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GreaterGouda wrote:
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.

That doesn't make sense to me. Less points is less points. In the case of battle company that means there are less units that can generate free transports. For war convocation, same thing. Less points to generate new units that in turn create new points. For daemons, you have less room to take psykers to get warp charges to bring more units on the board. For tau, heretics and tyranids, you have less points to round out your list so you're stuck with mostly the recyclable units. That makes players rely on the naked free units and usually they are not very good.

 Brothererekose wrote:

 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.

I saw one opponent with his cards labeled and in a sheet and he would circle in dry erase marker the ones he has and the ones he doesnt.

How about "No More Free Units", summoning, formations, etc...

 FeindusMaximus wrote:
How about "No More Free Units", summoning, formations, etc...

I would honestly love for the competitive scene to adopt a "back to the basics/no formations" approach. I think formations by themselves took the game's imbalance and amped it up to 20.

Of course without them, very few people have a way to fight eldar, so it's not a magical fix-all, but rather just part of one. Further tinkering would still be needed.

The issue with banning free points is - how do you define free points? Many of the new formations benefits aren't "you get x unit for free" but instead are "you get x tremendous benefit for free". By banning only the ones that give free units, you're drastically altering the game state. For example, marines would be darn near unplayable competitively except in the form of allies for thunderstar, and potentially the skyhammer formation.

Eldar would remain on top, and if anything get further ahead of the rest of their books as they don't get any free units - they just have multiple severely undercosted ones and a bunch of free rules. Tau would be relatively (in the scheme of the change you're talking) unharmed, you'd just be targeting one specific formation.

Etc. etc.

Before you try something like this, you'd be better served trying to just lower the size of the games we play, instituting a penalty system for turn 4 or less, and improving the way events communicate round time during games.

Lower points is probably the most realistic option that could have a significant effect

tournament organisers should clearly call out times and suggested turn number eg we're an hour in so everybody should be finishing up turn 2, if you're not pick up the pace

also worth considering refunds if a tournament has say (picking a number out of the air) 30% or more games not finishing turn 5 in the allocated time. It would incentivise organisers to have realistic points limits/missions etc and people would be more likely to attend as there'd be a stonger belief theyd be abel to play their games to the end

I think 1500 is a great idea. I get the impression over the last few years that GW has been increasing the model size of armies (decreasing points on basic troops, allowing free stuff) and this might counteract that a bit.

Plus, it makes it easier for people to build and paint the army in time, and less of a financial issue to build a new one next year!

As someone who was heavily opposed to dropping points I've come around in the last 2 years. The number of games that don't finish is staggering. I went from it being a rarity, to it only happening at one event I attended, to it happening to people across the board in the course of 2 years. I keep a time sheet for my games to ensure I'm not absorbing more than half (generally substantially less) of the time but it's gotten to be a problem.

I say to hell with it. Let's drop the pts to 1,500 and see what happens.

 niv-mizzet wrote:

 FeindusMaximus wrote:
How about "No More Free Units", summoning, formations, etc...

I would honestly love for the competitive scene to adopt a "back to the basics/no formations" approach. I think formations by themselves took the game's imbalance and amped it up to 20.

Of course without them, very few people have a way to fight eldar, so it's not a magical fix-all, but rather just part of one. Further tinkering would still be needed.

I'm actually leaning the opposite way: ban CADs for factions that can take formations and/or Decurion detachments. It seems a little counter intuitive at first, but what it would really do is prevent the easy access to HQs for special rules/ability stacking for many armies. It also removes the most efficient psychic heavy builds and forces more unit diversity into the game.

 Hulksmash wrote:
As someone who was heavily opposed to dropping points I've come around in the last 2 years. The number of games that don't finish is staggering. I went from it being a rarity, to it only happening at one event I attended, to it happening to people across the board in the course of 2 years. I keep a time sheet for my games to ensure I'm not absorbing more than half (generally substantially less) of the time but it's gotten to be a problem.

I say to hell with it. Let's drop the pts to 1,500 and see what happens.

So exalted! Would love to see this gain momentum, and might prompt me back into a 40K GT after only playing Warmachine this year. Already started working out lists, and I really like what can be done with it.

I'm okay with dropping the pts to 1500, but I'd prefer it to staying at 1850.

Maybe this, or a combination of timesavers ideas:

1) Before, the tournament starts and in *front* of tournament officials, roll your powers, warlord and random gears for the rest of your tournament games. Take that part out of having to do that randomness before each and every game. That'll cut down the pre-deployment time a bit.

2) Keep the same Primary/Maelstorm points designation, but add a tournament "tie breaker" one to facilitate fast play. Something like for a 2 hr 30 min round both players get 'x' tiebreaker points for completing a game turn before each round's "milestone". Here's an example:
Rnd 1 milestone 50 min mark. (includes deployment and generally the "longest" turn)
Rnd 2 milestone 1 hr 25 min mark. (35 minutes later)
Rnd 3 milestone 1 hr 50 min mark. (25 minutes later)
Rnd 4 milestone 2 hr 10 min mark. (20 minutes later)
Rnd 5 milestone 2 hr 30 min mark. (20 minutes later)

Something like that... or, change out the incentives and maybe add 'x' points to total score.

Just spit balling here.

I voted for other points drop. I like the idea of trying 1650 points. I think 200 points is substantial .

Before, the tournament starts and in *front* of tournament officials, roll your powers, warlord and random gears for the rest of your tournament games. Take that part out of having to do that randomness before each and every game. That'll cut down the pre-deployment time a bit.

How are TOs going to track and enforce that for 50 players, let alone 300? Honest question.

You could just let people pick and put it on their lists, but that's a fairly significant change to the game's balance.

 DarkLink wrote:

Before, the tournament starts and in *front* of tournament officials, roll your powers, warlord and random gears for the rest of your tournament games. Take that part out of having to do that randomness before each and every game. That'll cut down the pre-deployment time a bit.

How are TOs going to track and enforce that for 50 players, let alone 300? Honest question.

You could just let people pick and put it on their lists, but that's a fairly significant change to the game's balance.

Yeah, neither one of those will work well, I'd agree.

1) How are you going to have 300 people roll and document in front of the ~5-10 staff
2) Guess what, you rolled, you missed invis. You missed your key power for the entire tournament. Guess you're out before the event begins!
3) You don't really save much time.

And as to just picking powers, its insanely imbalancing. You now can guarantee psychic powers and don't even have to invest to get them. We tried this at a team america practice one year to practice "worst case scenario" games and it just ended up being silly, as every psyker having perfect powers impacted what they rolled on and didn't produce a realistic game - they just cherry picked one from each chart to have exactly what they needed.

There are plenty of games that don't finish on time between players without psychic powers, with set warlord traits, etc. While these things may take up time, they're not causing the problem.

Look at it this way:
1) Over the last 5 years, every event has gradually extended round times to accommodate games not finishing
2) Over the last 5 years, we've remained relatively locked in point values (baubling from 1750-2000, spending the vast majority of it at 1850)
3) Over the last 5 years, progressively less and less games have been finishing (this is the reason events have increased round times over the years - that they have is the proof)

Round times used to be 2 hours flat and that was considered a great amount of time - some ran a bit less! Now events run about 3 hours - Nova does, Adepticon does, LVO ran 2h45 this year.

Possible reasons for things slowing down:
1) The game has changed (rule complexity) - true, the rules have gotten more complex and lengthy over time (look at the size of our rulebooks and the amount of sources we have)
2) The game has changed (how things are costed) - true, units have gotten much cheaper over time (can be proved by looking codex to codex), and army model counts on average are much larger.
3) It's the players - they need to learn to play faster. This implies you think the current population of tournaments is that intrinsically different from the old population of tournaments.

I agree with those who say that game complexity is the prime driver of game length. This makes an even bigger impact at RTTs, where you might not have all the rules memorized or be testing a different list than your norm...you'll be looking stuff up in 3 different books. Simply adding the table for perils of the warp has added a couple minutes to all my games. In addition there are now so many formations and units that the answer to "what does that do?" is a lot more complicated. That said, I DO NOT in any way shape or form want to see points costs lowered because:

1. It reduces variety in the game. We all know what the optimum builds for certain armies, at lower points values efficiency becomes a much bigger factor. In current Eldar lists a core is often 3 squads of warp spiders...those won't get cut, the vaul's wrath batteries and wave serpents will. The "cookie cutter list" will be a bigger problem.

2. The Rock-Paper-Scissors factor of the game increases as you decrease points. At lower points values you simply don't that the resources to make something close to a TAC list (unless your units themselves are TAC). In order for your list to function, you have to cut stuff out...stuff like skyfire, melta bombs, etc. It becomes much more meta-driven, and there will be an increase in the number of "bad matchups" as points values decrease.

3. Some points are worth more than others. What I mean by this is that 295 points of Eldar buys you a lot more than 295 points of Grey Knights. If there is something in your list I need to kill, chances are that I may need to dedicate more than it's cost to kill it, especially if I didn't bring quite the right tool for the job. As points costs decrease, I simply don't have the points to take down some of the "needs-to-die" units that my opponent brings to even the score. When unit efficiencies are factored in, the imbalance between armies grows; and that's not even taking into account the impact of "free" units. Now I'll go ahead and discredit myself by saying that I believe that the near-universal drop from 2k to 1850 was because TauDar in 6th hit their max efficiency at 1850 and certain TOs wanted to win with that; that said we can all attest to what happens in small games when hyper-efficient units fight ones that aren't as good.

4. Army tiers aside, deathstars get a lot more powerful at lower points (or any high-damage/high durability unit). An invisible centstar can kill 1-2 units a turn; in a 5 turn game that's 5-10 units. In a 1500 point game, 10 units may be all that you have...you can't ignore it anymore, and you don't have the points to kill it cause 145 for a culexus isn't in your budget anymore. So you tailor, or you lose. The same could be said of any deathstar, which will exacerbate the RPS problem.

I think the best solution is to extend the game length...assuming that most games do in fact reach turn 5 (which has generally been my experience), then what is wrong with adding 20-30 minutes to each round? It only adds 1-1.5 hours to a standard 3 round day, and gives a bigger break to players who finish early. A 2:45 round assumes approximately 20 minutes per game turn for a 5 turn game; simply adding another 20 minutes gives you an extra turn which may be all you need. I understand that TOs have schedules they want to maintain, but the radically simple solution of just giving more time could solve the issue without changing anything else about the tournament scene. That's just my 2 cents.

ryuken87 wrote:
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.

1500 points used to be standard for UK GTs, back in the mid 2000s. I think the USA has always tended towards higher point limits, and things probably have got worse thanks to changes in the game, meaning GW's encouragement of using more stuff.

Clearly a lower point limit would help, in the same way that a higher point limit would make things worse. It won't automatically cure the problem, because if TFG wants to take 10 minutes moving every Termagant, it won't make a lot of difference if he has to move 50 of them instead of 55. But that is not the only aspect of the issue. Part of the issue is horde armies literally being too big for the player easily to be able to move all his units in the time limit, even going at a proper pace with good will.

This aspect of the problem has often been discussed in the past, because clearly it is a genuine problem with big games.

If that part of the problem could be cured by a slightly smaller game, the TFG part of the problem would be more obvious to TOs, also, it could be addressed by using chess clocks. You can buy a chess clock for about £15 t0 £20. Although not a trivial investment, it would be relatively minor compared to the amount of money needed to hire the hall and provide all the other equipment for a large tournament.

If chess clocks are to be used often, it would make sense for TOs to require players to bring one. That way everyone has to equip themselves with a clock, and the individual tournaments don't have to buy them.

How about requiring all games have to complete turn 5 before anyone can move on. I imagine by round 3, anyone slow playing would be murdered by the other participants. So it works it self out naturally.

Im gonna come out and say it. I think the ITC missions and their format have slowed the game down considerably with one main problem, the viability of MSU armies and how much you need to take them Its a big problem and one that needs to be adressed. I would very much think it would be good to go back to where you where running 2 missions at once and that would speed up the game considerably IMO.
I love the ITC missions, but I think there needs to be more balance to them to not favoring slowplaying MSU missions

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Im gonna come out and say it. I think the ITC missions and their format have slowed the game down considerably with one main problem, the viability of MSU armies and how much you need to take them Its a big problem and one that needs to be adressed. I would very much think it would be good to go back to where you where running 2 missions at once and that would speed up the game considerably IMO.
I love the ITC missions, but I think there needs to be more balance to them to not favoring slowplaying MSU missions

I massively agree with this.

Last time I attempted to play a big US tournament (NOVA 2014) I hadn't a clue what was going on. Optional missions, multiple missions to complete at once, choose your secondaries, etc. It all adds to the prep and the general stress of trying to play a game.

I'd much prefer a nice selection of regular missions, where both players are trying to achieve a simple objective.

regarding chess clocks, which I am not totally in agreement that we need.

Wouldn't it be a simpler solution to adopt chess clocks as part of your playing materials such as dice, tape measures ect ect. Of course TOs would have to have a few of them on hand for those forgetful players. But it would mitigate the cost of providing them.

Another thing I see that should be enforced instead is TOs should be very proactive in having judges for there tournaments be a presence at games where people are either slow players or have large armies and are not finishing games. Judges should be standing by and "enforcing" there own timing clock on the game that seems reasonable for that game to finish to at least 5 rounds. This is especially true at the top tables. Judges can time figure out the remaining time and do a quick calculation as to how much time it will take per player round to finish the game to at least 5 round completion. At the end of that time limit. play moves on to the next player. This becomes Judge enforced and takes away the animosity there may be between players.

Is this perfect?...no but it does help we have enforced this at times.

zedsdead wrote:
regarding chess clocks, which I am not totally in agreement that we need.

Wouldn't it be a simpler solution to adopt chess clocks as part of your playing materials such as dice, tape measures ect ect. Of course TOs would have to have a few of them on hand for those forgetful players. But it would mitigate the cost of providing them.

Chess clock apps, people. Free. Every table can have 2 of them for no cost. Not that I think they would work in 40k, but cost is the least of the worries for them.

zedsdead wrote:
regarding chess clocks, which I am not totally in agreement that we need.

Wouldn't it be a simpler solution to adopt chess clocks as part of your playing materials such as dice, tape measures ect ect. Of course TOs would have to have a few of them on hand for those forgetful players. But it would mitigate the cost of providing them.

tape measure: 3-15 dollars
dice: ~7 dollars
chess clock: ~40 dollars

one of those things are not quite like the other


Honestly, looking at it from a non-tournament player point of view, I'd have to blame that fact that MSU lists are basically a 'must' with an ITC ruleset, and with ITC being the most common, this is leading to longer play times.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Trasvi wrote:

zedsdead wrote:
regarding chess clocks, which I am not totally in agreement that we need.

Wouldn't it be a simpler solution to adopt chess clocks as part of your playing materials such as dice, tape measures ect ect. Of course TOs would have to have a few of them on hand for those forgetful players. But it would mitigate the cost of providing them.

Chess clock apps, people. Free. Every table can have 2 of them for no cost. Not that I think they would work in 40k, but cost is the least of the worries for them.

assuming everyone has a smart phone, which makes the game a bit more exclusive.

I'd point out that in 5th (when MSU was king) games finished in 2 hours or less. 2 Hours was the time frame for many a larger event with 2.5 being abnormal.

The idea that MSU is to blame is silly. While MSU armies now are larger than in 5th it's not by that great of a degree. Game complexity, mission complexity, rule dispersement. and speed of change have far, far more to do with it than MSU.

pre-game rolls plus cheaper models. The regular ork boy went from 9 points to 6 points a model with grenades from the mid-2000's to now!

I think those two factors are making the games take longer, someone put it earlier "Everyone used to finish games and now they don't, did EVERYONE decide slow playing is to their advantage? Is the current crop of players that different?"

You can't generate powers at the beginning of the tournament or worse, have people choose because it changes everything way too much. I love playing psychic armies because I can choose what I want to roll for depending on my opponent. And if you let me choose? Holy cow that would be game breaking. Also make several independent characters utterly pointless.

I think calling pacing marks for everyone is definitely the best way to go. Let people know that they're behind schedule when they're 20 minutes into their game and they're not deployed, not when they have 20 minutes left. I've started setting a clock NOT A CHESS CLOCK just a clock and say, hey, we're behind schedule here, lets pick up deployment. That's done wonders. completely anecdotal I understand but there you go. I play green tide and summoning so that's gotten me to almost always getting through turn 5.

I'm not a fan of dropping to 1500 for the same reasons others have said. I think it limits diversity of lists and tools you can bring.
Think about it like this, would you rather play to a game ending at time on turn 5 without rolling for random game length, or have every game end in one of the players getting tabled? That's the comparison I see. I hate it when a player gets tabled so that's why I want to see the points stay on the board.

As someone who made the argument for years about more tools=better game play I've shifted my stance from 5th to now.

In 5th it felt like you needed the points to combat certain styles of list. But from my read that isn't the case anymore. Deathstars need certain units to function that eat points. When most deathstars run you around 1k with all the add-on just for the unit (not the compulsories) you don't get the tools to help the army function and support the star.

I mean, lets be real, you can't under the current structure build true all taker armies. You build an army designed to mitigate potential bad matchups but you still to an extent play the meta. That is no different than 1500.

I guess it comes down to a few things for me;

-Games are already pretty much at their max time frame. Going to 3 hours a game isn't feasible for most events unless you drop a game from the weekend.

-Increasing time has been happening for 2 editions and 4 years now and hasn't resolved the problem. It's actually gotten worse.

-If increasing time isn't working, and hasn't been working, why would it work now? And if it won't work it's time to consider something new. Dropping points is something that, while it won't 100% fix the problem, will directly impact it.

-It lowers the bar of inclusion and the strain on attendees. Most other suggestions don't. Making tournaments more of a slog and harder to get to and lessening desire.

Just my thoughts. They pretty heavily mirror Target's. We're in a rut and doing the same thing we've been doing isn't going to get us out of the rut.

I don't think chess clocks will really fix the issue. They help deter slow play, yeah, but I don't see slow play happen all that much. What I see more often is both players moving at decent speed and making it to turn 5, but not having time for t6 or 7, because the game is just too damn fat to fit in that little time window anymore. It really let itself go.

All I think chess clocks would accomplish is that you'll get to turn 5, run out of time, and the clock will generally show that both people used the same-ish amount of time. (If one person got run-away board control superiority, he may use up a bit more.) In which case we still have the same problem: the games aren't finishing naturally and its not usually the fault of the players.

It's a solution for a different problem than the one we're having.

The game should be in a state that average knowledgable players going at "serious but not rushing" speed should finish a typical game naturally with a good 10-20 wind down break after putting models back in the army tray, scoring the game and turning it in, etc. There shouldn't be more than a small handful running to time, like say 5%. There should be rounds here and there at events where no one hits the time wall at all, and the next round actually starts on time.

The only real solution to that issue is to get the game on a damn treadmill and cut some food to get it down some weight.

Ideally if we could house rule a few things we could really shave time. Things like: Models moving in move, shooting, AND assault phase, complicated wound pools with look out sir in squads, anything involving multiple blasts scattering, close combat in general... All of those eat huge chunks of time.

I think if we had a good way to house rule some of the clunkisness away and also lowered points a bit, we'd actually be in the situation from above; Where most games finish naturally with enough time to catch a breath before the next round.

I like the idea of chess clocks just to see who is taking more time in an event, and then you can look at lists and decide, based on the army and feedback, if they were slow playing or not.

But it's quite the hassle for the normal TO to parse through. Heck, it sounds like LVO didn't even collect lists to check, reading through feedback any more complicated than great/good/bad sportsmanship is pretty unlikely to happen. Unless there were some automated way to put in a complaint about a player and get it resolved, it's unlikely to mean anything. Just the clock running out doesn't exactly mean much, it could just mean they had a lot of hard choices to make, or they were playing an army with an extreme amount of pre-game rolls, or a Horde, etc. As has been said in this very thread, there are dozens of reasons for someone to need more time that aren't attributed to malicious play.

I think a lot of things have come together to make the games longer since 5th.

1.) Less Mechanized armies. It takes a lot less time to move 10 metal boxes than it does to move 10 squads of 6 guys. So while MSU may not have changed much, it used to be MSU in boxes, now it is less so. Throw in the initiative step pile in for assault and now you are moving more models more often.

2.) Increased volume of dice rolling. We roll a lot more now. Random charges, more shots (a unit of guys shoots way more times than a single tank), overwatch, re-rolls (shooting, saves etc.), Psychic powers, random tables in some books.

3.) Speaking of Psychic powers, they get used way more now than back in 5e. Most books had so-so powers at best until nearly the end of the edition, now there are a ton of great powers available. This began in 6e and continued on.

4.) The Pre-game phase- rolling powers, warlord etc. As well as some missions requiring more player choices at this time.

5.) Reduced reserves (elimination of Dawn of War deployment, or change to it at least) In 5e it was not uncommon for little to happen turn 1 as more armies used null deployment, and 1/3rd of games started with little on the table for either player.

All these things combine to make the game longer. I agree with those who say reduce points (though I'm not certain how much it will help.) I don't think chess clocks are the way to go. I think TOs keeping on top of players knowing how much time they have is more important than having each player have exact equal time.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
How about requiring all games have to complete turn 5 before anyone can move on. I imagine by round 3, anyone slow playing would be murdered by the other participants. So it works it self out naturally.

No it won't. Some people are slow and give no feths about who they inconvenience.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:

1) Before, the tournament starts and in *front* of tournament officials, roll your powers, warlord and random gears for the rest of your tournament games. Take that part out of having to do that randomness before each and every game. That'll cut down the pre-deployment time a bit.

I know you're just tossing ideas out, but, as mentioned above, in large tournaments with 300+ people and only 5 staff, that will actually take MORE time if they have to witness it all.

 kronk wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
How about requiring all games have to complete turn 5 before anyone can move on. I imagine by round 3, anyone slow playing would be murdered by the other participants. So it works it self out naturally.

No it won't. Some people are slow and give no feths about who they inconvenience.

This is a bit of a touchy subject, but I think it's one that needs to be talked about at least a little bit.

Punishment. There seems to not be much or any in many tournaments. To me, there are a couple factors:

1) People are shy to come forward and point fingers at their opponents. No one wants to be that guy who threw a fit over his opponent's gameplay, even if said opponent was slowplaying/fudging measurements/misplaying on purpose. Everyone wants to be friendly and all, and it can be hard to "snitch" on the guy who gave you a bad game. With the Adepticon format, where you have to mark Great/Good/Bad sportsmanship before signing, it's even worse, because no one wants to be like "Hey can you sign this sheet that says you're a jerk? Thanks."

2) Not enough TOs/Judges/etc to enforce everything. Once you open the floodgates of bringing up complaints of bad play or (Emperor forbid) cheating, then TOs suddenly have to constantly patrol and hand out judgements as soon as they come up.

3) Events are just afraid to punish. As soon as you're an event that punishes someone or has to go all the way of banning someone, there's a bit of a mark on you as an organization. People may avoid because they don't want to chance getting kicked out, even if they aren't the sort of people who would act in that way.


But honestly even with those, I think something needs to happen. If you want to keep people from slow playing, don't put in more rules. They'll find ways to circumvent them, or new ways to gain advantages that are just as annoying/bad sportsmanship. Enforce the rules that exist. Someone is slow playing or fudging things to their advantage? Dock them points. It keeps happening? More serious consequences, such as preventing them from any sort of placement or award, or even expulsion.

I'm not saying every instance of a player playing slow needs to have a consequence. Some people take a while to think, or have armies that necessitate more time for deliberation or just numbers. But I feel like there really is nothing in place to punish the people who are being malicious, which isn't good.