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Things I do at my Bolt Action events to help with time. I have a timer running on a large TV in the room. I walk around all the tables and ask people what turn they are on. If they are behind I tell them both they need to pick up the pace. I have a 15 minute period for meet greet army list look over before each round and my rounds last 2 hours thirty minutes.

Warmachine does this and doesn't get a lot of complaints. Warmachine has hoard and elite armies and there aren't issues s. The issues exist with the saves and remembering to roll to hit and to roll to wound and then passing the clock so the opponent can make his saves. I'm not saying it can't work and I know you are running an event Sunday and will look for the info when it's done and feedback. I'm not against clocks but it's a lot to remember and figure on. Warmachine is far better streamlined for clocks.

Updated the title and attached a word document.

Also I created a Google document and it can be found here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BQIk7X0Fm0Znr2VbpNP3bGNs0hhyNHhU6AUVcy4G1rM/edit?usp=sharing

Let us know how the tournament goes, t.

You can also use the Law of Large Numbers to speed things up. Any time you have a situation where 1 player is rolling more than 20 dice, you simply take the mathematical average rounding down. For Example, 30 Orks attacking with 3 attacks each, needing 4+ to hit, would generate 45 hits. Then needing 4+ to wound, would generate 22 wounds. That speeds up a bit of the dice rolling.

I feel like trying to do that is... not going to work with 40ks current rules. There are a ton of times when you roll a bunch of dice trying to get that lucky streak of 6s or hoping your opponent gets 1s.

Besides... is it really the 30 ork boys that are slowing the game down? In my experience it's far more likely to be the one Psyker deciding which spells to cast, or the 9 separate units of warp spiders, or the mixed units where everyone USA different weapons / ballistic skill / special rules, than homogeneous blob squads.

Fragile wrote:
You can also use the Law of Large Numbers to speed things up. Any time you have a situation where 1 player is rolling more than 20 dice, you simply take the mathematical average rounding down. For Example, 30 Orks attacking with 3 attacks each, needing 4+ to hit, would generate 45 hits. Then needing 4+ to wound, would generate 22 wounds. That speeds up a bit of the dice rolling.

This doesn't really speed that much up. Calculating the right answer and agreeing with your opponent that it's correct is going to take almost as much time as actually rolling the dice, if not more time.

 40KTV wrote:
don_mondo

Thank you for your friendly response! You get the same amount of time regardless of what army you bring. I should not have to give up my time because my opponent cannot execute his or her army within their given time frame. It literally does not matter what army you bring. Yes if I play and eltie style army with fewer models my play will go faster. Three hour rounds at 1850 you and your opponent have a hour and half to get through the game. I should not get less time to play because my opponent has 25 warp charge dice or 200 models what happen when two armies that have a lot of models or mechanics play one another to the get 4 hours to finish because their armies play longer. You response about pro rating per model gave me a nice laugh.

This whole argument about 'my time' and 'your time' is based on a fundamental error. It is NOT true to say that in a 'fair' game of 40k both players get equal time, and that if one player takes more than half the time then they are in some way playing badly. It's an entirely made up assertion.

If one player has 100 models and the other player has 3 then it is fair that one player takes more time than the other. If one player's army requires lots of extra rolls on tables than the others then it is fair that they take more time than the other. There is no such thing as 'your' or 'my' time, and thinking about it that way is only going to lead to arguments.

Playing for an equal amount of time has never been part of the game rules and never been implied in any of them. You are, of course, welcome to play that way if you want - you can modify the game however you want in your tournaments - but i think your starting assumption is in error.

I really don't like the idea of chess clocks in tournies. It feels like one step too far in terms of competitiveness, and I would likely not attend an event if using them. I am far from a casual player, I play to win and build tough lists - but at the end of the day, unless you're at the very very top end of LVO or something playing for a major cash prize, it's still only a game. I don't go to a tournament to win money or prestige, I go to have fun and do my best to win every game - very different things imo. A chess clock just seems to turn it from a game into a sport, which 40k is just not tailored to being. The added level of stress of having to play within time or suffer a potentially very harsh penalty is not something I want - how am I supposed to even make friendly conversation with my opponent whilst the game is ongoing if it wastes their/my time? What if we want to go get a beer? As someone who is godawful at multitasking I cannot play the game whilst chatting, I have to briefly stop. Sure, at the very highest levels it might be needed to stop cheating, but the vast majority of players who want to just have a good time and try their best to win are those it's going to affect - those top players can probably play quickly enough that a chess clock won't be needed!

Another point noone seems to be raising is that a timer will raise the cognitive load of playing - ie. by having to bear in mind the time, you are pushing something else out of your working memory, and your actual gameplay will suffer as a result.

The other thing that just seems utter madness to me is that chess clocks are being considered the solution before dropping points limits! Here in the UK a lot of the events I have been to are 1750, 1650 or even 1500 point events - the UK GT last year I think was 1500. The games at these levels are much much faster and are still absolutely fine - part of the challenge of list writing is finding the best possible combination within the limits allotted to you, be that no LoWs, x detachments, or a points limit. Sure, some lists don't work at these lower levels, but equally others will be made viable by the lack of these lists, all it does is shift the meta like any number of other changes to the rules set will do.

 ArbitorIan wrote:
If one player has 100 models and the other player has 3 then it is fair that one player takes more time than the other. If one player's army requires lots of extra rolls on tables than the others then it is fair that they take more time than the other. There is no such thing as 'your' or 'my' time, and thinking about it that way is only going to lead to arguments.

It isn't fair at all for one player to have more than half the time. Imagine what happens when the 100-model army that requires more than half the available time is matched up against a 100-model army that requires half the available time. The game is not going to finish because the total time required is now more than what is available. By bringing that 100-model army without the ability to play it within your fair half of the available time you're essentially saying "play a small army that takes less time or I'm not going to let you finish the game". And that isn't fair to the player who is able to do their half of the game within half the available time.

The issue with chess clocks is not that they punish people who don't deserve it, it's that it isn't possible to make a chess clock work in a game like 40k because of the structure of the game. If you could magically create a chess clock system that fairly and unambiguously tracked each player's use of time and didn't slow the game down with excessive time spent on managing the clock system a chess clock in tournament 40k would be a great idea. But that system only exists in some magical fantasy world, not in real tournaments.

 Peregrine wrote:

It isn't fair at all for one player to have more than half the time. Imagine what happens when the 100-model army that requires more than half the available time is matched up against a 100-model army that requires half the available time. The game is not going to finish because the total time required is now more than what is available. By bringing that 100-model army without the ability to play it within your fair half of the available time you're essentially saying "play a small army that takes less time or I'm not going to let you finish the game". And that isn't fair to the player who is able to do their half of the game within half the available time..

That's not an issue of the player not being 'fair'... that's an issue of the tournament not allowing enough time for the size of the armies being played.

 insaniak wrote:
That's not an issue of the player not being 'fair'... that's an issue of the tournament not allowing enough time for the size of the armies being played.

It's both. Tournaments often have problems with allowing far too little time for the point level, but you can't set a round time that allows literally every game to finish. If the slowest armies with the slowest players are finishing then everyone else is sitting around waiting after their games finish in a reasonable amount of time. At some point you just have to accept that you've allowed as much time as you can reasonably allow, and if a player can't finish doing their part of the game within half that amount of time then they either need to pick a different army or stop coming to tournaments.

Fragile wrote:
You can also use the Law of Large Numbers to speed things up. Any time you have a situation where 1 player is rolling more than 20 dice, you simply take the mathematical average rounding down. For Example, 30 Orks attacking with 3 attacks each, needing 4+ to hit, would generate 45 hits. Then needing 4+ to wound, would generate 22 wounds. That speeds up a bit of the dice rolling.

I don't agree with this method at all. 40k is a dice game. As an ork player and playing a horde style from time to time, I would not attended an event that uses this rule.

Greetings everyone,

We held a 12 person RTT this past weekend with the chess clocks rules that where provided by T. Instead of going to my opinion on chess clock usage i will give a list of takeaways from the event.

Format: Adepticon
Time: 2:45 minutes

Armies in attendance: Genestealer Cult, Dark angel battle Company, White scars battle company, death stars and daemons.

Pros

1. All games except one (new player to Dameons with a massive psychic phase) had a natural conclusion.
2. No one had a issue keeping track of their own time.
3. Many armies had high model count and or high psychic phase
4. Opinions of the majority of players (13 in total) was the clocks provided an excellent way to track time.

Cons

1. If you forget to pass your time it can become a issue since you cannot get that time back.
2. If you pause for rules questions and arguments you will still get dice down called on you for running over time.
(this was not much of a issue but can be if the question drags on without a decently fast resolution.
3. Clock Fear this when the player plays to fast because they are afraid of running out of time.
This should be resolved by continuing to use clocks and realizing that you do have plenty of time.

Thanks in advance for your feed back. Leadership check incoming

 40KTV wrote:

3. Clock Fear this when the player plays to fast because they are afraid of running out of time.
This should be resolved by continuing to use clocks and realizing that you do have plenty of time.

...which would seem to eliminate the need for clocks...

I have been a little busy since Sunday, sorry for the late reply.

So the event went really well, almost to a man the feedback that I received was very positive. All the games ended naturally either through dice rolls or timeout. The timeout that 40ktv described was a demon player that was very new to demons and I think he timed out in the 5th turn of his first game only. I was playing at the time so I wasn’t watching that game but I don’t think that he actually fully timed out, it was more like he had only 45 sec for a turn.

The armies that I saw at the event were Gene stealer cult, full blown min/max Lions Blade, bike heavy Lions Blade, Tau-Eldar, full blown min/max Battle Company, flying demons, Magnus plus screamer star, screamer star with exalted flamers, double Wraithknight using the new Eldar rules and Wolf Star.

The round times were 2h50m minutes for the first two rounds and reduced to 2h40m (reduced because the store closes early on Sundays) for the final round. The top table for the finals rolled for turn 7 with 12min on one clock and 6min on the other. The roll to play 7 failed and it ended on 6.

The most important observation of what was happening at this event is that games were ending naturally with a variable turn roll. This result is consistent with what we expect from our experience using clocks in other monthly tournaments in Chicago and through all the practice games.

The following things are examples of what I did not observe at this tournament that are constantly complained about at other events. There were no 45+ minute first turns, no one was playing through their entire lunch break, no one was accused of slow playing, no Eldar players exploited the time rules so they didn’t have to roll for a 6th turn, no complaints about Demon pre-game taking to long, no three turn battle company games and there was no need to reduce points.

One final note, we are going to tweak the first rule a hair because when you read it out loud in front of 15+ people it sounds a little awkward in its current state.

On the surface this seems like a way to stack the odds in the favor of small model count armies like Imperial Knights and rig the system against MSU armies or horde armies.

After deeper consideration, I came to the exact same conclusion.

If the amount of time each player has is the same no matter what army they play, there's an additional factor being added in to heavily advantage some armies over others. I can't see any other way to look at it other than trying to rig the outcome against armies/builds the TO doesn't like.

Chaos Daemons vs Imperial Knights.

How points were use for this event? Even at 1850pts, I could easily manage a 2h 50 min or 2h 40min game in with out a chess clock. Maybe I, personally, play a a brisk of enough pace to not worry about time, but if you rounds are that long, what is the point in having the chess clock?

What he said.

2:45 seems to me a very decent time to play games.

I tend to experience timeouts in tournaments that are trying to cram 2000pts in to 2 hours. 1850 in 2:45 seems like a breeze that you would have very little difference with or without clocks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jimsolo wrote:
On the surface this seems like a way to stack the odds in the favor of small model count armies like Imperial Knights and rig the system against MSU armies or horde armies.

After deeper consideration, I came to the exact same conclusion.

If the amount of time each player has is the same no matter what army they play, there's an additional factor being added in to heavily advantage some armies over others. I can't see any other way to look at it other than trying to rig the outcome against armies/builds the TO doesn't like.

Or you could look at it the other way...
people playing MSU armies are trying to rig the outcome by playing a style of game that disadvantages the other player.

Or another way:
If you bring an army that you expect to take you more than half the play time, then you are imposing on your opponent. You're expecting them to compensate for your deficiency.

Its all well and good to say an all-knights army takes a short time and a battle company takes a long time, but when you end up with a battle co vs battle co taking extra extra long, something has to give. If its a casual game at home you can take all the time you want, but a tournament has to run to a schedule of some kind; and the schedule can't be determined by the two slowest players playing the two slowest armies.

 Jimsolo wrote:
On the surface this seems like a way to stack the odds in the favor of small model count armies like Imperial Knights and rig the system against MSU armies or horde armies.

After deeper consideration, I came to the exact same conclusion.

If the amount of time each player has is the same no matter what army they play, there's an additional factor being added in to heavily advantage some armies over others. I can't see any other way to look at it other than trying to rig the outcome against armies/builds the TO doesn't like.

Giving certain builds and advantage is already a thing though. Most tournaments are won by armies that are tailored for the format. Your claim assumes all tournaments are playing rulebook 40k, when in reality they all are house ruling the game in their own way, thus altering the meta and deciding which armies have an edge over others. Having timed rounds already favors elite armies over horde, this hasn't changed in multiple editions. So unless there is an event somewhere out there that doesn't have time limits they all are "rigging the outcome" as you put it.

The simple solution is to have games always go to 5 turns regardless of time it takes to play. If someone is suspected of intentionally playing slowly, have a harsh penalty, which a judge could rule on.

Clocks are trying to solve a problem brought about by setting time constraints on the game. If you have to finish regardless there's no incentive to slow play, other than being That Guy, in which case a judge could observe your game and easily make the determination that you're playing slowly on purpose.

 Marmatag wrote:
The simple solution is to have games always go to 5 turns regardless of time it takes to play.

This is not a viable option. Events need to have a fixed schedule to run properly.

t wrote:
I have been a little busy since Sunday, sorry for the late reply.

So the event went really well, almost to a man the feedback that I received was very positive. All the games ended naturally either through dice rolls or timeout. The timeout that 40ktv described was a demon player that was very new to demons and I think he timed out in the 5th turn of his first game only. I was playing at the time so I wasn’t watching that game but I don’t think that he actually fully timed out, it was more like he had only 45 sec for a turn.

Sounds like everyone had a good time.

Thanks for the update, t.

I find that most games that don't finish naturally start out slow from the onset.
- initial tournament setup ( depending on Tournament format: ITC, Nova, ect) Traits, sides, psychic powers, seizes, night fighting, turn choice, ect ect.
- Setting up armys, Infiltrates, scouts, ect, ect
- 1st turn process of both players.

I wonder if we should be looking to streamline this initial process along with a time constraint on initial setup and 1st turn ?...

could be either combined into a total of say 30 min or divided into portions say setup 5 min per player and 10 min per player 1st turn. then move onto a more natural process ?!

Trasvi wrote:
Its all well and good to say an all-knights army takes a short time and a battle company takes a long time, but when you end up with a battle co vs battle co taking extra extra long, something has to give. If its a casual game at home you can take all the time you want, but a tournament has to run to a schedule of some kind; and the schedule can't be determined by the two slowest players playing the two slowest armies.

I agree that something has to give - I'd just argue that the thing that has to give is either number of points or number of rounds, rather than removing certain factions or changing the feel of the game.

If we accept that:
- we want to have a format where people can bring whatever army they happen to own
- some armies take a long time to play, either because of high model counts or lots of rules
then the best way to determine round length is to get two 'average' speed players (say, experienced players who are playing the game at a sensible pace - neither chatting to their friends for ages nor powering through like professional sportsmen wih no extraneous chat or bathroom breaks) and get them to play the slowest armies. That's your round time. Too long? Have less rounds or have less points.

Anything else (like, say, the ever-present spectre of a clock right there next to you timing your every move) forces people into a certain style of play that emphasises playing speed, something that has never been part of 40k. Sure, I COULD bring my Renegades or my Guard, but then I'll have to be playing at total, full-on speed for almost three hours, not stopping for anything, not chatting to my opponent, permanently aware of the time. That's much more stress than many people want in their leisure activity. So I'll bring my Knights instead. And if I was a newer player who doesn't have multiple armies to choose from, I probably just won't go. And lots of people also having tI make that choice is bad for building a community, something which is often the point of tournaments in the first place!

The problem is that we're playing a game which is too complex and has too many models to fit in the round time we're used to. Chess clocks are a solution that rules out certain armies (and thus players) unless they want to play like professional sportsmen. I don't think that's good for the hobby.

Sorry I haven't jumped in sooner, but we've tried out the system and like it. I am a big proponent of chess clocks in 40k as it really helps to illustrate which player is taking more time and keep folks on schedule.

And I agree with others in this thread, the game has gotten too bloated with rules and free points to reasonably play in an acceptable amount of time without some type of time tracking.

 ArbitorIan wrote:

I agree that something has to give - I'd just argue that the thing that has to give is either number of points or number of rounds, rather than removing certain factions or changing the feel of the game..

There is some validity to the argument that allowing ample time for the largest/slowest armies to finish their games can result in most of the players spending more time standing around scratching themselves between rounds.

I'm wondering if adding some sort of army-matching algorithm into tournament software would help there... Allow TOs to set specific armies that won't be matched up against each other, except for in the final round. That way at least your slowest armies won't be compounding the issue by playing against other slow armies.

 insaniak wrote:
I'm wondering if adding some sort of army-matching algorithm into tournament software would help there... Allow TOs to set specific armies that won't be matched up against each other, except for in the final round. That way at least your slowest armies won't be compounding the issue by playing against other slow armies.

I don't think you could come up with one that couldn't be exploited. If I'm playing a horde army and know that the matching algorithm isn't going to match me against another horde army it makes it really easy to focus on anti-elite and anti-vehicle weapons and ignore the need to deal with hordes.

I ran a 40k tournament yesterday where "slow play" was a considerable issue. I'm still new to being T.O. and did not handle it as effectively as I think I could have (Having played the individual a time or two before I know how brutal his turns can be) I tried being reasonable but that game ended up running 20+ minutes into the lunch break.

Something I had considered after the fact was the "dice down" ruling or even calling the game a draw. In a sense it would penalize the slow player while being fair to the opponent. Not sure how effective or reasonable this would be. My local club is also thinking of missions in round one that would cull the slower players but not sure how well that would work either.