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I am all for a clock as well as TO's that check how the games are going during the games.

Call me weird but would not playing smaller point games in a tourney make it easier to get games done in time?

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
As has been mentioned Warmahordes can use a "death clock" option at its tournaments. It doesn't prevent "horde" armies from playing nor does it put them on an unfair footing. It's up to the player to make tactical decisions as to which units to use at which time. AFIAK there is no rule in 40K that says that you have to use all of your units all of the time. There is a rule like that in Warmahordes.
What the death clock does force people to do is learn their armies rules and abilities. If you want to say that that would restrict novice players from playing 200 Orks in a battle then I say so what? I would feel the same way if he was using a 15 model GK army. Don't waste my time if you don't know how to run your army.

Warmahordes is a different game. Some games are designed around IgoUgo and have similar balance concepts around time. Those games it can work.

And 'knowing how to run your army' has nothing to do with the raw phsyics of dice rolling or moving 30 models on foot vs 1 tank carring 20 models.

And 'not using all your models' why should someone pay 500 points and only get to use half of them when someone else pays 500 points for expensive single models and gets to use all of them? You might as well be telling specific armies or units 'you get to play this tourney with half the number of points of the small model count armies.' Is that balanced?

It is gamebreakingly unfair and slants the entire meta to 'expensive models' vs 'high model counts'

nkelsch wrote:
And 'not using all your models' why should someone pay 500 points and only get to use half of them when someone else pays 500 points for expensive single models and gets to use all of them? You might as well be telling specific armies or units 'you get to play this tourney with half the number of points of the small model count armies.' Is that balanced?
It is gamebreakingly unfair and slants the entire meta to 'expensive models' vs 'high model counts'

emphasis added by me

This is the same battle cry for why Forgeworld shouldn't be used (albeit in a different use of the word expensive).

Obvoiusly the TOs that run events think that a certain amount of time is enough for both players to complete a game. Why is it "fair" to give one player more time to play than the other? If you keep your stuff organized and you have practiced running your army there shouldn't be an issue. It's not like someone is suggesting that clocks be sprung upon the players. Everyone who enters that event would know what is expected. If you find that you can't run your army in the time allotted then make some changes or learn to move/decide things faster.
Would a clock change Metas? Certainly, but so does any rule change. A single FAQ entry could destroy a popular build or make a particular model more or less desirable. Does that mean it shouldn't be followed? No, it just means that players will have to make an adjustment to their game plan and move on. This would be no different.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:

nkelsch wrote:
And 'not using all your models' why should someone pay 500 points and only get to use half of them when someone else pays 500 points for expensive single models and gets to use all of them? You might as well be telling specific armies or units 'you get to play this tourney with half the number of points of the small model count armies.' Is that balanced?
It is gamebreakingly unfair and slants the entire meta to 'expensive models' vs 'high model counts'

emphasis added by me

This is the same battle cry for why Forgeworld shouldn't be used (albeit in a different use of the word expensive).

Obvoiusly the TOs that run events think that a certain amount of time is enough for both players to complete a game. Why is it "fair" to give one player more time to play than the other? If you keep your stuff organized and you have practiced running your army there shouldn't be an issue. It's not like someone is suggesting that clocks be sprung upon the players. Everyone who enters that event would know what is expected. If you find that you can't run your army in the time allotted then make some changes or learn to move/decide things faster.
Would a clock change Metas? Certainly, but so does any rule change. A single FAQ entry could destroy a popular build or make a particular model more or less desirable. Does that mean it shouldn't be followed? No, it just means that players will have to make an adjustment to their game plan and move on. This would be no different.

Because units are balanced upon Points, and points do not take in to account 'how fast' a unit is to use. Including speed to use as a rule to the game, one which is not part of the rules at all means the entire game needs to be rebalanced for it to be fair.

Yes, it shifts the META. And it is a arbitrary and unfair shift at that, one that damages the game to unplayable levels for some armies. It makes the event exclusionary for no valid reason, based upon a false premise not included in the game design. TO's have every right to modify the game arbitrarily to change rules and so on, but if they do it too much, it ruins the event and people won't attend.

Equal Play is not in the rules and is not figured into the balance of the game and makes the game unplayable for many units and codexes, to a point where the outcome of the event becomes basically 'pointless' due to it being so unfair.

There is a difference between playing a game to its natural conclusion in the alloted time, and playing the game so each player gets exactly HALF the time and one player can 'starve' the other by finishing his turns super fast throug a small-model-count army and force the game to end 45 minutes early before time is out and claim 'you are out of time, I win'. And considering there is no valid way to account for 'whose time is whose' the accounting of 'equal time' is a false premise.

If time limits are imposed, and games are not finishing, that is an issue with times being too short or point limits too large, not equal time.

It's easy to account for whose time is whose. If you're rolling the dice or moving pieces then it's your time. If your opponent is doing such things then it's his time.
I don't understand your point about unit points being balanced against other units. Points are points. Each person has the same amount and each person can choose how to spend them.
So what if my army has 15 models and yours has 100. If I loose one of my models it hurts me more than you losing one of yours. And it shouldn't matter to you how fast your opponent is playing. You should be concerned about how you are playing. Why should you be entitled to use more of the allocated time than I am? If we're each using the same points where does it say we have to have the same model count?
Fairness is all a matter of perspective. I sometimes don't think that it's fair that orks can have all sorts of cheap weapons and troops and a full codex. While I have to work out of 2 editions of the White Dwarf (I'm a Sisters player). So what should we do about that situation? Life isn't always fair and neither are dice rolls. If you play a game and you're aware of the rules then you can adapt to those rules or quit. There's no one who is forcing anyone else to play the game.

@ OP The only reason this works for chess is due to the symmetry of the forces and board. It wouldn't be fair in 40k due to these asymmetric differences. Combine that with turns were both parties participate and it just doesnt make sense.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
...Points are points. Each person has the same amount and each person can choose how to spend them....
...Fairness is all a matter of perspective. I sometimes don't think that it's fair that orks can have all sorts of cheap weapons and troops and a full codex. While I have to work out of 2 editions of the White Dwarf (I'm a Sisters player). So what should we do about that situation? Life isn't always fair and neither are dice rolls. If you play a game and you're aware of the rules then you can adapt to those rules or quit. There's no one who is forcing anyone else to play the game.

Everyone has the same choices of codices to pick from, and each person can choose which one to pick. So what if you have 2 editions of WD to go off of? You chose to play SoB, and with those WD issues are your codex, with a full force org chart and errythang. Life isn't always fair and either are dice roles, you either adapt to different codices or quit.


That aside, I don't think clocks are a great way to balance out the turns because of the potential asymmetry of the armies involved. Maybe a model limit instead of time limits? Maybe just getting over people having a butt-ton of models and trying your best to play a full game?

The Maryland Wargaming Collective has been using chess clocks to time games since they started running events three years ago.

It works great! Some players aren't very good about managing their time, but for the most part the clocks have the desired effect: instead of mulling over moves and analyzing the game for a prolonged amount of time, players must take their turns in a reasonable amount of time.

MWC limits games to 2 hours, 1 per person.

I am surprised by some of the arguments being offered in this thread against chess clocks.

The interactive portions of the turn take almost no time to resolve, and in three years and 15 tournaments I cannot recall a single player abusing the system by taking a long time to roll saves, etc. Even in the aggregate, an opponent spends little to no time responding to moves made during the active player's turn.

Time management does become a bit more critical for model-heavy armies like green tide, mostly because moving is a pain, but there are little tricks that can be done to save time. I've seen slower players run out of time playing footslogging IG, but for the most part everyone seems to cope. It hasn't been a big disadvantage to horde armies. Players running short of time simply have to go faster.

Extreaminatus - That's just my point. I adapted. I didn't like what happened but I got over it.
That's what I'm saying about a new clock rule. People will adapt and the world will go on.

True, I'm not exactly sure what point I was trying to make by quoting you, but I do know that clocks seem like a silly way to go about things, mostly because horde armies take forever to move anyway (not just from mulling over WHERE to move, just that physically moving them takes a while).

Really, if time is becoming an issue routinely at events...why not just lower the points level? I know people like playing bigger armies, but armies have been growing in size every edition. Every edition stuff gets a little bit cheaper, armies need a few more models, and time becomes more of an issue. What will fit in an 1850pt IG army now would have been 2600pts in 3E, what you can fit in a Tau army now at 1850 would have been 2100 previously, etc.

Add to this that tournaments have gone from 1500pts almost universally a decade ago to 1750pts then 1850pts and then to 2000pts at the end of 5E (though have retreated to 1850 after the double-force org was put in in most places) and we're playing larger armies with more points than before.

If games cannot be finished in time at the current points level, and events cannot increase the amount of time for games played, then the real answer is to lower the points level for the games played, not to try and hamfist clocks into the situation that will put the same time limit on all players armies regardless of whether its reasonable or not and add another thing that can be gamed, gimmicked and argued over.

Not to mention having to have TO's purchase said clocks in addition to providing tables, terrain, etc.


TL;DR if time for games can't be extended, events need to play smaller games, not try and fiddle with clocks.

Yeah, seems like 1500 point games would be more reasonable to get done in time.

As was mentioned, Kings of War and Warpath are specifically designed to have only the player whose turn it is acting. This means it works perfectly well with chess clocks and speeds up play. I think if people want to play in that style, they should swap over to the Warpath rules set. 40K is getting much too bloated and time consuming to play as a tournament game.

We've thought about this a lot, and this is a topic that comes up often.

The main reason we haven't done it in our events: chess clocks aren't cheap.

Wow, I just googled their cost, they start from $25 up to over $100 for something that would have been simple and cheap to make even in the 80's...

Yeah, good luck getting a TO to spring for 30-60 of those.

 erewego86 wrote:
The Maryland Wargaming Collective has been using chess clocks to time games since they started running events three years ago.

I haven't seen a tourney in MD (or philly, DC or nova) use a chess clock for 40k ever in 20 years of gaming in this area. And I have never ever heard of MWC.

I would love to see the statistics of these 'events' including which armies attended, which armies had too much or not enough time. Point levels, Time limits, and feedback from people who actually attended along with size of events.

I would also like to know how quickly and frequently you require tapping back and forth considering one assault goes back and forth at least 10-15 times minimum. In a phase where you can easily have 5-6 assaults, you are almost clicking back and forth in one assault phase more than an entire game of chess.

Know what also has the 'desired effect' without imposing a false premise like equal time? Simply announcing how much longer the round is every 15 minutes. Seems to work just fine if the points limit and time are reasonable.

I think that this system sounds like a great idea overall. Say one hour and fifteen minutes per player for a total of a two and a half hour game. Like most people said though, these clocks cost a whole lot for what they do.

hey good thing we got a chess coach on the forums
Basic Wood Analog Chess Clock
$29.99

at chess events players are responsible for bring a clock, shoot compared to the rest of the stuff gw sells now they can sell over priced clocks

Like everyone else is saying:

One guy fielding 2000 points of Grey Knights may have a small amount of fully geared up guys

But his opponent is running the Green Tide with maybe a few bikes to...

It just wouldn't be fair to give them the same amount of time to move, shoot, assault etc.

If we require players to bring a chess clock I guarantee several things:

1.) A percentage of people would forget and/or bring the wrong type of clock, making the entire purpose moot.

2.) A percentage of people wouldn't come to the event because they would be mad that they were being "forced" to buy something they don't want. That means less attendance, less fun, harder to actually host a tournament as it is so expensive already.

The only real way to do it is for the TOs to buy them, which would cost several thousand dollars for a good sized event, even at wholesale pricing.

I think it makes perfect sense though as both players get an equal amount of time. You get 20 minutes for pregame and then divide the time equally between the players. Any player that goes over on time gets penalized in some way. It is fair and unbiased.

As for horde armies not playing in the time limit, I disagree. I have seen experienced horde players get through game super fast. Often they're movement phase is really simple: go forward. It's all about preparation and knowing your army far more than the type of army, IMO.

At any rate, I would love to try it at one of our events but money is the main reason we have not.

 Reecius wrote:
The only real way to do it is for the TOs to buy them, which would cost several thousand dollars for a good sized event, even at wholesale pricing.

I think it makes perfect sense though as both players get an equal amount of time. You get 20 minutes for pregame and then divide the time equally between the players. Any player that goes over on time gets penalized in some way. It is fair and unbiased.

The local press gangers for warmachine/hordes use cheap egg timers. They're a few bucks apiece. That would mean that a 250 person event would need 250 timers (one per player / two per table), and cost somewhere between $500 - $1000.

Note: I'm not necessarily a fan of this idea, just wanted to point that out regarding cost. It works well for warmachine, not sure how well it would translate to 40k. Sorry if the egg timers had already been pointed out, too... but you don't need a chess clock for timed turns / a timed game, there are much cheaper options.

I have a chess clock app on my phone. It was free from google play, and these days the likelihood of at least one person at the table not having some sort of phone capable of running that type of app is pretty low I would think.

Timed movement phases is the fairest thing but I don't see that coming into its own as you could still theoretically slow play in the shooting phase. I think that getting away from this max-points in min-time approach to tournaments is a step in the right direction. Personally, and it's just my opinion, but I think that 1850-2000 points as a standard is a bit much when rounds are ~2 hours.

I would be open to the option of playing in a tournament with play clocks just to test the concept.


I'm also open to the idea of penalizing players whose turns are taking an excessive amount of time. I.e., Time the entire turn for each player. If the game doesn't come to a T5 conclusion, then apply the following: If the sum of the duration of one player's turns is more than X % greater than the sum of the duration of the other player's turn, that player is penalized one point for every Y interval. Something of that nature would encourage fast play (during your turn anyway) which would probably be enough.

 RiTides wrote:

 Reecius wrote:
The only real way to do it is for the TOs to buy them, which would cost several thousand dollars for a good sized event, even at wholesale pricing.

I think it makes perfect sense though as both players get an equal amount of time. You get 20 minutes for pregame and then divide the time equally between the players. Any player that goes over on time gets penalized in some way. It is fair and unbiased.

The local press gangers for warmachine/hordes use cheap egg timers. They're a few bucks apiece. That would mean that a 250 person event would need 250 timers (one per player / two per table), and cost somewhere between $500 - $1000.

Note: I'm not necessarily a fan of this idea, just wanted to point that out regarding cost. It works well for warmachine, not sure how well it would translate to 40k. Sorry if the egg timers had already been pointed out, too... but you don't need a chess clock for timed turns / a timed game, there are much cheaper options.

Egg timers for a buck....brilliant! Might have to try this out, thanks for bringing it up, I had not thought of that.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Timed movement phases is the fairest thing but I don't see that coming into its own as you could still theoretically slow play in the shooting phase. I think that getting away from this max-points in min-time approach to tournaments is a step in the right direction. Personally, and it's just my opinion, but I think that 1850-2000 points as a standard is a bit much when rounds are ~2 hours.

I would be open to the option of playing in a tournament with play clocks just to test the concept.


I'm also open to the idea of penalizing players whose turns are taking an excessive amount of time. I.e., Time the entire turn for each player. If the game doesn't come to a T5 conclusion, then apply the following: If the sum of the duration of one player's turns is more than X % greater than the sum of the duration of the other player's turn, that player is penalized one point for every Y interval. Something of that nature would encourage fast play (during your turn anyway) which would probably be enough.

But such a formula is fundamentally unfair. Orks have explicit game mechanics designed around one coordinated massive assault of your whole force during a single turn. The waves crashing against the rocks. It is not uncommon to have a single, long assault phase and the rest of the turns in the game to be quick. The game and rules point to explicitly that orks should expect to have a long assault phase which can take a significant portion of the overall game. Punishing a codex for having rules explicitly designed around concepts that would have longer turns in some situations is fundamentally unfair and not supported by the rules.

And this your turn, my turn concept doesn't account for interactive phases.

Equal play isn't in the rules or codex design. Until the game is rebalanced for equal play, any implementation is unfair as it makes models who play faster "better for their points" than alternative units which rely on slower game mechanics. 200 points of 1 unit is not equally as fast as 200 points of another unit so the game breaks.

nkelsch wrote:

But such a formula is fundamentally unfair. Orks have explicit game mechanics designed around one coordinated massive assault of your whole force during a single turn. The waves crashing against the rocks. It is not uncommon to have a single, long assault phase and the rest of the turns in the game to be quick. The game and rules point to explicitly that orks should expect to have a long assault phase which can take a significant portion of the overall game. Punishing a codex for having rules explicitly designed around concepts that would have longer turns in some situations is fundamentally unfair and not supported by the rules.

And this your turn, my turn concept doesn't account for interactive phases.

Equal play isn't in the rules or codex design. Until the game is rebalanced for equal play, any implementation is unfair as it makes models who play faster "better for their points" than alternative units which rely on slower game mechanics. 200 points of 1 unit is not equally as fast as 200 points of another unit so the game breaks.

But all tournaments are already timed, you keep ignoring the fundamental problem and providing incidental reasons why Orks should be exempt from a more granular approach to timing rounds. It is a tournament problem, so I'm not sure what reason there is to refer to the rules and codices (they don't mention tournaments at all).

We can rewrite your final paragraph and substitute the word "slow" for "fast" and make the same argument about the current system of timed rounds without player limits. In addition, one can slow play intentionally as a game tactic. One more point - more games of tournament chess have been played than all other tabletop wargames combined (and multiplied, and squared) - clocks are used in chess for the very valid reason that slow play sucks the life out of games and is very subject to abuse.

Jack_Death wrote:

nkelsch wrote:

But such a formula is fundamentally unfair. Orks have explicit game mechanics designed around one coordinated massive assault of your whole force during a single turn. The waves crashing against the rocks. It is not uncommon to have a single, long assault phase and the rest of the turns in the game to be quick. The game and rules point to explicitly that orks should expect to have a long assault phase which can take a significant portion of the overall game. Punishing a codex for having rules explicitly designed around concepts that would have longer turns in some situations is fundamentally unfair and not supported by the rules.

And this your turn, my turn concept doesn't account for interactive phases.

Equal play isn't in the rules or codex design. Until the game is rebalanced for equal play, any implementation is unfair as it makes models who play faster "better for their points" than alternative units which rely on slower game mechanics. 200 points of 1 unit is not equally as fast as 200 points of another unit so the game breaks.

But all tournaments are already timed, you keep ignoring the fundamental problem and providing incidental reasons why Orks should be exempt from a more granular approach to timing rounds. It is a tournament problem, so I'm not sure what reason there is to refer to the rules and codices (they don't mention tournaments at all).

We can rewrite your final paragraph and substitute the word "slow" for "fast" and make the same argument about the current system of timed rounds without player limits. In addition, one can slow play intentionally as a game tactic. One more point - more games of tournament chess have been played than all other tabletop wargames combined (and multiplied, and squared) - clocks are used in chess for the very valid reason that slow play sucks the life out of games and is very subject to abuse.

Chess is designed around equal balance and equal time, 40k is not. Remember, when I assault you with 7 units on *my* turn, you are going to spend 10-15 minutes of that turn rolling your shooting and assault attacks. In chess, that doesn't happen.

Slow play is not solved by equal time, and equal time doesn't address time issues in a tourney, just allows specific builds to starve the clock by saying "I am making a 2 hour game a 1.5 hour game by building a list which doesn't require a lot of time or makes its actions on your turns and then I will starve you of time and win due to penalties." Orks, like many assault armies have rules based around being the army who assaults, which means both players will be fighting mostly on the assault army's turn. Shooty armies will also be heavily over watching on assault armies turn. Shooty armies will also strive to cut out as much assault and movement as possible in many circumstances. As if 6th edition needed any more excuses to shift the META forwards shooting armies.

I still don't see any valid way to "time turns" when almost all the turns are interactive and the time is used by both players. Also due to the nature of the game, every movement phase doesn't take the same time so this idea that if my phase took 2 minutes that yours also needs to take 2 minutes isn't supported by the rules or how the game is actually played.

Slow play and equal time are not the same issue and equal play doesn't at all solve slow play. It is a falsehood to convince people that equal time solves slow play the same way army comp solves codex imbalance.

40K is not balanced around equal time, at least not in the sense we are used to. It's balanced around equal "time" in the sense that both players get the same number of turns.

Tournament time limits are the actual problem here. Trying to solve the problem of the game time limit being insufficient by making it stricter isn't going to solve anything, just introduce more headaches. If you want to actually fix the problem change the points to time balance (increase time, decrease points, both) and actually keep an eye out for people gaming the system.

If you're regularly having a problem with games timing out rather than running to completion then the problem is one of three things:

1. The time limit is insufficient, in which case the TO should use longer limits or smaller games in future.

2. One (or more) of the players is a jackass, in which case someone should be calling them out.

3. One (or more) of the players don't actually know what they're doing. This one is, in the long term, self-correcting as they'll either learn or quit.

nkelsch wrote:

 erewego86 wrote:
The Maryland Wargaming Collective has been using chess clocks to time games since they started running events three years ago.

I haven't seen a tourney in MD (or philly, DC or nova) use a chess clock for 40k ever in 20 years of gaming in this area. And I have never ever heard of MWC.

I would love to see the statistics of these 'events' including which armies attended, which armies had too much or not enough time. Point levels, Time limits, and feedback from people who actually attended along with size of events.

I would also like to know how quickly and frequently you require tapping back and forth considering one assault goes back and forth at least 10-15 times minimum. In a phase where you can easily have 5-6 assaults, you are almost clicking back and forth in one assault phase more than an entire game of chess.

Know what also has the 'desired effect' without imposing a false premise like equal time? Simply announcing how much longer the round is every 15 minutes. Seems to work just fine if the points limit and time are reasonable.

We play every other month at dropzone. Next tournament's in August. You haven't heard of MWC because we don't advertise but there's a meetup group you can google if you feel so inclined. Obviously we don't keep stats about who played what, but I can tell you I played Green Tide for most of the first two years (6 30 ork mobs) and I never ran out of time :-P

We don't tap back and forth. It's just not that big of an issue. People very rarely run out of time, so there's been no need to amend our rules. Nobody has complained in three years about the fairness of the clocks.

The desired effect isn't equal time. The desired effect is to wrap a tournament round in about 2 hours so we can start at ten, lunch at one, and be outta there around dinner.

Slow play isn't just an issue with Horde armies. We have several players in the area who continuously play slower when they're "in the lead" but are quite capable of playing faster when they're "behind". An 1850 point game only getting to the end of Turn 3 with a Farsight bomb army in a 3 hour game window is terrible. Especially when his opponent is usually quite capable of getting through a 7 turn game in an hour and a half. What's worse is when the rest of the players at the tourney are waiting around for the game to be over just to be able to discover their opponents for the next game. I've seen armies take 45 minutes to an hour to deploy in tournament games. Win first turn, then fumble about so much that in a 2 1/2 hour game with enforced time limits their opponent had a 10 minute first turn and had only 3 minutes in which to conduct their entire second turn.

Setting specific times for deployment would be an improvement, whatever units you don't have set up after your "10 minute set up window" going into reserve rather than deploying could be interesting. Declare those units you intend to reserve at the start of your deployment, anything forced into reserve by running out of time is only allowed to enter off your back table edge.

One of our local players has been playing horde Tyranids since 3rd edition. And has made up movement bases for his horde bugs that are like the strip Epic bases with each fig slot having a magnet to ensure things don't fall out. They're somewhere in the vicinity of 2"x6" and the fig slots are placed to ensure that two bases back to back or side to side will always be in coherency, as well as maintaining decent dispersal so his little bugs don't get crunched up under templates. It works extremely well, though its rather strange to see him move his units by moving bases from the back of the unit to the front of the stack. If the table surface permits, they can even be slid across the table.

IMO, its a great fix, keeps his bugs spread out optimally as well reducing the amount of bases to be move in his army down to less than most PA armies.

 dracpanzer wrote:
Slow play isn't just an issue with Horde armies. We have several players in the area who continuously play slower when they're "in the lead" but are quite capable of playing faster when they're "behind". An 1850 point game only getting to the end of Turn 3 with a Farsight bomb army in a 3 hour game window is terrible. Especially when his opponent is usually quite capable of getting through a 7 turn game in an hour and a half. What's worse is when the rest of the players at the tourney are waiting around for the game to be over just to be able to discover their opponents for the next game. I've seen armies take 45 minutes to an hour to deploy in tournament games. Win first turn, then fumble about so much that in a 2 1/2 hour game with enforced time limits their opponent had a 10 minute first turn and had only 3 minutes in which to conduct their entire second turn.

These are issues the people need to bring to the TO's attention then and appropriate action taken, however it's not unreasonable for say, an IG or Ork army to take 2-3 times as much time as their MEQ opponent to deploy and operate their units when they have 2-3 times as many of them, and forcing all armies to run in the same amount of time, when such a factor is not built into the rules at any point, is punitive to such armies. Slow play must be addressed as it occurs, as a blanket time restriction can severely pooch armies that are designed to play certain ways without any regard to time being a factor.

One of our local players has been playing horde Tyranids since 3rd edition. And has made up movement bases for his horde bugs that are like the strip Epic bases with each fig slot having a magnet to ensure things don't fall out. They're somewhere in the vicinity of 2"x6" and the fig slots are placed to ensure that two bases back to back or side to side will always be in coherency, as well as maintaining decent dispersal so his little bugs don't get crunched up under templates. It works extremely well, though its rather strange to see him move his units by moving bases from the back of the unit to the front of the stack. If the table surface permits, they can even be slid across the table.

While someone looking purely for expediency may be pleased with this, it removes tactical options open to players not confining themselves to such movement trays. Movement and positioning, especially for CC oriented units, is huge, especially now with wound allocation being the closest model and the existence of Overwatch. Forcing horde players to play like this functionally is giving an edge to their opponent to exploit in many situations.
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