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I didn't vote because the poll is hilariously biased.

I was at Nova. I only had 1 game go to time out of 7. The other 6 finished with 30-45 minutes to spare.

More time would be great, I'd love an hour between rounds, but I just don't see this pervasive time problem. I'm sure there are slow players, but in my tourney experience games very rarely finish by time getting called.

Gimme an undefeated Tourney Champion over Battle Points #1 Sealclubber any day.

 Chumbalaya wrote:
I was at Nova. I only had 1 game go to time out of 7. The other 6 finished with 30-45 minutes to spare.

What were you playing?

I had a reasonably-sized daemons army (i.e., NOT a 5 FMC army). Of 8 games, I had 2 finish naturally.

 Chumbalaya wrote:
I didn't vote because the poll is hilariously biased.

I was at Nova. I only had 1 game go to time out of 7. The other 6 finished with 30-45 minutes to spare.

More time would be great, I'd love an hour between rounds, but I just don't see this pervasive time problem. I'm sure there are slow players, but in my tourney experience games very rarely finish by time getting called.

Gimme an undefeated Tourney Champion over Battle Points #1 Sealclubber any day.

My experience at NOVA this year mirrors yours. 7 of my 8 games finished with at least half an hour to spare. The last finished on Turn 5. Several games featured pairings well in advance of the round start time so I really don't know why so many had problems this year. Given the score sheet data (the collection of which was, admittedly, flawed), perhaps this sentiment is just the result of a loud minority.

 Danny Internets wrote:

 Chumbalaya wrote:
I didn't vote because the poll is hilariously biased.

I was at Nova. I only had 1 game go to time out of 7. The other 6 finished with 30-45 minutes to spare.

More time would be great, I'd love an hour between rounds, but I just don't see this pervasive time problem. I'm sure there are slow players, but in my tourney experience games very rarely finish by time getting called.

Gimme an undefeated Tourney Champion over Battle Points #1 Sealclubber any day.

My experience at NOVA this year mirrors yours. 7 of my 8 games finished with at least half an hour to spare. The last finished on Turn 5. Several games featured pairings well in advance of the round start time so I really don't know why so many had problems this year. Given the score sheet data (the collection of which was, admittedly, flawed), perhaps this sentiment is just the result of a loud minority.

So many people at NOVA I would have said hello to had I realised.

The only games I had that finished naturally were the really one-sided tabling ones, where one list was innately superior to the other and it was practically an auto win (that's both me tabling and being tabled!!!).

All the real fun, close fought games I had ended because of time. At least one of those I could have won given another turn, and that could easily have won me my bracket.

People do realize these things are only mutually exclusive in basically the countries larges events, anything 64 players or less can do both. As for larger events....that becomes tricky as with 7+ games you need 3 days to make 3 hour rounds work.

Aftermath. wrote:
I attended a local tournament, and would have gotten first place, but got 2nd because the other player had a fully painted army HE DID NOT PAINT.

How can a TO enforce painting scores; they realistically can't. Any player with deep pockets can just pay to have his army painted and claim he did it.

A fully painted army you did not personally paint should generate 0 points on painting. But the dillema is this is virtually impossible to enforce.

This is one of the reasons why I left the GT circuit years ago and is a reason when I TO a game, painting is a separate award all together.

 Janthkin wrote:

 Chumbalaya wrote:
I was at Nova. I only had 1 game go to time out of 7. The other 6 finished with 30-45 minutes to spare.

What were you playing?

He played a small mech necron army with nob bikers.

 OverwatchCNC wrote:
I preferred the win-loss one undefeated player in 5th edition which was a much more competitive rule set.

With 6th edition being far less competitive and a much "longer" and complex game than 5th I have moved back in favor of less win-loss undefeated winner format tournaments. 6th edition is no where near as competitive tournament friendly as 5th was.

That being said I am happy to attend both types of events. I was in 5th and I am in 6th as well. The change now is I am happier at events which are not winner takes all, the reverse of my attitude 2 years ago.

I didn't find 5th edition more competitive. There was one build no matter what army you played: 5-man squads and a ton of transports. While that technically made things quicker because list-building was cut-and-paste, every damn game was the same. It was boring and bad for the game all together.

What's funny is, people complained that because of it's simplicity, the game wasn't complex enough to reward smart players, creative list-building, etc., often referencing the rules "complexity" of PP and other companies. Now there are tons of intricate ways to win objectives. Playing to the mission is far more important now, and requires a much higher level of tactical acumen than just math-hammering the most efficient way to deliver a meltagun.

 Chumbalaya wrote:
I didn't vote because the poll is hilariously biased.

I was at Nova. I only had 1 game go to time out of 7. The other 6 finished with 30-45 minutes to spare.

Is it possible your results were atypical?

 Blackmoor wrote:

 Chumbalaya wrote:
I didn't vote because the poll is hilariously biased.

I was at Nova. I only had 1 game go to time out of 7. The other 6 finished with 30-45 minutes to spare.

Is it possible your results were atypical?

It's certainly possible, but in all my time playing tournaments over the past 3-4 years time has very rarely been an issue. My Nova army was Necrorks with Wraiths, Nob bikes, some mech, some flyers and a scarab farm. Lots of complex assault fun. Last year I had 60 Orks and more foot Necrons and not a single game went to time.

I play at a reasonable pace, know my army and the rules, but I don't think that's anything special. I think Mike said that the majority of games finished "naturally" anyway, so I'm just not seeing where you're getting "most" games coming down to time. Is it possible that your results are atypical?

Also, next year we need some kind of "internet hugging" area where everybody can get their glomp on.

Who cares. If you dont like how a tournament is ran dont go. The opinion will be voiced but if it doesnt change anything then just dont go. Heck host your own tournament. Ill come ^.^

Chumbalaya- Janthkin also knows his army well, had a reasonably sized one, and had most of his games not finish, though (he originally posted a longer statement of this in the main Nova thread).

I think a NOVA specific bent is needless. Adepticon and NOVA both played 2.5 hours and 1850 points, and both recorded most games by a wide margin finishing on time.

Even a loud minority, however, is worth addressing if you plan to be worth attending as an event, so we'll be looking at numerous options for giving players more time anyway. If we went off large majorities we'd never have improved off year one, since the large majority had a great time then. To the complacent goes the rightful criticism.

I DO think it's important for people to understand perspective, from both angles. More players than in the past didn't finish their games. Most players did. Worth being honest about for both sides. Some of you by your and opponent's fault did not play at the pace of the "norm." But clearly the game takes longer to play, because more people failed to finish and it's being heard about more loudly. Requires concession and address from both directions.

Said another way ... people who attend tournaments need to be prepared to play at a much more clipper pace, and need to use judges and social applications to manage slow opponents. Tournaments simultaneously need to find a way to lower points and or give players more time.

Nova is only being discussed because it just happened, and as stated above should only be an issue at the biggest of events (Nova, AdeptiCon, etc) because of the need for more rounds. So, it's not a dig, it's a compliment to discuss Nova... I also don't see a belligerent minority, I see a few folks expressing an opinion and discussing it reasonably. Just what a forum is for

"It is best to have 1 undefeated player in a tournament where most of the games do not finish."

The problem with this poll is it is very biased due to the first choice which has already been shown to be often not the case.

It is the responsibility of both the TOs and players to make sure games go to at least the fifth turn. TOs should keep track of players whom can't seem to ever get past a third turn - if it happens twice give them a strong verbal warning. If it then happens again DQ them or pair them up versus other slow players on the lower tables.

Sixth edition can be played at a timely pace... The players must manage their time accordingly.

Getting to a 5th turn and knowing it must end then is different from finishing naturally, though.

 Chumbalaya wrote:


It's certainly possible, but in all my time playing tournaments over the past 3-4 years time has very rarely been an issue. My Nova army was Necrorks with Wraiths, Nob bikes, some mech, some flyers and a scarab farm. Lots of complex assault fun. Last year I had 60 Orks and more foot Necrons and not a single game went to time.

The past results do not matter because we were not playing 6th edition 3 to 4 years ago, and even then only until a couple of months ago we have the codexes released that take the longest to play (Demons, Tau, and Eldar).

I play at a reasonable pace, know my army, but I don't think that's anything special. I think Mike said that the majority of games finished "naturally" anyway, so I'm just not seeing where you're getting "most" games coming down to time. Is it possible that your results are atypical?

I do not have a computer (I am doing this from my phone) so I can't check, but we have access to 13 games on the uStream channel so how many of those finished naturally?

Given the two rather limited options of the poll, I would prefer complete games.

To black moor, I think your poll and initial post are really flawed. I didn't get a chance to chat with you at nova, but if I am correct from the tone of your post your games did not finish and you lost games because of that. If I guessed correctly then your approach to this topic should probably be reevaluated with some data from mike and a neutral perspective.

As for the games, I felt like my games at nova were slower than my games at adepticon. At adepticon I played a list that I had much more tournament experience with while at nova I played a new tau list that had lots of test game experience but no major tournament experience with hard time limits attached.

For a fact playing a new army with more dice slowed the pace a bit, as the new armies get more shots (with rerolls) than before. However lack of timed tourney game experience was another factor, as even when I played a match versus a club mate I have played 20 times already, the outcome was different solely because I took too much time at nova to play out my turns and a time limit ended the game early. I noticed a marked speed improvement in my play with more timed games under my belt as the weekend went on, as I knew what to hurry and what to focus my time on, but by no means am I quick enough with that force yet in a timed environment simply because nova was the first tourney I have had my new tau for.

So while I have voiced that I wanted more time for my games, my only complaint from nova round time was I felt a disconnect from when pairings were made to when the round started. I felt like this portion of the game time was out of the players control, as finding your table, getting moved over to your table, and getting your table sides sorted all ate into your round time.

All in all though, we have data from the etc games with their much longer round times that still shows that some games will not finish on time no matter how generous the time given is. This is the reality of some armies being slower to play combined with some players being slower to move their models. With this reality in mind and with the penchant for GW to increase the amount of dice being thrown by armies (each 80 point dev centurion throws 11 dice all with some form of reroll when shooting) we the players need to step up our games regardless. Chess clocks in a tournament are not the answer. Chess clocks in our practice games, however, WILL help us finish our tournament games.

3 hour round times may help some games finish, but a game that got to turn 3 in 2.5 hours will not go to turn 7 if given 30 more minutes.

MVBrandt wrote:
I think a NOVA specific bent is needless. Adepticon and NOVA both played 2.5 hours and 1850 points, and both recorded most games by a wide margin finishing on time.

Even a loud minority, however, is worth addressing if you plan to be worth attending as an event, so we'll be looking at numerous options for giving players more time anyway. If we went off large majorities we'd never have improved off year one, since the large majority had a great time then. To the complacent goes the rightful criticism.

I DO think it's important for people to understand perspective, from both angles. More players than in the past didn't finish their games. Most players did. Worth being honest about for both sides. Some of you by your and opponent's fault did not play at the pace of the "norm." But clearly the game takes longer to play, because more people failed to finish and it's being heard about more loudly. Requires concession and address from both directions.

Said another way ... people who attend tournaments need to be prepared to play at a much more clipper pace, and need to use judges and social applications to manage slow opponents. Tournaments simultaneously need to find a way to lower points and or give players more time.

Saying the players need to be prepared isn't possible in some cases. I can't prepare for an opponent's play if they play hoard or slowly. I think the TO needs to prepare and plan better IMHO.

Being a competitive player who now has family and less free time, I view your post is just as bias as Blackmoor's. You may think that there is "enough" time to finish but it doesn't mean that doesn't mean the players aren't rushed. Its just not fun. I enjoy competitive games and the challenge they bring but I will not play in a rushed tournament. Remember, a majority of us go to events because they enjoy the game and the hobby.

If any event for that matter, its not enjoyable for me, I will not go. Cramming as many games as one can exhausts a lot of players and i wish the community of events would trend back to this. As someone else posted, I choose not to go to those events.

This is why I do like Daboyz and attend and OTHER events I skip.

@The Rogue Engineer,

Have you tried other events? There are other events (I'm assuming you are in the North East if you go to Daboyz) in the area that allow for enough time. Battle for Salvation has 3 hour rounds this year. I ran 3 hour rounds at my GT at Connecticon.

I also enforced a penalty on players if they consistently did not finish games.

We played 2k points and had 1 game out of 70 not finish naturally. Many finished with 30+ minutes to spare.

However all that said players do need to be prepared, a lot of the responisbility is on the players. Even with 3 hours, it is possible to slow play, it is up to the players to call a judge if they feel this is the case. It is also up to the players to honestly report their games not finishing if they don't.

AS a TO I can try to provide a reasonable amount of time (3 hours is reasonable, anything longer is not funcitonal.), and I can enforce penalties for slow play, or simply not finishing games consistently. Beyond that everything is on the players.

I'm only particularly talking about Nova because I brought the same army to 6 GT's this year and before Nova only had 2-3 games called due to time. At Nova I only had one game finish naturally.

Now, I don't think that was entirely Nova's fault. Partly it was due to Tau and Eldar now being out and slowing down game play (mine included, thanks intercepting Riptides....)But a contributing factor was pairings giong up 1-2 minutes before rounds started which meant just getting to your table ate up clock time.

Personally, I think it'll ease out and that just ensuring a little more cushion would work out. But I also wouldn't mind a 1500pt GT here or there.

Rogue, to be fair your criticism is misguided. If your opponent is slow and playing horde, Mike said in your quote that you need to use judges and social apps to manage slow players, yet your first comment is how your helpless versus a slow player! Slow players will not finish games even when given 4 hours, just look at the etc. A judge can't intervene with a slow player if you don't say anything.

Your observation about being rushed is no fun is quite valid, but da boyz ALSO has a time limit, and you still need to play quickly to finish a game. As for cramming games in, the open had a max of 3 games a day. If anyone wanted more games than that, they had the option, both with organized games like trios and unorganized open gaming. The fact is you are the only one who makes your schedule, and furthermore nova is drop friendly so there is no pressure to even play a game if you are tired of playing already.

Like I put in the post above yours, 6th edition requires you to play faster than 5th, regardless of format. 30 extra minutes will not turn a game that ended on turn 3 with 2.5 hours to turn 7 in 3 hours. That player will not finish their games regardless of being in upstate New York, Chicago, or northern Virginia.

While it is true that 30 min won't change the turns that ended on turn 3 to ending on turn 7, but it will change those turn 4 games to turn 5+, and turn 5 getting called on time to likely turn 7 games. Turns tend to get faster as the game goes on.

To deal with those 3 turn games you need 3 things.

1.) The opposing player to call a judge, and call him early, if you call a judge with 15 min left and you are only on turn 3, it is too late to do much.

2.) Consistent time reminders. Many events don't let you know about time until the last 15 minutes. At that point if you are playing too slow, you cannot adjust. I always try to remind when there is 1 hour left (sometimes 1.5 hours), 30 min, 15, 10 , etc.

3.) A penalty for not finishing games. The reason for this is two fold. First it provides impetus to finish games. Second it provides motivation for people getting slow played to get a judge so that they are not penalized. What I do is as each table if they had a natural conclusion (as well as monitor games running over time). IF a player has more than 1 game not finish they are penalized(increasingly for each unfinished game). That way, each of their individual opponents are not penalized, but consistent slow play is. Is it perfect no, but like I said, 1/70 games not finishing is pretty good.

 Blackmoor wrote:
The past results do not matter because we were not playing 6th edition 3 to 4 years ago, and even then only until a couple of months ago we have the codexes released that take the longest to play (Demons, Tau, and Eldar).

The vast majority of the Daemon armies I saw at NOVA were flying circus lists with extremely low model counts. The predominant Tau configurations seemed to keep large portions of their army (namely, their Kroot) in reserve, which results in a very brief deployment phase and first game turn. And almost every single Eldar army at NOVA was fully or almost fully mechanized, making them one of the fastest armies to play in 40k.

I would argue that Daemons, Tau, and Eldar represent armies that take the shortest amount of time to play when using common competitive builds. Having played literally nothing but Daemons, Tau, and Eldar at NOVA (and using Tau myself, with only two games worth of experience before NOVA), this is consistent with my own experiences at NOVA. Had I not gone in cold with respect to my own army, the games probably would have been even shorter.

Well Daemons take up quite a bit of pregame time with rolling Powers, and Rewards, but during game play how long they play largely depends on warpstorm rolls etc.

Having Watched the live feed, it is very evident that lots of players spend a lot of time measuring moves, checking LOS, measuring again etc. (At least on top tables.)

That said I rarely have trouble finishing games, but I can see with lots of pregame rolling, needing to get to the table, etc...games not getting finished.

 The_Rogue_Engineer wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:
I think a NOVA specific bent is needless. Adepticon and NOVA both played 2.5 hours and 1850 points, and both recorded most games by a wide margin finishing on time.

Even a loud minority, however, is worth addressing if you plan to be worth attending as an event, so we'll be looking at numerous options for giving players more time anyway. If we went off large majorities we'd never have improved off year one, since the large majority had a great time then. To the complacent goes the rightful criticism.

I DO think it's important for people to understand perspective, from both angles. More players than in the past didn't finish their games. Most players did. Worth being honest about for both sides. Some of you by your and opponent's fault did not play at the pace of the "norm." But clearly the game takes longer to play, because more people failed to finish and it's being heard about more loudly. Requires concession and address from both directions.

Said another way ... people who attend tournaments need to be prepared to play at a much more clipper pace, and need to use judges and social applications to manage slow opponents. Tournaments simultaneously need to find a way to lower points and or give players more time.

Saying the players need to be prepared isn't possible in some cases. I can't prepare for an opponent's play if they play hoard or slowly. I think the TO needs to prepare and plan better IMHO.

Being a competitive player who now has family and less free time, I view your post is just as bias as Blackmoor's. You may think that there is "enough" time to finish but it doesn't mean that doesn't mean the players aren't rushed. Its just not fun. I enjoy competitive games and the challenge they bring but I will not play in a rushed tournament. Remember, a majority of us go to events because they enjoy the game and the hobby.

If any event for that matter, its not enjoyable for me, I will not go. Cramming as many games as one can exhausts a lot of players and i wish the community of events would trend back to this. As someone else posted, I choose not to go to those events.

This is why I do like Daboyz and attend and OTHER events I skip.

I'm not sure you read my quote. Events like mine need to give people more time. As others have said, however, games that go three turns in 2.5+ hours are not going to go to 7 in 3 or even 4 hours. Some people ALSO need to play faster. I've heard nothing but wonderful things about DaBoyz so I'm glad you're going and supporting it!

 Hulksmash wrote:
I'm only particularly talking about Nova because I brought the same army to 6 GT's this year and before Nova only had 2-3 games called due to time. At Nova I only had one game finish naturally.

Now, I don't think that was entirely Nova's fault. Partly it was due to Tau and Eldar now being out and slowing down game play (mine included, thanks intercepting Riptides....)But a contributing factor was pairings giong up 1-2 minutes before rounds started which meant just getting to your table ate up clock time.

Personally, I think it'll ease out and that just ensuring a little more cushion would work out. But I also wouldn't mind a 1500pt GT here or there.

I find it interesting that this is the opposite of Danny Internets' post (about Tau and Eldar taking more time). But this is what I have heard most often, too, that these armies tend to just take more time. Not sure why Danny's experience would be different when I've heard that from so many other people...

Agree very strongly with your last line- just a little more time cushion, or even a lower point level tourney here or there, would be really great

MVBrandt wrote:

I'm not sure you read my quote. Events like mine need to give people more time. As others have said, however, games that go three turns in 2.5+ hours are not going to go to 7 in 3 or even 4 hours. Some people ALSO need to play faster. I've heard nothing but wonderful things about DaBoyz so I'm glad you're going and supporting it!

I did miss that the first time around. Sorry. How do you propose to manage other people playing faster? I am not sure that is realistic.

I would like to see more time and I am glad you are looking into options for that. Mike, I do consider both NOVA each year but its easy to dismiss for me as it sounds more like work and less like fun as a result of lots of games and short (from my perspective) time limits. I tell you this, not to criticize, but for information only.

I am with Blackmoor, in that I would like more time per round.

I haven't been to the bigger of the 40k GTs like Adepticon or NOVA, but dont most have long posts with table numbers on them? What if along with the table numbers, you had a round counter on them as well? I think this could alert the judges as to what round some games are on and maybe they can give some encouragement to pick up the pace.

You could have rounds 1 and 2 be colored red. This would be to show that the game is in its infant stage. If 30 mins are called, and a red card is still up, the judge should go over and see what the deal is. Rounds 3 and 4 could be yellow while rounds 5-7 could be green, meaning everything is good and the game is getting to the right number of turns.

There will be some issues with this, like players forgetting to turn their cards. However, if the judge comes over to a table with 30 mins left and a red card is up, and they see the game is either over or really on turn 5, then there is no problem. But, I think with the card system, the TO and judges could be more informed with how games are going and who is playing these games. If the same people are having red cards consistently, talk with them or have a system to dock them points.

The cards I think would be a simple indicator and enable the judges and TO to track games to give that reassurance of playing faster and the encouragement to get more rounds in.

Thoughts on this idea?