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This forum's LVO 2016 thread generated valuable discussion on tournament games exceeding duration. A plurality of that thread's participants agreed that shrinking armies down to 1500 points is best solution to this problem. I wanted to poll the rest of this forum:

How should your Tournament Organizer best ensure games finish on time?

Providing timely announcements and maybe a timing outline in the packet can help too. Only announcing 20 minutes left is often too late if the game was running slow. Still mostly on the players, but it's something simple that can help players be aware of time.

I'd love a shift to 1500 - the timing seems right for such a change, making the game for accessible for new players and letting tournament games play to completion in much greater numbers.

Start with 1650. Perhaps we might swing that pendulum a little more slowly, so the Great Unwashed Masses won't get whip-lashed so hard that it snaps their necks while sitting at Army Builder.

Start with 1650 for a few months until summer. Then 1500.

I did put in my votes above.

I voted for 1500 points.

I think the pre-game rolling can also be simplified to waste less time. In 5th edition you just showed up with your list and after determining turn order you started deploying. Now we spend a good chunk of time rolling on various charts. Not only is that a time suck, but the fact that commanders show up to a battle without knowing what their command benefit is or that psykers spend their entire lives training, but have no idea what powers they will have has never made sense to me.

I think players should just pick their psychic powers and warlord traits before the tournament and note them on their list. It would of course make more sense if the good powers and traits cost more points than the crappy ones, but putting these choices back in the player hands directly allows both parties to use tools that work for their army. That seems more fair than someone rolling a good trait/power and the opponent getting crap. Whenever that happens it further makes sure that one person's points go much farther than the others and 1500 v 1500 is not really equivalent.

If it's deemed that the strategic traits are too powerful, I think it's reasonable to at least pick warlord traits from your own codex.

I really don't think that letting opponents pick their power would be a good idea. It would allow you to take less psykers thus lowering the cost for certain powers plus I think it would increase the amount of deathstars built around a set of powers. I also voted for 1500.

Yah that idea scares the crap out of me, and I play psyker heavy armies haha.

I voted for keep the status quo. I've literally never had a game end before turn 5 in tournament play so I'm probably biased. But I like what's happening with the game ATM. As a tournament player though I would certainly adapt to any changes made to format.

Yes to 1500. When you get to 10 minutes left and take a scan around the room and notice like 90% of the games are rushing trying to fit in that last turn (and they're not going to roll RGL)...we have a problem. This is even the case on high level events streaming games.
The average game should be finishing naturally, obeying random game length roll, and still have some wind down time before pairings for next round are up. I'm just not seeing that happen currently.

That and the pretty nice wave of pro's has solidified my stance on it. New entrants getting into the tournament scene easier, shorter rounds making for a more entertaining spectator sport...Like the only thing I don't like about it is that I love giant games. Oh well. There's always side events and flgs get-togethers for that.

Yes to 1500. Penalizing for turn 5 is too harsh in all likelihood and will lead to players just "agreeing" that they got to turn 5 to avoid penalties.

Penalize if they don't reach turn 4, and this will hit the truly problematic games. Providing time announcements (via loudspeaker or giant projected round timer) to let players know when the round started, the remaining time, and updates on the hour (2hours remaining, 1 hour, 30 minutes, dice down). A lot of time you see players just not realizing until it's too late that they've wasted the majority of their time.

The points limit probably needs a reduction.

At the very least there needs to be a standard penalty for not finishing 4 turns and a system in place to track and warn players who consistently cannot, or will not, complete games.

I am not sure that 1500 points will solve the problem.

I am in favor of chess clocks. If you are worried about your opponent monopolizing time bring your own and have it approved by the TO. Everyone use to say that chess clocks break down in the assault phase, but I have not seen one of those in a while, and even then I do not think it will be too much of an issue.

 Blackmoor wrote:
I am not sure that 1500 points will solve the problem.

I am in favor of chess clocks. If you are worried about your opponent monopolizing time bring your own and have it approved by the TO. Everyone use to say that chess clocks break down in the assault phase, but I have not seen one of those in a while, and even then I am of with it.

Precisely this. If you can slow play at 1850 you can slow play at 1500. The number of points makes literally no difference, it comes down to the players making effective use of their time.

ebay yields a couple chess clocks at ~ $13, but the rest of the ones I found (in 60 seconds of internet shopping) shows them to be $40+.

*I* am not going to buy one and I doubt we'd see small RTT hosts buy them, let alone GT organizers. Chess Clocks are a dead end on our timing issue ... unless there's a Chess Clock app for Smart Phones?

(60 second internet search comes up dry for that one)

There are lots of apps out there, nearly all of the local Warmachine folks use an iOS app for it outside of actual tournament play.

wait, dont smartphones have a chessclock app?
Several things I think we can do, the biggest is a giant clock projected with stuff like "You should be deploying now" and "you should be in turn 3" and stuff like that to help

 Brothererekose wrote:
ebay yields a couple chess clocks at ~ $13, but the rest of the ones I found (in 60 seconds of internet shopping) shows them to be $40+.

*I* am not going to buy one and I doubt we'd see small RTT hosts buy them, let alone GT organizers. Chess Clocks are a dead end on our timing issue ... unless there's a Chess Clock app for Smart Phones?

(60 second internet search comes up dry for that one)

So what you are saying is that a good chess clock costs as much as 5 assault marines or 3 jetbikes?

That said it should be optional. If you want to bring one, bring one. I also do not want to use an app, but I want a chess clock so I can see the time and not fiddle with a phone.

1/2. Around my area everyone plays 1500/1650 points. Apart from a few Daemon players games pretty much always come to their natural conclusion. Nobody pines for 1850.

3. Penalize players whose games did not finish 5 turns.
I think this has been tried and as both players in a game will be punished, they simply collude and pretend they got to turn 5.

4. Provide "chess clock" timers purchased by entry fee.
Could work but 1. Expensive. 2. It's an easy thing to forget in a game which already has too many things to remember. 3. There are many actions which occur in the other persons turn: Saves, DTW, Interceptor, Warp Spiders, etc.

5. Schedule more time to play each game.
I think 2h30 or 2h45 is enough. Longer games can just get tiresome and not enjoyable.

6. Limit unit and/or model count.
I don't think people should be punished for their army choice, but there should be an expectation on players to be able to play their army efficiently.

Other.
I think 'cheat sheets' should be mandatory for psychic heavy armies.
i.e. You have a Daemon Prince army where each Prince has 3/4 powers, 2/3 gifts, etc. Players with such an army should Having a cheat sheet or equivalent system to efficiently record and remember their powers. One friend who plays Flyrants has magnetised discs with the powers written on that he can attach to the wings of each Flyrant.

I also do not think that 1500 points or longer rounds will be a panacea to not finishing games.

Here is the problem, there is no incentive to finish your games on time, and in fact, often an incentive to slow play.

Until there is a disincentive to slow play, it will continue no matter the time or the points.

This is beginning to sound like a bad political debate "Look, you can't prove lowering points cost will make every game finish on time, so we shouldn't change points cost!"

If you're opposed to lower points, please explain why, it might help people understand your opposition to lowering points. Because lowering points can *only* help. Will it cause every game to finish on time? Of course not. Will it cause more games to finish on time? Yes.

Reducing points is not trying to tackle the issue of intentional slow play, that has always and will always rest in the hands of the players to identify it, and the judges to penalize it. But smaller games are just flat out faster.

Target wrote:
Reducing points is not trying to tackle the issue of intentional slow play, that has always and will always rest in the hands of the players to identify it, and the judges to penalize it. But smaller games are just flat out faster.

Frankly, if you aren't finishing at least 5 rounds in 2h30, you or your opponent are intentionally slow playing (even if not maliciously). You need to be prepared to play out your full game in the time allotted. Easily 75% of game time is not spent moving models/rolling dice, but rather thinking about what is going to be done, even with high model count armies.

The blame lies solely on the players, IMO, once you get to 2h30 or longer rounds.

My main argument against lower point counts is not really the meta shift (though it will severely hurt my wallet and soul to see my second Stormsurge up on the shelf collecting dust), but rather that it does not address the actual problem of not finishing games in the time allotted.

You hit a few scenarios:

Lower points + less game time = same problem.
Lower points + same game time = same problem with sampling size for results, malicious slow play unaffected.
same points + same game time = same problem.
same points + more game time = malicious slow play unaffected.

I can only say what I have experienced at tournaments I've been to. At 1500/1650, we finish games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I will also say the other thing we don't generally do in my area is dual missions. A tournament may have both Maelstrom and EW missions but not both in the same mission. I think this helps increase the speed of games.

Target wrote:
This is beginning to sound like a bad political debate "Look, you can't prove lowering points cost will make every game finish on time, so we shouldn't change points cost!"

If you're opposed to lower points, please explain why, it might help people understand your opposition to lowering points. Because lowering points can *only* help. Will it cause every game to finish on time? Of course not. Will it cause more games to finish on time? Yes.

Reducing points is not trying to tackle the issue of intentional slow play, that has always and will always rest in the hands of the players to identify it, and the judges to penalize it. But smaller games are just flat out faster.

I am all for trying everything to get games to finish. I would like to see some TOs try lower point costs or have longer rounds.

My fear is that TOs are very slow to change. They like the status quo and do not want to rock the boat because they want to keep everyone happy and they are worried that lowering the points will impact their ticket sales. They also want to try to find a "true winner" of their tournaments and so when these tournaments get larger and larger they try to cram as many rounds as possible into a weekend.

The rules and format for LVO, Adepticon, and Nova have already been announced for 2016 so changes to large tournaments will be 2017 at the earliest. Chess clocks can have an impact this year.

 1PlusLogan wrote:

Target wrote:
Reducing points is not trying to tackle the issue of intentional slow play, that has always and will always rest in the hands of the players to identify it, and the judges to penalize it. But smaller games are just flat out faster.

Frankly, if you aren't finishing at least 5 rounds in 2h30, you or your opponent are intentionally slow playing (even if not maliciously). You need to be prepared to play out your full game in the time allotted. Easily 75% of game time is not spent moving models/rolling dice, but rather thinking about what is going to be done, even with high model count armies.

The blame lies solely on the players, IMO, once you get to 2h30 or longer rounds.

My main argument against lower point counts is not really the meta shift (though it will severely hurt my wallet and soul to see my second Stormsurge up on the shelf collecting dust), but rather that it does not address the actual problem of not finishing games in the time allotted.

You hit a few scenarios:

Lower points + less game time = same problem.
Lower points + same game time = same problem with sampling size for results, malicious slow play unaffected.
same points + same game time = same problem.
same points + more game time = malicious slow play unaffected.

I don't think there's a form of intentional slow play that isn't malicious - if you're doing it on purpose, you're doing it to penalize your opponent or benefit yourself - both are malicious. I respect the fact that you don't think there's a problem, but it doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of games at LVO (and this is not a phenomenon restricted to LVO) did not roll for random game length - and I'd also wager the vast majority of players had at least one game not make it to five. Of the 10 people I know who went, all of whom are extremely experienced tournament goers, every one of them had one or more games not finishing, and most of their games not rolling for RGL. Lowering game points is not a solution to malicious slow play - nor should it be. It's an attempted solution at improving the overall speed of games for the majority of the tournament. Intentional slow play can only ever be addressed by judges and by turn-based penalties for not finishing.

You can say blame the players, you can say people just need to play faster, but that essentially equates to "do nothing, tell people to be better". It won't change anything, and the fact remains that it is currently a problem.

That being said, I'm not saying the ONLY thing that should be done/tried is lower point values, just that it is one of the things that should be done, and it can only be positive in terms of game duration.

bogalubov wrote:
I voted for 1500 points.

I think the pre-game rolling can also be simplified to waste less time. In 5th edition you just showed up with your list and after determining turn order you started deploying. Now we spend a good chunk of time rolling on various charts. Not only is that a time suck, but the fact that commanders show up to a battle without knowing what their command benefit is or that psykers spend their entire lives training, but have no idea what powers they will have has never made sense to me.

I think players should just pick their psychic powers and warlord traits before the tournament and note them on their list. It would of course make more sense if the good powers and traits cost more points than the crappy ones, but putting these choices back in the player hands directly allows both parties to use tools that work for their army. That seems more fair than someone rolling a good trait/power and the opponent getting crap. Whenever that happens it further makes sure that one person's points go much farther than the others and 1500 v 1500 is not really equivalent.

If it's deemed that the strategic traits are too powerful, I think it's reasonable to at least pick warlord traits from your own codex.

WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY too powerful. However perhaps rolling for spells and warlord traits when you turn your list into the TO. Then you keep those same spells/traits for the entire tournament.

Does 1500 exacerbate already powerful lists? Certain powerful lists will be hurt, like IKnights or Superfriends who are packing in the points. But Eldar can still easily fit a WK with mass bikes, Gladius can still take Battle Company with mass vehicles, and Summoning will still be strong.

While that's fine to have strong armies, you're also taking away 350 points of answers from other armies, which is where the real detriment can lie.

I'm all for shaking up the meta, so we'd have to see what happens, but I do have somr concerns.

 quickfuze wrote:

bogalubov wrote:
I think players should just pick their psychic powers and warlord traits before the tournament and note them on their list.

WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY too powerful. However perhaps rolling for spells and warlord traits when you turn your list into the TO. Then you keep those same spells/traits for the entire tournament.

I play eldar. I have a wraithknight. The Devil tempts. I might always show with Invis, Fortune and Prescience.

So, nope. Quickfuze is right.

On the serious side, it is fun and strategic to alter might Psy choices based on a completely different opponent Rounds 2 and 3, so choice is always better, despite the few minutes of rolling them up, finding the card and informing the opponent.

Requizen wrote:

While that's fine to have strong armies, you're also taking away 350 points of answers from other armies, which is where the real detriment can lie.

Yes you are correct you take away 350 points (of solutions) which also mean you take away 350 points (of problems) that now dont need solutions.

As it is now we have people throwing 2K+ on tables and every horde is unplayable, and some people feel its a form of cheating when another player takes any more then 1/2 of the allotted time regardless of model count, questions, ect.

When its literally 4 second per model per phase at a meager 100 model count total assuming a *perfect* 2.5 hours (which does not happen) it is amazing to me that many simply state "go faster L2P nub" (not ness you requizen) or that 4 seconds per model is more then enough time.

 Blackmoor wrote:
I am not sure that 1500 points will solve the problem.

I am in favor of chess clocks. If you are worried about your opponent monopolizing time bring your own and have it approved by the TO. Everyone use to say that chess clocks break down in the assault phase, but I have not seen one of those in a while, and even then I do not think it will be too much of an issue.

A chess clock is not fair because not all 1,850 point armies are equal. The bottom line is that it takes longer for armies with more models and/or armies that do things in multiple phases to play, period, end of story.

The only thing that adding a chess clock would do is to drive those types of armies out of tournaments, and force even more people to play the same types of armies (small, easy to play).

Why would you want that? The whole point of 40k is that you should be able to see and play against a wide variety of armies, and players who choose to play an army with a high model count shouldn't have to be some uber-trained guy who thinks and moves faster than everyone else in order to finish in the allotted time.

If people are not finishing on time, then round times need to be extended or points values need to be lowered (or any combination of those two).

It is a very small percentage of people who willingly slow-play, so there is simply no need to punish everyone because of them.

Instead, players should be tracked from tournament to tournament, and a record kept of how often they fail to finish their games. If they are far and above the normal average, then the TO should warn and eventually punish them for that continued behavior.


It's really that simple. In descending order, you fix this 'problem' by:

1) increase round times (where able).
2) lower army point values.
3) keep track of a player's record of not finishing their games all-time, and discuss/punish them when necessary.

Lowering points doesn't fix anything in my opinion UNLESS changes are made to armies that bring extra points to the table. I am talking about you battle company, war conclave, piranha drone farm, demon summoning, re-spawning heretics and tyranids. I think the biggest offender to not making it to turn 5 are armies that bring extra models to the table coupled with players who are not mindful of the time constraints.

This year at LVO my army consisted of 35 models spread across 10 units. I played Tau. Every one of my units had interceptor and moved in the movement and assault phase. Every one of my games made it to at least turn 5. Only 2 of my games were pressed for time. One game being against eldar scat pack spam and the other being against space marine battle company. In both of my games I made sure both myself and my opponent finished turn 5. It meant me spending a combined 20 minutes my last 2 player turns, but together we were able to get it done.

Looking around the floor after games from my perspective it looked like maybe 20 to 25% of tables were were still playing when time was called. I have no idea if they made it to turn 5 or not.

IMO chess clocks don't work well for 40k.
40k's variety comes from many different armies doing many different things and behaving in very different ways.

You have some armies that just sit still & shoot. You can field armies that have literally 5 models. You can field armies that have over a hundred models! You have armies that don't do assault or psychic, and some armies that operate in all 4 phases!

Couple that with the amount of interaction on each player's turn that is allowed in 40k. Yes, I know 40k is horribly IGOUGO compared to some games, but still:
Eg. In your movement phase, I might be able to overwatch.
In your psychic phase, I can deny, and need to roll saves.
In your shooting phase, I need to roll saves.
In your assault phase, I get to overwatch, roll saves, and roll attacks.
* Rolling saves can be non-trivial for forces with eg mixed save units / look out sir / re-rollables / feel no pain.

Compared to Warmachine where chess clocks ARE used, the times you do anything in your opponents turn are so rare that its feasible to switch timing while you do it.



IMO lower points sizes would be better. Additionally I think it helps with things like tournament attendance, and in reducing the overall power level of armies to a more even playing field.