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FLG mentioned in a youtube comment that there had been several polls that showed people wanted to play at 2k. I don't remember seeing any since the early early days of 8th, and certainly none since the LVO. What do you guys think?

I'll post what I think later on in the thread, since I don't want it to influence the results.

I like 2000k points, it allow you to use many units, but at least playing Dark Angels it feels I still need to make sacrifices. If you go lower things get worse and the game enters a more Rock-Papers-Scissors state because TAC lists are harder to do. I Normally I have no problems reaching turn 4 or even 5 in all my tournaments, but at the same time regional tournaments here have 3-hour games.

(First game of the day 09:00-12:00. Second one 12:00-15:00. We stop to eat until 17:00 to 20:00 for the third and last game)

The main issues to consider are time and the number of expected/known players and if its club limited or open participation.

In general a club level tournament can have more flexibility because the players can choose to have it take place over many days (weeks) rather than all in a single day or two days. As a result higher points values are viable because the game can take longer.

Meanwhile if the event is tied to a very specific time period and if the number of people coming is larger then you've got more limitations which promotes smaller army sizes so that games can complete in a quicker span of time.


So what players want is almost not part of the equation since many times the criteria are going to be defined by the situation more so than the players taking part.


You might get away with larger games if the event is at the peek of a series of battles and thus all those player are of a confirmed high skill level (ego should be able to play faster than those of less experience and skill).

I think that I like every tournament being different so my vote is ... any that they want.

It's fairly clear that 2k points in this current metagame makes it fairly difficult to reach turn 4/5/6 on a regular tournament schedule. You can read what you will into that, imo.

meleti wrote:
It's fairly clear that 2k points in this current metagame makes it fairly difficult to reach turn 4/5/6 on a regular tournament schedule. You can read what you will into that, imo.

Agreed. I read that very few games at LVO made it past turn 3, not sure how accurate that is.

Ok far enough down I feel I can post without first look bias creeping in, not that these things are scientific, but there is no harm in trying to limit bias.

8th ed is a little slower than 7th ed, the reasons are varied but that does seem to be the case. We didn't know this going into 8th ed, we were told it was faster and simpler, so in our optimism people decided on 2k as the standard. It's been almost a year, and the error of that is pretty clear now. The debate has been how to handle it.

This is relevant because, FLG talked about chess clocks in their last podcast/liveshow. We might even see them at the BAO. The idea they were tossing around was if you went over time, you couldn't take any more turns (your involvement in the rest of the game is rolling armor saves and morale), and your opponent got to play normally. It's not an idea I'm fond of.

Let me go slightly off topic and tell one of my favorite science jokes. A professor had trained a grasshopper to jump when they heard a bell ring. The professor then numbed one of the grasshoppers legs, range the bell and the grasshopper jumped. He repeated this a few times, numbing a leg, ringing a bell and the grasshopper jumping. Finally he numbed all of the grasshopper legs and rang the bell, and to his surprise the grasshopper didn't jump. He concluded that grasshopper must hear with their legs.

The moral of the story is it's possible to have all of the information and still come to the wrong conclusion. I think that's where FLG is right now, they see the same problem we do, with long game turns and few games coming to a natural conclusion, but they think it's because of slow play, intentional or otherwise. They think adding chess clocks will speed up play, because the penalty for taking too long is so harsh. I'd say they are probably correct, but it will come at a cost of enjoyment, and several armies will not be functional at 2k points and exactly one hour and 15 minutes of play time.

There are also the complications of the chess clock, when to hand it off, when to pause it etc. They were suggesting that players would have to watch a tutorial if they were there competitively. I could go on, but the video is linked below, you can watch it at your leisure, which will involve less of my bias creeping into what they said, than me quoting them.

With that said, let's talk about the points, 1500 seems to small to me and 2000 is demonstrably too much. I feel like for a first run we should split the difference, and go with 1750. If it needs to be adjusted in the future (up or down), I feel like that will be a good place to move from. 1750 still allows multiple detachments, but maybe not three detachments.

Youtube video, slow play discussion starts at 28 minutes:

Well when 8th first dropped it was absolutely faster than 7th, quite dramatically so in some areas. Many of our newer players doubled their speed overnight because they actually understood the rules for the first time, something they had struggled with for most of 7th However, there were far less rules to memorize. No one had chapter tactics, strategems were super easy to remember because there were a whopping 3 of them, and many units had far simpler interactions than they do now. Not to mention warlord traits, new aura abilities, less weapon abilities, etc. From what I saw IG had the craziest stuff in the game with orders, and even there the codex doubled what we had access to. As codexes dropped units lost wargear options but gained arguably far more interactions with chapter tactics, strategems, warlord traits, auras, and pyskers.

With all this in mind, I'd personally prefer 1500, but could definitely understand a compromise of say 1750 to accommodate more elite armies. Even 250 makes a big difference. For IG that can be a solid platoon of guardsmen depending on kit. I would like it to be 1500 as a horde player, but obviously as an IG player I could go to a 1,000pts tomorrow and not bat an eye. I'd be taking less of everything but I could at least somewhat cover my bases. The difference would be I'd be running say 80 infantry instead of 150, or 1-2 tanks instead of 6.

I do feel other armies could actually compete at 1750 and even 1500, players just don't like losing access to all their toys. Ideally I feel a points level for tournaments should heavily emphasize hard choices being made. You shouldn't be able to slap everything in with 0 issues like 2000 often encourages. When I played Flames of War a lot back in V3 they often ran 1750-1850 and that was about right to where you never really had everything exactly where you wanted it. You could be really set on AT but you'd lack AA, or have lots of infantry to overwhelm enemy mg's but lack in armored support. Elite armies were quite powerful but had to be razor focused at winning a certain way or else they risked not having tools for the job, while more generalist armies had most of their tools to cover scenarios but never had enough to 100% shut down a person doubling down on a certain strategy.

That's actually another thing I'd love to see 40k tournaments do, a randomly shifting amount that moves to a different value between 1500-2000 every year or so. Helps break up the meta a bit and encourages less netlisting, which usually helps promote a healthier meta. Obviously certain meta lists will still appear, but by enouraging lists to move up and down in points you prevent there being go to lists like we had toward the end of 7th.

I struggle to fit everything I feel I need in a 2k list, though that may be a result of just playing an across-the-board overcosted army lol. I don't think I would have fun at anything less than 1750, lower than that and I would seriously struggle to make lists I'm satisfied with.

I like 2000pts personally, but if time is a factor, 1500 is really the sweet spot, and is probably a bit less insanely alpha strikey.

No matter what you do you're picking favorites. You add chess clocks and you're 'penalizing' horde armies. You shrink points and you're 'penalizing' elite armies.

Take Imperial Knights. I think there's only a few configurations you can do to field an IK list at 1,500. At least if you want to allow them to take a detachment that actually adds CP.

Custodes too. A minimum battalion is, what, 772 points? That's over half your points allotment and you've got nothing to deal with Psyekrs or have access to any shooting besides Rapid Fire 1 S4 spears. An Outrider of 3 bike squads is even more expensive at 970.

Conversely, can a lot of armies deal with 10 T6 2+/4++ models with Fly, Hurricane Bolters and the equivalent of Force Lances at 1,500? Cause that's what an Outrider would jam down their throats.

Grey Knights suffer too. Cheapest troop choice is 105 per squad.

Anyway, it goes on and on. I'm personally more in favor of holding players to higher speed standards than restricting army selection by nerfing points. I reject the premise that 8th is, overall, slower than 7th since 7th had trouble with people finishing games at big tournaments too.

The big thing in 8th is that we CAN go faster and horde players can learn to go faster. There's plenty on this board who will happily offer advice on how to do so. You nerf points though and some armies are just phased out. No learning around that. So let's just focus on getting people to actually play their games in a timely fashion.

Heavens knows it's fairly boring to spend all of 45 minutes combined on my turns only to sit around rolling saves for 2 hours and 15 minutes while my horde opponent shoots everything. It'll help peoples' sanity to go faster too!

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Well when 8th first dropped it was absolutely faster than 7th, quite dramatically so in some areas. Many of our newer players doubled their speed overnight because they actually understood the rules for the first time, something they had struggled with for most of 7th However, there were far less rules to memorize. No one had chapter tactics, strategems were super easy to remember because there were a whopping 3 of them, and many units had far simpler interactions than they do now. Not to mention warlord traits, new aura abilities, less weapon abilities, etc. From what I saw IG had the craziest stuff in the game with orders, and even there the codex doubled what we had access to. As codexes dropped units lost wargear options but gained arguably far more interactions with chapter tactics, strategems, warlord traits, auras, and pyskers.

...

That's actually another thing I'd love to see 40k tournaments do, a randomly shifting amount that moves to a different value between 1500-2000 every year or so. Helps break up the meta a bit and encourages less netlisting, which usually helps promote a healthier meta. Obviously certain meta lists will still appear, but by encouraging lists to move up and down in points you prevent there being go to lists like we had toward the end of 7th.

I think if the points adapted to the meta that would be wonderful for the game, even if the only driving agent was average turn duration. You'd want to limit the update to once a year, that way you wouldn't alter the meta during an ITC season, but with that in place you could have a big reveal, and get some solid hype for it. As for why it's slower, yeah stratagems would likely be culprit, though reroll auras (up to double the amount of dice rolling) probably share blame. Several other rules got more complicated, like deep strike, used to be place the marker, roll scatter, then place models. Now you pick a spot, measure to each enemy model nearby, and then either place each model with a measuring tape in hand, or start all over again. I'm sure measuring deep strikes consumed a fair bit of the judges time at the LVO, because they are such clutch placements.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Audustum wrote:
No matter what you do you're picking favorites. You add chess clocks and you're 'penalizing' horde armies. You shrink points and you're 'penalizing' elite armies.

Take Imperial Knights. I think there's only a few configurations you can do to field an IK list at 1,500. At least if you want to allow them to take a detachment that actually adds CP.

Custodes too. A minimum battalion is, what, 772 points? That's over half your points allotment and you've got nothing to deal with Psyekrs or have access to any shooting besides Rapid Fire 1 S4 spears. An Outrider of 3 bike squads is even more expensive at 970.

Conversely, can a lot of armies deal with 10 T6 2+/4++ models with Fly, Hurricane Bolters and the equivalent of Force Lances at 1,500? Cause that's what an Outrider would jam down their throats.

Grey Knights suffer too. Cheapest troop choice is 105 per squad.

Anyway, it goes on and on. I'm personally more in favor of holding players to higher speed standards than restricting army selection by nerfing points. I reject the premise that 8th is, overall, slower than 7th since 7th had trouble with people finishing games at big tournaments too.

The big thing in 8th is that we CAN go faster and horde players can learn to go faster. There's plenty on this board who will happily offer advice on how to do so. You nerf points though and some armies are just phased out. No learning around that. So let's just focus on getting people to actually play their games in a timely fashion.

Heavens knows it's fairly boring to spend all of 45 minutes combined on my turns only to sit around rolling saves for 2 hours and 15 minutes while my horde opponent shoots everything. It'll help peoples' sanity to go faster too!

One of the challenges the chess clock poses is that you could still run out of time rolling saves, since if you have dice in your hand the clock is on you. So deathguard who get two saves could be timed out if they aren't super quick on their turns. It also adds a clock metagame which ranges from unpleasant to downright abusive.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Well when 8th first dropped it was absolutely faster than 7th, quite dramatically so in some areas. Many of our newer players doubled their speed overnight because they actually understood the rules for the first time, something they had struggled with for most of 7th

This is SO damm important. For my first time playing warhammer 40k or fantasy... I KNOW ALL MY RULES. Isn't that crazy? I know what all of my units can do, all the basic rules of the game, and even then, I normally know what most or all of my opponent units do, and most if not all of the interactions that can happen in a game! I have gone to 6 regional tournaments since 8th started and I have seen literally 0 rules discussions!

The only think I can't remember 100% are stratagems, but even then most of the time I can remember the 8-10 most possibles ones I or mi opponent will use in any given battle. Chapter Tactics are very easy to remember. Relics and Warlord Traits are the same, is one of the basic things we always tell our opponent when whe share list (My warlord has this trait, I'm using this relic), the same for psychic powers.

 Grimgold wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Well when 8th first dropped it was absolutely faster than 7th, quite dramatically so in some areas. Many of our newer players doubled their speed overnight because they actually understood the rules for the first time, something they had struggled with for most of 7th However, there were far less rules to memorize. No one had chapter tactics, strategems were super easy to remember because there were a whopping 3 of them, and many units had far simpler interactions than they do now. Not to mention warlord traits, new aura abilities, less weapon abilities, etc. From what I saw IG had the craziest stuff in the game with orders, and even there the codex doubled what we had access to. As codexes dropped units lost wargear options but gained arguably far more interactions with chapter tactics, strategems, warlord traits, auras, and pyskers.

...

That's actually another thing I'd love to see 40k tournaments do, a randomly shifting amount that moves to a different value between 1500-2000 every year or so. Helps break up the meta a bit and encourages less netlisting, which usually helps promote a healthier meta. Obviously certain meta lists will still appear, but by encouraging lists to move up and down in points you prevent there being go to lists like we had toward the end of 7th.

I think if the points adapted to the meta that would be wonderful for the game, even if the only driving agent was average turn duration. You'd want to limit the update to once a year, that way you wouldn't alter the meta during an ITC season, but with that in place you could have a big reveal, and get some solid hype for it. As for why it's slower, yeah stratagems would likely be culprit, though reroll auras (up to double the amount of dice rolling) probably share blame. Several other rules got more complicated, like deep strike, used to be place the marker, roll scatter, then place models. Now you pick a spot, measure to each enemy model nearby, and then either place each model with a measuring tape in hand, or start all over again. I'm sure measuring deep strikes consumed a fair bit of the judges time at the LVO, because they are such clutch placements.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Audustum wrote:
No matter what you do you're picking favorites. You add chess clocks and you're 'penalizing' horde armies. You shrink points and you're 'penalizing' elite armies.

Take Imperial Knights. I think there's only a few configurations you can do to field an IK list at 1,500. At least if you want to allow them to take a detachment that actually adds CP.

Custodes too. A minimum battalion is, what, 772 points? That's over half your points allotment and you've got nothing to deal with Psyekrs or have access to any shooting besides Rapid Fire 1 S4 spears. An Outrider of 3 bike squads is even more expensive at 970.

Conversely, can a lot of armies deal with 10 T6 2+/4++ models with Fly, Hurricane Bolters and the equivalent of Force Lances at 1,500? Cause that's what an Outrider would jam down their throats.

Grey Knights suffer too. Cheapest troop choice is 105 per squad.

Anyway, it goes on and on. I'm personally more in favor of holding players to higher speed standards than restricting army selection by nerfing points. I reject the premise that 8th is, overall, slower than 7th since 7th had trouble with people finishing games at big tournaments too.

The big thing in 8th is that we CAN go faster and horde players can learn to go faster. There's plenty on this board who will happily offer advice on how to do so. You nerf points though and some armies are just phased out. No learning around that. So let's just focus on getting people to actually play their games in a timely fashion.

Heavens knows it's fairly boring to spend all of 45 minutes combined on my turns only to sit around rolling saves for 2 hours and 15 minutes while my horde opponent shoots everything. It'll help peoples' sanity to go faster too!

One of the challenges the chess clock poses is that you could still run out of time rolling saves, since if you have dice in your hand the clock is on you. So deathguard who get two saves could be timed out if they aren't super quick on their turns. It also adds a clock metagame which ranges from unpleasant to downright abusive.

There's a meta game now even without clocks. Sometimes you're in a great position on T3 or T4 but you know you'll lose it if the game goes on. Alternatively, you're winning on points at T4 but you'll be tabled at T6. Some people are jerks and go slow on purpose to drag it out from there. Others have no idea their army does that bad over 6 turns because they always take so long the game ends by T3 or T4. Effectively, they built a 4 turn army while their opponent built a 6 turn army then they, intentionally or not, force the game to end early. In NOVA, for example, players still have the option of end of game scoring. It's very easy to imagine a horde that has control of all the objectives when time gets called at T4 because the horde player monopolized 60%-80% of the time when the elite player may have been able to take those objectives with two more rounds.

I'm not really worried about two save armies taking too long. I played Imperial Soup against an Ynnari list at a major tournament in 8th edition (this is one of my favorite anecdotes). This was before the Ynnari FAQ limiting Strength from Death and I was using an army that had a Codex in my soup, so lots of options/tools/re-rolls at my disposal. Even with the Ynnari player's extra actions and my ability to re-roll tons of dice, we finished all 5 rounds in 45 minutes. Not 45 minutes each, 45 minutes total. If we can do that, there's no reason any horde army can't do the entirety of its 6 rounds in 75 or 90 minutes just for its own turns. Players just have to know their rules and focus.

Personally I voted for 1500. The primary issue in the tournament scene right now, more than anything else IMO, is that a significant portion of games, I've seen some numbers indicating more than half, do not reach their natural conclusion and are instead ended by time limit. That is simply not acceptable. I would argue that if more than just 10% of games (to allow for the possibility of slow play and potential issues such as rules disagreements or TO calls eating a good chunk of the clock) in a tournament are forced to an end by time rather than finished properly, then the tournament is not allowing for enough time for the size of the game played. In that case, the tournament must either increase the amount of time a game has to be played (obviously not feasible given the limits of scheduling tournaments have), or play smaller point games.

Audustum wrote:
.

I'm not really worried about two save armies taking too long. I played Imperial Soup against an Ynnari list at a major tournament in 8th edition (this is one of my favorite anecdotes). This was before the Ynnari FAQ limiting Strength from Death and I was using an army that had a Codex in my soup, so lots of options/tools/re-rolls at my disposal. Even with the Ynnari player's extra actions and my ability to re-roll tons of dice, we finished all 5 rounds in 45 minutes. Not 45 minutes each, 45 minutes total. If we can do that, there's no reason any horde army can't do the entirety of its 6 rounds in 75 or 90 minutes just for its own turns. Players just have to know their rules and focus.

Not trying to be confrontational in a rude way, but what list were you running exactly, if you don't mind sharing?

Because my typical IG lists at 2k tend to run 130+ infantry and anywhere from 4-6 vehicles, many of whom fire twice with random shot weapons. I'm not entirely sure that army is possible to play in 45 minutes with an opponent even if we were both telepathic and able to communicate by thought with 100% cooperation.

Because true horde armies aren't quite as simple as they appear at first glance, and I say this as a guy who works very hard to play his army as fast as possible. The sheer amount of rerolls an army like IG has to do, on top of random shot weapons and pure weight of dice, makes it tough to play quickly. In addition, split fire makes armies like infantry guard take a lot longer to play *correctly* (as in getting your best advantage) because there are just so many moving parts. Heck just in dice alone a single IG squad can kick out about 40 lasgun dice, unless you have a dice app or freakishly large hands that takes a while to roll, to say nothing of a conscript unit doing FRFSRF. These units can take so long to roll for the advice is quite literally "just don't shoot with lasguns". That's a pretty rough handicap just to try and keep your game playing on time, especially since that's a major source of anti infantry firepower.

One big thing that I think gets glossed over is alternating deployment at setup. I've seen that eat up more time in games than even an IG alpha strike. From a game design perspective it makes sense and is definitely more balanced, but in my area at least people take ages to deploy trying to get units out of sight and ensuring their screens/auras are properly placed. And since every drop matters there's lots of hmming and hawing. I usually don't even have half my units deployed by the time the opponent is fully deployed and I can often get that second half deployed in under a couple minutes, yet we'll take a good 20 minutes up to it as my opponent tries to find an optimal spot for his devestators or artillery.

The other is assault. It is absolutely hell for a horde player. The amount of shenanigans people have now, and the need to play absolutely perfect or your whole line will collapse makes it absolutely awful. Not to mention the whole tri locking thing, and players having to see who they're actually closer to in a sea of 100 guardsmen, the difference of 1/16th an inch meaning the difference of them piling into a tank or piling into more conscripts. I can't blame them, it's critical to playing the game well, but these kind of things eat up time.

Smaller values are better due to time constraints.
On the other hand, if the game is played with a clock, then larger pt values are acceptable.
I voted for 1500 pts.

1500 if there are time limitations.

There's nothing worse about 40k than having the game interrupted because the time is over.

I lile 1850. Not because of anything to do with time but because it forces you into making choices about what to tale as you cam't afford everything.

I also voted for 1500. In 8th, this feels like the best point level for games you actually want to finish in a reasonable time frame, while 2000 is a level for gaming on weekends with no time limitation.

Due to vanguard, spearhead and outrider detachments existing, I don't think any army will fail to build a proper TAC list at that level. For almost any army, you should be able to fit tools to handle all common threats in a battle-forged army of some sort, since the only reason to actually take tax units is for more CP.

On death guard rolling two saves all the time: Keep in mind that most DG units are more expensive than their chaos/imperium counterparts, so you have less models to move/shoot/fight with. The only true horde unit has no armor saves, so you don't actually have double saves their either.
I'm a hell lot more worried about rolling KFF and dok tool saves for my ork boyz than DR for my Death Guard.

I prefer 1500 due to time mostly. However, I accept the fact that at 1500 points it becomes rather hard for elite armies to form a force. A problem I encounter with my Dark Angels time and time again.

I honestly think 1650 needs to be experimented with. Weird number, but at the end of 7th some tournaments were experimenting with that number; by 7th standard they reported that at 1850, like less than 50% of games finished to their natural conclusion (i.e. not because time was called). Moving to 1650 I think that number shot up to 90% or thereabouts (meaning that many games finished normally, without running out of time).

It has a little more "bite" than 1500 does, as well. However, the issue will be that I think lower points in a tournament will need to have more comp added to prevent people just hard-skewing lists; with lower points you can "stack the deck" by taking things that you expect your opponent will simply not be able to handle at that points level and expect to win that way. At 1500 you might not have the resources to deal with primarchs or superheavies that you would at 2000, so I fear dropping the points will just encourage those types of lists and not TAC which is what you would expect.

I just participated in a small (8 person) event. None of the games went to time and we were playing 2000 points. I'm just a beginner and all but 1 of my games went to turn limit ( I got tabled in my last game).
I don't think it's the points, I think that it might be too hard for a TO to handle too many people. It'd be like herding cats in that you have too much to take care of and it takes too long for everyone to get organized.
So why don't we look at it from another point of view. Maybe larger events need to set aside more time between rounds to allow everyone to get organized. That way everyone can get out their models and find their table and do all the other things that need done before the game begins.

The issue with that is the length of the day. Here's the schedule for this weekend's tournament:

0900 –0945 -Venue open for Registration
0945–1000-Pre-Event Brief
1000–1245-Round 1 (165mins)
1245–1315-Lunch (30mins)
1315 –1600-Round 2 (165mins)
1600 –1630-Afternoon Break(30mins)
1630–1915-Round 3(165mins)
1915–1930 –Evening Break
1930 –1945–Awards
1945 –2000 –Home time

So there are a couple of 30 min breaks in there but even if you ignore the Awards stuff it's 9am - 7.30 pm

Hard to see how you can fit in more time.

I voted 1850 as frankly I like playing with toys and always want to take more... but the list creation problems a smaller points value gives

I also support chess clocks and think FLG's decision is great.

Chess clocks are not abusive. How can they be? If you show up with a force you can’t play in the time allotted to you by the Tourney Organizer that is… self abuse?

Chess clocks are amazing and make the game much better. I hate going to a three hour tourney and getting to play for 30 minutes, cause my esteemed opponent takes 50 minutes each time he wants to move and fire his 50 man conscript.

I don't think that its bad to go with 1500-2000 point game. There is room for all sorts of variety.

The event you're posting has almost 3 hours per game. We played all of our games at 2K points and 2 1/2 hours. Again I think it depends on how many players vs how many TO + assistants there are. I know that the extra 15 minutes per game don't usually mean much but maybe it should be cut from the game and added to the between rounds time.

Like I said, I'm new and maybe I just had a really super TO in a small event. I can't say what it would be like if there were 16 players or more and whether the event would have gone as smoothly as it did.

Or we could... play 100 PL.

I'll see myself out.

Strangely enough my 2000 point list is 114PL so I'd actually have to drop a unit. I don't think that that 1 unit is going to reduce my time used all that much. The list that I played at the event was 109 PL again not that much change needed and minimal, if any, time reduction would occur.

I like playing at 2k, its where most of my armies 'feel' the best to me (which is a lot about getting to take the toys and setups I like). Ultimately I practice with a chess clock so I can play through games pretty quick and I have 0 issue calling my opponent for slow play.

FWIW, I like 1800 over 1750. No mechanical reason; its just a cleaner looking number to me; divisible by 3 and the like.

2000 is fine though. I think a clock would help quite a bit. The game doesn't take THAT long if you keep it moving. The problem is there are lots and lots of opportunities to waste time.