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chess clocks.

Solid point, Deviant - most people probably hadn't considered that.

I won't in any way play in tournaments without a way to stop the cancerous intentional slow play. So I am all for chess clocks.

Well this is the 100th chess clock thread since LVO. The answers should be pretty streamlined by now.

In principle I'm against the use of player clocks as a direct control over game length, as it creates a built in advantage to low model count armies that has nothing to do with player skill or the absence/presence of intentional slow play.

This feels like more of a knee-jerk - instead of punishing all from fear of slow play, you should incentivise faster play. Relatively simple measures could include:

1. ruling and advice on the use of movement trays.
2. introducing score modifiers to missions that only kick in after turn x for a higher scoring potential.
3. introducing new end game missions that can only be scored after x number of turns have passed.

I wonder if there isn't an alternative to chess clocks in aiming to improve game speed without impeding other areas of the gameplay.

In the end the idea of the chess clock isn't really to time matches nor to award points based on speed of play (since armies can have widely varying play speeds depending on how they are setup); its there to try and avoid time wasters lagging the game and to try and get players focused on the game whilst they are playing it.

I guess one method would be to have a TO at each table or between a pair of tables, since an official being on hand and watching might well discourage people from cheap tactics like lagging the play. Of course at much bigger events this becomes less and less viable and puts more pressure on finding more people willing to spend the day officiating rather than playing.

Another aspect could be to live-stream or at least record and display all games. At least once a few people have been "shown up" as time wasters it might discourage that behaviour within the community.

You can't subjectively determine intentional slow play. There are one thousand ways to fake it like its legit.

 Overread wrote:
I wonder if there isn't an alternative to chess clocks in aiming to improve game speed without impeding other areas of the gameplay.

In the end the idea of the chess clock isn't really to time matches nor to award points based on speed of play (since armies can have widely varying play speeds depending on how they are setup); its there to try and avoid time wasters lagging the game and to try and get players focused on the game whilst they are playing it.

I guess one method would be to have a TO at each table or between a pair of tables, since an official being on hand and watching might well discourage people from cheap tactics like lagging the play. Of course at much bigger events this becomes less and less viable and puts more pressure on finding more people willing to spend the day officiating rather than playing.

Another aspect could be to live-stream or at least record and display all games. At least once a few people have been "shown up" as time wasters it might discourage that behaviour within the community.

This is an ideal solution if manpower is available at a 1:2 ratio (TO:players). I don't think this has ever been the case unless the tournament is absolutely tiny (say 4 people). The logistics involved in streaming is also going to be much more expensive than running a timer for both parties. Recording games has been done before, but as far as I know, it's mostly done in the last half of an event where there are less games going on.

As long as chess clocks are used to catch obvious slowplayers i'm fine. Let's not punish people: "Oh you used 5 minutes more than me, therefore <insert here>."

 Marmatag wrote:
As long as chess clocks are used to catch obvious slowplayers i'm fine. Let's not punish people: "Oh you used 5 minutes more than me, therefore <insert here>."

I don't think that'll ever be the point, I think there's a fair amount of it that actually amounts to basically showing a non intentionally slow player that he's playing too slow. I've had several opponents realize just how long they take when we started using a clock.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
As long as chess clocks are used to catch obvious slowplayers i'm fine. Let's not punish people: "Oh you used 5 minutes more than me, therefore <insert here>."

I don't think that'll ever be the point, I think there's a fair amount of it that actually amounts to basically showing a non intentionally slow player that he's playing too slow. I've had several opponents realize just how long they take when we started using a clock.

Yeah, i'm definitely interested in trying this. Locally, we've been discussing practicing with timers for some time, this will be the impetus to actually start.

One rule i found interesting - electing to let your opponent decide the outcome of an action - I think this is actually a good way to help speed things up. There is a lot of irrelevant dice rolling in this game.... to determine if something is "dead" or "super dead." People need to get in the habit of skipping meaningless actions.

Another thing to speed up the game would be to drop the number of secondaries down from 3 to 2. People are already gaming them in list construction heavily.

 Marmatag wrote:
As long as chess clocks are used to catch obvious slowplayers i'm fine. Let's not punish people: "Oh you used 5 minutes more than me, therefore <insert here>."

Chess clocks are the punishment. That's how it can be gamed. Stay 5 minutes ahead of your opponent. They run out of time on turn 3. Now you can play 2-3 quick turns in 5 minutes without them participating.

 deviantduck wrote:
Well this is the 100th chess clock thread since LVO. The answers should be pretty streamlined by now.

This thread is because FLG has announced how they plan to start implementing chess cloaks and they also put out a rule set for how to start implementing their use.

 deviantduck wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
As long as chess clocks are used to catch obvious slowplayers i'm fine. Let's not punish people: "Oh you used 5 minutes more than me, therefore <insert here>."

Chess clocks are the punishment. That's how it can be gamed. Stay 5 minutes ahead of your opponent. They run out of time on turn 3. Now you can play 2-3 quick turns in 5 minutes without them participating.

And how do you ensure that? That isn't how chess clocks work unless you hamsting yourself by not using all of your army or make rash/careless decisions.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 deviantduck wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
As long as chess clocks are used to catch obvious slowplayers i'm fine. Let's not punish people: "Oh you used 5 minutes more than me, therefore <insert here>."

Chess clocks are the punishment. That's how it can be gamed. Stay 5 minutes ahead of your opponent. They run out of time on turn 3. Now you can play 2-3 quick turns in 5 minutes without them participating.

And how do you ensure that? That isn't how chess clocks work unless you hamsting yourself by not using all of your army or make decisions.

Let's say the game is a neck and neck nailbiter. Nobody really played slowly. The clocks are close. You have a 5 minute edge on your opponent. He runs out of time on the bottom of turn 3. You now only need to capture an objective. He's out of time and can't participate. Ok. Turn 4. I move 1 unit. My turn is over. He does nothing. Turn 5, I move 1 unit, my turn is over. He does nothing. Turn 6, I move my unit onto his backfield objective and I get the objective and linebreaker, etc. That 5 minutes turned out to be super important.

 deviantduck wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 deviantduck wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
As long as chess clocks are used to catch obvious slowplayers i'm fine. Let's not punish people: "Oh you used 5 minutes more than me, therefore <insert here>."

Chess clocks are the punishment. That's how it can be gamed. Stay 5 minutes ahead of your opponent. They run out of time on turn 3. Now you can play 2-3 quick turns in 5 minutes without them participating.

And how do you ensure that? That isn't how chess clocks work unless you hamsting yourself by not using all of your army or make decisions.

Let's say the game is a neck and neck nailbiter. Nobody really played slowly. The clocks are close. You have a 5 minute edge on your opponent. He runs out of time on the bottom of turn 3. You now only need to capture an objective. He's out of time and can't participate. Ok. Turn 4. I move 1 unit. My turn is over. He does nothing. Turn 5, I move 1 unit, my turn is over. He does nothing. Turn 6, I move my unit onto his backfield objective and I get the objective and linebreaker, etc. That 5 minutes turned out to be super important.

Did you bother reading the rules FLG posted for use that basically prevent this from happening?

 Farseer_V2 wrote:


Did you bother reading the rules FLG posted for use that basically prevent this from happening?

Well, it says game ends when neither (both) player has less than 10 minutes left, but suggest 5 as workable. So, it could be done with 6 minutes on the clock.

 deviantduck wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 deviantduck wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
As long as chess clocks are used to catch obvious slowplayers i'm fine. Let's not punish people: "Oh you used 5 minutes more than me, therefore <insert here>."

Chess clocks are the punishment. That's how it can be gamed. Stay 5 minutes ahead of your opponent. They run out of time on turn 3. Now you can play 2-3 quick turns in 5 minutes without them participating.

And how do you ensure that? That isn't how chess clocks work unless you hamsting yourself by not using all of your army or make decisions.

Let's say the game is a neck and neck nailbiter. Nobody really played slowly. The clocks are close. You have a 5 minute edge on your opponent. He runs out of time on the bottom of turn 3. You now only need to capture an objective. He's out of time and can't participate. Ok. Turn 4. I move 1 unit. My turn is over. He does nothing. Turn 5, I move 1 unit, my turn is over. He does nothing. Turn 6, I move my unit onto his backfield objective and I get the objective and linebreaker, etc. That 5 minutes turned out to be super important.

So he shouldn't have run out of time before you. That's what the clocks are for. I'm not sure how this is so difficult to understand. You can't make your opponent manage their time badly - that's on them. It's just another of the meta-skills required to do well at certain tournaments, like knowing the lists you'll likely face or being familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the armies.

Just to talk about a few not clear answers.

Clock etiquette.

You have the time on your chess clock to do anything you want. I was in the middle of a turn and the opponent swapped the time from me to his turn, and went to the restroom. He apologized, but he said he couldn’t hold it. No worries, it was his time. We laughed and kept playing. I won, but not due to him clocking himself.

As a rule any time the game is waiting on a player’s actions his time should be ticking.

As my rule, if I’ve just rolled you taking 4 up saves, and you have the dice ready and roll, I’m not going to flip the clock. If your standing there slackjawed trying to see how some guy glued a nurgling that way, I’m going to flip it to you to get your work done. It’s not hard to stand there with a handful of dice during his shooting phase rolling saves as they come up. Stay involved in the game.

If it’s not your turn and you want to use a stratagem, like Armor of Contempt, reach down and flip the clock to you, state what you’re doing and put down your marker, then flip the clock back to him.

If you need a judge, the person posing the question, or questioning the situation should flip the clock to his time while a judge is called. Once the judge gets there they should pause the clock, and make the call.

Simple.

People act like the clock is going to rob them of all fun, and hock their favorite miniature.

I’ve found it makes the game much more enjoyable, most specifically in casual play.

First, you get more turns in. While I’m playing, when he is moving is a good time to eat a snack and take a drink. Second, it gets the game done, to actually take a drink and talk smack about how the mighty winner will fall to the less mighty loser the next game. Third, it keeps me on the schedule to get home, keep the wife agro low, so I get to come and enjoy the game with you again soon. Versus never cause the Wife is pissed that my 3 hour window stretched to 5 hours.

Next, the clock is not the final arbitrator when playing casual. But I’ve found several times that it let me get more games in, when we locked in 1 hour we got to a point where one side was going to win, we reset and got a full second game in, cause those first 2 turns went so fast.

Also, many times, I’ve ignored the clock. Having a fun casual game and the clock dings? Keep playing. Its fine to keep on and let the game sort its self.

Overall there is way to much angst over the clock. I play with them when I’m on a time line, at a tourney, and practicing for a tourney. They are not the bad guy people want them to be.

That seems to have less to do with who's better at the game than who's able to get through their movement and psychic phase faster. Faster doesn't mean better.

 EnTyme wrote:
That seems to have less to do with who's better at the game than who's able to get through their movement and psychic phase faster. Faster doesn't mean better.

It does in the context of a tournament. Part of being a good tournament player is great time management so it 100% is indicative of skill set.

Insularum wrote:
In principle I'm against the use of player clocks as a direct control over game length, as it creates a built in advantage to low model count armies that has nothing to do with player skill or the absence/presence of intentional slow play.

The thing is, chess clocks don't create an advantage for low model count armies. They just limit each player to half of the available time. The real constraint is the overall time limit, determined by the tournament format, which has nothing to do with how that time is measured. If you are unable to play 6 turns in half the available time, you are bringing the wrong army to that event. Or perhaps you need more practice on how to play faster.

Can you really stand on an argument where you claim to deserve more than half the available time? Just imagine saying it out loud, or hearing it: "I deserve more time than you because ________". And if you had a mirror matchup, what then? Do you both deserve more than half of the available time?

I totally get it if people think that the allotted time is too short to play in. but let's direct that criticism to the time limits established for an event, or to a players particular ability. Chess clocks don't have anything to do with it.

 deviantduck wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 deviantduck wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
As long as chess clocks are used to catch obvious slowplayers i'm fine. Let's not punish people: "Oh you used 5 minutes more than me, therefore <insert here>."

Chess clocks are the punishment. That's how it can be gamed. Stay 5 minutes ahead of your opponent. They run out of time on turn 3. Now you can play 2-3 quick turns in 5 minutes without them participating.

And how do you ensure that? That isn't how chess clocks work unless you hamsting yourself by not using all of your army or make decisions.

Let's say the game is a neck and neck nailbiter. Nobody really played slowly. The clocks are close. You have a 5 minute edge on your opponent. He runs out of time on the bottom of turn 3. You now only need to capture an objective. He's out of time and can't participate. Ok. Turn 4. I move 1 unit. My turn is over. He does nothing. Turn 5, I move 1 unit, my turn is over. He does nothing. Turn 6, I move my unit onto his backfield objective and I get the objective and linebreaker, etc. That 5 minutes turned out to be super important.

That's not how deathclocks work. If you run out of time, you immediately lose the game at whatever penalty the TO deems appropriate. Sure that might suck, but it just means that either you are not skilled enough with your army to play efficiently or the time limit is unreasonably low to compensate for what is a reasonable model count army (1hour 30mins is quite a bit of time to get stuff done, and that's pushing a 3 hour limit each round, which is logistically harsh on the TO already). This may have been a problem when players used to have to space carefully to avoid flame templates and blast weapons, but that's no longer the case and blobbing has no repercussions. Positioning means so little in 40k that it really shouldn't take much time to consider the exact formation of each unit when moving them. My old Irusk2 Iron Fang block was 1/3 the size of my friend's Tyranid army, and yet it took me longer to resolve my turns without opening myself up to assassination or losing blocks of pikemen than he did shoveling gaunts and stealers around.

 EnTyme wrote:
That seems to have less to do with who's better at the game than who's able to get through their movement and psychic phase faster. Faster doesn't mean better.

Ahh... see your right..

But the chess clock doesn't care how fast your opponent plays. You still get your allotted time. If you beat him with 20 seconds on your clock and he has 40 minutes.. you still won.

Reemule wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:
That seems to have less to do with who's better at the game than who's able to get through their movement and psychic phase faster. Faster doesn't mean better.

Ahh... see your right..

But the chess clock doesn't care how fast your opponent plays. You still get your allotted time. If you beat him with 20 seconds on your clock and he has 40 minutes.. you still won.

ha, I know what that feels like. My Harkevich list had my opponent dominated by my scenario play with little time spent. I even felt good about my play at the end of turn 2. Problem was that I misplayed and left an opening to my caster for my opponent to use to assassinate me. If I had taken my time and considered the offensive vectors, I'd have kept that hole shut at the cost of time. Faster isn't always better than slower.

Been thinking, and they have to state when you can change the clock.
TFG will press the clock when his 50+ dice are still in the air, counting wounds on your time. And stand there waiting to throw the one dice for his armour 6+ save, or the dice for the moral phase he can not lose, until you change the clock.


But even so, I prefer all of that to every game ending turn3...

 Wibe wrote:
Been thinking, and they have to state when you can change the clock.
TFG will press the clock when his 50+ dice are still in the air, counting wounds on your time. And stand there waiting to throw the one dice for his armour 6+ save, or the dice for the moral phase he can not lose, until you change the clock.


But even so, I prefer all of that to every game ending turn3...

Again if he is counting wounds thats on his time. If he's takes his time throwing dice in the first few rolls just switch it to him every time.

Again switching clocks on a single roll is common, maybe not at the start of the game but when it comes down to the wire it happens plenty.

 Overread wrote:
I think chess clocks work great in chess because each turn is very distinct. If its your turn its your turn, you don't need anything at all from your opponent during that turn, your opponent makes no action, makes no choices nor does anything to the game table.

As such each turn is totally distinct from the other.


In Wargames and Warhammer though each turn is still, in part, a conversation between two players. The player who's turn it is does the leading and the bulk of actions, but the opponent can still have a huge impact.

They get to react to attack via dice rolls - ok sure that's not long so that's ok to leave on the players clock

They get to make choices on abilities and remove dead units from attacks. Ok so they could take a while over this would you want to flick that back over their clock?!

They get to ask questions of your codex. You might have to prove how an ability works or the stats of a unit. Or even query a rule in the core game and how it interacts/works. Again this is another point where the opponent is causing a time-lag, yet its counting against the active players turn time on the clock.


Another potential negative is that I can see it penalising large/swarm armies over smaller elite armies that are able to operate quicker by simple reduced model count.


I can see it working in terms of aiming to speed up turns and also punishing players who take too long with turns at the extreme end. I think that PP (warmachine) games have also made more extensive use of them so chances are some (all?) of the issues I've raised might be resolvable with guidelines; or might not be as important as one might suppose.

I agree wit this entire post.

Chess clocks are a terrible idea in a game like 40k, where it isn't clear which player's clock should be running at all times. For reasonable players they just add a ton of extra clock management, constantly swapping back and forth every few seconds as you alternate who is rolling dice and obsessing over whose time it should be. For TFGs they just give TFG new ways to cheat, exploiting the system to drain the reasonable player's clock and then "winning" on time.

 Peregrine wrote:
Chess clocks are a terrible idea in a game like 40k, where it isn't clear which player's clock should be running at all times. For reasonable players they just add a ton of extra clock management, constantly swapping back and forth every few seconds as you alternate who is rolling dice and obsessing over whose time it should be. For TFGs they just give TFG new ways to cheat, exploiting the system to drain the reasonable player's clock and then "winning" on time.

Why is it so hard to understand how chess clocks work for wargames? IF YOU ARE THE ONE DOING SOMETHING, YOU DO IT ON YOUR TIME. Micromanagment of the clock isn't a big deal. Its already been proven with Warmachine. And yes, before you say it, Warmachine has just as many (if not more) opponent reactions during your turn as 40k.

Besides, you hate 8th edition anyway, why do you care?