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Last month, we did a little tournament with a couple of friends, and we had a draw on 2nd-3th position. We came up with something we like to call speedhammer or stresshammer. It was actually really fun, so i want to share it with you guys.

We agreed on the mealstorm of war missions, and 500 points.
Every turn was exactly timed by someone who watched (the winner of the tournament)

-each player has 15 minutes to set up his forces. out of time? forces who are not on board go to reserves
-each playerturn takes 5 minutes exactly (yes, that's fast!) out of time? stop your turn where your 5 mins are gone, and other player starts. (In case of mid cc,say I4 just attacked, I3 is the first attacker next turn)
-game has 6 turns
-battleforged armys

Now, whats so fun about this?
-90 minutes per game
-really simplyfied armylists (i tried to avoid psychic phase and flyers cause of limited time and i see no place for units with a million special rules)
-the tactical mistakes everyone makes are epic
-you really have to think ahead, and sort your dice out for your next move. (and tell your opponent during your own moving/shooting to prepare fighting dice for a squad your planning to attack so he loses none of your time)
-the adrenaline... alot of it.

I achieve something like this at 1500 with 4 Imperial Knights...Its really easy to move 4 big models. Really easy to point and throw dice. Its just the str D attacks and the stomps that snags time.

I used trukks for an easy moving phase, so it's limited (like you said) to moving a couple of models. I can imagine that you can do this with 1,5K points of Knights, but that's just mission impossible for my orks

We play 1500pts with 8-10 min per turn for every player. So this doesn't seem much like speed hammer to me.

 wallygator wrote:
(and tell your opponent during your own moving/shooting to prepare fighting dice for a squad your planning to attack so he loses none of your time)

And this is why it doesn't work. I'm going to roll my dice nice and slowly and use up as much of your time as possible so that you can only shoot at me with one unit.

 Peregrine wrote:

 wallygator wrote:
(and tell your opponent during your own moving/shooting to prepare fighting dice for a squad your planning to attack so he loses none of your time)

And this is why it doesn't work. I'm going to roll my dice nice and slowly and use up as much of your time as possible so that you can only shoot at me with one unit.

The games we play are with friends, so with us it works really well. Playing like you suggest is just being annoying, and will ruin the game.
But i think there are gamers in other groups who would do stuff like that, just for a victory. That's the spirit that destroys a nice game imo

1,5 hours for 500 points? Doesn't seem very speedy to me.

And 15 minutes for deployment, otherwise forced reserves? How much is it possible to bring at 500 points that you can't deploy everything within that timeframe?

For reference, when I play 1,650 point games, they rarely exceed 2 hours.

Good that it worked
How do you handle time slow opponents take in your turn.
such as Saves, Deny rolls, Intercept rolls. Overwatch etc.

when we play, it's mostly 1850 and it takes alot of time, specially when someone has alot of special rule searching or strategy thinking to do. A game 90 minutes max (it was shorter, turn 5 or 6 only took 2 mins a person i think), all included, is one of the fastest i've played, but i speak for myself now .


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 oldzoggy wrote:
Good that it worked
How do you handle time slow opponents take in your turn.
such as Saves, Deny rolls, Intercept rolls. Overwatch etc.

when you're about to shoot at a squad, he can allready prepare his savedice. Same with overwatch.

We didn't had problems with slow opponents, but i can imagine some people try slowing the game like that. Don't know what to do except don't invite that player for the next game

 Peregrine wrote:

 wallygator wrote:
(and tell your opponent during your own moving/shooting to prepare fighting dice for a squad your planning to attack so he loses none of your time)

And this is why it doesn't work. I'm going to roll my dice nice and slowly and use up as much of your time as possible so that you can only shoot at me with one unit.

The easiest way to avoid this is to use a chess clock. Every time your opponent has to do something, you hit the button and the timer stops. The longer your opponent takes time to sort his dice, the better for you. More time to plan your turn.

 MasterOfGaunts wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 wallygator wrote:
(and tell your opponent during your own moving/shooting to prepare fighting dice for a squad your planning to attack so he loses none of your time)

And this is why it doesn't work. I'm going to roll my dice nice and slowly and use up as much of your time as possible so that you can only shoot at me with one unit.

The easiest way to avoid this is to use a chess clock. Every time your opponent has to do something, you hit the button and the timer stops. The longer your opponent takes time to sort his dice, the better for you. More time to plan your turn.

Good option. With that in mind, it's possible to reduce the time to 3 minutes or so

Why not use a chess clock like warmachine? Just click the button over to your opponent when it's his turn in the assault phase?

Me and my friends tried a time-saving method before. It was basically us using average numbers instead of rolling (we didn't have blast weapons), rounding up fractions. So a squad of marines with 8 bolters rapid firing would hit about 11 times, wound another squad of marines 6 times, then 2 marines from that would die.

Made things a lot quicker.

And the players liked it / didn't feel stressed ?

 Peregrine wrote:

 wallygator wrote:
(and tell your opponent during your own moving/shooting to prepare fighting dice for a squad your planning to attack so he loses none of your time)

And this is why it doesn't work. I'm going to roll my dice nice and slowly and use up as much of your time as possible so that you can only shoot at me with one unit.

A more clear example of slow playing and poor sportsmanship I struggle to think of. With that sort of attitude, it's no wonder you're not well liked on this forum.

To make it clear ^ this is not what I intended with slow players. I did not intent to ask about a hyper competitive game environment where players do anything to win including stalling. I was wondering how you handled players who just are not that quick as other players. How did you prevent them from stressing out and not having a fun time.

 Drasius wrote:
A more clear example of slow playing and poor sportsmanship I struggle to think of. With that sort of attitude, it's no wonder you're not well liked on this forum.

You realize I was making a hypothetical statement, right? I personally wouldn't do that, but I would never play in a game like that because I know a lot of people will. It's a game format that is inexcusably open to people taking advantage of the rules and automatically winning, and only functions if both players are willing to deliberately make poor decisions for the sake of "fun". And that's not a good game.


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 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Me and my friends tried a time-saving method before. It was basically us using average numbers instead of rolling (we didn't have blast weapons), rounding up fractions. So a squad of marines with 8 bolters rapid firing would hit about 11 times, wound another squad of marines 6 times, then 2 marines from that would die.

Made things a lot quicker.

I don't really see how this is an improvement. Unless you have nice even numbers it's usually going to take longer to calculate the average outcome of a roll than it would to just roll the dice.


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 Chute82 wrote:
Why not use a chess clock like warmachine? Just click the button over to your opponent when it's his turn in the assault phase?

Because 40k doesn't have clearly-defined turns like chess. Chess clocks work because in chess only one player is active during a turn, there's never any point during a player's turn where their opponent does anything but sit patiently and wait for their turn to begin. So there's never any question of whose clock should be running. Your clock starts when your turn starts, and stops when it ends. But it doesn't work like that in 40k. Both players are active during a turn, and there are lots of cases where it's completely unclear whose clock should be running. For example, if LOS is disputed who should have to "pay" time to check it? If it's the player attempting to get LOS then the other player has too much incentive to contest every possible LOS check as stubbornly as possible to use up even more time. If it's the opponent then the player attempting to get LOS has too much incentive to aggressively claim LOS and count on their opponent not having enough time to spend on contesting it. You'll pretty easily end up spending more time and effort on managing and arguing about the clocks than on actually playing the game.

I don't necessarily agree with the formatting of this event,being especially open to abuse, but I do think that this sort of play could be fun. I have known how much of a rush it can be to finish an 1850 points tournament game, and how exciting it was to have to play with that clock in the back of my mind.

I feel tournaments should take a bit of this mindset to heart when designing missions and giving out prizes. You can have minimum turn restrictions, but it's also good to have a positive motivation for players. Maybe have some sort of award for Timely Play given to whomever finishes the most full game turns?