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Someone I was talking to about tournaments talked about a local tournament they played in where they had a game card that listed any "pregame" rolls such as Psychic Powers, Warlord Traits, Chaos Gifts, etc..

When people arrived they just had a list for each round and judge watched them roll their stuff before the game even began then the judge wrote it down on the card for each round.

Do you think this is a faster way to just "save" time and get into the game or superfluous?

Superfluous and opens up a huge potential for abuse. The returns on saved time are more than counteracted by those, imo.

And how do you deal with a Warlord that can reroll his trait, but not knowing who/what your opponent is you don't know if you want to reroll or not. Same for psychic powers. Might want to change which table I roll on based on opponent.

Now, as both an organizer and a player, I have no problem with players doing these rolls before the official start time, as long as both are at the table and watching each other roll.

One of my friends plays Daemons... and it takes him like 30 minutes to roll for all his junk. I would be cool with pre-tourney rolls in some cases

 Moktor wrote:
One of my friends plays Daemons... and it takes him like 30 minutes to roll for all his junk. I would be cool with pre-tourney rolls in some cases

What the heck does he play with? 15 ML3 heralds?

If he has that many rolls, he should have short cuts to cut down on time, otherwise he should be penalized.

Personally I have no problems with rolls starting before official time. But other than that its part of the game.

If you bring a list to a tournament you cant play quickly, thats on you.

From my experience playing with 5 FMC's most of last edition, I can say my pre-game rolls were always highly dependent on my opponent's list and, on occasion, the terrain available on the table. Pre-game rolls also generally only took a couple minutes, and that was including 16+ Psychic powers and 10+ Rewards. So, obviously, I would not be very happy blindly pre-rolling everything to shave off a couple minutes here and there. Especially when my shooting phase usually took 5-10 minutes compared to my IG or Eldar opponents' 15-20 minutes.

If someone's taking longer than a few minutes with their pregame stuff, tell them they're thinking too hard and need to speed it up. It should not take a half hour, not ever, even if it's your very first game using the new psychic phase.

 whigwam wrote:
From my experience playing with 5 FMC's most of last edition, I can say my pre-game rolls were always highly dependent on my opponent's list and, on occasion, the terrain available on the table. Pre-game rolls also generally only took a couple minutes, and that was including 16+ Psychic powers and 10+ Rewards. So, obviously, I would not be very happy blindly pre-rolling everything to shave off a couple minutes here and there. Especially when my shooting phase usually took 5-10 minutes compared to my IG or Eldar opponents' 15-20 minutes.

If someone's taking longer than a few minutes with their pregame stuff, tell them they're thinking too hard and need to speed it up. It should not take a half hour, not ever, even if it's your very first game using the new psychic phase.

Came here for this and am leaving satisfied! Rolling is part of your strategy; you can't just use 'default' rolls.

Hollismason wrote:
Someone I was talking to about tournaments talked about a local tournament they played in where they had a game card that listed any "pregame" rolls such as Psychic Powers, Warlord Traits, Chaos Gifts, etc..

When people arrived they just had a list for each round and judge watched them roll their stuff before the game even began then the judge wrote it down on the card for each round.

Do you think this is a faster way to just "save" time and get into the game or superfluous?

You should just be able to pick them anyway, rather than rolling, but that's a topic for another thread, I guess.

I don't have a problem with it. In fact, just come to the game with your warlord traits and psychic powers picked out. BAM! Done.

There is a good point that 40k has a really obnoxious amount of pre-game rolling now. In a tournament environment, I don't know if I'd complain at simply allowing them all to be prepicked and written on the army list.

 kronk wrote:

Hollismason wrote:
Someone I was talking to about tournaments talked about a local tournament they played in where they had a game card that listed any "pregame" rolls such as Psychic Powers, Warlord Traits, Chaos Gifts, etc..

When people arrived they just had a list for each round and judge watched them roll their stuff before the game even began then the judge wrote it down on the card for each round.

Do you think this is a faster way to just "save" time and get into the game or superfluous?

You should just be able to pick them anyway, rather than rolling, but that's a topic for another thread, I guess.

I don't have a problem with it. In fact, just come to the game with your warlord traits and psychic powers picked out. BAM! Done.

Warlord traits... yeah, I can dig that.

Psychic Powers?

Yea, pre picked psychic powers would break the game more so than it is now. I would argue the same with warlord traits

Yeah, even pre-selecting your own Warlord traits could be pretty nasty. Knowing that you'll always have Infiltrate Warlord + 3 Units, for example, could be huge. You can easily build lists around that trait alone.

One thing I like about the new edition is the ability to reroll WL traits. My opponent has no reserves? Then I'm rerolling the "-1 to enemy reserve rolls" trait for a shot at something useful. Like with other pregame rolls, the best Warlord trait is going to be situational. Removing an important strategic choice from the game to save the time spent rolling a single D6 seems like a bad call for several reasons.

While the balancing issues in the current game would be a nightmare, random traits, spells, etc are really a root CAUSE of poor balance. The more random you have in a game, the less skill it takes to play. Some randomness is to be expected, but traits and powers should never be random. I mean seriously, what general says "Oh, just send me whatever... I'll make it work."?

Ok, done with the dead horse.

 Moktor wrote:
While the balancing issues in the current game would be a nightmare, random traits, spells, etc are really a root CAUSE of poor balance. The more random you have in a game, the less skill it takes to play. Some randomness is to be expected, but traits and powers should never be random. I mean seriously, what general says "Oh, just send me whatever... I'll make it work."?

Ok, done with the dead horse.

A general makes due with what he has, even if it is not ideal.

Just played in Astronomi-con Toronto this past weekend.

The tournament required to submit, as part of your army list:
1) a preselected Warlord trait, and
2) a list of which psychic power table would be used to generate each power for each psyker in your army.
We still rolled up psychic powers before each game, but it went pretty quickly as there was little decision-making to be done during the process.

Upsides:
Warlord traits: This allowed certain builds that would not be very viable otherwise (eg assaulty tyranids with Master of Ambush). So it meant that you saw armies you might not see at "standard rule" tournaments.

Psychic Powers: There was no tailoring of which psychic table to roll on vs individual opponents. There was still the chance you would fail to get a particular power. Psychic power generation was fairly quick.

Downsides:
Warlord Traits: Gunline armies cried about all the Master of Ambush kicking around...boohoo.

All in all, it seemed a rather reasonable way to do things!

This slows down alot. Think about it. it could be 2-4 minutes per person. Lets take the BAO which had 116 that is more then 3 hour.

Warlord and psychic powers are just ways to tailor your list.

If you selected them with TAC in mind it wouldn't matter.

Honestly most of the time what you get for psychic powers doesn't matter because most people are going for the same specific powers, and we all know what they are.

The complaints would just come if a player didn't get their dream power for all the games in the tournament, but then some players will whine about their match ups in general anyways.

I think its slightly unfair that psykers can change their powers every match, or you can change your warlord trait every match to tailor to your opponent. As armies do not get to switch out their heavy/special weapons for different opponents makes little sense that psykers should get to do this.

Warlord traits and psychic powers all have tables which have some powers which are very good, and then some which are not quite as good. Most people would just pick the same things from certain stuff, and I think the chance of rolling something that is not the "best" power in a table is why its random and not points based.

I do rather like the idea of pre picking a warlord table/psyker tables then rolling on those before each game but you can't change what tables you picked to roll on.

Hopefully it sinks in at some point among the player base that playing at a lower points level can speed up a tourney nicely without having to resort to changing the rules of the game.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
This slows down alot. Think about it. it could be 2-4 minutes per person. Lets take the BAO which had 116 that is more then 3 hour.

Except its still 2-4 minutes per round because those 116 people are taking their actions simultaneously, not sequentially. Even being generous and saying 5 minutes per round to do pre-game rolls you'd only save 15 minutes per day at a GT. Hardly worth the effort.

I didnt write it . HE said do it infront of a TO individually, which I said would make things go more slower

 Moktor wrote:
One of my friends plays Daemons... and it takes him like 30 minutes to roll for all his junk.

That's purposefully slow playing and will get you booted out from any tournament faster than he could roll on the Gift table. No army, ever, takes 30 minutes for pre-game rolls. Ever.