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hey guys.

Ive never been to a tournement, but i happen to play a horde army and runs around 140-150 models at a time, and i have no idea how im meant to keep myself within that 1½ hour time limit that i have, if the game is meant to take 3 hours. and next to that i run a close combat army which makes it even more micro intensive.

I mean dont get me wrong, i understand that when you're at a tournement, you cant waste the entire day for a single game, but it just feels like horde armies are being taxed unfairly with time as a currency, that other players dont feel as much by having 50 or fewer models. sure everyone gets hit by the fact they only have 1½ hour to play their own part, but its not as much of an issue when you are running way fewer models, and even less of an issue if you run a predominately ranged army.

As it stands right now i have no idea how my 150 model ork army with a focus on close combat would be able to even play all 5 turns of my turns, in 1½ hours. even putting my dice in groups of 10, and having a calculator ready i dont see it. People say i can use movement trays but since i rutinely place my boys in weird symbols to make conga lines to buffs and such, i would rip my boys in and out of the movement trays so im not even sure it would help. If anything, since my movement phase would be stressed, i could see myself making incorrect amount of movement distance because i have to speed up my movement phase.

Like, am i missing something with the time limit of 3 hours max? also what if my opponent is slow at making his save throws in my turn? does that take time from my turn as well?

How on earth do you guys with close combat focused horde armies play at tournements?

If you cannot finish your stuff in 1,5 hours, what happens when you face another player that cannot finish their stuff in 1,5 hours? The game goes over 3 hours. That's why everybody, even the hordiest of hordy armies have no more than 1,5 hours.

You can use movement trays to help speed things up, move the first and last model in a unit and move the rest of the unit so they are between the first and the last model.

Use a digital dice roller to speed up your dice rolling. You can ask your opponents not to talk to you during your turn so you can focus on getting done on time. You can also cut down on the number of models you bring.

Just practice and you'll get faster.

This might be a sensitive point - but the average player isn't going to care about how you micro-position Ork number #23 in a 30 man blob because its not going to matter.

Realistically if you are going to try and get 3 games in a day, as is fairly common in a tournament, you can't have them all spill on for 4 hours. Including some time for breaks, finding your opponent, setting up etc.

And yeah, the whole "I've brought a horde, so we'll just estimate what happens in the game because I've not finished my second turn" needs to jump in the sea.

You can't just give a single army type more time. The way a tournament is setup the time limits are there mostly so that the event can start and, most importantly, finish within a set allotment of time. Because officials and people need to setup and take things down; people need to go home and the place likely needs rent to pay for the time hired.

Basically the time limit is a product of the organisers trying to give everyone as much time as they can, whilst getting in the required number of games to have the tournament function.


As noted practice will improve your speed. Often practice without focusing on speed will help the best since if you focus on speed you'll end up making more mistakes as you rush yourself. Instead focus on the gameplay and let speed come with experience.

As with anything where there are additional tournament rules/requirements on top of the main ruleset, it's basically a case of the onus being on you to meet those requirements, not on the organiser to accommodate you. If you insist on bringing an army that prevents you playing the game in the allotted time, that's on you.

The whole point of timed turns in tournaments is to enforce equal time for both players in order to get the game finished on time and make sure no player is disadvantaged by a slow-playing opponent. How would your proposal work if two horde armies play each other? Are we supposed to delay the start of the next round for everyone else so they can finish?

Model count is not the only thing that can make turns take a long time. Some armies are more complicated than others even when they have smaller model counts. Armies of equal size can have vastly different amounts of time needed to play. For example, some Slaanesh Daemon lists can rival Ork lists for model count but they have barely any shooting so they tend to play a lot faster in the early turns. How would you resolve who gets more time there? What if I have half the models but a more complex army?

Even the largest armies can be played within the time limit, IME. It takes practice and a good knowledge of your own army but hordes can get through 5 turns in 1.5 hours if you concentrate on the game and practice. There are explicit rules for dealing with opponent's rolls in your own turn for most systems that use a chess clock. Generally, the active player is within their rights to pass the clock to their opponent when they need to roll saves or Deny the Witch attempts etc. In practice you often won't if it's just a couple of saves and your opponent is ready to roll the dice.

Basically, because your army choice is not your opponent’s fault. The day has to wrap up in a certain time frame regardless of your army choice, and it’s not fair to everyone else if they have to wait for you. As a tourney-attending horde player myself, I know it’s tough. You need to practice a LOT, often choosing to forgo shooting altogether with some units, and your back and knees hurt a lot more by the end of the day too, but it can be done! As also stated, get used to moving less than your maximum so you’re not worried about perfect moves, and get quick with rules and describing your rolls. Put yourself in a clock in basic games as well. It’s work, but it’s doable.

But didnt games workshop set the time limit at around 3 hours? why on earth would they make armies that can run 200 models if at the same time they only give people 1½ hour.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Yarium wrote:
Basically, because your army choice is not your opponent’s fault. The day has to wrap up in a certain time frame regardless of your army choice, and it’s not fair to everyone else if they have to wait for you. As a tourney-attending horde player myself, I know it’s tough. You need to practice a LOT, often choosing to forgo shooting altogether with some units, and your back and knees hurt a lot more by the end of the day too, but it can be done! As also stated, get used to moving less than your maximum so you’re not worried about perfect moves, and get quick with rules and describing your rolls. Put yourself in a clock in basic games as well. It’s work, but it’s doable.

even as you say, it can be done. Sure, but you also said you forgo even shooting with less important units.

So even you, who is probably experienced, you cant do everything you need to, which is a tax on you, the horde player, that other armies might not get. Because GW made a time frame thats too short for the army composition their own game allows. that makes no sense.

Games shouldnt be 3 hours long then, they should be 4 hours long.

And i understand people saying, why should it be 4 hours long because i picked a horde faction? simply, because i did not set the time table at 3 hours, nor did i make the horde armies competitive.

Games workshop made the game, they made it possible to run horde armies on purpose, yet they also dont give horde armies enough time to do everything they want, simply because they have too many models to move, shoot and fight with. Meaning smaller things will be ignored, like shooting with boys pistols even though it could make a difference.
You're not the first person i hear saying, that you forgo specific parts just to speed up your own game, and the fact you even have to do it, seems weird. Sure if you took your sweet time then its your own fault, but i dont think the majority of horde players take their sweet time. they rush as fast as they can, yet they still need to, not do, specific parts simply because they dont have time.


That seems weird, that they allow army compositions in the codex that grows so large that they cant be fully played within the time frame of a tournement.

From the GW US Events Pack: (p9 & 10 discuss timing)

All players are expected to finish their games, and to attend with an army list they feel comfortable playing a complete game within 3 hours. You must not intentionally leverage the clock to disadvantage your opponent.

Beardedragon wrote:
But didnt games workshop set the time limit at around 3 hours? why on earth would they make armies that can run 200 models if at the same time they only give people 1½ hour.

GW does not take tournament time limits into account when designing their armies. They also haven't set any time limit on a game of 40k, save for in their official tournaments. However, that's clearly a pragmatic thing and not some declaration of how the game is balanced. Tournaments need time limits so they can stick to a reasonable schedule. The reason that's normally set at 3 hours per game is because it gives you a reasonable length of day in a tournament - a 3-round day that starts at 9am with an hour for lunch means a finish around 7pm. Adding an hour to each game either means you need to only have two games per day or extend the day to finish at 10pm, neither of which are too popular with your average tournament player.

Incidentally, this is one of the minor reasons I dislike 40k as a tournament game. The games take so long it's often difficult to get a definitive winner in large events due to a lack of rounds.

The biggest issue I've found with close combat hoard armies is ongoing combats. My experience is that if neither player is able to deliver a decisive blow, then it can drag and slow down the game. Often you *don't* want to deliver a decisive blow in your turn as it means being shot at in your opponents, which just compounds the problem.

There are also other things you can do to help speed things up without rushing. Using a dice box (which are pretty standard now at events) so that there's no daft hunting around for dice and such. Practicing so that you're fast but not too fast with dice rolls. It's a balance, its not just about making the rolls, but also about your opponent getting to see them.

Keeping your game side neat and tidy so that any counters and tokens and such are easily found.

Even just practice so that you know how to work your army; what to attack with what; what you want to move where. All things that cut down your pausing and thinking time

Horde armies don't require much more time than elite armies in practise, typically only turn 1 takes more time than usual. Yes, you need to move tons of models but they will likely only move, while elite armies require to invest tons of time for dice rolling in the shooting phase or tanking enemy shots. In combat dice rolling is the same since only 10ish models would actually fight and elite oriented units have lots of attacks to resolve. Cheap bodies also die very fast; orks army are typically left with a handful of models top of turn 3.

In my experience it takes me more time to play SW with 40-50 models than orks with 120-150 models.

Slipspace wrote:

Beardedragon wrote:
But didnt games workshop set the time limit at around 3 hours? why on earth would they make armies that can run 200 models if at the same time they only give people 1½ hour.

GW does not take tournament time limits into account when designing their armies. They also haven't set any time limit on a game of 40k, save for in their official tournaments. However, that's clearly a pragmatic thing and not some declaration of how the game is balanced. Tournaments need time limits so they can stick to a reasonable schedule. The reason that's normally set at 3 hours per game is because it gives you a reasonable length of day in a tournament - a 3-round day that starts at 9am with an hour for lunch means a finish around 7pm. Adding an hour to each game either means you need to only have two games per day or extend the day to finish at 10pm, neither of which are too popular with your average tournament player.

Incidentally, this is one of the minor reasons I dislike 40k as a tournament game. The games take so long it's often difficult to get a definitive winner in large events due to a lack of rounds.

to be fair, maybe they really SHOULD take time as a consideration in to.. well the equation when making codexes.

As i see it, 3 hours is too short for a game. Ive been told this is even with introducing your army? that just makes it worse.

I feel like 4 hours would have been the proper amount of time, but i fully understand what you're saying about wanting to make 3 games, then 3 hours would make sense. But i still really scratch my head as to how the F im meant to do this in 1½ hour. all my turns that is.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blackie wrote:
Horde armies don't require much more time than elite armies in practise, typically only turn 1 takes more time than usual. Yes, you need to move tons of models but they will likely only move, while elite armies require to invest tons of time for dice rolling in the shooting phase or tanking enemy shots. In combat dice rolling is the same since only 10ish models would actually fight and elite oriented units have lots of attacks to resolve. Cheap bodies also die very fast; orks army are typically left with a handful of models top of turn 3.

In my experience it takes me more time to play SW with 40-50 models than orks with 120-150 models.

i dont know. between deepstriking my units with da jump and green tiding where you must be 9 inches away but within 6 inches of the board it just takes extra time placing 30 boys here, and then 30 boys there, then 9 inches away, and then the perfect place for you to put them down. movement takes a long time i feel turn 1 and 2.

Sure there arent that many models left later, but even if i could only reach with 10 ork boys thats often still 4-6 attacks each if i buff them up completely so a lot of dies must be thrown.

but i agree i need a lot more practice but ive never had a game where my entire round was less than 1½ hour thats for sure

GW does not set time at tournaments, organizers do, GW might have copied what has become popular in their tournaments as well, but it's not something they engineered. Ultimately you have to weigh the benefits of having plenty of time to complete your game against possibly having to sit around and wait for the next round because games take 4,5 hours. In a tournament with 30 people that's difficult, less than 10 with tonnes of time allotted for games? Totally doable and those are the majority of tournaments I've attended.

I think GW did their best to make hordes as bad as possible, putting Gretchin at 5 points, limiting the amount of Boys that can fight in melee, nerfing troops CP generation. Mechanised Ork lists have done well, so you wanting to take 150 models is on you, not on GW. I think most people thought hordes were bust in 9th. Hordes being viable is happy accident of 5-turn games, missions focussing on board control and smaller minimum suggested board sizes.

the minimum size for a tournament is 3 games. At 3 hours each game thats a 9 hour time commitment minimum, not including food breaks and administrative time. At 4 hours each thats 12 hours minimum, again not including breaks and administrative time. 4 hour rounds are simply not practical, that 12 hour day very quickly drags out towards 15-16+ hours or so once you factor in all the "time between".

You can't just give one type of army more time either, because you need everyone to start and end their games at the same time.

The fact of the matter is that the time limit is there more or less explicitly to prevent hordes from unfairly dominating competitive play. Years ago there was a fairly widespread issue in competitive play where people would bring horde armies and leisurely take their time playing them in order to only play 2 turns over the 3 hour round- its hard to lose a 2 turn game when you have 3x more minis than your opponent does, horde armies typically have an early game board control advantage which is conducive to objective based scenario play, but that advantage erodes as your army is attrited over multiple turns. The timing rules help ensure those shenanigans can't happen and that you will get through 5 turns of gameplay so that an opponent doesn't auto-lose after spending 3 hours watching a horde army do nothing.

If you want to bring a horde army to a tournament, play fast. If you can't play fast, don't bring a horde army. Tournaments incentivize what are (theoretically) well-rounded balanced take-all-comers army lists. "Horde" armies are not that. They are a skew list designed to be played by maximizing certain aspects of a faction and they aren't really an intended playstyle. The design studios idea of what a proper "horde" army looks like is still probably only about 100 models, most likely less than that. To the design studio, a "horde" army is a few large units of troops supported by a small number of big gribblies. I.E. 60 gaunts, 2 hive tyrants, 3 carnifexes, a trygon, and some I dunno, warriors or lictors or something. 80 guardsmen and 6-8 leman russ/basilisks/hellhounds, a few sentinels, and a unit of ogryns. 60 ork boyz, a couple battlewagons, 5 speedwaaaagh buggies, a gorkamorkanaut, a unit of meganobz, and a unit of nob bikers or whatever. The "horde" army list style is defined by having 2-3 large units (i.e. 20+ minis each) and a bunch of other stuff, not by maximizing the number of models in your army list which is how the community interprets "horde" playstyles. Just because you *can* play an army that takes 150+ minis doesn't mean you should, nor does it mean that its an intended feature or playstyle of the game.

Honestly a game going over 3 hours, unless it involves heavy drinking, is just horrible.

But yes, GW should take "time to play the army" into account when designing, no doubt ! The worst example, we ork players know, are 6s that generate an extra attack, NOT HIT.

Rules bloat in general doesn't help.

Of course a tourney cannot award more time to player X than to player A based on his/her army.

Ultimately, it's an organisers call to introduce rules to a game not designed for tournament play to make it functional at tournament play.

If you want GW's position on it, they probably point you towards stuff like Warhammer Underworlds, which seems more natively designed for Twitch-streaming/e-sport-style gaming, whereas 40K is largely still a "show-off-all-your-toys-and-drink-beer"-style of game, at least by it's DNA, even though the "comp 40K scene" became an increasingly important market over the past couple of years.

If GW was super-super-super genuinely serious about making 40K tournament-game-focussed, they'd probably reduce high-model count and low-model count extremes and make things more similar, as well as maybe bring point size and table size down to something like 500 points or so to make it a genuinely more streamable, 6-7-round tournament in a day-style of game.

Also, MSU is the slowest to play. My ork buggy list is a lot slwoer than my ork boy hord army (like Blackie says basically).

I faced an eldar CW army at a tourney this saturday, with perhaps 16 units, two of them psykers, that seemed to drag on forever. Double move this, deep strike that, oh maaan. The guy was very skilled, it was impossible to play it really faster without him making mistakes.
It was my 4th game in the tourney, I was really starting to lose my patience in the last hour...

It's CW so his army didn't even have all the 9th ed extra layers of rules. Let's hope GW will be cautious when designing that 9th ed CW codex...

well. my ork buggy list sure isnt slower than my Ork horde list im currently running.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 addnid wrote:
Honestly a game going over 3 hours, unless it involves heavy drinking, is just horrible.

But yes, GW should take "time to play the army" into account when designing, no doubt ! The worst example, we ork players know, are 6s that generate an extra attack, NOT HIT.

Rules bloat in general doesn't help.

Of course a tourney cannot award more time to player X than to player A based on his/her army.

indeed. things like dakka dakka that dont grant actual hits but hit rolls, are just extra things that takes time that we really dont seem to have

Beardedragon wrote:
So even you, who is probably experienced, you cant do everything you need to, which is a tax on you, the horde player, that other armies might not get. Because GW made a time frame thats too short for the army composition their own game allows. that makes no sense.

Games shouldnt be 3 hours long then, they should be 4 hours long.

That's a discussion to have with the TO. GW doesn't force them to run tournaments of certain lengths - the game book just says it "should" be wrapped up in a certain time frame, not that it needs to. GW's design is largely based on what's fun. It's us tourney players that try to pull it apart for all its worth, because that's fun for us to do. Saying we should get preferential treatment is like saying "my army design should be competitive, no matter what poor decisions I make". It's not up to GW to force everyone to play exactly equally - it's up to us to find what makes worth.

Like, if I'm shooting 34 autogun shots (yes, I play horde GSC, so autoguns, not lasguns ), 2 Flamers, and our version of a frag grenade against Deathshroud Terminators, and I only have 15 minutes left on my clock... then that's on me. Could this end up doing something? Yeah. Will it? Statistically, it's not relevant. If all I need that unit there for is to move-block the unit, then I'm just going to move block them, and forget about shooting them, because my time is more valuably spent somewhere else. I already know I'm not going to win a killing game, so why bother wasting my clock doing so?

In the same game, when the clock was fresh, and my opponent had Mortarion in my face, I did nearly the identical set of rolls against him. But this time I DID roll it out, because each and every wound DID matter there. I needed him dead, not just pinned in place, and I had the time to roll it. In that case, I chose to do it.

As a competitive player, you only ever play the hand your dealt, not the hand you wish you had. Well, at a tournament, I have the choice to bring my GSC, and I know that by doing so I'm playing at MANY disadvantages. If I complain about the clock, I may as well complain about not having access to Wraithknights or Custodes or a Thunderhawk Gunship. It's just the reality of playing this faction at an event. I can either adapt to it, or I can play something else.

For casual games? Frig, we easily take 5 hours on those, but then we're chatting and having fun and opening beers and doing Crusade. Different beast. And in those? I'm not on a clock - so I can play however slowly as fits our day.

Beardedragon wrote:
hey guys.

Ive never been to a tournement, but i happen to play a horde army and runs around 140-150 models at a time, and i have no idea how im meant to keep myself within that 1½ hour time limit that i have, if the game is meant to take 3 hours. and next to that i run a close combat army which makes it even more micro intensive.

I mean dont get me wrong, i understand that when you're at a tournement, you cant waste the entire day for a single game, but it just feels like horde armies are being taxed unfairly with time as a currency, that other players dont feel as much by having 50 or fewer models. sure everyone gets hit by the fact they only have 1½ hour to play their own part, but its not as much of an issue when you are running way fewer models, and even less of an issue if you run a predominately ranged army.

As it stands right now i have no idea how my 150 model ork army with a focus on close combat would be able to even play all 5 turns of my turns, in 1½ hours. even putting my dice in groups of 10, and having a calculator ready i dont see it. People say i can use movement trays but since i rutinely place my boys in weird symbols to make conga lines to buffs and such, i would rip my boys in and out of the movement trays so im not even sure it would help. If anything, since my movement phase would be stressed, i could see myself making incorrect amount of movement distance because i have to speed up my movement phase.

Like, am i missing something with the time limit of 3 hours max? also what if my opponent is slow at making his save throws in my turn? does that take time from my turn as well?

How on earth do you guys with close combat focused horde armies play at tournements?

You're already making your opponent suffer through your incredibly tedious movement phases, now you want to force him to wait EVEN LONGER?

Can't get it done in 1.5 hours, don't play that list. Simple as that.

Beardedragon wrote:
People say i can use movement trays but since i rutinely place my boys in weird symbols to make conga lines to buffs and such

This is what GW won't take into account, and yet neither will they do anything too drastic to prevent it.

If GW changed auras to "unit wholly within", and gave buffs an area effect that also required the unit to be wholly within, you'd end up with tightly packed units that were less fun to play.

I have played horde armies in tournaments. there is no reason to take more than an hour and a half. I have brought a list with 180 ork boys (1710 points/2k hard to bring more) chess clocks mandatory, my movement phases were done in under 5 min. I don't use movement trays either. If you are going to play horde army you need to be planning the movement phase ahead of time as the opponent is moving ther army be planning how you are going to react with each unit and then the second combat ends i am rollign advance rolls for units advancing and putting down movement sticks (my one movement aid) immediately. I push groups of boys together to the new point sort of like shuffle board and adjust back from there if needed. I actually played against a knights player who double checked clocks when we finished and I had used less time than him despite his 6 models on the table

It isn't your opponents job to give up time for you and an event is timed so all the rounds can be completed. its your responsibility to get your things done quickly within the alloted time

Beardedragon wrote:


Games shouldnt be 3 hours long then, they should be 4 hours long.

Games workshop made the game, they made it possible to run horde armies on purpose, yet they also dont give horde armies enough time to do everything they want, simply because they have too many models to move, shoot and fight with. Meaning smaller things will be ignored, like shooting with boys pistols even though it could make a difference.

The game isn't 3 hours long, it's however long it takes to play it. A game in a specific tournament has a time limit of 3 hours. GW does not design the game for tournament play. The game is not balanced with a timeframe in mind and design decisions do not take into account the time of a tournament game. The problem you're having is you're trying to play a game not designed for tournament play in a tournament and coming up against some problems associated with that.

Even taking that into account 90 minutes is plenty of time to play pretty much any army with a bit of practice. You talk about placing Green Tide or Da Jump units as an example. In that case all you have to do is simply mark out (often with dice) the line 9" from the enemy and don't place beyond it. If you're placing individual models and measuring each and every one you're wasting time. There are a lot of little things like this that can help speed up your game.

Warhammer 40k isn't a tournament game, tournaments and time limits are something extra added to the game by event organizers.

Really, if you're going to an event, know what you can handle with time per rounds. It's like getting upset you lost points in army appearance scoring because you didn't read the scoring rubric.

If you can't play your 5 turns in 1.5 hours, it's not the tournament or GW's fault.

I think Underworlds is the only game GW makes which is actually built to be a competitive game, and you can play best 2/3 in like 45min.

This sunday I played a black templar horde army with grimaldus 5+ FNP bubble. It had 80 crusaders, 3 land speeders and 5 characters. And rolling all those FNP saves was a pain.

BUT... we completed all our games going go turn 5. Because yeah, I'm much faster with my custodes army with 15 minute turns. But normally the games goes like this: 30-40 minutes per player spend in turn 1, 20-25 minutes spend in turn 2 (Or viceversa), and then turn 3 is max 15 minutes, and turn 4-5 are generally just 10-15 minutes combined.