Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Haven't had much tourney experience myself but do you guys find most matches don't get past 3 turns? Do you think it would be good for the game if people didn't take 90 plaguebearers or 150 cultist lists to speed the game up? IMO while horde lists are strongly competitive and viable they're more suited to playing one off games with mates, or leagues. Too many people take forever and easily end up being on objectives and winning that way with hordes that would get wiped out if the game went for 6 turns. Have you guys ever heard of tournaments where they cap the unit limit to 60 models or something to speed it up? Is 2000 points too much for 2-3 hours of play on average to play a game to 6 turns? I'm sure this has been discussed plenty but I'm new to tournaments and want to get some feedback on all of this, cheers

Ban Orks, Guard, Nids, and Chaos from tournaments? I wonder how that would be received.

A 60 models limit is too extreme. Orks would be completely banned since even mechanized lists with tons of transports have 80+ bodies, only pure dread mobs would resist.

If a max amount of miniatures is to be set for a 2000 points game I'd say 120, not less.

But IMHO the only good and effective way to cut those silly time limitations on tournaments is to allow less players to the event. Cap the max number of players, not the amount of miniatures allowed.

Usually the best compromise is to limit the points budget to 1500 points since with that format the majority of the games played by experienced guys won't last more than 2-3 hours. Maybe cap the max amount of turns to 5, but the majority of the games should end within 5 turns anyway.

In my experience 2-3 hours are enough for playing at 2000 points, only sometimes games last longer but at tournaments some people slow play intentionally and always will. WAAC players will always exist, even with the strictiest rules in the world. .

 Blackie wrote:
A 60 models limit is too extreme. Orks would be completely banned since even mechanized lists with tons of transports have 80+ bodies, only pure dread mobs would resist.

If a max amount of miniatures is to be set for a 2000 points game I'd say 120, not less.

But IMHO the only good and effective way to cut those silly time limitations on tournaments is to allow less players to the event. Cap the max number of players, not the amount of miniatures allowed.

Usually the best compromise is to limit the points budget to 1500 points since with that format the majority of the games played by experienced guys won't last more than 2-3 hours. Maybe cap the max amount of turns to 5, but the majority of the games should end within 5 turns anyway.

In my experience 2-3 hours are enough for playing at 2000 points, only sometimes games last longer but at tournaments some people slow play intentionally and always will. WAAC players will always exist, even with the strictiest rules in the world. .

How would capping player limits help?

I agree that some people will always wind up slow playing, though. I've been timed out by an opponent in a two-and-a-half hour long 1500 point tournament game - reducing point limits isn't an automatic fix.

ravenerioli wrote:
Haven't had much tourney experience myself but do you guys find most matches don't get past 3 turns? Do you think it would be good for the game if people didn't take 90 plaguebearers or 150 cultist lists to speed the game up? IMO while horde lists are strongly competitive and viable they're more suited to playing one off games with mates, or leagues. Too many people take forever and easily end up being on objectives and winning that way with hordes that would get wiped out if the game went for 6 turns. Have you guys ever heard of tournaments where they cap the unit limit to 60 models or something to speed it up? Is 2000 points too much for 2-3 hours of play on average to play a game to 6 turns? I'm sure this has been discussed plenty but I'm new to tournaments and want to get some feedback on all of this, cheers

The answer is pretty simple:
Sanction the player, not the army.

If you're fast enough to play 400 gretchin in a 2k game and still finish turn 5, go play it. If you can't finish turn 3 despite playing pure custodes, you should be punished for it just like any horde player.
Tournament organizers and judges need start to actively fight slow play. Providing chess clocks to make sure both players get the same game time is one way to do it, but having experienced judges that identify and punish slow play is just as effective, if not more.

Here are two articles on handling slow play slow play in MtG. Especially at low profile events like pre-releases, stalling used to be a common practice to turn losses into ties, and in return placing a lot higher than players that scored losses and thus improving the chances of getting rewards. In the last years this practice as all but disappeared from competitive MtG.

If you can wrap your head around the few things that don't apply to WH40k, you can learn a lot from them:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/practical-approach-slow-play-2007-09-24
https://blogs.magicjudges.org/playerexperience/2016/11/02/slow-play-myths-and-truths/
Note that MtG differentiates between stalling (intentionally wasting time) and slow play (just playing slow with no intention behind it). You can get sanctioned for just honestly playing slow at events that are not meant to be entry-level.

The TL;DR of those articles is that you should be able to finish your game(s) within the time limit no matter what. Complex situations usually don't appear out of nowhere, so you should not start to think something through when you are supposed to take action.
To quote one of the articles: "The important thing is not whether a player is ending the game as fast as possible, but whether they are making their decisions in a reasonable amount of time." You can extend that to moving, rolling dice and measuring.

Last, but not least, if a game or a player has already noticed to be slow playing or even stalling, a judge needs to closely monitor what's going on an follow up on any warnings they gave out with hard punishments up to game losses or even DQs.

I think it really is the missions that are the issue. They are what most people make their list to deal with.

wild idea tossing out to see what sticks:

Mission objectives score better on later turns: Turn 1 and 2 no points available, turn 3 small points available and turn 4 medium amount of points available, turn 5 big points. Tabling only earns the points the mission would be worth based on the turn plus the total points earned for the match. Loser also keeps the points they earned so far.

Use W/D/L as who pairs with whom, but accumulated points count as tie breakers.

Winners who score big will tend to pair with each other, winners who score low might be paired down with higher scoring people who Draw or Lose.

Though this could lead to people winning matches, but still losing over all due to low earned points.

Watching some of the London GT now and it's amazing watching some players towards the end of the third turn when he figures it's to his advantage to catch up and play fast. Seen plenty of folks wasting time and telling opponents how their army works >.>

Also a few cases of people getting the rules for the army they have with them wrong. Still plenty to learn to speed things up but also player attitude.

 Jidmah wrote:

ravenerioli wrote:
Haven't had much tourney experience myself but do you guys find most matches don't get past 3 turns? Do you think it would be good for the game if people didn't take 90 plaguebearers or 150 cultist lists to speed the game up? IMO while horde lists are strongly competitive and viable they're more suited to playing one off games with mates, or leagues. Too many people take forever and easily end up being on objectives and winning that way with hordes that would get wiped out if the game went for 6 turns. Have you guys ever heard of tournaments where they cap the unit limit to 60 models or something to speed it up? Is 2000 points too much for 2-3 hours of play on average to play a game to 6 turns? I'm sure this has been discussed plenty but I'm new to tournaments and want to get some feedback on all of this, cheers

The answer is pretty simple:
Sanction the player, not the army.

If you're fast enough to play 400 gretchin in a 2k game and still finish turn 5, go play it. If you can't finish turn 3 despite playing pure custodes, you should be punished for it just like any horde player.
Tournament organizers and judges need start to actively fight slow play. Providing chess clocks to make sure both players get the same game time is one way to do it, but having experienced judges that identify and punish slow play is just as effective, if not more.

Here are two articles on handling slow play slow play in MtG. Especially at low profile events like pre-releases, stalling used to be a common practice to turn losses into ties, and in return placing a lot higher than players that scored losses and thus improving the chances of getting rewards. In the last years this practice as all but disappeared from competitive MtG.

If you can wrap your head around the few things that don't apply to WH40k, you can learn a lot from them:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/practical-approach-slow-play-2007-09-24
https://blogs.magicjudges.org/playerexperience/2016/11/02/slow-play-myths-and-truths/
Note that MtG differentiates between stalling (intentionally wasting time) and slow play (just playing slow with no intention behind it). You can get sanctioned for just honestly playing slow at events that are not meant to be entry-level.

The TL;DR of those articles is that you should be able to finish your game(s) within the time limit no matter what. Complex situations usually don't appear out of nowhere, so you should not start to think something through when you are supposed to take action.
To quote one of the articles: "The important thing is not whether a player is ending the game as fast as possible, but whether they are making their decisions in a reasonable amount of time." You can extend that to moving, rolling dice and measuring.

Last, but not least, if a game or a player has already noticed to be slow playing or even stalling, a judge needs to closely monitor what's going on an follow up on any warnings they gave out with hard punishments up to game losses or even DQs.

This is beautiful. Thank you. Let's also note that MtG is, I believe, substantially more popular than 40k so obviously this system doesn't turn everyone off.

Audustum wrote:
This is beautiful. Thank you. Let's also note that MtG is, I believe, substantially more popular than 40k so obviously this system doesn't turn everyone off.

It is - in 2017 WotC counted about 12 million players actively participating (i.e. registering with their DCI number) in events. Very optimistic estimates put WH40k at 800k to 1.2 million, including people that have not bought new miniatures in years. If you just count players that are regularly buying product you get 200k-400k (estimated from yearly revenue and average spending).

So just the people playing at events, who are all affected by these rules, outnumber the entire WH40k community by 10:1

 Jidmah wrote:

Audustum wrote:
This is beautiful. Thank you. Let's also note that MtG is, I believe, substantially more popular than 40k so obviously this system doesn't turn everyone off.

It is - in 2017 WotC counted about 12 million players actively participating (i.e. registering with their DCI number) in events. Very optimistic estimates put WH40k at 800k to 1.2 million, including people that have not bought new miniatures in years. If you just count players that are regularly buying product you get 200k-400k (estimated from yearly revenue and average spending).

So just the people playing at events, who are all affected by these rules, outnumber the entire WH40k community by 10:1

Perfect then. Seems it's not just rules writing can learn from Wizards on.

umm.. time clocks ... are we there yet ?

It is definitely the player,not the army. Somebody mentioned the London Gt. when I was there there were two things I noticed.
1) All of my games finished all turns in 2-2.5 hours, with 1 going for 7 turns against a plaguebearer horde in 2hrs 50.
2)I was watching an ork player who took about two hours for his first 2 turns, then when he realised he was behind on points made it almost to turn 5 in less than 1 hour

Think suggesting movement trays in a rules pack for armies with a larger number of models may not be a bad idea in a rules pack

thinking myself of doing a few - so a unit of 30 boyz is 10 boyz (including the nob and any specialists) then four movement trays of five - if it matters they can decamp but in most cases it probably won't.

have two trays, "close order" and "open order"

 Burnage wrote:


How would capping player limits help?

Not enough tables for everyone and some players have to wait the end of other people's game?

How many games do you usually play at a tournament? I'm asking because I have little experience with tournaments, I haven't played at those since 5th edition. If the event lasts all day there's time to play at least 4 regular games, maybe 5 or even 6 with no time limitations if the table is available, considering that on average games last 3-4 turns at most anyway, sometimes are even called by turn 2.

 Blackie wrote:

 Burnage wrote:


How would capping player limits help?

Not enough tables for everyone and some players have to wait the end of other people's game?

How many games do you usually play at a tournament? I'm asking because I have little experience with tournaments, I haven't played at those since 5th edition. If the event lasts all day there's time to play at least 4 regular games, maybe 5 or even 6 with no time limitations if the table is available, considering that on average games last 3-4 turns at most anyway, sometimes are even called by turn 2.

It's pretty standard to have 3 games in a single day at a tournament. If each game's given two and a half hours, that's seven and a half hours without any breaks or lunch - any longer than that starts to get excessive and can run into issues if there are delays starting for whatever reason.

Our tournaments use timers on each player. Works well.

You start your timer on your turn, and when you end your turn you pause it and let your opponent start theirs. Goal is to have the game over with time left on both player's timer.

Our tournaments are usually 2.5 hours total for one round, so each player gets 1 hour and 15 minutes.

I like it, keeps people from slow playing.

Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

Assuming most tournaments use the same system of dividing 20 tournament points between the two players; apply a reduction formula to those points if the game doesn't last 5 or more turns.
4 turns, 16 points
3 turns, 10 points
1 or 2 turns, 0 points

If you table your opponent, play out the remaining turns and score as normal. No bonuses and definitely no auto 20-0 for tabling.

This ensures that objectives are always important and slow players harm themselves.

I think tournaments that have time constraints should also use smaller point values. 2000 points is just too many for a tournament trying to get in three rounds unless you're willing to start early and end late. 1500 points is probably the most you should go.

For the game as a whole, i think overwatch should be removed or changed as it leads to a lot of rolling for little effect. (Especially against tau players who could have many units firing) It wastes a decent amount of time and just isnt that great of a rule to begin with.

There is a difference between deliberate slow play and unintentionally playing slow; the first is cheating and the second can be due to a wide variety of factors. The same solution isn't appropriate for both. Based on the reporting, we should assume that vast swaths of the community aren't cheaters.
Unfortunately, some of the solutions being proposed are targeting cheaters rather than unskilled players. While a chess clock can target cheaters, it doesn't change the result for an unskilled player...they are still going to take a longer time to play the game. There are only 3 real ways to reduce instances of games not finishing for more players:
1. More time per match. This increases the total time of each game, but also the length of the tournament overall.
2. Smaller points values. Less units on the table means less interactions and shorter turns, hopefully enabling more of them in the same time.
3. Reducing game delays, ie times when gameplay isn't actually happening like rules lookups.

You can't legislate #3 (except as a side effect of something like a chess clock), but there has been a bit of "encouragement" (or shaming) by the online community towards tournament attendees having a better grasp of the game. Quick reference products could potentially help it further. The real problem is that when 8th dropped the 7th ed "meta" armies (primarily Eldar and space marine free transports) got well-deserved points hikes, and some players felt like they had smaller armies. On the other hand, my GK army stayed essentially the same, and some armies got cheaper. So we jumped from 1850 to 2000 pts, and kept the standard 2.5 hour game. Unfortunately points costs dropped as codex releases occurred and players had to learn not just a new edition but an entire new set of armies, especially for the tournament environment where target priority is more important. So now we are playing bigger armies with unfamiliar rules in the same time...and people are surprised that games aren't finishing. The fact that all games essentially use progressive scoring also means that game length matters more and that's why you're seeing attention paid to it; though unfortunately the mainstream response is simply "chess clocks".

Dont limit or ban anything, that stupid, once you say "ban hordes" then whats to stop someone from saying "Well ban Eldar b.c i dont like them", etc..

IMO it should be either 3 hours for 2k or 2 hours for 1500. I fa tournament can not handle 3 hour rounds then they shouldn't be doing 2000 points.

A tournament is suppose to be who is best, not who can do the most in 1/2 a game.

ravenerioli wrote:
Haven't had much tourney experience myself but do you guys find most matches don't get past 3 turns? Do you think it would be good for the game if people didn't take 90 plaguebearers or 150 cultist lists to speed the game up? IMO while horde lists are strongly competitive and viable they're more suited to playing one off games with mates, or leagues. Too many people take forever and easily end up being on objectives and winning that way with hordes that would get wiped out if the game went for 6 turns. Have you guys ever heard of tournaments where they cap the unit limit to 60 models or something to speed it up? Is 2000 points too much for 2-3 hours of play on average to play a game to 6 turns? I'm sure this has been discussed plenty but I'm new to tournaments and want to get some feedback on all of this, cheers

60 models of orks is 360 points. Any other models in our index are way, way overcosted.

You get that, right?