Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Marmatag wrote:
The current standard already punishes horde armies. There is no reason to punish them further.

The example of slowplaying was someone playing an army that is FAST TO PLAY. Not a horde. Seriously you guys are trying to create rules to stop slowplaying but in doing so you'd ruin Orks, Tyranids.

You want to solve the slowplaying problem? Have judges enforce the rule. End of story.

Well there's two slow play problems. There is intentional slow play, which we can fix with judicial enforcement of current rules, but then there's also unintentional slow play. Allowing horde armies to just swallow everyone else's time in each match is, arguably, as unfair to elite armies like Custodes and Imperial Knights as clocking would be to horde armies.

As a horde army myself playing mostly ork boys now I will say as long as you prepare you can knock out movement quick and I often run 200+ boys in a list. cut a small ruler or stick at ~4 inches so you touch the base and move the base to the front of the stick. adjust based on base size and then just lay down said flat stick (coffee stirrers work great too, even wood glue on another so you have a handle) and it takes only a second or 2 per boy. you can also pre count some dice. I keep out 72 (2 bricks) on the table constantly reverting them into groups of 5. if my opponent is ok I roll their successful wounds as saves and they roll my successful wounds dice as saves too.

the biggest time sinks I see are on the table are indecisive players waffling on everything. the "I moved that and that and that... and shot that and that and still have to shoot this and this...

 G00fySmiley wrote:
As a horde army myself playing mostly ork boys now I will say as long as you prepare you can knock out movement quick and I often run 200+ boys in a list. cut a small ruler or stick at ~4 inches so you touch the base and move the base to the front of the stick. adjust based on base size and then just lay down said flat stick (coffee stirrers work great too, even wood glue on another so you have a handle) and it takes only a second or 2 per boy. you can also pre count some dice. I keep out 72 (2 bricks) on the table constantly reverting them into groups of 5. if my opponent is ok I roll their successful wounds as saves and they roll my successful wounds dice as saves too.

the biggest time sinks I see are on the table are indecisive players waffling on everything. the "I moved that and that and that... and shot that and that and still have to shoot this and this...

This is what I'm talking about. Experienced Horde players know how to move their models quickly. I started playing 40K with Nids and quickly learned how to make my turns happen quickly (often quicker than many of my Marine opponent's turns)

So I agree with G00fysmiley: The biggest time sinks are indecisive players, NOT necessarily players with lots of models.

So really, slow play comes from 2 sources: Inexperienced players, or TFG.

-

Audustum wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
The current standard already punishes horde armies. There is no reason to punish them further.

The example of slowplaying was someone playing an army that is FAST TO PLAY. Not a horde. Seriously you guys are trying to create rules to stop slowplaying but in doing so you'd ruin Orks, Tyranids.

You want to solve the slowplaying problem? Have judges enforce the rule. End of story.

Well there's two slow play problems. There is intentional slow play, which we can fix with judicial enforcement of current rules, but then there's also unintentional slow play. Allowing horde armies to just swallow everyone else's time in each match is, arguably, as unfair to elite armies like Custodes and Imperial Knights as clocking would be to horde armies.

Fairness is equality. Equality of time in this case. Both sides having even time is not unfair to anyone. If playing a horde army is disadvantageous for players - it is a choice they are making in army design . If the strategy suffers because it can't be played as quickly as a smaller army - switch your strategy. Otherwise - up your game - play faster - horde armies should not be entitled to more play time because their army takes a long time to play.

One could make the same argument about army choice in general.

"Oh, yeah, warhammer 40k is super balanced. Of course, you have to make the right listbuilding choices, like don't play anyone that's not Eldar, but what can you expect - taking anything but Eldar means your strategy suffers, and that's fine."

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
One could make the same argument about army choice in general.

"Oh, yeah, warhammer 40k is super balanced. Of course, you have to make the right listbuilding choices, like don't play anyone that's not Eldar, but what can you expect - taking anything but Eldar means your strategy suffers, and that's fine."

Well kind of, kind of not. His underlying premise was "equality is fairness". Thus, time should be equal to be fair. Similarly, Codices should be equal to be fair.

Audustum wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
One could make the same argument about army choice in general.

"Oh, yeah, warhammer 40k is super balanced. Of course, you have to make the right listbuilding choices, like don't play anyone that's not Eldar, but what can you expect - taking anything but Eldar means your strategy suffers, and that's fine."

Well kind of, kind of not. His underlying premise was "equality is fairness". Thus, time should be equal to be fair. Similarly, Codices should be equal to be fair.

Except equality is demonstrably not fairness (in this situation), so now that that premise has been disproven, the only fall back is "don't play the army".

So I'm just going off of that fallback position, assuming the original position ("equal time is fair for everyone") was untenable, because it is.

Cool list. I read the first page, but I am not reading 18 pages, I'll just ask.

How where the GSC lists?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
One could make the same argument about army choice in general.

"Oh, yeah, warhammer 40k is super balanced. Of course, you have to make the right listbuilding choices, like don't play anyone that's not Eldar, but what can you expect - taking anything but Eldar means your strategy suffers, and that's fine."

Well kind of, kind of not. His underlying premise was "equality is fairness". Thus, time should be equal to be fair. Similarly, Codices should be equal to be fair.

Except equality is demonstrably not fairness (in this situation), so now that that premise has been disproven, the only fall back is "don't play the army".

So I'm just going off of that fallback position, assuming the original position ("equal time is fair for everyone") was untenable, because it is.

Well, no again. The Codices are imbalanced but that just means we need to take measures to balance them, much like we need to take measures to fix issues with games not finishing in time.

Do you think going back down to 1750 points would make games last more or fewer turns?

 Galef wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
As a horde army myself playing mostly ork boys now I will say as long as you prepare you can knock out movement quick and I often run 200+ boys in a list. cut a small ruler or stick at ~4 inches so you touch the base and move the base to the front of the stick. adjust based on base size and then just lay down said flat stick (coffee stirrers work great too, even wood glue on another so you have a handle) and it takes only a second or 2 per boy. you can also pre count some dice. I keep out 72 (2 bricks) on the table constantly reverting them into groups of 5. if my opponent is ok I roll their successful wounds as saves and they roll my successful wounds dice as saves too.

the biggest time sinks I see are on the table are indecisive players waffling on everything. the "I moved that and that and that... and shot that and that and still have to shoot this and this...

This is what I'm talking about. Experienced Horde players know how to move their models quickly. I started playing 40K with Nids and quickly learned how to make my turns happen quickly (often quicker than many of my Marine opponent's turns)

So I agree with G00fysmiley: The biggest time sinks are indecisive players, NOT necessarily players with lots of models.

So really, slow play comes from 2 sources: Inexperienced players, or TFG.

-

Indeed and I find indecisive players are also suitable motivated by having their clock tick down while they can't make up their mind.

 Niiai wrote:
Cool list. I read the first page, but I am not reading 18 pages, I'll just ask.

How where the GSC lists?

31
59
92
109
119
328

 Xenomancers wrote:

Fairness is equality. Equality of time in this case. Both sides having even time is not unfair to anyone. If playing a horde army is disadvantageous for players - it is a choice they are making in army design . If the strategy suffers because it can't be played as quickly as a smaller army - switch your strategy. Otherwise - up your game - play faster - horde armies should not be entitled to more play time because their army takes a long time to play.

You are basically advocating banning entire armies because tounament organizers can't be bothered to allocate reasonable time to all armies when GW has designed game so that certain armies ARE REQUIRED to horde it up to chance any chance of not getting T1 stomped.

On the subject of soup, the new squat design has interesting potential for Xenos soup...

tneva82 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Fairness is equality. Equality of time in this case. Both sides having even time is not unfair to anyone. If playing a horde army is disadvantageous for players - it is a choice they are making in army design . If the strategy suffers because it can't be played as quickly as a smaller army - switch your strategy. Otherwise - up your game - play faster - horde armies should not be entitled to more play time because their army takes a long time to play.

You are basically advocating banning entire armies because tounament organizers can't be bothered to allocate reasonable time to all armies when GW has designed game so that certain armies ARE REQUIRED to horde it up to chance any chance of not getting T1 stomped.

I am not opposed to increasing the time limits for a torny game - honestly I think that is a great idea. The time limit should be monitored though - and rules against slowplay enforced.

4 hour games are never going to happen. Not just because a 2/4 round event is super lame.
You have to keep in mind that, even if 25% of games arent finishing naturally, that means 75% are. Many of them are over in half the time or less You have to be fair to those players as well. Making them sit around for another hour just so the slowest 2 players can finish is not on. The event cant be organised to accommodate the 2 slowest players with the 2 slowest armies at the expense of (in LVOs case) 500 other people. At some point it becomes your responsibility as a player to ensure you can use your army.

The big thing making games still slow is points values. At 1850 in 7th time was an issue: but when 8th hit we immediately upped points values while simultaneously switching to a rules set that encouraged more, cheaper, infantry. Go to 1500pts instead; thats the value we've been using locally for the last few events and most people are finishing games in the 2:15 time frame.

Side note re chess clocks: I dont really like them for reasons indicated below, but if you do want them, cost isnt an object. Any smartphone can download a dozen chess clock apps, and i highly doubt that in our extremely expensive hobby where you can get a phone for less than the cost of many characters that asking one of the pair to have a phone is a big imposition.

One thing that i have noticed is that combat armies make the game take longer. I recently used a combat force with a chess clock. My games generally timed out on T4, whereas all 4 of my opponents finished their other 3 games naturally. But on the chess clock in my games, both of us were using similar amounts of time and in some cases my opponent was using much more!
I think that comes down to a few factors:
- a shooty v shooty force only really has 2-3 phases - move (maybe psychic) shoot. Hell I know people who skip the move part too. A combat v shooty force has 7: move, psychic, a little shooting, charge, overwatch, my fight, your fight.
- combat quadruples up on one of the longest parts of the game- moving models. Move, charge, pile in, consolidate. As much as i would like to use movement trays, there are enormous advantages to gain if you know how to pile in properly.
I'm not saying that people should avoid combat armies. Just pointing out that in 40k, unlike chess or warmachine, you have many ways of making your opponent take longer to play their army and as such chess clocks are a little unfair.

Tldr: only way for quicker games is lower points

You could probably get away with only adding half an hour, because the game are about 25% too slow so adding 25% more time should balance it out. Still that's a huge amount of additional time in the average tournament day, instead of ending at 5pm you get out at about 7pm.

Given the additional costs and wear and tear on volunteers, I'm sure ITC would much rather play at lower points than try longer days. I just don't get why there is so much resistance to dropping points, a year ago we were doing 1850, and before that we were doing 1999. So it's not like this is the first time dropping points to better fit in with time limitations.

I don't believe there is a time problem in the first place.

This whole discussion is predicated on everyone agreeing that we need to see longer games (turn wise). I do not agree. Making it to turn 3 at least in virtually every game is enough. Turn 5 is not required for a good game.

I'm not into torunaments but one thing interests me: are 3 hours of game not enough? I usually play the 2000 points format and pretty much all my games end within 3 hours.

Even when I play footslogging orks, with 200+ bodies, since you won't roll many dice in turns 1-2 because you're basically just move models.

Gunlines like guilliman's one and IG are way slower to play with, that's my experience. Rolling tons of dice require more time than moving infantries.

 Marmatag wrote:
I don't believe there is a time problem in the first place.

This whole discussion is predicated on everyone agreeing that we need to see longer games (turn wise). I do not agree. Making it to turn 3 at least in virtually every game is enough. Turn 5 is not required for a good game.

Turn 3 isn't even generally enough for basic infantry to reach opponents DZ without gimmicks often. 3 turns is laughably little. And 40k rules generally assume 5-7 turn games...

It's like going to gas station, paying for 40$ gas and getting only 25$ worth of it.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


There's really no indication that mono-faction armies have weaknesses anymore.

as a Tau player, show me my psykers/assault units, please.

 soundwave591 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


There's really no indication that mono-faction armies have weaknesses anymore.

as a Tau player, show me my psykers/assault units, please.

Assault = Kroot, no?

Martel732 wrote:
They don't know what to hit until it has been abused. Pretty obvious to me. There are no "underlying issues", just miscosted units.

The only underlying issue: bland core rules.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

 soundwave591 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


There's really no indication that mono-faction armies have weaknesses anymore.

as a Tau player, show me my psykers/assault units, please.

Assault = Kroot, no?

Even Kroot shoot better than they fight... maybe shield drones? Though it would be silly to choose either for their melee ability, neither is really an assault unit.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

 soundwave591 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


There's really no indication that mono-faction armies have weaknesses anymore.

as a Tau player, show me my psykers/assault units, please.

Assault = Kroot, no?

...have you assaulted Kroot? no is exactly the answer to your question.
also what about psykers? I have no defense to psykic powers

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


There's really no indication that mono-faction armies have weaknesses anymore.

There is only 1 codex that can say that with certainty IG, and 1 that comes close CWE. I ususally agree with you but this is bollocks.

Soup will have the inherant advantage of choice with imperium being te most extreme. If there is something OP there is 50/50 chance it's somewhere in the imperium line up.
I think matched play should either not have the restriction of 1 key word across the entire army or the imlperium ,and potentially Chaos/Aeldari.

In this scenario Ynnarri should be relegated mostly to narrative. With the triumviriate having a special rule that allows them to be part of separate CWE/ DE/Harlie armies.
A similiar solution could be used for inquisition.

SAme for codex vs index. Even if the stratagems ina codex are useless 80% of the time the remaining 20 will give a big inherent advantage to codex. Al these things add sufficiently for a tournament enviroment to make index only practically inviable as a top list.

 Blackie wrote:
I'm not into torunaments but one thing interests me: are 3 hours of game not enough? I usually play the 2000 points format and pretty much all my games end within 3 hours.

Even when I play footslogging orks, with 200+ bodies, since you won't roll many dice in turns 1-2 because you're basically just move models.

Gunlines like guilliman's one and IG are way slower to play with, that's my experience. Rolling tons of dice require more time than moving infantries.

It is an issue at tournaments for a number of reasons. People are rolling a ton of dice turns 1 and 2, in fact those are by far the slowest turns in competitive play because after that most things are dead. Further sometimes that time includes players finding their pairings and table, moving stuff, reviewing lists.

So flashy, complicated rules are going to make balance easier?

 Marmatag wrote:
I don't believe there is a time problem in the first place.

This whole discussion is predicated on everyone agreeing that we need to see longer games (turn wise). I do not agree. Making it to turn 3 at least in virtually every game is enough. Turn 5 is not required for a good game.

It's not particularly well written, but in terms of any evidence of games not finishing, BoK has some words

There was also the first rumblings of slow play starting to bubble up; as top players made it into the deeper rounds, not so much on the skill of play, but on the time of clocks. Worse, one of the slowest and terrible games was streamed on Twitch getting through only turn two. By Saturday, it seemed that any game involving Eldar or Imperial soup could only get to turn three at most in 2.5 hours. Including player options to play into lunches and breaks. By round six the top 20 players I guess had at least half their games not come natural conclusion and ones that did were mostly because of tablings.

 mugginns wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I don't believe there is a time problem in the first place.

This whole discussion is predicated on everyone agreeing that we need to see longer games (turn wise). I do not agree. Making it to turn 3 at least in virtually every game is enough. Turn 5 is not required for a good game.

It's not particularly well written, but in terms of any evidence of games not finishing, BoK has some words

There was also the first rumblings of slow play starting to bubble up; as top players made it into the deeper rounds, not so much on the skill of play, but on the time of clocks. Worse, one of the slowest and terrible games was streamed on Twitch getting through only turn two. By Saturday, it seemed that any game involving Eldar or Imperial soup could only get to turn three at most in 2.5 hours. Including player options to play into lunches and breaks. By round six the top 20 players I guess had at least half their games not come natural conclusion and ones that did were mostly because of tablings.

I love how that articles account of the semi finals focuses on how both players helped eachother play fast. Completely ignoring that Tony took over an hour for his turn 1. Something he managed to do in just over 20min when confronted with a judge and a stopwatch.