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Hi all.

I attended a tournament over the weekend and in one of my games I suspect my opponent was deliberately taking time and stretching things out. We were half way through my fourth turn and the organiser came over to say only 30 mins left.

At the pace we had been playing at and considering the amount of models left we should have easily been able to get the game finished. I finished my turn four and my opponent started his turn 4. Now he didn't have a lot left at all but did manage to move a small weak unit onto an objective in his movement phase. He then proceeded to take an awfully long time to make each and every decision there after which prevented us from taking turn 5. I'm confident I could have dealt with this unit in turn 5 and won the game.

I didn't say anything to him as the tournament had generally been very good and I didn't want to ruin my experience with an altercation at the end.

Have you ever experienced this? I'm particularly interested to see if anyone is willing to admit to having tried this themselves? (be honest)

Havent played tournaments often but i have seen this occasionally in the local workshop. The guy who does it often has to leave near the end of a game and wins by default (although you cant possibly call it a win and i witnessed 1 guy who he had done it to before happily stand there and keep asking "so you forfeit" till the lad just said lets finish the game) and somehow finishes his errand and is back within the hour.

 King Amroth wrote:
Havent played tournaments often but i have seen this occasionally in the local workshop. The guy who does it often has to leave near the end of a game and wins by default (although you cant possibly call it a win and i witnessed 1 guy who he had done it to before happily stand there and keep asking "so you forfeit" till the lad just said lets finish the game) and somehow finishes his errand and is back within the hour.

How he could win by default if HE leaves? Don't know any place where somebody leaving would win by default then. Opposite...

Though I haven't played a lot myself, I have watched at least part of several games since I started into Warhammer. Usually at my local GW shop, dice are hitting the table as fast as they possibly can to the point of some rolling off the table eventually (hoping to make a dice tray for us to use soon). So, with people taking actions and saves being rolled so fast, I don't think there's a lot of time being taken going on.

As a small example, the manager at my local GW shop has come up with a narrative 40K campaign where the players started at 500 points, then moved up to 750 after a certain number of battles or a certain amount of time, 1000 points next, etc. A couple of guys who knew the rules well finished a 500 point game in about 20 minutes.

SG

Slow play is generally bad form but at the ened of a game, you do tend to take more time as there are less mistakes you can afford to make. So it isnt strictly slow playing but maybe?

The way I usually handle it is that when you'r down to the last 20 or so minutes, you split the last evenly: 10 ad 10. Aything you don't do, too bad. Many tournaments are moving to this when a round seems likely to be the last so you simply play the last turn by splitting the time.

Slow play on either side at that point is going to get noticed. So you roll fast and get it done.

It happens. It's kinda gakky, but it's something that the game rules just don't concern themselves with (one will notice that no edition of Warhammer 40,000 has included rules on a time limit for the game) and is part of the artificiality of tournament environments that the game makes no attempt to adapt to.

If it's really obvious, call the TO over, it's their job to handle that. If nothing else, call it out yourself, just say something like "hey man, we've only got a few minutes left and I'd like to get my turn in" or "hey, while you're thinking about that, mind if I start moving my stuff for my next turn?" and just prod them along if they're being sly, it tends to stop working then.

That said, the end of the game can also be the part that does *sometimes* stretch out as plans start to come together and people try to maneuver things *just so* and get everything right and run through every eventuality to ensure they don't get tripped up by something at the last minute, so it isn't always deliberate slow play.

It's another reason 40k is a bad tournament game. Other games use death clock or timed turns to prevent that from happening.

From experience, casual games usually go up by 1 hour per 500 points after 1000, while 1000 points generally lasts just as long (ok not exactly, but only like a 10-15 minute difference) as a 500 point game. Anything more and it's usually either someone brought a horde army numbering in the hundreds, or someone has a bunch of units with weird rules.

Use timers like they do in chess.

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
Use timers like they do in chess.

This is frequently mentioned but it doesn't work in 40k. It's not as simple as "your turn, your time on the clock" like in chess because both players are doing stuff at the same time. For example, whose clock should be running if there's a dispute over LOS? Can you roll saves really slowly and use up your opponent's clock, or does it switch to your clock over and over again every time you have to roll a die? So you either have a system where there's so much screwing around with the clocks that you end up slowing the game down and frustrating everyone, or one where it's even easier for slow players to stall because you just have to burn up your opponent's clock time and then auto-win.

Dont like timrs but I do subscribe to it at the games end. Honestly most tournaments do provide 2.5 hours which at 1850 should be eough to get to a point where you know whose got it and of course like i said a VERY fast last round does sometimes have to happen. But thats okay. Just split the time and it is what it is.

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
Use timers like they do in chess.

the problem is that many armies just inherently take longer to play than others. Playing an Ork Green Tide is just going to take dramatically more time to physically move models and roll all those dice than something like Knight army.

 Vaktathi wrote:
the problem is that many armies just inherently take longer to play than others. Playing an Ork Green Tide is just going to take dramatically more time to physically move models and roll all those dice than something like Knight army.

That's fine, IMO. You aren't entitled to take more than 50% of the available time just because you'd really like to have it. If you can't do everything necessary to finish your part of the game in half the available time then you need to accept that you have too many models on the table and bring a different army. Otherwise you screw everything up and ensure that games will never finish unless your opponent requires less than their share of the available time. If you run into a fellow green tide player who needs their full share (or, worse, more than their share!) then you've guaranteed that the game will not finish.

IMO the problems with chess clocks are entirely in the execution of the system. If you could figure out a way to fairly decide whose clock should be running at all times and remove the ability to dishonestly exploit the system I would have no problem at all with imposing a hard limit of 50% of the time per player.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
Use timers like they do in chess.

the problem is that many armies just inherently take longer to play than others. Playing an Ork Green Tide is just going to take dramatically more time to physically move models and roll all those dice than something like Knight army.

I bought 8 slot movement trays for 25mm rounds back when LOTR battle game was still a thing. I use them for my IG to speed up deployment and movement.
The 8 slots take the squaddies and you place the HWT beside the tray.
If you have a 30 strong blob of orks, placement of individual boyz is not going to be the key to success or an enjoyable part of the game for you. You keep the nob and any special weapons separate and move the other 20+ orks around in trays.

 =Angel= wrote:
If you have a 30 strong blob of orks, placement of individual boyz is not going to be the key to success or an enjoyable part of the game for you. You keep the nob and any special weapons separate and move the other 20+ orks around in trays.

Better at least put initially the special guys inside the tray. Otherwise jolly good time sniping them with any fast movers.

 Vaktathi wrote:
It happens. It's kinda gakky, but it's something that the game rules just don't concern themselves with (one will notice that no edition of Warhammer 40,000 has included rules on a time limit for the game) and is part of the artificiality of tournament environments that the game makes no attempt to adapt to.

If it's really obvious, call the TO over, it's their job to handle that. If nothing else, call it out yourself, just say something like "hey man, we've only got a few minutes left and I'd like to get my turn in" or "hey, while you're thinking about that, mind if I start moving my stuff for my next turn?" and just prod them along if they're being sly, it tends to stop working then.

That said, the end of the game can also be the part that does *sometimes* stretch out as plans start to come together and people try to maneuver things *just so* and get everything right and run through every eventuality to ensure they don't get tripped up by something at the last minute, so it isn't always deliberate slow play.

I fully agree with this, especially when it comes to higher model count armies like my own IG or orks. The game just isn't concerned with tournament play.

We had a similar problem during yesterday's game. It was Nids vs SM and the Nid player always.takes.a.lot.of.time to do anything. After 6 hours the game ended... on turn 4. Yeah...

I'm playing with this guy in our RPG group, and he dose exactly the same thing. I've gotten used to it really, but sometimes things like that can really get on your nerves.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
the problem is that many armies just inherently take longer to play than others. Playing an Ork Green Tide is just going to take dramatically more time to physically move models and roll all those dice than something like Knight army.

That's fine, IMO. You aren't entitled to take more than 50% of the available time just because you'd really like to have it. If you can't do everything necessary to finish your part of the game in half the available time then you need to accept that you have too many models on the table and bring a different army.

That doesn't sound like an issue with the player or the army, that sounds like an issue with an event imposing an outside limitation that the rules of the game don't concern themselves with.

Assuming that people should just "bring another army" is sort of ridiculous, particularly when many people may not *have* another army, and it just drives and reinforces push to big silly things like Knight armies and Space Marine centricity.

 =Angel= wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
Use timers like they do in chess.

the problem is that many armies just inherently take longer to play than others. Playing an Ork Green Tide is just going to take dramatically more time to physically move models and roll all those dice than something like Knight army.

I bought 8 slot movement trays for 25mm rounds back when LOTR battle game was still a thing. I use them for my IG to speed up deployment and movement.
The 8 slots take the squaddies and you place the HWT beside the tray.
If you have a 30 strong blob of orks, placement of individual boyz is not going to be the key to success or an enjoyable part of the game for you. You keep the nob and any special weapons separate and move the other 20+ orks around in trays.

Movement trays make it really pleasant for an opponent's blast weapons to kill a big grip of dudes because you're not using your unit coherency to minimize casualties, and makes it very difficult to maneuver around terrain to avoid having to take checks if required. There are meaningful downsides to using movement trays intended for Fantasy ranked combat in a game like 40k.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Movement trays make it really pleasant for an opponent's blast weapons to kill a big grip of dudes because you're not using your unit coherency to minimize casualties, and makes it very difficult to maneuver around terrain to avoid having to take checks if required. There are meaningful downsides to using movement trays intended for Fantasy ranked combat in a game like 40k.

There are, but-
1: Staying compact lets you maximise cover, which is what you SHOULD be using to reduce casualties. The average scatter result with bs4 moves the blast 3 inches, the entire width of the template. By spreading out you are maximising the chances his blasts will hit some of your guys, a compact squad may be missed entirely.

2: They aren't glued to the trays. If you feel its disadvantageous to keep them in, you take them out. It's an aide, not a constraint.


An opponent will recognize that you are trying to speed things up and not gain an advantage. It's easier for them to see that a unit hasn't moved farther than it should. When this happens, I find they become much more accommodating themselves, allowing you to place stuff where convenient and 'count' terrain rather than moving every single model where it needs to be in a terrain piece.

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
Use timers like they do in chess.

This doesn't fix anything. Both players take actions in either players turn. Were I a dick, I could drag out rolling for saves for a good while with look out sirs, arguing over which model is the next closest to the firing unit, etc.

 kronk wrote:

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
Use timers like they do in chess.

This doesn't fix anything. Both players take actions in either players turn. Were I a dick, I could drag out rolling for saves for a good while with look out sirs, arguing over which model is the next closest to the firing unit, etc.

How about in that situation the attacking player press pause on his timer and the defending player turns on his timer for his drawn out saves and next closest model.

I nearly disqualified a lad once for doing this in a school league event. He had gun line guard, his opponent had pure cc nids. He was deliberately taking a long time to do anything so that his opponent couldn't reach him. He didn't move a model or have any psykers, so his turn was just a shooting phase. His opponent just ran everything up the field, so it was just a movement phase. 75 mins into the game they were still on turn two. I'd been watching and clocked what he was doing. When the nid player called me over to complain I told him not to worry, I'd already logged him as the winner. The guard player got a final warning to prioritize sportsmanship in his remaining games.

 kronk wrote:

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
Use timers like they do in chess.

This doesn't fix anything. Both players take actions in either players turn. Were I a dick, I could drag out rolling for saves for a good while with look out sirs, arguing over which model is the next closest to the firing unit, etc.

My LGS is actually testing this in 1850 point events. I'll have to ask how it's going, because I haven't played in those events yet, but I guess they've been having problems with slow play (intentional or not) causing games being timed for 2.5 hours to only go ~3 game turns on average. If it's my turn, but you need to roll saves, I hit the clock and it's your time counting down. I guess they're doing it as if it's your "action" so you're the one on the clock. I'm sure it's not perfect, but like I said it's a test to try to fix a problem they're having. Also, if your 75 minutes runs out, the game turn gets finished, and you're penalized points if it's prior to turn 5, more points for each turn earlier. If it runs out on turn 5 or later, the players just finish the game turn. It discourages horde armies, to be sure, but I don't think there are many at the store anyway. Plus, the place disallows more than 2 GMC/SHV (used to be limited to 1 but they're testing the waters with 2 now), so 5-IK armies are essentially banned outright anyway (using this point to illustrate that their houserules kinda push out certain army builds already).

 CadianGateTroll wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
Use timers like they do in chess.

This doesn't fix anything. Both players take actions in either players turn. Were I a dick, I could drag out rolling for saves for a good while with look out sirs, arguing over which model is the next closest to the firing unit, etc.

How about in that situation the attacking player press pause on his timer and the defending player turns on his timer for his drawn out saves and next closest model.

I'm not poo-pooing anyone trying something new. Don't get me wrong. Perhaps they will help. However, there is so much back and forth in 40k, you're really going to have to be hitting that your turn/my turn button a crapton during a game.

Declares target. *hits button*
Declares jinking *hit button*
Rolls to hit.
Rolls armor penetration *hits button*
Rolls jink *hits button*
Rolls vehicle damage chart *hits button*
Puts markers down to show that vehicle lost a hull points and is shaken *hit button*

Move to next shooting unit.

That's 6 back and forth actions on a single unit shooting.

Clock Hammer, 40k!

We've used a clock in the movement phase only as it's the only phase purely run by one side at a time. It doesn't speed up other elements of the game but it sets a precedence for our continual lollygagging.