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There are a lot of ways that GW tend to balance the game and while we can certainly have lively debates on the validity of those, there is one thing that is in and of its nature, hard to balance. Horde armies.

There are always some Codices out there with detachments dedicated to horde armies. Unending Swarm, Kroot Hunting Pack, Chaos Cults, ect... However, for anyone whose every taken them to a tournament before, you know by the nature of how many models you have to bring that you're already starting on the back foot.

Time is your constant opponent, and GW's answer to this in many of their events is to just not time rounds and make sure people are playing at a reasonable speed. However, that can still lead to some major feel bads if you time out in round 3, not just for the horde player but for their opponent too, especially since horde armies typically dominate the first few rounds of the game and other armies come back in the later stages. And when you do play on a chess clock, they horde player is constantly in panic mode trying not to time out, while the other player gets plenty of time to think their plays over. Either current system heavily disadvantages one player over the other.

There is a fix though, and it could even be done outside of GW by groups that organize tournaments. Time based on model count. It would be simple, you submit the total model count of your list when you put in your army list. Normal games are 1:30 - 1:30. If one player's army has 50% more models than their opponent's, it is instead 1:35 - 1:25, and if their model count is double, it's 1:40 - 1:20. This would be simply to help balance the time it takes to physically move models around the table and aim to give both players an equal amount of time to plan their plays.

It would also be more healthy for the meta as seeing more varied lists come out to events is better for the game as a whole, and GW I'm sure would be happy with the idea of more people collecting horde armies, more money for them. Seems like a win all around.

What are everyone's thoughts?

The problem with the staggered time approach is that it extends the overall tournament time.

And as some events rent their space - time is literally money. Typically, when you rent a space you rent the space in time blocks (and for some locations, this includes setup and breakdown time).

Ever noticed the mad dash to hand out awards and prizes at the end of a game event. It's not that the organizers are disorganized, it's the magical countdown timer loudly ticking.

(My knowledge comes from event/media shows, aka comic book convention/sci-fi toy shows, but the same may be applies to other events that rent space)

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
The problem with the staggered time approach is that it extends the overall tournament time.

And as some events rent their space - time is literally money. Typically, when you rent a space you rent the space in time blocks (and for some locations, this includes setup and breakdown time).

Ever noticed the mad dash to hand out awards and prizes at the end of a game event. It's not that the organizers are disorganized, it's the magical countdown timer loudly ticking.

(My knowledge comes from event/media shows, aka comic book convention/sci-fi toy shows, but the same may be applies to other events that rent space)

The whole point of the system is that the total time is the same, it's not extending the length of anything. I used 3 hours as an example, but you could do +/- 5 minutes to whatever time you're running. The percentage shouldn't change much. Though I imagine if you're trying to get people to play 2k games of 40k in 2 hours, you're already in for a problem to matter what.

I think I'm missing something.

In the event that someone takes a slow-to-play army, your proposal is to punish their opponent by taking away some of the opponent's time, thus potentially forcing said opponent to make more rushed decisions. All to facilitate army themes that, unfortunately, just don't lend themselves well to a timed tournament?

Like, I get that it's a bummer that a carpet of gaunts is too slow to play to be super viable in a timed setting, but I think that means that massive hordes are just a bad fit for those styles of events just like casual armies are probably a bad fit due to the competitive nature of the event.

Also, if someone is leaning so hard into hordes that they can't finish games, it could very well mean that they're running a skew list, and I'm not sure we want to encourage those.

Yeah, I misread the topic originally, I don't not understand removing time from one player, and giving it to the other.

What would be a better idea, is awarding a special prize to the player with the fastest average times.

This way you incentivize speed and it doesn't take anything away from a player.

I think it'd be too difficult to handle anything more complicated for the organizers, props for such a light and easy rule I think it is well designed and would help with your goal.

I think it's a good rule that you can play your army (whether that would be easy or hard for most people) in half the allotted time for the game. So if you are new or have physical disabilities? Pick something easy for yourself and your opponent to have a good time. You really want to play your horde list at a tournament? Practice and work out.

Win rate data of horde lists being skewed by tournament time restrictions is an issue, solution? Throw a few tournaments with longer time allotments for games. See what changes.