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At best, he hasn't brought an army that he's able to utilize under most tournament conditions (timed). At worst (and this is most likely the case) he is a cheating cheater who cheats.

In tournaments I ran, stalling like that would usually result in giving a win to your opponent.

Been in this particular hobby for over 23 years. What I have seen in recent years is the will to win at all costs, overcoming sportsmanship and the spirit of the game in many of the tourneys I have played. It is come to the point that I will not go to Games Day anymore as well many other major tournament sights in the US and Abroad. My professional days in this hobby are over.

I now play in casual games and in casual tournaments when I can find them. They are usually small but overall are so much enjoyable. It is not about winning anymore. It is about having fun. I also train and help others get into this hobby by showing them the tricks of the trade.

You can tell the difference when a person, who has been playing long enough to be considered a pro in this game, who is playing with a horde army and is abusing the time allotment allowed per game so he can pull out a win than one, is who is a pro and knows the entire aspect of the game. This includes sportsmanship.

I've caught several players, playing the time game against me. Start off fast and as the game progressed they start to slow down in their movements or just move slowly all together from the start.

The Spirit of the Game to me is one of the most important aspects to me when you play this game. Take that aspect away and I might as well play Texas Hold them at Vegas.

As I like to say to those people who must win at all costs attitude, when I was playing in those big tournaments.


I am not here to win the tournament. I am here to make you lose the tournament.


Suddenly the game play got better.

I don't particularly care for your question or the possible answers because they seem to indicate that the player's *strategy* is to slow play and from what I can gather from the rest of your description you don't have any actual knowledge that this is the player's *strategy* rather than him being a genuinely slow player...in other words, not a 'strategy' but a simply a flaw that he's not as quick a thinker/player as you and is playing a poor army to be dealing with that issue.

IF (and that's a big if) this is truly his 'strategy' then he is a dirty cheater, as far as I'm concerned. However, if you had lunch with him and he seemed like a nice guy then my guess is that this is *not* his strategy but rather just an issue with his ability to think and move quickly under the duress of a tournament game schedule.


I also think that in general, tournaments continue to raise the points values of their games without adding the appropriate amount of time to compensate so you frequently have situations where if a player isn't too quick OR is playing a horde army then he frequently doesn't finish his tournament games. And if he happens to be slow AND playing a horde army, then he has no hope to finish any of his games.

IMHO, tournament rounds should be set to allow players that play at a normal speed (not fast) with a horde army can finish their games, even if they get paired off against a slow player playing a small army or another normal speed player playing a horde army. Obviously you can never set aside enough time to cover the super-slow players playing horde armies, but I do feel like right now tournaments have their rounds set way too short for the size of games they're playing.

That fella's got a face like a yak!

Honestly, I don't think the question is loaded or anything. Let's look at it this way, if you're playing in a timed tournament (which most are, to keep sanity levels up) you need to build and bring an army that you can play effectively in that time allotment. If you can't, then it's not a very good list to bring because people will think you're stupidor cheating...or a cheating fool...stupid cheater? I dunno, math is hard.

problem is at 2k you can put 250 models on the board.

in a dawn of war game and you go first you could have to do 1000 moves.
so your looking at up to 1 hour of play time just to do the move and run twice.

are you cheating, it is just the list you bring. 2k list's need 2.5 hours.
if you are playing versus a horde you need to play faster, offer him to roll his runs during movement if he wants.

Okay, I think I need to put this more succinctly. If you bring that many models to a timed tournament and you have no way of managing it effectively, you suck and should lose.

Honestly though, there's like maybe 2 armies that might be able to drop that many models on the table in 2k and they'd both suck.

I run a green tide and used to run a swarm nid force. They do take a while to move, and most players are ok with you taking a while (if they can template barrage my backfield on turn 1 without me whining, they usually don't whine about my movement phase) .

Then you get the guy who starts tapping his watch after 3 seconds and muttering under his breath at the minute mark, and swears at you if you aren't moving models like an addict popping pills. I've moved 180 boyz in under 4 minutes, and still had my opponent whine over it, because it takes those four minutes off the time he could be pummelling my boyz with S10 AP2 pieplates (when did they become standard issue on everything human again? It used to be S 10 weapon was rare and wonderful ) .

I go as fast as i can moving my models, but i'm not going to rush my thinking for some impatient jerk with a clipboard and stopwatch who is keeping timecounts on my moves.

If this guy is actually slow playing in order to win then he would be classified as a LANGUAGE. I voted number 2 down. Personally I'm dissapointed if I don't get the chance to play the game out in full... if I wanted to play half a game then I'd play Uno with my two-year-old niece. Also, if I wanted to win all the time then I'd play Uno with my two-year-old niece. Just sayin'.

Up to a point I'd be fine with it. I have a total of 31 models and only start on the board with 10 of them, so he can take the time I won't be using. 30 minutes for deployment on the other hand is insane and I'd ask the T.O. about it.

The original question was hypothetical.

Has anyone seen this kind of behaviour in tournaments? How common is it?

average tournament round is 2 hours yes?

If you cant finish your turn in 10 minutes then you are unfairly disadvantaging your opponent and shouldn't be playing that army.

Any army should be able to complete a turn in 10 minutes regardless of the size. Its just a case of practicing with that army. if your opponent is taking more than half of the time for their turns and they are experienced in playing that army then i would say they are cheating.

ChocolateGork wrote:

If you cant finish your turn in 10 minutes then you are unfairly disadvantaging your opponent and shouldn't be playing that army.

Popycock!

It takes more time to move more models then it does to move less models. It takes more time to resolve shooting that involves more units, more models and weapons that have more shots then it does to resolve shooting that involves less of each. It takes more time to resolve close combats involving more models than less models.

In short, some armies take longer to play than others. There is an imbalance in the time it takes to play certain armies from a purely physical standpoint.

However, the game is designed with a points value, and a tournament should allow the appropriate amount of time for every player to play at the SAME SPEED and still finish their games within the allotted time.

Players wishing to play a certain army build should not be penalized into having to play FASTER. That's incorrect and unfair. If the game allows for large armies to be taken at a certain point limit, then the tournament needs to allow for those armies to be taken and played at the SAME SPEED.

Players who take small armies should have EXTRA TIME to spare at the end of the round. Players with large armies should not be penalized by being forced to play extremely fast.

but a player with a big army needs to be prepared to be able to play that quickly. Other wise if he plays an opponent with a another large army or an opponent who uses half his time to consider his moves then he is screwed.

And its not fair for the people with small army's to have to rush their turns because they are playing an opponent incapable of finishing his go in his half of the allotted time.

And i agree with you that if the tournament is a large enough point level and allows army's a huge size to be taken then the tournament should have enough time per round for a player with 200+ models to play his turn without rushing.

As long as he moved his army in a timely fashion, the fact that he has 3 times as many models as you means he should take longer.

If I started the game with just say 7 vehicles on the board my movement phase should only take about 2 minutes - yet some people string this out for up to 10 minutes and they don't get called timewasters! If the opponent has 120 models to move then as long as he gets on with it the fact that he takes nearly half an hour for his turn should not be a problem.

You could always offer to help him with movement, or get an independent in to assist, or just help out by killing as many as possible with large templates on turn one so he has less to move on turn 2!

ChocolateGork wrote:but a player with a big army needs to be prepared to be able to play that quickly. Other wise if he plays an opponent with a another large army or an opponent who uses half his time to consider his moves then he is screwed.

And its not fair for the people with small army's to have to rush their turns because they are playing an opponent incapable of finishing his go in his half of the allotted time.

And i agree with you that if the tournament is a large enough point level and allows army's a huge size to be taken then the tournament should have enough time per round for a player with 200+ models to play his turn without rushing.

if you have 50 models versus a guy with 200 models and you use half the time. you are slow playing and you really should practice with your army to play faster.

ChocolateGork wrote:but a player with a big army needs to be prepared to be able to play that quickly. Other wise if he plays an opponent with a another large army or an opponent who uses half his time to consider his moves then he is screwed.

Are we now going to introduce a clock like they do in timed Chess matches? Consider and make your move then hit the button to start your opponants turn? Ok.. then how long is allotted per player turn?

In a 2 hour game, to get through turn 4, each "Game Turn" should be 30 minutes..... giving each player 15 minutes to move, shoot, resolve, remove casualties, assault, resolve, remove casualities, follow-up move, finish turn. This time also would have to include compulsory actions for BOTH players; piling in, fleeing, other items that take place "at the end of the (players) turn.

Yeah, some builds or players can resolve a turn in 10-15 minutes, but the game isn't designed to be played like that.
I doubt anyone here has "speed played" 1000 points in less than an hour. could it happen... maybe.. but those armies would probably have to be under 20 models each on a small table.

Tournament play is a voluntary method of playing that goes against the intent and nature of the game: that is the game allows for some armies to have rather large model counts, and the original assumption was that two players are only limited by turn count, but not a timer when they play a game.

40K isn't designed around speed play, nor should it be. The game is suppose dto be a leisure excuse to push some toy soldiers around. IF you enjoy sportshammer, so be it, to each his own, but don't act like everythign else must bend to your desire to play this way, and don't blame a player for doing what the guidelines and rules set forth by an event organizer allow.

That is the big problem i have with tourney play: a definate systematic bias towards certain list builds and styles of play, and you should never have bias in what is supposed to be a competitive format (be it toy soldiers or otherwise). Tourney games like any othe rgame should be played until they are finished, not enslaved to a clock and the foot tapping of opponents.

If you choose to play the game in a manner it was not intended for then you get what you ask for.

Warhammer ISN'T a sport (though some people try really hard to make it one) nor is it the "S3rious Buizn3ss111" that people in threads like this seem to imply.

If large armies bother you and are ruining your tournament experience then perhaps you shouldn't be playing tournments as perhaps you don't have the mental fortitude for it...

Unless you can actually prove he's deliberately slow playing, rather then just playing slow with a large army, then the answer is no its not cheating.

To be honest, there are just some people that play slow. Not becuase their trying for advantage, but thats who they are. I use to play with someone a decade or two ago that, whether RPG or 40k, played rather slowly, even if he had a small model count army. That was just him. Give him a horde and he could take quite a while.

How do you know he's slow playing? I have a friend who plays green horde. I typically fix another drink while waiting for him to move the rest of his army. He can't help it unless he wants to intentionally gimp his movement by doing something not officially supported by the rules such as movement trays or something.

That being said, I think I would spot it coming were it to happen and deal with it accordingly. Maybe IG spoils me, but I'd rather an Ork or some other horde player not make it to me and I have three turns of blasting the hell out of him. One outflanking unit is not scary, especially when I see what's outflanking. It's not hard to set up an objective outside of 15" of the table edges.

I've met quite a number of players who use large armies and play them efficiently and quickly, being able to complete their turns and full games. Redbeard wrote an article on how to do it with an Ork horde, IIRC. Horde armies have an advantage in the metagame, as you tend to see fewer of them in general, and even fewer in tournaments. But they are still there and good players work to play their turns quickly so they can get in full games. Considerate and aware opponents also reciprocate and play our turns quickly to help conserve clock time. My two friends who play horde guard do use movement trays, and don't quibble over how many models are hit by enemy blasts and template- they err in the side of the opponent's favor, partially to conserve clock time.

The slow-player I saw at a recent tournament wasn't even using a horde army. Although he was using a shooty army, which benefitted from games ending early. Hence the organizer repeatedly authorizing his games to be played out.

I don't disagree, Carm, it'd be almost impossible to tell one way or the other but when it appeared in a tournament I was running, I didn't make the distinction. One player continually ran down the clock in 3 of his 4 games...they didn't make it past turn 3, even. Whether this was intentional or not he was still heavily penalized in his battle scores for not getting games finished.

Slowhammer is a problem in tournament play. Always has been. Most well-run tournaments recognize and seriously discourage this type of activity.

I am neither condoning nor have ever done this...the counter to it, is to slowhammer him back, take multiple bathroom/snack breaks, call judges over for long esoteric discussions on absolutely nothing, and then take your draw and move on. Although this too is not satisfying. I would rather get massacred by a well-played game by my opponent, than to have an unsatisfactory slowhammer game.

In reality though, I have seen judges at well-run tournaments adjust results where it was pretty obvious that this tactic was being used, either by a horde player or against them.

I even had someone at one event (run by GW no less) several years back tell me they were going to drag out their turn and let the game time run out, because they knew if it went any longer they would lose. I complained to a judge who just shrugged his shoulders. (This and some other past experiences at GW-run events tend to cloud my opinion of events run directly by GW.) Extremely frustrating...

That is a different beast entirely than the "large horde army at a tournament" scenario. I have had Ork players tell me that they can't get wins because they can't get past turn three in a lot of games, and people are slowhammering them back, even though they are not intentionally playing slow. So it works both ways.

In either instance, I think it violates the spirit of the game.

Unless you are a very good and fast player, tournaments and hordes do not mix well...

Yeah, it can work in reverse too. One of my horde-IG-playing friends was cheated out of a ticket to the Ardboyz Finals in 2009 because his SM opponent in R3 of the Semifinals slowhammered their game to a Draw. Which was particularly frustrating as the SM player couldn't win at that point, and a Draw just eliminated them both.

If I can chime in here....

When I first started playing Orks, I had issues with slow-playing. No one accused me of it during a game, but I did get comments from time to time that our game was dragging on, and obviously when a tournament game ends at the 2 hour mark and we only got through three turns....you can make some connections.

That was quite some time ago, and I've learned much about 40k since then - some things turn into muscle memory. At my last tournament this past weekend, it was 2k points, 2 hours per round, and each of my rounds was over at least 30 minutes early.

Then again, I wasn't playing Orks, I was playing Dark Eldar. My point: I think Orks take a while. Even today, if I break out my Orks, its going to look like this:

Turn1: 5-10 minutes
Turn2: 5-10 minutes
Turn3: 30m-1hr
Turn4: 20m
Turn5: 5-10m

For my army, the entire game happens the turn I disembark and charge. That many models, that many disembarkations, that many running moves, assaults, pile-ins, dice rolls, combat resolutions, and consolidations....it takes a while. A lot of my slowness was in lack of knowledge of an opponent and their codex, and trying to make decisions about what to do in different situations - those bottlenecks disappear over time with knowledge and understanding of the various codexes and and how you interact with them; I've got a friend who is recent to 40k, plays Orks - and while he's speedy enough against me, is slow against others because he doesn't know their codex.

What I *do* object to is people who are proud of how slow they are. The tournament I was at this past weekend had a Tyranid player who had announced at the beginning in some casual chat that he was proud of how slow he played, and how few turns he gets through - I'm glad I didn't have to face him.

And finally, I agree that reminders to your opponents generally work, since most people aren't doing it intentionally, they're just being careful and methodical. Especially for deployment. "Hey, can I help you with anything? I don't want to lose this big of a chunk of our gaming time in your deployment."

And for each individual person: ALWAYS BRING COOKIE SHEETS OR MOVING TRAYS!!! Something to move your models around on between games. There is *NO* excuse for putting your models away and having to get them back out between rounds - bring something to move them on. That's inexcusably rude and as time-wasting as anything else.

Dashofpepper wrote:And for each individual person: ALWAYS BRING COOKIE SHEETS OR MOVING TRAYS!!! Something to move your models around on between games. There is *NO* excuse for putting your models away and having to get them back out between rounds - bring something to move them on. That's inexcusably rude and as time-wasting as anything else.

I think yours is a great post, Dash. Just wanted to point out that in the above quote, making this mistake can also be due to inexperience- but hopefully a person wouldn't do it a second time after realizing what a time-waster it is at a tourney!

Having a display/movement board on which to move your army between rounds is an absolute must. Even something as lazy as a pizza box or baking sheet. There's just no reason to be losing game time to unpack models from an army case. This is one of my evergreen tips for new tournament players.

Mannahnin wrote:Slow playing is against the rules at well-run tournaments.

Generally this, Mannahnin has it.

I voted don't care though because this is a grey area. I would be cautious about this attitude, the danger being not necessarily all high model count armies are run by players trying to run out the clock and win half games.

A LOT of hi model counts armies are pretty low powered, like ALL foot slogging orks, and IG Mobs w/o many tanks etc, I wold caution their opponents not to enter matches like that assuming they are going to stall, it just happens sometimes...

It depends on the player. I've met slow players who couldn't help it and fast players who played slow. Even fast players sometimes slow down to ponder their next move. But regardless, none of this is fair to the opponent, which is why I like PLAYER turn limits. Each player gets a turn limit. I played against orks once and if he was too slow it ended up hurting his assault phase, which was his most important. And if your turn ends quickly, well no problem with giving the opponent the left over time...being a good sport and all.

But really, time limits and 40k horde armies don't match...but there's little way around it...except maybe saying that if the match isn't played to completion, then the results don't count.

The game is not balanced for time. Horde armies are paid for by points, the player should not be penalized because he has paid for 30 bodies in a unit instead of 12 bodies and a transport.

If you arbitrarily change the game by imposing time limits, you punish 'rock' and then 'scissor' builds are promoted because one of their major counters are not welcome at the event due to unfair rules.

I think some people just hate playing against horde armies and accuse them of slow play. What they don't realize is horde armies take massive casualties, usually during *YOUR* shooting phase, and being a reactionary build, faster armies always assault them which means it happens during *YOUR* assault phase. Apart from maybe 1-2 turns of heavy moving, the rest of the time is spent resolving opponents wounds.

Having a Horde does not mean slow play. And you do not have a right to balanced or fast turns as the game is not balanced for it. Bloodbowl is balanced for timed play. 40k is not.

Personally, I like Ork hordes because they look cool and I like my ork models. I don't want to be told to go play a MECH Marine army because it is faster for my opponent.

nkelsch wrote:The game is not balanced for time. Horde armies are paid for by points, the player should not be penalized because he has paid for 30 bodies in a unit instead of 12 bodies and a transport.

If you arbitrarily change the game by imposing time limits, you punish 'rock' and then 'scissor' builds are promoted because one of their major counters are not welcome at the event due to unfair rules.

I think some people just hate playing against horde armies and accuse them of slow play. What they don't realize is horde armies take massive casualties, usually during *YOUR* shooting phase, and being a reactionary build, faster armies always assault them which means it happens during *YOUR* assault phase. Apart from maybe 1-2 turns of heavy moving, the rest of the time is spent resolving opponents wounds.

Having a Horde does not mean slow play. And you do not have a right to balanced or fast turns as the game is not balanced for it. Bloodbowl is balanced for timed play. 40k is not.

Personally, I like Ork hordes because they look cool and I like my ork models. I don't want to be told to go play a MECH Marine army because it is faster for my opponent.

This x 1000000000000.

It's ridiculous that anyone would complain about the "speed of a horde player". Players being "deliberately slow", could be using any army, be it marines or horde. If they are going to do it, they will do it, regardless of the skin of their army.