1500pts. So I don't see how that's a landslide.

That's OK. The real point of the poll is to NERF TAU!

gungo wrote:

 axisofentropy wrote:
Update: thank you everyone for voting in this informal poll. The more official ITC poll is now open: https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2016/02/22/itc-2016-season-q1-update-poll/

From what we've seen in this thread, I predict the motion for 1500 points will win in a landslide, at least 2:1. We'll find out next week.

I don't think you realize how polls work.
First people who vote here are inclined to vote because they already agree with the topic of the post
Secondly It's a two vote question.
First you have the yes and no vote which even if we you have enough people voting to reduce points
You have a second vote which will include everyone who didn't want to lower the points voting for the highest point limit.
Whereas your poll is an either or choice.

I wouldn't call it a landslide since a lot of people don't want to lower points. In fact your own vote has 60% of the people voting not for 1500pts. So I don't see how that's a landslide.

we shall see! Want to make a wager?

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
That's OK. The real point of the poll is to NERF TAU!

"We're going to review tau!"

Asks a question aboUT ghost heels that isn't that important and for a rai for pirahna coming back from death or immobilization. Nothing on reviewing the hunter cadre special rule or the drone farm.

I've only once ever not finished a GT 1850pt match, and that was with a very particularly problematic player who nabbed his third warning (and thus penalty) for slow play in our match at that GT.

In general the problem tends to be either intentional slow play by one person, heavy rules lawyering by both parties, or truly unfortunate matchups where you have hundred of orc models vs hundreds of some other model type. The second one, in my experience, is the most likely issue to have come up. True slow players (for a benefit) are rare and if they play against a competitive GT goer they are going to get called out on it and penalized. The third type, those rare moments where there are just 2 million models on the table, are rare but unfortunate when they happen. The third one is the only instance I feel lower point caps would help solve the issue.

I think the most common cause of a game not finishing is actually just players who having fun / playing casually / not used to time limits / etc, rather than any of the above.

Of course, a really high model count army is going to cause issues, but it seems to me that those players are actually often more aware of the need to play quickly!

A huge advantage to this would be basically excluding über-formations like War Convocation from tournaments. I believe you can't fit it in 1500? Still, 1500 might be a touch too small, maybe 1650?

 Mymearan wrote:
A huge advantage to this would be basically excluding über-formations like War Convocation from tournaments. I believe you can't fit it in 1500? Still, 1500 might be a touch too small, maybe 1650?

I do wish pepole would do the math first. Yes, the war convocation fits even with the shooty knight.

 Hulksmash wrote:

 Mymearan wrote:
A huge advantage to this would be basically excluding über-formations like War Convocation from tournaments. I believe you can't fit it in 1500? Still, 1500 might be a touch too small, maybe 1650?

I do wish pepole would do the math first. Yes, the war convocation fits even with the shooty knight.

Was just going off memory from the initial discussion when the formation was released, sorry

We've been running 1500pt events ever since 7th edition came out. Give players 2 hours and 30 minutes per round. Its more than enough time to get the game in and if you have a lot of pre-game rolling to do for psykic powers you can still get your game in. I help organizes events in my area, we've not a problem with the points drop. It actually got more players to come out. They saw the points drop from 1850 to 1500 as the organizers helping to eliminate some of the cheese combos that are you. Seems to be working pretty good for us.

 axisofentropy wrote:
This forum's LVO 2016 thread generated valuable discussion on tournament games exceeding duration. A plurality of that thread's participants agreed that shrinking armies down to 1500 points is best solution to this problem. I wanted to poll the rest of this forum:

How should your Tournament Organizer best ensure games finish on time?

sorry for the late chime in...how are you setting things up? I know how major tourney's handle it, but what's your time frame currently?

Ours is follows, and it is strictly adhered to.

1000 Pts
Store opens to dice down .5 Hr
Round 1-- 1.5 Hr
Break -- 0.5 Hr
Round 2-- 1.5 Hr
Lunch -- 1 Hr
Round 3-- 1.5 Hr
Break -- 0.5 Hr
Round 4-- 1.5 Hr
Prizes -- 0.5 Hr

9/10 games finish

1500
Store opens to dice down .5 Hr
Round 1-- 2.0 Hr
Break -- 0.5 Hr
Round 2-- 2.0 Hr
Lunch -- 1 Hr
Round 3-- 2.0 Hr
Prizes-- 0.5 Hr

8/10 games finish before time about, 1-2 per round finish on turn 4-5

1850 and Team 1000's
Store opens to dice down .5 Hr
Round 1-- 2.5 Hr
Break -- 0.5 Hr
Round 2-- 2.5 Hr
Lunch -- 1 Hr
Round 3-- 2.5 Hr
Prizes-- 0.5 Hr

7/10 games finish before time and about 1-3 per round finish on turn 4-5

We have a really loud kitchen timer that beeps at 0.5 hr which signifies no new rounds!!!! Then again at 15 min. with tells you to wrap up the bottom of the round quickly. Then dice down at the 0. It works and only one person hates it because it breaks his concentration....Boo Hoo

Opponents who slow play usually feel a sting in sportsmanship. Timely play is worth 2 VP per round!

Painting scores (general 3 and base, an attempt to paint at a above average skill level for Best overall score) are done on the fly by the TO during the tournament and painting award is done at lunch for those entering it.

 Rune Stonegrinder wrote:

Break -- 0.5 Hr

This is the thing I like the most! I'm happy to play long days of gaming, but half an hour between games would be fantastic...

 ArbitorIan wrote:

 Rune Stonegrinder wrote:

Break -- 0.5 Hr

This is the thing I like the most! I'm happy to play long days of gaming, but half an hour between games would be fantastic...

Works for small tourneys, 10 or less tables, I'm sure the big events like Adepticon/Nova need more time to process scores.

 Rune Stonegrinder wrote:

 ArbitorIan wrote:

 Rune Stonegrinder wrote:

Break -- 0.5 Hr

This is the thing I like the most! I'm happy to play long days of gaming, but half an hour between games would be fantastic...

Works for small tourneys, 10 or less tables, I'm sure the big events like Adepticon/Nova need more time to process scores.

Not really. Torrent of Fire helped with this immensely at NOVA.

Personally I think that it need to be a combination of a minor point reduction AND penalizing BOTH players IF their game does not complete, at minimum 4 turns or something to that degree.

There is no reason two players can't manage a 2 - 2.5 hour game and ensure it finishes naturally.

Penalizing players for not finishing their game ontime is not a good option. Not only is it no fair to some armies (horde armies like orks or psyker heavy armies like daemons just take longer to play) it is also not realistic to enforce. If a game goes to time how are you suppose to determine which play is at fault? If you simply try to penalize both players it just opens up the system to abuse and lets players purposefully stall to spite their opponent

No, definitely penalize *both* players. That's the fairest solution, and gets the refs out of a "he said / she said" situation.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
No, definitely penalize *both* players. That's the fairest solution, and gets the refs out of a "he said / she said" situation.

I forgot to post ATC's new sportsmanship rules for 2016 regarding "Slow Play". They're detailed:

Slow Play
* A minimum of 4 mandatory turns is required to be completed every game. Teams taking armies or players that take a lot of time should train hard to be able to finish games to turn four within the allotted time frame or not take said armies to the ATC. Again it is the responsibility of the players, not the referees, to make sure games complete at least 4 turns. So once more Teams need to factor this into both their list design and their playtesting or suffer the consequences. If it looks like a game will not reach turn 4, even early on in the game, then it should be brought immediately to the attention of the referees who will decide based upon the following, but not exclusive, criteria, if any penalties are required:

1. Number of ref calls by a player. The referees will have a list of teams and players to keep track of this over the course of the tournament. Refs will align these numbers every round. Calling a ref and waiting or looking for a ref have been common to slow down progression in games over the years so this is a factor to take into consideration. Players calling refs to their tables in excess will be judged with the possibility of foul play and stalling in mind.

2. Number of models in an army, including summoned units. This can have an effect, especially if two big armies are facing each other. As such it is down to the referees to decide if it was unintentional or not.

3. Time taken to deploy should be logged. Unlike turns which involve the interaction of both players, the deployment does not. Excessive deployment time can therefore be an indicator of slow play. Then obviously it is down to the discretion of the ref if a player is slow playing on purpose.

4. It is both players responsibility to ensure games finish in time. Any game that gets reported where players do not play the minimum amount of 4 turns, including random game length, will see both players receive an official warning. If your opponent is too slow, ask him/her to speed up, if it doesn't help, get a judge to help speed things up. If that doesn't happen the above will be strictly applied. Consecutive games where there is the suspicion of slow play will see players that were previously warned incur an automatic infraction penalty. Thereafter any instance of slow play as deemed by the referees instantly incurs further penalties, cumulatively within even a single round if required.

(Copied from http://www.whatc.org/warhammer-40k.html )

This leaves a LOT of discretion to the judges, while also outlining how they'll use that discretion.

 Plains of War wrote:
There is no reason two players can't manage a 2 - 2.5 hour game and ensure it finishes naturally.

If they both want to.

 matphat wrote:
As an Ork player, I often can't even consider running at 1850 or 2k without running out the clock. Moving 180 dudes every round is a total bitch.

my local flgs banned a player who used a green tide as a strategy to win games. The games would end at the end of turn 2 as he would take 2+ hours moving his 120+ orks. Essentially, he deployed, ran to the objectives, and called time.

I want to ask a question. Do you have a particular player that irked you in a tournament setting, and what of the above solutions would have sped up his game?\
I voted chessclock, but had I known that multivoting was possible, I would have selected model\unit caps as well. I have played in tournaments since 3rd, I considered them a way to get a couple games in where I was pretty much guaranteed a game (or 3). I really did try to limit myself to 30-50 models on the field at a time with mechanized transports a terrific deal.

seriously, choose your most detested tournament player. Which of the solutions would speed up his or her game?

People will be destroyed in a couple of turns and want there points back.

Something that I think is often missed...

A game isn't over just because it went 5 turns. The game lasts anywhere from 5-7 turns and that is a very important aspect of the game. Certain armies perform well under a time constraint where only getting 5 turns is a benefit. The game size needs to be lowered not because every game isn't getting to turn 5, but because almost no games have the opportunity to get to turn 7, despite the game is written to go that long 33% of the time.

 CKO wrote:
People will be destroyed in a couple of turns and want there points back.

I don't even understand this post. Everyone would be going to 1500, it's not like one side is just losing 350 points and the other side gets to table them in 2 turns. Or are you just complaining for the sake of complaining?

 axisofentropy wrote:
I forgot to post ATC's new sportsmanship rules for 2016 regarding "Slow Play". They're detailed:

Slow Play
* A minimum of 4 mandatory turns is required to be completed every game. Teams taking armies or players that take a lot of time should train hard to be able to finish games to turn four within the allotted time frame or not take said armies to the ATC. Again it is the responsibility of the players, not the referees, to make sure games complete at least 4 turns. So once more Teams need to factor this into both their list design and their playtesting or suffer the consequences. If it looks like a game will not reach turn 4, even early on in the game, then it should be brought immediately to the attention of the referees who will decide based upon the following, but not exclusive, criteria, if any penalties are required:

1. Number of ref calls by a player. The referees will have a list of teams and players to keep track of this over the course of the tournament. Refs will align these numbers every round. Calling a ref and waiting or looking for a ref have been common to slow down progression in games over the years so this is a factor to take into consideration. Players calling refs to their tables in excess will be judged with the possibility of foul play and stalling in mind.

2. Number of models in an army, including summoned units. This can have an effect, especially if two big armies are facing each other. As such it is down to the referees to decide if it was unintentional or not.

3. Time taken to deploy should be logged. Unlike turns which involve the interaction of both players, the deployment does not. Excessive deployment time can therefore be an indicator of slow play. Then obviously it is down to the discretion of the ref if a player is slow playing on purpose.

4. It is both players responsibility to ensure games finish in time. Any game that gets reported where players do not play the minimum amount of 4 turns, including random game length, will see both players receive an official warning. If your opponent is too slow, ask him/her to speed up, if it doesn't help, get a judge to help speed things up. If that doesn't happen the above will be strictly applied. Consecutive games where there is the suspicion of slow play will see players that were previously warned incur an automatic infraction penalty. Thereafter any instance of slow play as deemed by the referees instantly incurs further penalties, cumulatively within even a single round if required.

(Copied from http://www.whatc.org/warhammer-40k.html )

This leaves a LOT of discretion to the judges, while also outlining how they'll use that discretion.

While I agree that intentional slow play is what they are intending to address, what is this obsession with Turn 4? Turn 4 is just over half way through the game. The game lasts 5-7 turns, and the solution the ITC comes up with should be something that allows ALL players to potentially get to turn 7. I think we should be aiming for a solution that does the following:

- Everyone starts at a sensible time in the morning and finishes at a sensible time in the evening, with decent breaks between games.
- All players can potentially reach Turn 7 in their games without feeling rushed.
- All armies can be taken, even moderate 'horde' armies - we don't want Orks and IG immediately dropping out of tournaments because of the timing rules.
- These games can be completed in the above time by players who DON'T attend timed tournaments every month (i.e the majority of the players at a large event).

If that means that tournaments go to 1000 points, fine.

Yeah.. dropping points is not the end of the world as some would say.

Its a bit rude or trolling to have people in this thread stating "just play faster" or L2P faster noobs!

We only have 4 seconds per model per phase at a mediocre model count of 50 per side, that is already playing very fast, and it already completely disallows even moderate horde armies.

 easysauce wrote:
We only have 4 seconds per model per phase at a mediocre model count of 50 per side, that is already playing very fast, and it already completely disallows even moderate horde armies.

this is an oversimplification.
is there any force where each of the models uses all 4 phases in each of the turns? How do they all manage to assault turn 1?

 CKO wrote:
People will be destroyed in a couple of turns and want there points back.

Not really. 1500 vs 1500 has no more proportional attack power as 1850 vs 1850. 1500 v 1500 should actually be somewhat more survivable, simply because the shooter doesn't have as much total firepower to concentrate on enemy units.

 easysauce wrote:
Yeah.. dropping points is not the end of the world as some would say.

Its a bit rude or trolling to have people in this thread stating "just play faster" or L2P faster noobs!

We only have 4 seconds per model per phase at a mediocre model count of 50 per side, that is already playing very fast, and it already completely disallows even moderate horde armies.

People should play their armies enough in advance they can finish five turns in two hours. "Practice makes perfect ."

 carldooley wrote:

 easysauce wrote:
We only have 4 seconds per model per phase at a mediocre model count of 50 per side, that is already playing very fast, and it already completely disallows even moderate horde armies.

this is an oversimplification.
is there any force where each of the models uses all 4 phases in each of the turns? How do they all manage to assault turn 1?

Yes there are plenty of armies that use all/most of the phases, I don't think you grasp the game from *other armies* perspective as well as you might think you do if you don't see that there are plenty of T1 charge opportunities esp with scout/infiltrating models on the other side.

There are more turns then the first one too... as well as jet packs/bikes move in the assault phase... people run in shooting phases...assault phases in general require the most time due to moving BOTH players models twice per phase as well as rolling for both players models.


I purposely over simplified it to 4 sec per model per phase because the actual time is *less* then that, once you factor in the realities of assault armies its significantly less then that. The actual amount of time is less then 4 seconds per model per phase.

The over simplification is actually specifically done to be in your favour and make the # of seconds higher then it actually is.

That 4 seconds # comes from calculations done in a *PERFECT WORLD* where games get the full 2.5 hours, no discussion happens, no chit chat, no set up or break down time, ect. which also means its significantly higher then what people actually get in a real life game.

Once you actually get into the details of what is involved when you don't run a bog standard cookie cutter shooty list and you have to actually participate in all the phases it is well under a couple seconds per model per phase.









Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dozer Blades wrote:


People should play their armies enough in advance they can finish five turns in two hours. "Practice makes perfect ."

Just repeating over and over "learn to play faster noob" isn't helpful, its trolling/rude.

It has already been established that players get much less then 4 seconds per model per phase at a mere 50 models per side.

For some reason you seem to think people can magically move/measure/roll for 100 models in the same time as someone who has 50 models.

No it is not. I played horde Nidz and never had a problem finishing a game. Going to a tournaments is a social contract with your opponents you will play to finish games in a timely manner.

 easysauce wrote:

 carldooley wrote:

 easysauce wrote:
We only have 4 seconds per model per phase at a mediocre model count of 50 per side, that is already playing very fast, and it already completely disallows even moderate horde armies.

this is an oversimplification.
is there any force where each of the models uses all 4 phases in each of the turns? How do they all manage to assault turn 1?

Yes there are plenty of armies that use all/most of the phases, I don't think you grasp the game from *other armies* perspective as well as you might think you do if you don't see that there are plenty of T1 charge opportunities esp with scout/infiltrating models on the other side.

There are more turns then the first one too... as well as jet packs/bikes move in the assault phase... people run in shooting phases...assault phases in general require the most time due to moving BOTH players models twice per phase as well as rolling for both players models.


I purposely over simplified it to 4 sec per model per phase because the actual time is *less* then that, once you factor in the realities of assault armies its significantly less then that. The actual amount of time is less then 4 seconds per model per phase.

The over simplification is actually specifically done to be in your favour and make the # of seconds higher then it actually is.

That 4 seconds # comes from calculations done in a *PERFECT WORLD* where games get the full 2.5 hours, no discussion happens, no chit chat, no set up or break down time, ect. which also means its significantly higher then what people actually get in a real life game.

Once you actually get into the details of what is involved when you don't run a bog standard cookie cutter shooty list and you have to actually participate in all the phases it is well under a couple seconds per model per phase.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dozer Blades wrote:


People should play their armies enough in advance they can finish five turns in two hours. "Practice makes perfect ."

Just repeating over and over "learn to play faster noob" isn't helpful, its trolling/rude.

It has already been established that players get much less then 4 seconds per model per phase at a mere 50 models per side.

For some reason you seem to think people can magically move/measure/roll for 100 models in the same time as someone who has 50 models.

Even if an army uses every phase, not every model uses every phase. Devestators shouldn't be getting into combat. Assault units sometimes don't even have guns. Shooty units might not move if they're in the right place. The Psychic phase is really only used by a few models in the whole army (other than like, Daemons and GK who are the exception not the rule). Even if you're playing Eldar (who use every phase of the game) saying that every model is doing something in every phase is just kinda disingenuous.

And also, no one is saying "learn to play faster noob". People are saying "if you know how to use your army, know all the rules, and know how the game works from a strategic standpoint, games take you much less time". There's a reason good players play fast and new people play slow. If you paid money to go to a tournament and your opponent paid money to be there too, people should not be looking up things about their army like statlines or what special rules they have and what they do. And if you're actually shooting to be on top tables, you shouldn't need an extra 15 minutes per turn to think about what you're doing, you should already have a game plan and be thinking about reactions while your opponent is going.

So if you're hearing "play faster noob" then you're just trying to inflate your victim complex. What I'm saying is, if you're going to an event where people paid to play a serious game, then maybe you should play seriously.

Requizen wrote:
What I'm saying is, if you're going to an event where people paid to play a serious game, then maybe you should play seriously.

This is where I'd like to point out that the vast amount of players attending a 100+ person event are not there to win and are not there to play a serious game seriously. They are there to hangout with friends, roll dice, and enjoy a weekend away from kids/responsibilities. Which means to get games done you need to not only play your army in a very speedy manner but generally in a manner speedy enough in the early rounds to ensure you can finish against others who don't take it that seriously.

And as much as people deride 40k for being a non-tactical game it does have depth once you get to higher levels. Single model placement starts to matter. So against higher end players you may find you need to take a second to think.

So what we then have is needing to be extra fast generally early against people there for fun. Needing to be extra fast in case you need to think more against good opponents. So the only time you don't need to be super fast is against someone who wants to play seriously but isn't good at 40k.

That seems off to me.

It is interesting to see this poll played out. If you add up all the "don't change the points amount" to the "change points" it is actually close and leaning more towards the don't change the points. My fear is someone will look at this and say "looks like change the points wins since it has 48%" of the vote". Without realizing the don't change section is split into 7 other categories.

 Fishboy wrote:
It is interesting to see this poll played out. If you add up all the "don't change the points amount" to the "change points" it is actually close and leaning more towards the don't change the points. My fear is someone will look at this and say "looks like change the points wins since it has 48%" of the vote". Without realizing the don't change section is split into 7 other categories.

check boxes! Voters are not limited to one option.

The problem with doing that is that there was no " don't change points" option. We have no way of knowing if any of those 48% also voted for other options as well. It is a poorly constructed poll as far as determining what percent of people want to change points. For instance it is possible that all 41 people who voted to penalize people for not finishing also voted to reduce points. Now while that is not likely it is likely that some people picked more than one option. In order for a poll like this to work it needed an option of "click this box when you vote" so that we counted the number of people who actually voted in the poll, or a mandatory portion of

1.) Reduce points to 1500
2.) Reduce to some other value
3.) Stay at 1850
4.) Raise points value

As it is we have a bunch of options that are not mutually exclusive. As such chances are better that there is acutally a higher chance that more than 48% of people voted to reduce, than there is that only people that did not want a reduction chose other options. It is also possible that people choosing those other options picked more than one. Like Penalize and Chess clock, or Penalize and More time etc.

I would argue that this poll cannot really be used to determine anything conclusive about what people feel about game size.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In fact the only thing we can really determine is that 95% of votes were for a change of some sort.

Wow as of right now less than half who voted want less points.

Wow. As of right now, only 43% want to keep the current points.

Penalize players whose games did not finish 5 turns +
Provide "chess clock" timers purchased by entry fee +
Schedule more time to play each game +
The Status Quo is fine. Get on my level!

So, reduce the points.

Instead of penalizing players that don't finish games, why not reward players that do finish just make finishing the game a bonus point. I do that here in Austin and players definitely at least try to finish games.

 axisofentropy wrote:

 Fishboy wrote:
It is interesting to see this poll played out. If you add up all the "don't change the points amount" to the "change points" it is actually close and leaning more towards the don't change the points. My fear is someone will look at this and say "looks like change the points wins since it has 48%" of the vote". Without realizing the don't change section is split into 7 other categories.

check boxes! Voters are not limited to one option.

I did not realize this was checkboxes heh. The data from this poll is too easy to manipulate.

There is most certainly a vote to not change the points...
its called "keep the status quo" and it got barely any votes...

To me this was basically a knee jerk reaction that has blown over now.

I'm still interested in smaller points just from a personal perspective. I don't think it'll "fix" anything but I personally really enjoy 1500 games.

Dozer Blades wrote:Going to a tournaments is a social contract with your opponents you will play to finish games in a timely manner.

Agreed. This thread is for of deciding what a 'timely manner' actually is.

Dozer Blades wrote:People should play their armies enough in advance they can finish five turns in two hours. "Practice makes perfect ."

First, SEVEN turns. That's how long the game lasts.

Second, this doesn't work in practise. What do you do? Disqualify people who haven't played enough games? People who've spent hundreds of dollars on flights and hotels to attend your event. That seems like pretty bad business practice for many big tournament.

Last time I played a big US tournament (NOVA 2014) I had managed to fit in one game with my army before the tournament. I might maybe play one game of 40k a month. Many other people are in that situation - getting lots of games in is part of the appeal of big tournaments. Alienating that section of the hobby (the biggest section) is a bad idea.

As others have posted, most people at a tournament are there for a social, fun gaming weekend. Of course people should be expected to finish in a timely manner. But the tournament should be set up so that a one-a-month player of a horde list, just there for a weekend of fun with his friends, can complete the game in the allotted time without rushing or stressing out.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
To me this was basically a knee jerk reaction that has blown over now.

-->"only 48% voted to downsize, so we should keep it the same!"

<-- "but far fewer people voted for the status quo."

---> "Well it's obviously a knee jerk reaction by people that need to L2P!"

<--- "..."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dozer Blades wrote:


People should play their armies enough in advance they can finish five turns in two hours. "Practice makes perfect ."

Hi there! I have a management position for a fortune 500 company. I travel 40% of the time. I take vacation to block off time in order to attend tournaments.

We're not all unemployed welfare queens that live in our mother's basement and spend 12 hours a day at the local game store making fun of "newbs buying chaos space marines, lol!"

Before you hit that yellow triangle of friendship, I am not implying that anyone here is.

 ArbitorIan wrote:
Last time I played a big US tournament (NOVA 2014) I had managed to fit in one game with my army before the tournament. I might maybe play one game of 40k a month. Many other people are in that situation - getting lots of games in is part of the appeal of big tournaments. Alienating that section of the hobby (the biggest section) is a bad idea.

As others have posted, most people at a tournament are there for a social, fun gaming weekend. Of course people should be expected to finish in a timely manner. But the tournament should be set up so that a one-a-month player of a horde list, just there for a weekend of fun with his friends, can complete the game in the allotted time without rushing or stressing out.

Well put - and as someone who played you, I don't think we got through to random game length, but had a good game nonetheless. Would have been nice to complete the game though.

 easysauce wrote:
There is most certainly a vote to not change the points...
its called "keep the status quo" and it got barely any votes...

Except that is not a vote to keep the same points, it is a vote to
1.) Keep the same points
2.) Not penalize slow play
3.) Not use chess clocks
4.) Not comp slower armies
5.) Not increase round times.

So if I wanted to keep points the same but use clocks I wouldn't vote for keep the status quo.

But as you note status quo got few votes so we can infer that most people want to see some sort of change.

guys guys this poll is not official and will not change any tournament you play in. I started it to begin the discussion, not end it!

 kronk wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:
To me this was basically a knee jerk reaction that has blown over now.

-->"only 48% voted to downsize, so we should keep it the same!"

<-- "but far fewer people voted for the status quo."

---> "Well it's obviously a knee jerk reaction by people that need to L2P!"

<--- "..."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dozer Blades wrote:


People should play their armies enough in advance they can finish five turns in two hours. "Practice makes perfect ."

Hi there! I have a management position for a fortune 500 company. I travel 40% of the time. I take vacation to block off time in order to attend tournaments.

We're not all unemployed welfare queens that live in our mother's basement and spend 12 hours a day at the local game store making fun of "newbs buying chaos space marines, lol!"

Before you hit that yellow triangle of friendship, I am not implying that anyone here is.

Okay kronk are you suggesting we should change just for the sake of making a change ? That is what I am hearing from you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 axisofentropy wrote:
guys guys this poll is not official and will not change any tournament you play in. I started it to begin the discussion, not end it!

I seem to remember a prediction that included the number 1500...

 ArbitorIan wrote:

Dozer Blades wrote:Going to a tournaments is a social contract with your opponents you will play to finish games in a timely manner.

Agreed. This thread is for of deciding what a 'timely manner' actually is.

Dozer Blades wrote:People should play their armies enough in advance they can finish five turns in two hours. "Practice makes perfect ."

First, SEVEN turns. That's how long the game lasts.

Second, this doesn't work in practise. What do you do? Disqualify people who haven't played enough games? People who've spent hundreds of dollars on flights and hotels to attend your event. That seems like pretty bad business practice for many big tournament.

Last time I played a big US tournament (NOVA 2014) I had managed to fit in one game with my army before the tournament. I might maybe play one game of 40k a month. Many other people are in that situation - getting lots of games in is part of the appeal of big tournaments. Alienating that section of the hobby (the biggest section) is a bad idea.

As others have posted, most people at a tournament are there for a social, fun gaming weekend. Of course people should be expected to finish in a timely manner. But the tournament should be set up so that a one-a-month player of a horde list, just there for a weekend of fun with his friends, can complete the game in the allotted time without rushing or stressing out.

No, Actually a game has only 5 guaranteed turns then there is a CHANCE that it continues so to assume 7 or stating a full game is 7 turns is 100% wrong.

You not knowing your rules or getting enough practice in with an army seems like a personal problem and should not ruin your opponents experience. You are right, it costs a lot of money to go to a big event, think about that next time you want to bring some army that you know very little about because its the 'flavour of the month'.

You are right about people going to tournaments for fun, shooting the gak etc. etc. But while people can still have fun outside of the game at the end of the day the game is why people took the time to go. So if you decide to only play three turn and think that is ok what makes you think that your opponent feels the same? You have as much of an obligation to your opponent as he does to you to make every game at the very least enjoyable and part of that is allowing the game to take its 'Natural' course which is ending when the dice decide so or at the bottom of turn 7

What part of his post said you shouldn't finish games? There's a lot of mud slinging going on over people saying games should finish. As has been stated a few dozen times, saying "lern 2 play nub" isn't a relevant or meaningful contribution to the discussion. Finishing a game in the time allotted with the points limit, as has been mentioned, is a worsening problem. This isn't because the demographic of events has gotten lazier, more talkative, or inexperienced. The game has bloat, and takes longer to play at the same point level.

 Dozer Blades wrote:

Okay kronk are you suggesting we should change just for the sake of making a change ? That is what I am hearing from you.

Then you have a serious comprehension problem.

Again, for the 3rd time, more people have voted for reducing the points (48%) than have voted to keep it the same (43%).

That means lower the points.

However, you are saying that even though more people are voting to lower it, we shouldn't. For...reasons?

This poll wasn't very good but at best I expect the ITC to go with 1650 points just because the way that question was worded you are going to end up with the same people voting not to change it also voting for 1650.

And yes axisofentropy did state this poll meant we were going to 1500 and said do you want to make a wager. Again I don't think he understands the poll questions.

gungo wrote:
This poll wasn't very good but at best I expect the ITC to go with 1650 points just because the way that question was worded you are going to end up with the same people voting not to change it also voting for 1650.

They have their own "official" poll, which will have a larger sampling of players than just DakkaDakka. I guess we'll see what they have to say.

I'm hoping the standard tournament is at least 1650, but prefer 1500.

 kronk wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:

Okay kronk are you suggesting we should change just for the sake of making a change ? That is what I am hearing from you.

Then you have a serious comprehension problem.

Again, for the 3rd time, more people have voted for reducing the points (48%) than have voted to keep it the same (43%).

That means lower the points.

However, you are saying that even though more people are voting to lower it, we shouldn't. For...reasons?

This.

If we were to create a DakkaDakka official 40k Tournament format based off these results then clearly it would be based on a points level below 1850.

I know I am weighing in on this late, but I feel very strongly against 1500 pt tournaments. I respect what the ITC and the guys at Frontline gaming do, however their opinions have great clout. I would like to caution against having a set amount for tournaments and making the tournament points value lower. I run most of our local tournaments in our city and for the most part most of the tournaments are 1850 pt games, we do change it up through the year and do 1500 pt tournaments as well as team tournaments, but most are at 1850 pts. I think it is fine for events and their TO to run them at points for what they want but I do not think that the time has come to force the majority to go to 1500 pts. Here is why I think this.

1.) one point is the time involved at that 1850 pt games take a huge chunk of the day. This is true, however it is also true that any point level game takes a while to play in 40k. There is terrain set up, objective placement, warlord traits, psychic powers to roll and lists to review before the game begins NO MATTER WHAT point level you play at. If you lower the game time, the tournaments will get done sooner but really that much sooner? After lunch, breaks and awards you may shave a half hour to an hour off the total time - Will that make people feel less tired or beat at the end of the day. A lot of it for me is not the strain of standing the whole day as most places provide chairs to sit, but the strain or stress of strategizing and playing 3 hard fought battles that day regardless of point level.
2.) Not getting to Turn 7 - I would say quite a bit about this. First running tournaments myself and playing in many - I would say that the majority of people finish their games. When random turn lengths came into being in this game I wold say that 6th and 7th edition have made a little harder with all the Warlord and psychic powers to generate, however I think with 7th edition their has been a major change. In 5th I would notice in many case where the top tables would be battling it out hard but there would still be significant amount of the forces left. Obviously one sided games this was less true. However in 6th edition and especially into 7th edition, both sides win or loose tend to take heavy losses no matter the victor. Many times with competitive builds winners are determined by who has first turn. In many cases an opponent is tabled or concedes before the game is over. This is a reflection on the edition and how shooting is such an emphasis in the game. Another point on the time issue. If we shorten our tournament round times I believe that people that have trouble with the time for 1850 pts are going to have trouble with 1500 pts with the new time restrictions.
3.) The Cost of Entry is too High. - Well this one is completely ridiculous and mute. Why? Well because this game by itself is a ridiculously expensive game. Shaving 350 pts off an army list will realistically not make or break someone out of the hobby. Editions, codices and rules change all the time. The competitive players have to spend every year to stay competitive and keep up with the current meta. There will be some that do not, but then they are also not expecting to take first place and are there to play for fun and not competition. This point I see is a reach at trying to make a number points to make you see things your way, however the argument is full of holes.
4.) Hobby time - Once again I refute this point as not being valid. 350 pts more to paint will not make or break you for a tournament. Also once again I bring up the point of the competitive players changing their armies throughout the year as the meta is changing, thus requiring you to paint new models frequently or even new armies if you decide to play a new one.

My thoughts on this is similar to an early post by Yakface. If people or tournaments are having trouble with games getting completed, then they need to seriously re-evaluate the time that they allow for rounds. I have been to events like adepticon that increased their time for rounds to adjust for more time for games and this helped immensely. If you are going to reduce your point level, then I would not recommend reducing the time played by much which defeats the purpose of point one made. I do think it is ood to keep track if people finish their games or not and a person consistently doesn't then discuss it with them or talk to them.
Cheers I guess this is my 2 cents.

 kronk wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:

Okay kronk are you suggesting we should change just for the sake of making a change ? That is what I am hearing from you.

Then you have a serious comprehension problem.

Again, for the 3rd time, more people have voted for reducing the points (48%) than have voted to keep it the same (43%).

That means lower the points.

However, you are saying that even though more people are voting to lower it, we shouldn't. For...reasons?

Math....what happened to the other 9%? If there are two clear categories for lower and those are all accounted for then that means 52% voted for some other solution right?

 Dozer Blades wrote:

 axisofentropy wrote:
guys guys this poll is not official and will not change any tournament you play in. I started it to begin the discussion, not end it!

I seem to remember a prediction that included the number 1500...

What are you implying?

They announced that voters overwhelmingly chose to stay at 1850! I was wrong! That's the poll that matters, not this thread! This one is for fun!

 kronk wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:

Okay kronk are you suggesting we should change just for the sake of making a change ? That is what I am hearing from you.

Then you have a serious comprehension problem.

Again, for the 3rd time, more people have voted for reducing the points (48%) than have voted to keep it the same (43%).

That means lower the points.

However, you are saying that even though more people are voting to lower it, we shouldn't. For...reasons?

I am sorry you don't understand my point - less than 50 percent is not enough to illicit a change.

 Fishboy wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:

Okay kronk are you suggesting we should change just for the sake of making a change ? That is what I am hearing from you.

Then you have a serious comprehension problem.

Again, for the 3rd time, more people have voted for reducing the points (48%) than have voted to keep it the same (43%).

That means lower the points.

However, you are saying that even though more people are voting to lower it, we shouldn't. For...reasons?

Math....what happened to the other 9%? If there are two clear categories for lower and those are all accounted for then that means 52% voted for some other solution right?

Go back and read my earlier post where I broke it down for you. I won't take the time to do it again. The "keep it the same options" only add up to 43%.