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@Sonsoftaurus

Then call a judge over and have them watch the game. Something like that should be extremely obvious so it wouldn't cause any issues. The TO would just need to make sure they had enough staff to properly judge the event which a lot of tournaments have gotten much better about.

Hulksmash wrote:@Sonsoftaurus

Then call a judge over and have them watch the game. Something like that should be extremely obvious so it wouldn't cause any issues. The TO would just need to make sure they had enough staff to properly judge the event which a lot of tournaments have gotten much better about.

Right - and if you already have policies about slow play, you shouldn't need to add an extra one for the same thing.

Someone who slow-plays through a loss in order to spite their opponent should be asked to leave and be blacklisted from future events. Seriously, are we not above this crap?

Can anyone share what the 'horde orks' list was and how 'hordey' was it? Were we talking like 120 models or someone really packing the table with 30*6 and some meat-based other slots?

This slow-play talk sounds like it wasn't slow play... more like game stoppage over rule arguments. There is a difference between playing slow and constantly stopping the game in my book. (not that either are ideal but they are slightly different situations)

If games stopped for 10+ minutes for Judge intervention, then I think it is acceptable for Judges to extend play based on discretion. The game was paused for judge reasons, not because of slow play. If players were just slow or screwing around then no, they should be cut off.

The reason there's a feel of a need for your amendment, Redbeard, is that we are NOT above this crap ... not everyone. Most players even when in an intense game are gentlemen and honest; adding a policy that punishes both players in a slow game is punishing the innocent to go after the guilty.

I think I don't like to second guess organizer decisions here b/c you never fully understand the why.

Last year at the NOVA 2010, in the final round of Day 1, a couple of players had been notorious slow players and aggressive individuals all day; so, knowing this, when the round began we told ALL players to finish their games in entirety, and stationed judges at the repeat trouble-makers' tables. All games went off without a hitch, and the full round finished not much later than it otherwise would have.

I think hard objective punishments are always a tricky thing to put into place for an event like a 40k tournament, b/c they can be so unfairly applied due to infinite variables and aforementioned potential for chipmunking. It's a problem we as TO's are going to perpetually have to deal with, beyond simply blanket blacklisting repetitively known problem children.

DaBoyz GT last year had a 4 turn minimum with 0 battle points if you didn't complete them in 2.5 hours. I don't think a single game between 90 players and 6 rounds earned that penalty.

The Horde Orks were as follows:

Biker Warboss
Biker Warboss
6 Nob Bikers

25 shoota boys on foot
25 shoota boys on foot
25 slugga/choppas on foot
25 slugga/choppas on foot
+1 more of...one of them I think

5x Lootas
5x Lootas
5x Lootas

1x Deffkopta with TL Buzzsaw and Rokkit Launcha

It would appear that I got a 42 for sportsmanship; I believe I had 3-4 great game votes, 2-3 good game votes, and 1 bad game vote; the bad game vote came from David Light; who was rematching me from the final game of the Alamo GT. We only went five turns in two hours without the die for a random turn six, so didn't get to finish. I overheard (his raised voice) arguing with Nick Rose the (head judge?) after the game that it would have turned out differently had we had another turn, but Nick was adamant that he was getting slaughtered, and another turn wouldn't have changed anything.

My game against Russell was actually fun; I saw that BOLS said that we had a lot of rules arguments, but we didn't. What we did have was 2-3 judges at our table consistently. They made rules calls, cover calls, LOS calls...even when we didn't need it. =p That's not a bash, just noting that constant judge injection, combined with two extremely MSU armies, combined with a two hour time limit for a 2,000 point game....is extremely difficult to finish in time. It was nice that they gave us extra time to finish, but it didn't change the end result from when time was called to when we "legitimately" ended.

The troop vs. trueborn venom....my venoms (not converted raiders, but actual venoms) are distinctively marked to avoid confusion about their passengers. It was loud in there, everyone was shouting at each other to be heard, we had MASSIVE amounts of people around our table...and Russell said that he asked if it was a troop venom; I heard trueborn venom. When he wrecked it, trueborn got out - all with blasters. I noted that if there was confusion about it being a troop venom, that would have been a good identifier. The judge kept the ruling because the guys who shot at the trueborn venom didn't have LOS to the troop venom, and wouldn't have been able to melta it anyway.

In terms of his most expensive HQ...is an Inquisitor really more expensive than a pimped out Cannoness? I had relayed that to Hulksmash Saturday night, and he didn't think so.

I lost to Horde Orks 18-12. Capture and Control (primary), Killpoints (secondary)...something else tertiary. We only got through four turns, and the judge at our table noted that we were both playing with superhuman speed. But again; 2,000 points in two hours - especially with OUR armies, with massive amounts of dice to roll on both sides, gigantic assaults and multi-assaults...it is what it is. I would have appreciated another couple turns. He had two depleted ork units left along with a single nob from a third ork unit surviving - I had the guns left to finish removing them, but not the time. We tied primary, he got secondary, and I think we tied tertiary and both got it.

My game against Ben was much fun, if a bit horrifying. He didn't weapon destroy / shake / stun anything....it was wreck/explode every time (in those first three turns), and cover/flickerfields weren't helping. Worse, for the first three turns, I failed EVERY pinning check. Wyches pinned. Trueborn pinned. Warriors pinned.

When I finally got my beasts up into range of combat...they didn't make it. And the following turn, they barely made it - into an assault against a tactical squad already in combat with a lone remaining trueborn, and I caused a grand total of one wound with my beast unit. He did three back, I failed all three 4+ invulnerable saves to lose by two, failed leadership, and ran away with my tail tucked between my legs. Across the whole board for the rest of the game.

Props to him for a good game.

And finally, I didn't bring my camera; I've done so many battle reports lately that I'm completely burned out of doing them. Burned out of 40k actually; we were talking about canceling up to an hour before we left. And it would have been a nightmare to try doing them anyway; the time limits and point values wouldn't have been conducive to taking time to take pictures, so it turned out to have been a wise call after all.

Yeah I really feel if you're going to put together the people and resources to run a 2 day GT event, you really need to allow reasonable time for the paying players to finish their games naturally.

I think 2.5 hours is best at 2,000pts as deployment can often take 20 minutes, especially if the missions aren't standard and both players need time to read and plan.

There's enough stress in building, painting, and traveling to GT's. It would be nice if people weren't losing games to time limits after all the effort everywhere else.

I guess if it were me, I would trade one game so that my other 5-6 games could finish on time. This is especially true in battle point tournaments as you don't need a single undefeated player at the end.

This was the best battle report I have read from dash. Short and to the point, just my style (ask the wife :-))

2 hours is to short for 2k. Some poeple disagree. Save the Battle Report pictures for pickup games. Then you have all the time in the world to get everything done. The Horde Ork player plays here in Chicago and he is a very fast player.

Sadly time limits seem to come up so very often when it comes to GT's and Ard Boyz. I think as a whole organizers need to take note and find a way to up the time limits for these events even if that means forking out more for the entry fee due to longer room rentals etc. Two hours for a 2k gt is just as bad as the 2.5 they give you for 2500 @ Ard Boyz. I decided after last year that unless the time limit is moved up to 3hrs I am finished with Ard Boyz. I am tired of driving 6 hours round trip for the semis and end up having one of the games make it to turn 4 barely. So many people travel for these events and I am sure they would much rather get home a couple hours later than travel all that way to lose a top 3 finish due to time limits ending one of their games prematurely. Biggest hurdle is probably the players though. The problem is that people nitpick every little thing when the prizes get bigger (bragging rights included). People are more prone to pulling the DB card and requiring judge intervention when there is more on the line than just dicing off for questionable cover or LOS issues.

NOTE: The only other time I have had issues with any of my games finishing is against a friend that plays horde Orks in a local tourney, and it was just the once. We only got to the 4th turn however we did have the 3rd turn smoke break that would have been skipped had we checked the time beforehand, but wasn't so the blame lies mostly on us there.

I was the head judge and I made the call for the hour extension on the game. It was simple players in the hour and half-finished only two turns and one of them held their whole army in reserve. With all the rules issues and disputes between the players I intervened. As stated our duty is to make sure games move at a pace where they can be finished. I sat at the table after making the decision and they finish the rest of their turns under an hour as I had the final say in any rules arguments or discussions. Afterwards I gave them a very clear and final warning. Letting them know this will not happen again and if it does I will be removing them from the tournament regardless.

We always reserved the right to give a few extra tables regardless of where they sat in standings extra time because of certain circumstances. We also exercised this right to players who had issues that were out of their control. We do not tolerate slow playing in any way shape or form at our tournament and we have a schedule to adhere too.

Nick Rose
Darkwynn

DarthDiggler wrote:This was the best battle report I have read from dash. Short and to the point, just my style (ask the wife :-))

This. And underplaying the drama, instead of magnifying.

pretre wrote:

DarthDiggler wrote:This was the best battle report I have read from dash. Short and to the point, just my style (ask the wife :-))

This. And underplaying the drama, instead of magnifying.

That's the thing though; there wasn't any drama. There usually never is, a few folks just hype it.

Walls wrote:Reecius, perhaps I said it wrong. I can give you that.

However let's be truthful here. Allowing them to play was a pile of bs. They couldn't finish, that's their fault and probably because of constant arguing rules. What about the guys on other tables not going to the can so they finished in time? Should they have been allowed to take a wazz or go have a smoke or go get a sandwich and be allowed extra time? It was a clear lack of leadership and giving in to friends and "net famous" warhammer players. It was COMPLETELY unfair to the rest of the players.

Fair enough, but to declare the entire event a sham based on one thing is going too far. I agree that that was a bad call, at least with what information I have here as an outside observer, but it doesn't negate the entire event. It looks and sounds like it was a fun, big community building event in which hundreds of gamers had a great time.

Dashofpepper wrote:

pretre wrote:

DarthDiggler wrote:This was the best battle report I have read from dash. Short and to the point, just my style (ask the wife :-))

This. And underplaying the drama, instead of magnifying.

That's the thing though; there wasn't any drama. There usually never is, a few folks just hype it.

Glad to see we are in agreement. What I was trying to say though was that, in the past, you hyped a bit of it yourself (intentionally or unintentionally) in the way that you wrote your BR's. I'm glad to see that that is not happening here and I appreciate it.

2000pts and 2 hours has potential for unreasonably short games being unfair to some army builds, especially if two armies end up in a perfect storm against each other.

I do like to hear a horde player still playing without people blaming his army comp for slow play. I would hate to see anything deter valid army comp simply due to time issues.

Darkwynn wrote: It was simple players in the hour and half-finished only two turns and one of them held their whole army in reserve.

That does sound rather odd. You would expect those first two turns to fly by.

sonsoftaurus wrote:

Darkwynn wrote: It was simple players in the hour and half-finished only two turns and one of them held their whole army in reserve.

That does sound rather odd. You would expect those first two turns to fly by.

A lot of disputes on reserve rolls?

@Darkwynn

I don't understand the need to threaten with explusion from the event. According to Jwolf both players had finished all their games up to that point so it doesn't seem like intentional slow play was an issue. Just an observation.

pretre wrote:

sonsoftaurus wrote:

Darkwynn wrote: It was simple players in the hour and half-finished only two turns and one of them held their whole army in reserve.

That does sound rather odd. You would expect those first two turns to fly by.

A lot of disputes on reserve rolls?

Curious indeed! How the feth does it take 90 minutes to do two turns with only one army on the table?

Thanks for the news updates and congrats to the winners. I just wanted to chime in on time limits since it was brought up... I would travel to more events in a wider area if there were longer time limits for high point games. 1500 should be 2 hours, 2000 should be 2.5, 2500 should be 3. If you give more than enough time for each round it allows for slow players, slow armies, or rules disputes. It also has a built in motivation of playing efficiently to give yourself more time to have drinks, check on buddies, and just enjoy the event. If time frames were like that I would be much quicker to travel to a wider area for larger tournaments, no one wants to commit large amounts of time and money into something only to walk away wondering what would have happened if they had finished their games.

Cool format for WargamesCon, I will be adding it to my list for 2012. Looking forward to pictures and reports.

We've had some feedback about time to play games from a number of players every year, which has not moved me previously. This year, a couple of things are clear:

1) Both Dark Eldar and Grey Knights shoot a whole lot more than other armies for more game turns, and people generally cannot manage that volume of shooting / saving (Orks with 45 Lootas might shoot a whole lot, but thanks to Ballistic Skill, don't generally involve as much saving, and it's only 3 units, not 5-8+).
2) Both Dark Eldar and Grey Knights have multiple complex issues that can slow down the Assault Phase.

Locally we have a fairly aggressive position finishing games in 2 hours; it is part of the culture of our gaming group, so these changes have resulted in less of an issue amongst local players than are clearly present elsewhere. I don't think that makes us better - we do generally allow a lot more "oops, I forgot to" than other areas, partially to allow games to happen more quickly, which certainly has its good and bad points as well.

We are considering both change of point value and time limits for next year. With the improvements we have in scorekeeping and pairings (thanks, real genius!) our turnaround time for pairings has dropped from ~15 minutes to <2 seconds, so we will have more latitude for getting in that final turn as well.

As to the scoring of Sportsmanship and Painting. This year Sportsmanship was a completely stand-alone score - it did not matter at all for final standings for awards.

Our Painting scores are a scale of 0-30, and are designed to generally have players with fully painted armies at the 24 point range, with only a 6 point variance for quality of painting. We also have a stipulation that unpainted armies are inelligible for winning overall regardless of their performance on the table. This allows players to come and play with unpainted armies, and each year a small number of players do so. We have a player who would have placed in Fantasy last year and the RTT this year, had his army been painted, but did not do so because of painting. This is what I want from painting scores. We also have an award for the best painted and players choice armies, and a seperate painting contest that is free to all tournament players. We mean to encourage players to do their best on painting and bring attractive armies (and we get tons of beautiful armies), but do not mean to duplicate the painting requirements of other fine events. I don't think our decision about this is right or wrong, just different, and I am pleased with the effect of our painting rubric after 3 successful years.

Jwolf, I would generally support a move downward in points to 1850 or so. I managed to finish 5/6 games in two thousand, but I tended to reserve a lot, and am a pretty quick player. My hand to hand with hydra gauntlets, re-rolls, sharnets are a little complicated, so that does slow things down as well. I also fire 45 or so splinter shots a turn, so the rolls to hit, rolls to wound and armor distribution on squads slows things down as well.

BOLS guys.. It was an awesome event. Thanks again for running it.

There were a ton of heavy hitters in attendance and both the RTT and the champions bracket were mine fields.

-paul murphy

A few things after reading this over

--Isn't having 2 or 3 judges at your table a bad thing? Don't you want none, really? If they are all there, obviously there is a problem.

--If sportsmanship isn't part of your scoring, why bother scoring? A favorite opponent vote is easier really. Sportsmanship being a part of scoring would really help some of the issues the tourney has.

--I really don't get how people can't finish in 2 or 2.5 hours. I was thinking the time limit was at max 1.5 hours. And two turns with most held in reserve? Shouldn't those 2 turns take like 5 minutes, not 1.5 hours? Just how much arguing was going on?

--And finally, obviously there was drama. It only takes one side to make it so. I think alot of this is on the TOs allowing slow players extra turns to compensate for rules bickering. THAT is why sportsmanship in scoring is so important.

I am not going to accuse anyone of slow play but part of being a tournament player is finishing in the time scheduled.

Crap happens every once and a while and exceptions can be made BUT the schedule for the rounds were posted in the tournament packet BEFORE the event.

It is the responsiblity of the player to bring a list that he or she thinks they can command within those constraints.

With that said - This is not a jab at Dash.. Just a statement for reference targeted at people who are not 'pros' at tournament play.

Jon, something to consider...

Why not switch tables around? I was on Table #1 for 3-4 games in a row - no variance of terrain. It would be nice if you guys added table assignment to your matrix as well, so that folks can play on different tables.

@Walls: Table #1 always had judges at it, regardless of who was on it.

blood angel wrote:

It is the responsiblity of the player to bring a list that he or she thinks they can command within those constraints.

You mean Arbitrary Army Comp?

Gunlines and pillboxes are more conducive to speedy play. Shifting the meta game by making games unreasonably short for the point value not only construct what people can being, but limit what people can expect to face which means they can load up on even more of the same.

2000 points for 2 hours is as close to standing on the line of unreasonable time limits as you can get. I don't feel people should be prevented from valid armies and valid tactics in a true competative environment due to an arbitrary limit that removes specific builds from the metagame. Especially hard-lined black and white disqualifications. I think it is fair for a judge to allow a legitimate game to go longer but shut down a slow-player or a quibblefest.

Hulk,

Jwolf and I are tied to the hip when we run these events. Justin and Russell finishing their previous games were taken into consideration and Wolf and I discussed this for a while. Issuing the stern warning was warranted considering the situation. In all due respect I am sure other people who were at the event would agree.

Redbeard wrote:Or you state that any table that doesn't make it through X turns will count as a loss for both players.

this is fantastic. 4 turns or you both lose.