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solkan wrote:There are a few things which can be done to ensure that players get a full five turns in a tournament:
a) lower the point limits. Two 2500 point horde armies playing a two hour game. Seriously?!?
b) timed turns. Complicated by the need for chess clocks and determining what get counted against each player.
c) summary execution of slow players. I've hemmed and hawed at tournaments, so I know I'd be dead by now. On the plus side, think of all the fun the organizers and judges would get to have, but how do you decide who's a slow player?

If a player cannot complete 5 of their own turns in two and a half hours (an average of 20 minutes, including setup time) then they really need to stick to picku games until they can. No offense to newer players, but I am not going to be their 40k tutor during a tournament. I would be happy to show said person the ropes in a pickup game, where time is not a factor, but if you show up to a tournament and your play pace could be charitably described as "glacial", then you frankly do not belong there. Plenty of people can bang out a game in under the assigned time limit with horde armies. I don't lay out an entry fee just so that I can play two turns and eat a minor loss to someone's slow playing horde guard/ork ass. I am especially amazed at people who cannot even seem to coherently deploy their own army and fit it into their deployment zone in a reasonable amount of time. I don't know about you, but this is the first thing I do with an army when I am practicing with it. How the hell can you not know how to fit your own army comfortably into a deployment zone?

Timed turns I cannot agree with, for two reasons. First, turns tend to vary in length throughout the game. A fast moving assault army might be doing nothing but moving the first two turns or a bloodbath battle might have only a handful of models acting in the last couple of turns. Second, the way the assault phase is setup, a lot of decisions and action need to be made by the player who's turn it is not, so there would be room for chicanery on both player's part there. I guess an overall time limit for all turns equal to half the allotted time would be an option, as long as deployment were included.

I agree that timed turns is going too far . . . unless they were unfeasibly long to cover all possibilities . . . but then this would screw up the rest of the game.

But as I said earlier use their long turns to plan your turn, then your turn will take no time at all and the problem is solved. It works for me with a range of armies.

I can't even stand slow playing in friendly environments...

During the enemy turn, I'm planning out my turn. The longest pauses I make might be around 5 seconds to decide whether to Lascannon your Dreadnought or your Land Raider, or maybe to look up a rule query.

I can't stand people who take half an hour to get through what takes me three minutes.

Case in point - half past five last monday, my club's "Captain Slow" was preparing to play. The board was ready, his models were half set up, his opponent was waiting to deploy.
In two hours I found an opponent, agreed to play Planetstrike, wrote a 1,500pt list, borrowed everything we needed (terrain, dice, etc), set up the board, played a six turn game and packed away again. Captain Slow was on turn four.

I find a slower paced game can be quite relaxing in a friendly environment. Play a game, have a chat with your friends, relax after a hard days graft.

Obviously this changes in a tournament environment, then I'm not only playing to have fun, I'm playing to not finish in the bottom half, and to actually try and get enough turns in to reach a suitable conclusion in the game.

On the other hand if I'm up against someone who is completely comfortable playing at 100mph, but when the pace drops frustration creeps in, and mistakes are made, then surely it is a sound tactical decision to make some delays, get the game going at a pace that unsettles my opponents rhythm. It's all about gaining that tactical advantage.

One nice thing about slow-play in a friendly environment is that it gives you time to make a sandwich, read your opponents army list/comic book collection, and/or have a smoke.

lol sometimes I walk round the tables and have a look at the other games going on while they do their movement phase, makes for a nice relaxed atmosphere and makes a nice social area =]

Frazzled wrote:
1. brought a timer and tried to keep me to THEIR standard. I'd really slow down for that one. If the TO used one that would be cool however (did that in a nontourney pre-Apoc multiplayer game and it worked great).

A good chess clock can be set to record total elapsed time rather than setting a turn time limit. Then, when you're half-way through the game and he's used twice as much time as you, you can point it out.

TBH, I don't know why tournies aren't run on clocks just like chess - both players should have the same amount of time to play.

Scott-S6 wrote:TBH, I don't know why tournies aren't run on clocks just like chess - both players should have the same amount of time to play.

Too simplistic a view point. Unlike in chess, my opponent must do various things during my turn which may take notable time. (Wound allocation & saves for complex units comes immediately to mind.) And who is "billed" for CC time in any given turn? (Why is it that my hypothetical ork opponent is rolling his models individually in my turn, and all together during his? Could it have anything to do with this hypothetical chess clock, where my time is getting rapidly diminished during his attacks?)

Wait, you're saying the problem with using a clock, to solve the problem of slow play, is that your opponent might slow play you?

Nurglitch wrote:Wait, you're saying the problem with using a clock, to solve the problem of slow play, is that your opponent might slow play you?

Hmmm... I think we are making this too complicated, a clock is a solution not a problem .

I doubt there needs to be anything besides allotted time limits. If someone goes to a tournament with a huge swarm, they should know how to use it. There could be special instances when someone really (like, REALLY!) needs an extra 5 minutes per turn, but that would be rare indeed.

You chose the army, and quite frankly it is unfair to say that you should not be "penalized" for YOUR choice, whereas you have no problem taking extra time from your opponents game. See the double standard here?

Just learn to be fast or simply do not play at tournies, I think that is more than fair.

Holy cow!! I actually agree with something Wrex said...the apocalypse is truly nigh.


GG

I'm not a slow player, I don't think I've ever had a problem finishing a game at a tournament in the allotted time that I can remember, but I know that if someone showed up with a chess clock and expected it to be used for turn timing, I'd say "good game", and pack it up right there. That sends all kinds of crazy signals and suggestions that I really would find incredibly offensive. Intentionally slow is one thing, but other than that people are just there to play, and they may need some more time than someone who is used to playing 3-4 games a week.

The most direct compromise is evenly shared time limits.

Not sure how someone would get offended by this, it is two people sharing a set amount of time, in a Tournament no less.

In a friendly game there are no requirements but what each player can agree to. Therefore no clock would ever really be needed.

The insinuation of putting a clock down and expecting an opponent to use it is that A: they may intentionally try and stall the game even if they are not, B: they are dumber than you, C: your time is more precious than theirs, D: expecting them to play to your speed even if it puts them at a disadvantage and may not be appropriate to the army.

People come to play and have fun, not to get badgered about how they go about playing their game. If there's a huge issue leave it the to TO's to decide.

Sorry, but certain armies will play slower than others. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be moderately quick about things when able, but expecting a Green Horde army to get through turns as fast as Space Marines, or Guard to get through movement and shooting as fast as Eldar, is a bit much. My Chaos Space Marines can probably get through all of their turns faster than my IG army can get through 3 turns of shooting as there are far more actions to perform, expecting the IG player to compress their playing time just to match the CSM army would be unfair.

With Player types 2 and 4 you can probably make the game get in under time just through going fast with your own turns if you are up to it, and with new players you can help them by saying "you need 4's for this, 5's for the next roll" and helping them move units and suggesting better methods of doing things and stuff like that, speeding things up. It shouldn't be too much of an issue, I've never seen it become an issue except for one new player who was playing an entirely different army than what they started with as they were encouraged to play in the event but didn't have a big enough army of their own.

Now, I think it should be reasonable that nobody is intentionally stalling, and that a player should be able to make it through at least 5 turns in 120 minutes in a 1500pt game, but leave time enforcement up the the TO's.


I personally have never had a game where time was really an issue. I don't think I've ever failed to get to at least turn 6 in a 1750 tournament in 2 hours.

It sounds like the horde armies need extra time that is not subtracted from their opponents.

This is not asking too much, I have lost a tournament before simply because people took too long. It is unfair to me and other players, why should the horde armies not make a concession as well?

We are talking about a tournament here, I keep hearing situations that would better be applied to a friendly environment. Not to say a tournament can't be friendly, just that there is a certain level of game-play that most would expect.

Vaktathi wrote:I personally have never had a game where time was really an issue. I don't think I've ever failed to get to at least turn 6 in a 1750 tournament in 2 hours.

The Ard' boyz tournament was 2500 points in 2 1/2 hours, I think that was a huge mistake. I have played 1000 point games in 5 hours among friends, and we had fun, but it just took too long and I got bored. If I ever actually get into Apocalypse I will have to play with people that know how to finish the game up quickly. I would mainly be playing for the sheer spectacle of the game.

The whole clock thing is a bit out of proportion really, I wear a watch, and clocks reside on walls. If the tournament really needs a timer for specific games that could be a good idea, but this would be more of a guideline so to speak that was presented directly to all of the participants; I am not talking about horde armies only, we talked earlier about the different types of stallers.

Something along the lines of this.

Horde armies wouldn't be the ONLY army to be affected by this, it would just be a 50/50 time share, JUST to make it fair. If players feel that someone is taking them too long, they CAN ask their opponent to stick to their general time frame. If someone continues to hog the whole game, note it, and the game will be reviewed later.

I just wanted to ask, are you guys this obsessed with speed when it comes to every other facet of your life? When you go out to dinner with your girlfriend do you choke your meal down and then try to rush her through hers, offering to cut her food up or put the spoon in her mouth for her? When you go home and lay it to her that night (if she lets you after that bs anyway) do you try to bust a nut in 30 seconds? And is she impressed?

And all you guys talking about chess clocks and gak, maybe you should be playing chess instead of 40k? It's a far more competitive game and the rules don't have a million fething holes in them at that.

Sidstyler wrote:I just wanted to ask, are you guys this obsessed with speed when it comes to every other facet of your life? When you go out to dinner with your girlfriend do you choke your meal down and then try to rush her through hers, offering to cut her food up or put the spoon in her mouth for her? When you go home and lay it to her that night (if she lets you after that bs anyway) do you try to bust a nut in 30 seconds? And is she impressed?

And all you guys talking about chess clocks and gak, maybe you should be playing chess instead of 40k? It's a far more competitive game and the rules don't have a million fething holes in them at that.

What does the rest of my life have to do with a tournament of WH40k?

Are you saying that asking to share a pre-allotted amount of time evenly between two people as a general rule for tournaments would be a bad thing to enforce?

Are you always such a nice guy?

Are you saying that asking to share a pre-allotted amount of time evenly between two people as a general rule for tournaments would be a bad thing to enforce?

Nah, I just think putting a fething clock on the table is a douche move.

Augustus wrote:I often wondered what a tourney would be like if they (EDIT organizers) wrote the armies themselves, and published them, and the players had to bring one of the published armies?

I assume people wouldn't like it, but wouldn't that be a great way to level the army issue?

So, would you have to purchase all the models for this event yourself? I wouldn't mind playing in a tournament like this, if the TO provided me with the army to play with that is.

At last year's 'Ard Boyz tournament I faced a 'Nid player that was unforgivably slow. We ran out of time at the bottom of T2. No comp/sportsmanship score so no recourse...

olympia wrote:At last year's 'Ard Boyz tournament I faced a 'Nid player that was unforgivably slow. We ran out of time at the bottom of T2. No comp/sportsmanship score so no recourse...

You should've alerted a judge.

Better yet, you should have fired some rounds into the air. It would defintiely have speeded up things.

Actually a tourney where everyone had the same list from the same battlebox would be cool. I might actually go to that one.

'Ard boyz is simply too crunched for time anyways. I can never understand why set up time is part of the game time. It takes horde army players 30 minutes to set up

Janthkin wrote:

Scott-S6 wrote:TBH, I don't know why tournies aren't run on clocks just like chess - both players should have the same amount of time to play.

Too simplistic a view point. Unlike in chess, my opponent must do various things during my turn which may take notable time. (Wound allocation & saves for complex units comes immediately to mind.) And who is "billed" for CC time in any given turn? (Why is it that my hypothetical ork opponent is rolling his models individually in my turn, and all together during his? Could it have anything to do with this hypothetical chess clock, where my time is getting rapidly diminished during his attacks?)

I'd say that this is another example of why 40K is poorly suited to competitive play.

It's not that 40k is unsuited to competitive play, it's that the proposed solution isn't addressing the underlying issue.

Proposed solution: if a game is unfinished when time is called, both players receive '0' for the round, unless both players agree to score it anyway. If two of your games go unfinished in a tournament, you're disqualified, unless at least one of those opponents is willing to speak for you.

Too harsh?

If I face a slow player I try and take my turns faster to get the rounds in that I need to set up the win . If he is slow playing on purpse I tank him in marks sports , comp , and painting , so takes his chances of taking the win for over all away .

Slow playing on purpose is cheesy and a real douch thing to do to someone who want to get in a good fair game .

I've never faced a slow player in a tournament, but I have faced slow players in friendly games . . . it's not their fault, they're not doing it on purpose, they just take more time to think about things, I wouldn't advise them to play to a time limit as it just wouldn't work.

Janthkin:

Someone else (BrookM?) suggested something similar, and I think that suggestion and your suggestion are the best ones on the thread because they recognize that 40k is co-operative as much as it is competitive. Penalizing both players for not finishing in the time limit means that neither player has an incentive to slow play each other's turns, and that they both have incentive to finish the game on time. I think it would also discourage slow-players from entering tournaments until they learn to play at full speed.

The only thing I suggested was that horde armies and newbies aren't welcome one bit at these events due to large number of models, slow play and fiddly new rule systems.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also stated that the biggest babies should wait until the results are in from BoLS-con, the big spark to all this discussion.

Blackmoor wrote:I think if you can't reach turn #5 you should both get a loss.

That way you both have an incentive to hurry up, and if one person is winning they can't stall.

It turns out it was Blackmoor. "Blackmoor" and "BrookM" both have bs and ms in them...

Nurglitch wrote:Janthkin:

Someone else (BrookM?) suggested something similar, and I think that suggestion and your suggestion are the best ones on the thread because they recognize that 40k is co-operative as much as it is competitive. Penalizing both players for not finishing in the time limit means that neither player has an incentive to slow play each other's turns, and that they both have incentive to finish the game on time. I think it would also discourage slow-players from entering tournaments until they learn to play at full speed.

The problem is that a truly jerk-like opponent who was going to lose anyway could take you down with him, but that's the sort of player that tournament organizers need to locate and eject anyway.