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As I understand timers in competitive chess (which i've never played..) each player gets some allotment of time in which to take their turns, instead of just putting a timer on the game as a whole.

Why don't gaming tournaments do this?

Restricting rounds to 2:30 has balance implications, why not just give each player the equal amount of time?

I assume there would be some provision for stopping the clock for a ruling from TO if necessary.

Timers in chess give each player a certain amount of time which is the time for the whole game. Once you've made your move, you hit your part of the timer, which stops your timer and starts your opponent's. Then he does the same and so on and so forth.

I've never been to a tournament where this system is implemented, but it sounds like a decent system. You get a bit screwed over if you're playing a Green Tide or something though.

Because the rules are nowhere near similar. In chess if your part of the timer runs out you lose. Even if its your opponent's turn and you forget to hit the button.

It simply wouldn't work in 40k because the two armies are not identical. Someone who plays a horde or large army is going to be really pressured, ecen moreso than there are now, whereas smaller armies like Space Marines, Battlesuit Tau and GK have more time to relax. But what happens when Greentide faces Draigowing/Dethwing/TEQ based armies? TEQ getdoesn't have to worry about his timer as much because his turns are shorter and quicker whereas the Greentide has to really rush and doesn't have time to think.

This has been suggested a lot.

There are people that slow play, and just can’t get their act together to play in a reasonable amount of time. Even if a player is playing a horde army they can come up with systems to speed their play and to make sure they are acting in a timely manner. Just because you are playing a horde does not mean that you get to use over half of the time that you have to play your game.

Here is the problem with chess clocks…this works fine when you have one player who is doing there turn independently of their opponent IE chess and Warmahordes.

The problem with 40k is that you have a lot of phases of the game where your opponent is acting and that muddles the time issue. For examples the shooting phase your opponent takes time to check LOS, make saves, removes casualties, take morale, uses abilities, etc, Same with the assault phase.

Because of this chess clocks are not a perfect solution to time mismanagement.

Turns are interactive which means I make actions and use time on your turn and vice versa.

Implementing timed turns or equal play which are not accounted for in the rules is the same as adding arbitrary ARMY COMP to the tourney and it changes the META for the event.

Not saying it couldn't work, but it is arbitrary comp and isn't equally fair to all codexes and there is no expectation of equal time in the rules as they are designed.

40k doesn't work like chess, and such a clock system would be extremely abuseable. If I wanted to screw my opponent, I'd just take forever to roll every save, one at a time, during their turn, eating up their time.

You could hit the clock to pass time whenever your opponent is "acting", be that checking LOS or rolling his saves.

That being said, I agree that Chess clocks are not well-suited to 40k, as by design the game is intended to have a variety of armies, some of which play a lot faster or slower than others. The game is intended to work fine with one guy playing a small, elite, fast-playing army and the opponent playing a slower, horde army which takes up more than half the game time; and that's fine as long as they can complete their game in the total allotted time.

 Mannahnin wrote:
You could hit the clock to pass time whenever your opponent is "acting", be that checking LOS or rolling his saves.

That being said, I agree that Chess clocks are not well-suited to 40k, as by design the game is intended to have a variety of armies, some of which play a lot faster or slower than others. The game is intended to work fine with one guy playing a small, elite, fast-playing army and the opponent playing a slower, horde army which takes up more than half the game time; and that's fine as long as they can complete their game in the total allotted time.

I disagree.

I think that a horde player should be able to finish their games in the same amount of time.

I played against Mike Fox who posts here and he has a colored cups that corresponded to each of his ork squads. When he took casualties he placed them into the cups so he knew how many were in each squad buy what was in the cups. Also he has a system for his dice that helped him roll faster. On the other end of the spectrum I had an ork player who packed his army away in foam after every round, and took 40 minutes to deploy. The game ended on turn #3, Is that because he took a horde army or because of him?

The thing that people seem to forget it that an ork army is very forgiving when you are throwing around 6 point models. The small elite army has to be precise because one mistake and it could mean disaster and losing an expensive unit.

One player should not be monopolizing the time. Even with a horde army if you can’t get it done in half of the time that is on you.

Chess clocks are a good idea IMO and I would love to play in an event that incorporated them. That said, LoS checks and the like make this a little more complicated in 40k. If I went to a tournament and they had laser pointers in the swag bag and chess clocks for every table, though, I would be ecstatic.

 Blackmoor wrote:


One player should not be monopolizing the time. Even with a horde army if you can’t get it done in half of the time that is on you.

The problem is, the assault phase is the longest phase usually and you fight on my assault phase and vice versa. The game will always be stacked unfairly against assault-based armies.

If I am playing a green tide with 200 models, the chances you will be assaulting me on your turn are pretty high. And I will be rolling all my overwatch, all my ork attacks and so on during *YOUR* turn. In fact, I could build whole tactics around making sure that if you assault me it is a 30-minute phase, because it can become like that when rolling 100+ dice for one units CC attacks.

The turns are interactive, and small elite forces shouldn't get an unpaid advantage or expectation of being allowed to be super critical with movements and such to 'waste' time while other armies are expected to 'take the hit' of sloppy play. The rules are not written or balanced around such a notion. It is basically making up new rules based upon one person's notion of how the game 'should be played' which is army composition.

I've actually played with a chess clock before, though never in a tournament. It was an interesting experience, to be sure. Neither force was particularly large, admittedly, but it definitely kept the pace of the game moving quickly.

I can see the up and downsides to it. As a system in tournaments, it could be subject to massive abuse by the same people who are already deliberately trying to run down the clock, and also penalizes players who take horde armies.

But it does get enormously frustrating playing someone who needs to check, recheck, and triple check every single decision and action they make during the course of their turn. Especially when they're doing it on purpose.

 Blackmoor wrote:
Just because you are playing a horde does not mean that you get to use over half of the time that you have to play your game.

I notice your sig says Grey Knights. Any connection there?

 Dakkamite wrote:
I notice your sig says Grey Knights. Any connection there?

It doesn't have to have anything to do with GK, it's just basic fairness. No matter what army you play you should never think that you are entitled to more than half the game time, for one simple reason: your opponent can play the same army. If you have a horde army and your opponent has a horde army you will both need equal amounts of time, so you have to be capable of playing your half of the game in half the available time. If you assume that you're always entitled to more than half the time you will either fail to finish the game, or put your horde opponent under incredibly unfair time pressure. And if you're capable of playing your half within half the available time you don't get the right to take more than half just because your opponent is playing a "faster" army.


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 Mannahnin wrote:
You could hit the clock to pass time whenever your opponent is "acting", be that checking LOS or rolling his saves.

But that assumes that who is "acting" is clear. If the players are disputing LOS who has to spend time on it? If there's a rule disagreement who has to spend time on it? If I think my opponent's measurement is off do I have to spend some of my time to challenge it?

And then of course there's the problem of exploiting the chess clock. For example, if I know my opponent is running low on time I can move my models too far, claim LOS that I don't really have, etc, because my opponent can't afford to spend time to challenge it. Or I can do things like make irrelevant tank shocks to force my opponent to spend time moving their models, charge a terminator death star with a single guardsmen to force my opponent to spend time on a combat with an inevitable outcome, etc.

If you play Mantic's games like Kings of War, chess clocks are a suggested approach.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Dakkamite wrote:
I notice your sig says Grey Knights. Any connection there?

It doesn't have to have anything to do with GK, it's just basic fairness. No matter what army you play you should never think that you are entitled to more than half the game time, for one simple reason: your opponent can play the same army. If you have a horde army and your opponent has a horde army you will both need equal amounts of time, so you have to be capable of playing your half of the game in half the available time. If you assume that you're always entitled to more than half the time you will either fail to finish the game, or put your horde opponent under incredibly unfair time pressure. And if you're capable of playing your half within half the available time you don't get the right to take more than half just because your opponent is playing a "faster" army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mannahnin wrote:
You could hit the clock to pass time whenever your opponent is "acting", be that checking LOS or rolling his saves.

But that assumes that who is "acting" is clear. If the players are disputing LOS who has to spend time on it? If there's a rule disagreement who has to spend time on it? If I think my opponent's measurement is off do I have to spend some of my time to challenge it?

And then of course there's the problem of exploiting the chess clock. For example, if I know my opponent is running low on time I can move my models too far, claim LOS that I don't really have, etc, because my opponent can't afford to spend time to challenge it. Or I can do things like make irrelevant tank shocks to force my opponent to spend time moving their models, charge a terminator death star with a single guardsmen to force my opponent to spend time on a combat with an inevitable outcome, etc.

The problem is... what counts as 'using time'?

So I assault you... so now you are overwatching me... is that your time or my time? For it to be fair we would have to:

*My turn Declare assault <chess clock to other player>
*You roll overwatch hits and wounds <chess clock to other player>
*I roll Armor saves, LOS and remove casualties, We see if distance is valid, I move assaulting models <chess clock to other player>
*You respond assaulting models <chess clock to other player>
*Initiative 5 happens, Your models roll attacks, to wounds <chess clock to other player>
*I roll armor saves, remove casualties. I roll initiative 3 attacks, hot and wound <chess clock to other player>
*You roll armor saves, remove casualties <chess clock to other player>
*I roll Initiative 2 attacks, hit and wound <chess clock to other player>
*You roll armor saves, hit and wound. You roll Initiative 1 attacks, hit and wound <chess clock to other player>
*I roll Invulnerable saves, remove casualties <chess clock to other player>
*You fail combat and roll leadership, You fail, roll to flee <chess clock to other player>
*I roll to catch, I fail <chess clock to other player>
*You move models from fleeing<chess clock to other player>

That was *ONE* unit doing assault. Should that all be *MY* time? Should that all be *YOUR* time? Or are we going to go through the messy clusterfeth to chessclock that bullcrap? And that is just one average simple assault. The turns are interactive, the game doesn't expect turns should be the same amount of time as some armies and units completely disregard entire phases. How fair is it that I have a unit designed, pointed and balanced about rolling multiple dice in multiple phases while you may have a unit which sits still and does quick simple shooting?

And the 'you can play the same army, you choose to play an army which is slower so suck it up' is ARMY COMP. People seem to hate army comp except when it is to their personal advantage.

Hypocrites from people who claim they want more competitive gaming but then turn around and want to modify army composition via chess clocks and false premises like 'equal time' in a game which is not balanced around or designed for equal time in the core rules.

I would suggest using the clock only for the movement phase. The more interactive phases could be subject only to the "overall" round time. For those unfamiliar with chess clocks, this is trivial to implement. There is always a "middle" setting where neither player's clock is running.

There also doesn't have to be a "sudden death" loss based on allotted time, it could simply result in a VP penalty or something. If you are playing a competitive game in limited time then time management should be part of the player's skillset. Put 'em on the clock. In competitive chess, being able to play well quickly is a decided advantage.

nkelsch wrote:
How fair is it that I have a unit designed, pointed and balanced about rolling multiple dice in multiple phases while you may have a unit which sits still and does quick simple shooting?

Yes, that's one case. But now let's consider a case where both of us are playing with that "slow" unit. Let's say it takes 60% of the time available. While it might be fine when I have a 30% unit and we can finish the whole game it means it takes 120% of the available time if we both have that unit. Clearly that is unacceptable, so you have an obligation to keep your army as a whole within 50% of the time. And once you've fulfilled that obligation and allowed a "two slow armies" match to finish within the time limits you don't need to claim more than 50% of the available time just because your opponent doesn't use all of it.

Hypocrites from people who claim they want more competitive gaming but then turn around and want to modify army composition via chess clocks and false premises like 'equal time' in a game which is not balanced around or designed for equal time in the core rules.

It's not comp at all. If you can't move a horde of models quickly you can't play a horde army. If you can't handle the decisions in running an elite army fast enough you can't bring an elite army. But that doesn't mean your choice of armies has been limited, it just means that you need to practice more with your chosen army until you can play it properly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jack_Death wrote:
I would suggest using the clock only for the movement phase.

But that's not fair at all. Why should I be penalized if I take an army that has a slow movement phase but a fast shooting phase to make up for it? If you're going to time it the only fair system is to split the time in half and let each player use their half as they want. Timing specific actions but not others doesn't make any sense at all.

I still see nothing in the rules in regards to a false expectation of equal time nor how to account time during interactive phases like me resolving armor saves, FNP and LOS rolls on your shooting phase or you resolving over watch and attacks during my assault. In fact, a shooty defensive army could use a ton of it e on your opponents turn due to the nature of overwatch.

I don't see how "being able to play my army faster or better" addresses you rolling hundreds of dice on my assault phase because I happened to assault your 120 man blob or vice versa.

Interactive turns make accounting time impossible. The rules have no expectation of equal time, and setting an expectation of "fairness" on something which doesn't exist in the rules is a rule which changes how people are forced to select armies which is army comp.

nkelsch wrote:
I don't see how "being able to play my army faster or better" addresses you rolling hundreds of dice on my assault phase because I happened to assault your 120 man blob or vice versa.

That's why you don't have the clock run for an entire turn, you switch the clock to your opponent every time your opponent does something in your turn.

Now, this is a lot of tedious time-keeping for very little reward and (as I clearly said) I don't agree with the idea of chess clocks in 40k, but it's certainly possible to divide up those actions.

The rules have no expectation of equal time, and setting an expectation of "fairness" on something which doesn't exist in the rules is a rule which changes how people are forced to select armies which is army comp.

The standard rules of the game don't have that expectation, but once you add a time limit you also add an expectation that each player gets half of it.

And, again, call it comp if you want but if you're taking an army that depends on taking more than half of the available time you aren't going to finish your game when you play against an opponent with a similar army. And not being able to finish the game they paid money to play isn't fair to your opponent.

 Blackmoor wrote:
I disagree.

I think that a horde player should be able to finish their games in the same amount of time.

I played against Mike Fox who posts here and he has a colored cups that corresponded to each of his ork squads. When he took casualties he placed them into the cups so he knew how many were in each squad buy what was in the cups. Also he has a system for his dice that helped him roll faster. On the other end of the spectrum I had an ork player who packed his army away in foam after every round, and took 40 minutes to deploy. The game ended on turn #3, Is that because he took a horde army or because of him?

The thing that people seem to forget it that an ork army is very forgiving when you are throwing around 6 point models. The small elite army has to be precise because one mistake and it could mean disaster and losing an expensive unit.

One player should not be monopolizing the time. Even with a horde army if you can’t get it done in half of the time that is on you.

This is just untrue.

The composition of the enemy force can completely dictate how fast or slow an army plays on its own turn.

For example, say an elite army relies on a Deathstar unit that has Feel No Pain and lies to pass off wounds via Look Out Sir.

An Ork army shooting at such any enemy unit TAKES LONGER than against other types of enemies because you potentially have to roll for Look Out Sir, then an armor save, then feel no pain for EVERY single wound.

So for example, back when Paladins could all Look Out Sir, I know playing against a Paladin army with my Orks took way, way longer to play then against an opponent who had a much larger model count army. And that extra time was on 'my time' supposedly, but really it had everything to do with how the two armies interact with each other.

My Orks relied on mass, mass shooting (rolling tons of dice) and if my opponents army relied on multiple defensive rolls (Look out sir, armor saves, feel no pain) then MY shooting took a LOT longer to resolve, yet this had nothing to do with me and how fast or slow I played.


And I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you say that horde players HAVE to play fast in order to finish their games, then you've relegated horde armies ONLY to veteran players, which is a stupid way to construct a tournament scene.

Tournament organizers need to track records of players finishing/not finishing games in EVERY event they run. If the % of games being finished is too high, then they know they need to adjust the tournament rules or schedule to fix the issue, but if most people are finishing their games and a few players are routinely NOT finishing against a wide variety of players, then those players should be targeted and eventually ejected if they cannot comply.

Trying to shoehorn players into playing into 'half' the round time, is NOT fair in ANY possible regard with this game.

 yakface wrote:
My Orks relied on mass, mass shooting (rolling tons of dice) and if my opponents army relied on multiple defensive rolls (Look out sir, armor saves, feel no pain) then MY shooting took a LOT longer to resolve, yet this had nothing to do with me and how fast or slow I played.

Again, that's why you don't time the entire turn, you finish rolling your dice and then flip the clock over to your opponent while they do theirs. You have to do this anyway otherwise it would be way too easy to deliberately roll saves as slowly as you can to use up more of your opponent's time.

Trying to shoehorn players into playing into 'half' the round time, is NOT fair in ANY possible regard with this game.

Neither is bringing an army that you know requires more than half of the round time, since this guarantees that your match can only finish if you play against an opponent who does make the sacrifices to be able to play their army in less than half the time. If you play against a horde opponent who needs 48% of the round time with your 60%-required army then you will not finish the match.

To be honest, I'd like to see chess clocks running before the game even starts. Want to take a Daemon army with 2 dozen rolls on random tables before deployment? Okay, but it's coming out of your time. Want to take Thudd guns? Hope you can resolve multiple barrages quickly. A lot of inconsiderate/TFG behaviors would be solved by the use of chess clocks.

yakface wrote:
And I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you say that horde players HAVE to play fast in order to finish their games, then you've relegated horde armies ONLY to veteran players, which is a stupid way to construct a tournament scene.

Not to mention those who are ok with just dumping their painted models on top of each other into cups

Chess clocks just are not suitable to this game. This game was not designed with a time limit, and some armies fundamentally take more time to play than others and expecting them all to be able to play at the same rate is absurd, especially if wanting to measure accurately and make full use of the rules (e.g. I'm wanting to spread my squad out to ensure they can make that charge next turn but also get a cover save and not get pasted by blast templates).


Clocks would get messy and abuseable. If you're doing it straight by player turn, you can pooch someone by taking all the time in the world to roll saves, argue over rules/LoS/etc, and if you're doing it by actions then you waste a bunch of time messing with the clock and getting into arguments over people not hitting the clock fast enough/on time/etc. If you want to play speed chess, play speed chess. The game is well adapted to it. If you want to play 40k, then time must be adapted to 40k, not 40k to time, or you're no longer really playing 40k and you're going to get nothing but Elite armies at events and *far* more butthurt than you can imagine.

 Peregrine wrote:


Again, that's why you don't time the entire turn, you finish rolling your dice and then flip the clock over to your opponent while they do theirs. You have to do this anyway otherwise it would be way too easy to deliberately roll saves as slowly as you can to use up more of your opponent's time.

While my example highlighted situations where the opponent is making rolls (armor saves, feel no pain rolls, Look Out Sir), this isn't the full extent of the issue.

Say an opposing army is entirely mechanized, but when it dismounts its infantry models tend to die quickly (poor armor with no special rules) and your army features tons of anti-infantry shooting (like shootas in an Ork army).

In that type of game, you either don't have much to shoot at (as your anti-tank shots are pretty quick to resolve) and then when the opposing force dismounts, it is quite easy for your army to quickly dispatch them.

Counter this concept with an enemy army type that is completely foot-mounted, but is made up of super-tough infantry. In this situation, you literally have to fire every model in your army every turn at the enemy units in an attempt to whittle them down.

So in this second case, the time it takes to just play YOUR army (just rolling 'to hit' and 'to wound' with every one of your models every round) ends up taking MUCH longer than it would against a totally different army type.

The composition and the things your opponent does dictates how long 'your half' of the game takes. So it is entirely possible for someone with a tiny Elite army to actually cause the horde player's actions to take much longer to play than facing off against another horde army.

Neither is bringing an army that you know requires more than half of the round time, since this guarantees that your match can only finish if you play against an opponent who does make the sacrifices to be able to play their army in less than half the time. If you play against a horde opponent who needs 48% of the round time with your 60%-required army then you will not finish the match.

Again, this is a problem with the EVENT. The game is designed to allow for horde armies as part of the game. The tournament should be structured to allow two horde players playing at a reasonable pace to finish their game, either by reducing points, extending round times, or using other event-specific rules to help the issue out.

But if the only way for a horde army to finish their games at an event is to 'play fast' then basically you've unfairly relegated the horde army style to elite players, and that is both bad for diversity in the tournament hobby and helps to shift the meta-game in unnatural ways.

Warmachine/Hordes uses chess clocks as part of the Steamroller (year) tournament package. That or times turns. WmH has a relatively tight turn schedule, with few effects happening out of turn - the occasional tough (think armour save) roll or some effects that fire when something comes within range of certain models. However, those effects still demand a precice switch between the active and reactive players and can zometimes become a bone of contention between inexperienced tournament players. I am not sure I see it working well in GW games in generaø because a lot of reactive rollling and decicions go on in the opponents turn.

That being said, chess clocks rule for pacing the game, and force players to stop dragging their feet and spend twice as much time as their opponent in analysis paralysis. It also means you can have pretty big swiss draw tournaments in a single day!

 yakface wrote:


This is just untrue.

The composition of the enemy force can completely dictate how fast or slow an army plays on its own turn.

For example, say an elite army relies on a Deathstar unit that has Feel No Pain and lies to pass off wounds via Look Out Sir.

An Ork army shooting at such any enemy unit TAKES LONGER than against other types of enemies because you potentially have to roll for Look Out Sir, then an armor save, then feel no pain for EVERY single wound.

So for example, back when Paladins could all Look Out Sir, I know playing against a Paladin army with my Orks took way, way longer to play then against an opponent who had a much larger model count army. And that extra time was on 'my time' supposedly, but really it had everything to do with how the two armies interact with each other.

My Orks relied on mass, mass shooting (rolling tons of dice) and if my opponents army relied on multiple defensive rolls (Look out sir, armor saves, feel no pain) then MY shooting took a LOT longer to resolve, yet this had nothing to do with me and how fast or slow I played.

That is why I said that chess clocks break down in the assault and shooting phases and that is why they are not a viable solution to slow playing.

And I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you say that horde players HAVE to play fast in order to finish their games, then you've relegated horde armies ONLY to veteran players, which is a stupid way to construct a tournament scene.

Tournament organizers need to track records of players finishing/not finishing games in EVERY event they run. If the % of games being finished is too high, then they know they need to adjust the tournament rules or schedule to fix the issue, but if most people are finishing their games and a few players are routinely NOT finishing against a wide variety of players, then those players should be targeted and eventually ejected if they cannot comply.

Trying to shoehorn players into playing into 'half' the round time, is NOT fair in ANY possible regard with this game.

It is not fair for the game to only go 3 rounds either.

I do not want to lose hordes armies, and I want them to be accessible to everyone, but TOs are trying to cram a lot of games these days into a weekend and the games are taking longer to play. The best option is more time to play but that is not happening so something has to give.

 Peregrine wrote:

Jack_Death wrote:
I would suggest using the clock only for the movement phase.

But that's not fair at all. Why should I be penalized if I take an army that has a slow movement phase but a fast shooting phase to make up for it? If you're going to time it the only fair system is to split the time in half and let each player use their half as they want. Timing specific actions but not others doesn't make any sense at all.

Timing only movement was only a suggestion. I can just as easily say "timing phases where both players are acting doesn't make any sense at all" - that is in fact the argument being made by just about everyone in this thread.

Of course, the TO is already timing all of the phases and all of the player actions - just not for each individual player. You have to accept the fact that the game is already being timed and only then ask the question "is the gamed being timed fairly?". The movement phase is an easy target for improved fairness as players are not sharing the time. As 40K is not a strict I-go U-go game, any improvement is going to have tradeoffs.

Equal time cannot work until 100 points of ork shoota boyz takes the exact same amount of time to shoot as 100 points of Iguard pieplates.

The game is balanced off of some armies require massive numbers of dice rolled, models moved and so on for small individual points, others require small units, small numbers, quick actions for large points.

Time limits or the false premise of equal time negates the balance of mass models vs expensive models by giving expensive models a huge advantage not paid for or balanced with points.

Any implementation of such a concept is fundamentally unfair and against the core design fo the game. It shifts the meta and imposes army composition on people based upon an arbitrary notion on 'how the game should be played' opposed to the rules of the core game.

And timing just the movement phase isn't fair because a 250 point land raider doesn't take the same time as 250 points of nids. Equal-time expectations basically tells players that point-for-point armies all need to move with the equal amount of time. So I can 'move' my igard army in 10 seconds, so now my nid opponent must move his 100 models in 10 seconds.

Imposing equal time is no more fair than randomly changing units point values, requiring necrons to play with 250pts less of models or adding +1 WS to models who are blue. It is madeup rules which change the balance of the entire game unfairly.

But what you are saying is "unequal time is ok". That's fine, but I think there is room to disagree.

nkelsch wrote:
Equal time cannot work until 100 points of ork shoota boyz takes the exact same amount of time to shoot as 100 points of Iguard pieplates.

As has been mentioned Warmahordes can use a "death clock" option at its tournaments. It doesn't prevent "horde" armies from playing nor does it put them on an unfair footing. It's up to the player to make tactical decisions as to which units to use at which time. AFIAK there is no rule in 40K that says that you have to use all of your units all of the time. There is a rule like that in Warmahordes.
What the death clock does force people to do is learn their armies rules and abilities. If you want to say that that would restrict novice players from playing 200 Orks in a battle then I say so what? I would feel the same way if he was using a 15 model GK army. Don't waste my time if you don't know how to run your army.