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 Thadin wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
I can offer numbers for my last game, the only 8th ed game where I actively paid attention to these things.

1000 points each, Tau vs. Chaos, 13 vs. 6 models, 6 turns, took around two hours to finish.

Personally I don't get the impression 8th ed is any faster. Average model count didn't go down. Number of dice rolls didn't go down (you still have hit, wound, saves, many weapons got more shots, templates got replaced by another dice roll). Cutting away time for some things just gets added elsewhere (say difficult terrain rolls were dropped, but split fire was added and takes time to decide).

I also find it harder to memorize everything, because of bespoke rules. Takes unnecessary time to check up and make sure that this particular model has this particular take on this particular game mechanic. What a disaster.

It will get faster, once you memorize your rules. Myself, playing a Guard army with 50+ infantry, 3 tanks and a bloody Baneblade, with 3 different types of Commanders, vs an Ork list with 100+ Boyz, all sorts of weird special characters and flyers, took two hours to finish.
Things will get faster once the new rule set is ingrained, and memorized.

Yeah, no doubt. I just find 8th ed's formatting frustrating and unnecessarily fragmented.

And it's not even like this is a massive issue in the game I referenced. Take fifteen minutes out of it for this sort of thing and it's not massively shorter. Another factor I forgot to mention: re-rolls upon re-rolls. If I have to make every other roll twice, it just drags out the game.

I should add that in spite of finding lots of things that hold up the game, I am not unhappy with game length in general. I'm not in a terrible hurry and rarely play a second game on the same day, so I don't need a game to go smoothly to get the most out of it. In fact, I prefer if there's time to talk and socialize beyond the strict confines of the game.

Because of the chatty nature of our club - I'd say on average the 75-100 power level games have gone 3.5 hours. A lot of chatting, visiting other tables, discussions, etc.

 Geifer wrote:
Yeah, no doubt. I just find 8th ed's formatting frustrating and unnecessarily fragmented.

And it's not even like this is a massive issue in the game I referenced. Take fifteen minutes out of it for this sort of thing and it's not massively shorter. Another factor I forgot to mention: re-rolls upon re-rolls. If I have to make every other roll twice, it just drags out the game.

I should add that in spite of finding lots of things that hold up the game, I am not unhappy with game length in general. I'm not in a terrible hurry and rarely play a second game on the same day, so I don't need a game to go smoothly to get the most out of it. In fact, I prefer if there's time to talk and socialize beyond the strict confines of the game.

Rerolls do indeed add to the length of the game. I know all about disgusting amount of rerolls, as a filthy Guilliman player. But, mass rerolling does also cut down on the game length, as enemies are dying faster because your shooting and fighting is more effective. It's a bit of a give and take situation.

As for the fragmenting; I much prefer bespoke rules on the units sheets. Ork Boyz have +1 attack when they have 20+ models in a unit, and Ghazghkull near by is giving them +1 attack on the Charge. Two unit entries, rules right in the index. As opposed to reading up the rule entries, and seeing that Ork Boyz squad has a rule called, for the sake of arguement, Overwhelming Numbers, and Ghazghkull having a 6" Aura that grants friendly units Furious Charge. What do Overwhelming Numbers and Furious Charge do? Well, you'd better open up your BRB to double check, if you haven't memorized the specifics. So you flip to the USR's area, and read Furious charge, then go find Overwhelming Numbers.

7th Edition without memorizing; 2 different books to look up two Rules, taking more time to look
8th edition without memorizing; one book, two different pages for the unit entries and all their special rules right there.

If you fully memorize what every single unit does, then of course fragmented or otherwise, where the rules are don't matter. Until someone asks you to prove it. 8th Edition, you need one book. 7th, you need two books. Army book and Rule book to see what USRs you get, and to see what the USRs are.

Edit: the system of USRs for 7th Edition did have one advantage; You had one rule, that did the same thing for every unit in the game. Until a new Unit is released, mid-edition, with new special rules. Well, then the USRs aren't so Universal any more. They're also not nuanced, in the way that, as I read somewhere else on the forum, that an atomic system of rules would be.

It's not faster than 7th.

That's what we are finding as well. We all prefer 8th, and it's certainly MUCH easier to introduce new players to, but the "plays so much faster" promise hasn't really developed yet. As others have said, set-up takes the same amount of time, close combat often takes longer, and the re-rolls. My god the re-rolls. As an example, at a 1000pt tournament last weekend, I watched an Ultramarines player with multiple stacked re-roll auras take longer per turn than some of the Ork horde players.

!000point games with minimal non-game chatter appear to take around 2 hours. We have found though, that if we remove stratagems, that we can generally cut 20-30 minutes off of each game.

EDIT:
The other thing we've noticed is that since characters no longer "join" units, we tend to have more rolls and have to touch our models more times per turn. For example, my Vanguard vets w/jump captain and jump Chaplain used to be treated as one squad for the purposes of things like charging. Now though, it's three separate units with three separate movements, three separate advance rolls, three separate charges, etc etc. So that one "unit" now takes three times longer to use than it would have in previous editions ...

 Ratius wrote:
Depends on the number of beers consumed
But around 2-3 usually.

exactly this. Typically a game at 50PL takes us about 2hrs. 100PL is around 3hrs.

At 2k, about 2-3 hours.

I watched an Ultramarines player with multiple stacked re-roll auras take longer per turn than some of the Ork horde players.

That depresses me greatly. On several levels.

That depresses me greatly. On several levels.

Ditto - it got to the point where one of his opponents was so tired of watching him roll dice that he just started saying "lets just pretend you made it" whenever he missed a hit/damage roll. I can't blame him. After multiple turns of "I missed my to hit roll. Reroll from the LT. I missed my wound roll - reroll from the captian, I missed that. I play xyz stratagem to reroll. Now I roll to see if I get the CP back. I failed it - let me spend xyz stratagem to ..." it just got brutal.

Tycho wrote:

That depresses me greatly. On several levels.

Ditto - it got to the point where one of his opponents was so tired of watching him roll dice that he just started saying "lets just pretend you made it" whenever he missed a hit/damage roll. I can't blame him. After multiple turns of "I missed my to hit roll. Reroll from the LT. I missed my wound roll - reroll from the captian, I missed that. I play xyz stratagem to reroll. Now I roll to see if I get the CP back. I failed it - let me spend xyz stratagem to ..." it just got brutal.

I don't know if that's for dramatic effect or hyperbole, but if what you're saying is correct, and he kept rerolling and rerolling the same attack, then he was breaking a rule.

It's stated, quite clearly, that you may only reroll any given dice roll once. Even if you have a different effect (Captains Aura to reroll, and Scions of Guilliman stratagem to reroll) you can only reroll a given dice once. I play Ultramarines, and my rerolling nonsense doesn't, in my own opinion, take long. Not long when compared to Ork Horde movement and melee, but I digress.

You can only reroll any given dice roll once. Just because you have a Captain buffing a squad of Tacticals who are under the Scions of Guilliman Stratagem; you do not get to reroll the same dice twice. And just to continue being picky, the Captain rerolls 1s to hit, and the LT rerolls 1s to Wound, you got it backwards

But, I can get how it can be demoralizing to play against such excessive rerolling. Not as demoralizing as it is having to watch 30x4 Ork boyz advancing up and being carefully placed around and on terrain...

For me it seems to be about 3 hours to get in 5 turns of a 2,000 point game. That being said, most of our games so far (about 50 between 6 players) have been decided by turn 3 at the latest. 8th edition armies are a lot smaller than 7th, but they can put down a ton of firepower. Stuff dies so fast that by the second or third turn somebody is usually well on his way to being tabled.

way quicker now...

Although the game duration has decreased slightly, the fun has decreased significantly.

I don't know if that's for dramatic effect or hyperbole, but if what you're saying is correct, and he kept rerolling and rerolling the same attack, then he was breaking a rule.

Nope. What I said was that he had a to-hit reroll, a to-wound reroll, a strategem AND the Ultramarines ability (I think it's a warlord trait?) that let's you roll to see ig you get a command point back after using a stratagem. He also had a re-roll to-charge (which I think is where the first stratagem was being used). Now imagine that across something like 4 squads ...

I don't know the exact specifics except that it was a legal list and a legal use of the various abilities/stratagems (it was challeneged twice and reviewed pretty tightly).

You can only reroll any given dice roll once. Just because you have a Captain buffing a squad of Tacticals who are under the Scions of Guilliman Stratagem; you do not get to reroll the same dice twice. And just to continue being picky, the Captain rerolls 1s to hit, and the LT rerolls 1s to Wound, you got it backwards

Like I said in the original post and above - he didn't re-roll the same die over and over. He simply had a re-roll for literally everything in the CC stage of the game.

 Thadin wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
Yeah, no doubt. I just find 8th ed's formatting frustrating and unnecessarily fragmented.

And it's not even like this is a massive issue in the game I referenced. Take fifteen minutes out of it for this sort of thing and it's not massively shorter. Another factor I forgot to mention: re-rolls upon re-rolls. If I have to make every other roll twice, it just drags out the game.

I should add that in spite of finding lots of things that hold up the game, I am not unhappy with game length in general. I'm not in a terrible hurry and rarely play a second game on the same day, so I don't need a game to go smoothly to get the most out of it. In fact, I prefer if there's time to talk and socialize beyond the strict confines of the game.

Rerolls do indeed add to the length of the game. I know all about disgusting amount of rerolls, as a filthy Guilliman player. But, mass rerolling does also cut down on the game length, as enemies are dying faster because your shooting and fighting is more effective. It's a bit of a give and take situation.

As for the fragmenting; I much prefer bespoke rules on the units sheets. Ork Boyz have +1 attack when they have 20+ models in a unit, and Ghazghkull near by is giving them +1 attack on the Charge. Two unit entries, rules right in the index. As opposed to reading up the rule entries, and seeing that Ork Boyz squad has a rule called, for the sake of arguement, Overwhelming Numbers, and Ghazghkull having a 6" Aura that grants friendly units Furious Charge. What do Overwhelming Numbers and Furious Charge do? Well, you'd better open up your BRB to double check, if you haven't memorized the specifics. So you flip to the USR's area, and read Furious charge, then go find Overwhelming Numbers.

7th Edition without memorizing; 2 different books to look up two Rules, taking more time to look
8th edition without memorizing; one book, two different pages for the unit entries and all their special rules right there.

If you fully memorize what every single unit does, then of course fragmented or otherwise, where the rules are don't matter. Until someone asks you to prove it. 8th Edition, you need one book. 7th, you need two books. Army book and Rule book to see what USRs you get, and to see what the USRs are.

Edit: the system of USRs for 7th Edition did have one advantage; You had one rule, that did the same thing for every unit in the game. Until a new Unit is released, mid-edition, with new special rules. Well, then the USRs aren't so Universal any more. They're also not nuanced, in the way that, as I read somewhere else on the forum, that an atomic system of rules would be.

I'll quickly address the red part first, because there's really only one thing to say about that: GW designers being unable to write a rule set and stick with it is not a feature. It's a bug. A bug of monumental size and eons old.

With that out of the way, I certainly agree with you that it would be good to have all the rules for one unit on one unit page. But that's simply not the case. First, equipment options are so vast at times that only the default ones are listed. For everything else, you still have to look at another page. Then there is unit synergy, and you need to know what aura effects affect a unit, so you have to look on another page again. Psyker powers and relics are on different pages. Stratagems and Warlord Traits are on different pages, and even different books.

If you want to simplify and streamline, the ideal is you activate a unit, take out the unit sheet, and you actually have everything on that one page that you need. It's never been like this with GW, and it's still not the case. They just reshuffled everything and ended up with something that as far as I'm concerned is less ordered than what we had before.

Speaking of what we had before, while the topic is about 7th ed compared to 8th ed, personally I prefer not to compare a bogus edition with another bogus edition. That's just asking yourself to pick the bogus that irritates you the least. I'd rather look back at 3rd ed and 4th ed (actual streamlined editions to a point) and see what they did right. Simply put, most units in this game don't need their own special snowflake rules. Those Orks don't need an extra rule for their mob size. A character doesn't need his own special aura rule with different size and effect. You don't need re-rolls to increase hit chance with a separate roll when you could just roll it into the original profile with a better hit value.

It's a huge, missed opportunity on GW's part. They were so willing to throw out the old rule framework and implement a new one. And where are we now? Case in point, still in the same T3 to T8 range we've been since 1998.

If you fully memorize what every single unit does, then of course fragmented or otherwise, where the rules are don't matter. Until someone asks you to prove it. 8th Edition, you need one book. 7th, you need two books. Army book and Rule book to see what USRs you get, and to see what the USRs are.

I'll quickly address the red part first, because there's really only one thing to say about that: GW designers being unable to write a rule set and stick with it is not a feature. It's a bug. A bug of monumental size and eons old.

The one thing people seem to be overlooking is that, while on the surface, having a DG version of FnP and a renamed Blood Angel version that is nearly identical (IDK if BA have it - just an example) seems more complicated, it's actually clever. Previously, if we had a rule like FnP that was identically named and applied across multiple unit entries, but became too powerful on a few specific units, well, fixing that without breaking something else became problematic. Now for example, if it's determined that the DG version of it is too powerful (not that it is -again - just the easiest example I could think of), all they have to do is FAQ "Disgustingly Resilient" and they've fixed the broken unit with no worry of having unintended consequences across multiple other units.

table set up + list talk over + game + cleaning up + chit char 2,5 - 3 hours.
if filming a battle report, 4 hours max.
8th edition takes up less time then 7th has. which is quite good.

3 Hour Average for games around 75 to 100 Power lvl, however our club uses something around 40-50 Power Lvl more commonly.

2000 pt games;

Eternal War; We're cracking out a 2000 pter in about 1 1/2 hours now, from the moment we roll a mission until scoring at the end is finished

Maelstrom; Same scenario, but roughly 2 hours.

But at this point my core playgroup of 6 folks have the rules and stats memorized, with just a few exceptions to a new unit here or there, or just double checking do to a "no way it really does that...".

At 2000 points we took about 3-4 hours to play, including setup.

Tycho wrote:
Like I said in the original post and above - he didn't re-roll the same die over and over. He simply had a re-roll for literally everything in the CC stage of the game.

Which isn't a problem at all when you are playing with the rules regarding modifier order. It becomes a problem if you forget that rerolls occur before modifiers.

Things like Chaos Lords only reroll 1s. Things like Guilliman that reroll everything still only reroll mostly 1s and 2s in a Space Marine army. This is because Space Marines have a 3+ ballistic skill. If you are rerolling at the appropriate time, anything 3+ on the dice does not get a reroll. So moving and firing heavy weapons, for example, which would normally give you a -1 to hit for hitting would still miss on a roll of a 3 because you CANNOT reroll the 3 and it is nerfed by -1 to hit, becoming a 2.

It is very simple to get reroll auras. Other factions can do it easily with simultaneous buffs. Chaos can do it in the fight phase with Dark Apostle + Exalted Champion.

Guilliman just happens to be ludicrously powerful in that he can simulate the effects of multiple reroll auras by himself. For Ultramarines only.


We're getting similar level of insane reroll shooting once Ad Mech codex releases.

I think if it still takes awhile a big part of it might be how or what you play. I just did 8 matches at NOVA recently. 2.5 hours per match allotted. 7 of my matches ended with ,30-60 minutes to spare. One match we did 5 rounds in 50 minutes.

Only 1 match took too long and it was against Guard artillery spam.

They're maybe 20% faster. It isn't much but it gets maybe 1-2 games more in for a day, so I can't complain.

Games where both players know their rules well are about 15-20% faster than 1850 in 7th for me.

Games where both players haven't played their armies at all before are infinitely faster. Playing a game between 2 players popping down new armies takes 1.5 to 2 times longer than when the players are knowledgable in 8th; playing a game without having your codex AND the BRB memorized in 7th was fething impossible, you could play 12 hours and not be done picking psychic powers yet.

I find this all quite interesting. The wife and I just played a game, my Salamanders vs her Tyrnaids. I won with a single dreadnought left at the end of turn 4 vs her getting tabled, and it only had 4 wounds left, but it was that close. We played a 50 Pl game, her first building a list by herself, and it took us 3.5 hrs to play. Granted this is her 6th game of 40k, and there was a lot of rule lookup for her tyrnaids, but still when people say they played it in 2hrs I can't wait to get to that speed lol.

I bet most of these 2-hour-players are playing mostly shooty lists. Because once you take assault into the equation your 2 hours fly out the window.

Firstly because resolving assaults and activations etc takes its time, and secondly because threat radius of assault units is a thing that slows down movement because you just can't move wherever you want unless you want to get an axe to your face.

YMMV and I bet more casual players don't think these things so thoroughly during a game and that might speed things up. But if you have a more competitive mindset you will pay more attention to the little nuances and think your moves through. Which takes time, obviously.

 Weazel wrote:
I bet most of these 2-hour-players are playing mostly shooty lists. Because once you take assault into the equation your 2 hours fly out the window.

Firstly because resolving assaults and activations etc takes its time, and secondly because threat radius of assault units is a thing that slows down movement because you just can't move wherever you want unless you want to get an axe to your face.

YMMV and I bet more casual players don't think these things so thoroughly during a game and that might speed things up. But if you have a more competitive mindset you will pay more attention to the little nuances and think your moves through. Which takes time, obviously.

Assault does slow things down. Especially overwatch where you throw buckets of dice for little result.

Less. Can't quantify it as we tend to chat more. Certainly got through the game faster, including assault with 90 Boyz (well, 90 in turn one....)

I wonder if the improvement in game speed has been slightly mitigated by increasing the 'standard' game size from 1850 to 2000? I know a lot of costs did go up 7th to 8th, but most infantry didn't. I often play an all-infantry list, so I've generally got a bit more stuff on the board.

 Weazel wrote:
I bet most of these 2-hour-players are playing mostly shooty lists. Because once you take assault into the equation your 2 hours fly out the window.

Firstly because resolving assaults and activations etc takes its time, and secondly because threat radius of assault units is a thing that slows down movement because you just can't move wherever you want unless you want to get an axe to your face.

YMMV and I bet more casual players don't think these things so thoroughly during a game and that might speed things up. But if you have a more competitive mindset you will pay more attention to the little nuances and think your moves through. Which takes time, obviously.

Can't speak for the others, but my lists are predominantly assault based. Also, my experience is much different than this. My assault heavy games go significantly faster than the shooting heavy ones.

Which isn't a problem at all when you are playing with the rules regarding modifier order. It becomes a problem if you forget that rerolls occur before modifiers.

Things like Chaos Lords only reroll 1s. Things like Guilliman that reroll everything still only reroll mostly 1s and 2s in a Space Marine army. This is because Space Marines have a 3+ ballistic skill. If you are rerolling at the appropriate time, anything 3+ on the dice does not get a reroll. So moving and firing heavy weapons, for example, which would normally give you a -1 to hit for hitting would still miss on a roll of a 3 because you CANNOT reroll the 3 and it is nerfed by -1 to hit, becoming a 2.

It is very simple to get reroll auras. Other factions can do it easily with simultaneous buffs. Chaos can do it in the fight phase with Dark Apostle + Exalted Champion.

Guilliman just happens to be ludicrously powerful in that he can simulate the effects of multiple reroll auras by himself. For Ultramarines only.


We're getting similar level of insane reroll shooting once Ad Mech codex releases.

In the case of the Ultramarine player I mentioned, the modifiers were all applied in the correct order. It really doesn't matter. I'm not complaining about "power level" here. I'm saying there are too many re-rolls. You correctly point out that other armies also have stackable re-roll auras. IMO this is one of the bigger things keeping 8th ed from being the blazing fast game we were promised.

EDIT:

Just wanted to add, we all still feel it's a far more fun edition with way fewer problems. We just don't think it's as fast as what GW said it would be.