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Alex seems like a great guy.
The other chaps seems like a bit of a *expletive deleted*.

I've never seen someone enforce that kind of rule (especially after 'helping' with the deployment of the models) in order to win a game. Surely even the most competitive player doesn't want to win on a technicality?
Isn't competition about proving you are the best, not that you are capable of seizing on something to get a technical win without having to display any skill or good judgement?

Anyway, I don't know this Tony chap. He might be a lovely fellow, but that's not the side of him that came out on this day.
But I wonder if winning the game is worth the damage to his reputation?
.

Yeah, even though he brought it on himself and deserves it, I still feel bad for Tony. I just picture him sitting in a dark room reading all the LVO coverage like Greg Stillson at the end of The Dead Zone.

Good on Alex, but dear lord... One fething hour to take a single turn? This is why "I go with all my guys, you go with all yours" needs to be taken behind the shed and shot.

Judging by the support that Tony got on facebook and on BOLS comments about how thats how you're supposed to play when money is on the line, I'm betting Tony doesn't care what people think and will continue to waac when money is on the line.

Which is why money being on the line is a terrible thing IMO.

Back on 7th edition, I was one VP behind my opponent in turn 4. The game was timed and we had 40 minutes left. My opponent deliberately stalled through the entire turn when he realized I could come back and slay his warlord and get windbreaker as well as take an objective.

He literally stood there and grinned and said, "still not finished with my turn" and played with his phone.

Told the TO and he told the guy to end his turn or concede.

 auticus wrote:
Judging by the support that Tony got on facebook and on BOLS comments about how thats how you're supposed to play when money is on the line, I'm betting Tony doesn't care what people think and will continue to waac when money is on the line.

Which is why money being on the line is a terrible thing IMO.

If that is the case, screw him. And all the supporters. I didn't realize WH was big enough to support a "I am not a role model" movement for spankers and their groupies. Between this and some of the recent deleted threads, it's starting to feel like the hobby is full of angry, toxic people. Not a new revelation, I know.

I agree about money bringing out the worst in the hobby community.

 auticus wrote:
One of the big things holding back tournaments from being as big as they want to be is the poor sportsmanship and people not wanting to spend a weekend of their life playing WAAC Tonies.

I'm quite pleased at GW for illuminating the good sportsmanship, even if some people feel that it wasn't any big deal to continue the game.

I'm also curious to see if more live streaming starts curbing WAAC Tonies behavior or if it continues as it always has.

It would be far more beneficial then, for GW and the LVO to visibly punish (even if just by calling out and criticising) poor sportsmanship rather than praising and rewarding the 'good sportsmanship' of tolerating said poor sportsmanship.

I will have to admit... Playing for massive amounts of money is going to make things a bit different. All kinds of folks want to act like they would be any different, but put several grand on the line and you'd be shocked at what people will do.

For $100.00 of store credit I've seen people get cutthroat at the tables. When you put cash or prizes on the line you have to anticipate your opponent using every trick, exploit, and ruse imaginable.

You can call Tony a scumbag but I can easily say that very few gamers would he different for that kind of money. Money is the leading cause of divorce. It can turn family on one another. It can ruin friemdships.

I might be misanthropic about this, but a year ago I had a settlement pay out and came into a significant amount of money. I saw people show a nasty side of themselves over it.

One of the things they can adopt from CCG format games is that the main body of the event is timed but when it comes to the final playoffs for the top 4 they don't have a time limit, that tends to deter stalling. Also during the finals you can have "active judging" where the judges step in if anything is being misplayed or done out of sequence. Anyone in the finals should know the rules well enough but it helps keep game play more even keeled and keeps "slip ups" or accusations of cheating from happening which might favor or disfavor one of the players.

Another thing that can be adopted from CCGs is not trying to play 100% strictly by RAW. For example, in MTG the tournament rules explicitly acknowledge that players can and will take shortcuts with executing the details of game actions/phases. If there's a single creature on the table and no decisions to be made "swing for two, go" is often the result and the players will only go through the entire combat phase with all of its steps explicitly stated if someone wants to do something where the timing of it matters. Even with tens of thousands of dollars in cash prizes at stake people understand that formally executing every step of the game is a tedious slog, and it's ok to rush through the routine stuff where the details don't matter.

Apply this concept to 40k and the response by the TO is telling Tony to STFU and stop being a . The exact order of deployment had zero effect on the game state, and there is no rule preventing a player from placing a model on the table without deploying it ("I'm just setting this here so it's ready when it's time to deploy it"). Placing things out of order in that case is exactly the kind of shortcut that is allowed in MTG and the "mistake" was a failure to be excessively literal with announcing the order of every action rather than a legitimate bad decision. Trying to claim that taking shortcuts with the exact order of moving models means forfeiting your entire movement phase is on the level of "lol, you forgot to put a comma in that sentence, I WIN LOLOLOLOLOL" and no sane judge should ever have allowed it.

I think the most interesting here is our money grubbing souless explitive overlords who grind us into the dust and dumb down the game for every penny, giving away five grand to charitable causes.
Sure it's got them some good PR, but they could of done a lot of things to get good PR they've never bothered to do, much less giving away five grand.
Good on them.

The last torny I went to, I was down on VP, but my opponent only had a Captain and a Librarian left, the Librarian being at the other side of the board in the open. I had a gunline primarily of lascannon toting devastators, a Cannoess, and some SoB. There were seven minutes left on the clock till hard dice down as we entered his turn, and he spent five of those minutes debating if he should cast null zone with his librarian and might of heros on itself, despite being 20 inches away from any other models. Unsuprisingly, I didn't get to finish my own turn, and lost the match rather than tabling him.

I did at least get to kill the Librarian with a lascannon, though.

Puzzling why people aren’t using proper chess clocks in tournaments if you have a game where there are known delaying tactics that cause problems. Seems a must where prizes are a stake.

Well done on the charity donation by the player.

 notprop wrote:
Puzzling why people aren’t using proper chess clocks in tournaments if you have a game where there are known delaying tactics that cause problems. Seems a must where prizes are a stake.

Because chess clocks don't work in 40k. There are too many ways to waste time during your opponent's turn (slowly rolling saves, demanding lots of LOS checks, etc), and by the time you have a clock system that is correctly tracking which player is spending time you've created something that's more trouble than it's worth and probably slows the game down worse than not having clocks.

 Peregrine wrote:

 notprop wrote:
Puzzling why people aren’t using proper chess clocks in tournaments if you have a game where there are known delaying tactics that cause problems. Seems a must where prizes are a stake.

Because chess clocks don't work in 40k. There are too many ways to waste time during your opponent's turn (slowly rolling saves, demanding lots of LOS checks, etc), and by the time you have a clock system that is correctly tracking which player is spending time you've created something that's more trouble than it's worth and probably slows the game down worse than not having clocks.

I've played with chess clocks at a high level and there is literally no issue. Granted it takes a bit of a spine but if there are a lot of saves you click over to him or if he's taking to long. If he's arguing tell him you'll switch the clock to him. If he's demanding tons of LoS checks then advise that comes out of his time. It's not hard to manage at all but does require a bit of resilience. I don't think everyone needs them. But I think that people should have to play with them if their opponents want to. Because just pulling one out or a timesheet out seems to make slow play issues disappear.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 auticus wrote:
One of the big things holding back tournaments from being as big as they want to be is the poor sportsmanship and people not wanting to spend a weekend of their life playing WAAC Tonies.

I'm quite pleased at GW for illuminating the good sportsmanship, even if some people feel that it wasn't any big deal to continue the game.

I'm also curious to see if more live streaming starts curbing WAAC Tonies behavior or if it continues as it always has.

It would be far more beneficial then, for GW and the LVO to visibly punish (even if just by calling out and criticising) poor sportsmanship rather than praising and rewarding the 'good sportsmanship' of tolerating said poor sportsmanship.

This is really just one big hot mess. It's good for more people to get a good look behind the tournament façade.

At least he gave the money away. I wish I got paid for not knowing the rules.

 Hulksmash wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 notprop wrote:
Puzzling why people aren’t using proper chess clocks in tournaments if you have a game where there are known delaying tactics that cause problems. Seems a must where prizes are a stake.

Because chess clocks don't work in 40k. There are too many ways to waste time during your opponent's turn (slowly rolling saves, demanding lots of LOS checks, etc), and by the time you have a clock system that is correctly tracking which player is spending time you've created something that's more trouble than it's worth and probably slows the game down worse than not having clocks.

I've played with chess clocks at a high level and there is literally no issue. Granted it takes a bit of a spine but if there are a lot of saves you click over to him or if he's taking to long. If he's arguing tell him you'll switch the clock to him. If he's demanding tons of LoS checks then advise that comes out of his time. It's not hard to manage at all but does require a bit of resilience. I don't think everyone needs them. But I think that people should have to play with them if their opponents want to. Because just pulling one out or a timesheet out seems to make slow play issues disappear.

Agreed, I really haven't had any problems with chess clocks in various systems. I haven't done it in 40k or AOS yet, but did plenty in Warmachine/Hordes and Wild West Exodus and other games, and you can hit similar nitpicking/arguing/stalling tactics. If your opponent starts taking extra time during your turn, you tap the clock and let it eat out of their time. If it's something you need to call a judge over on, you pause the whole thing (usually). Once you've played a couple games this way, it literally becomes no issue if you're not trying to be a douchecanoe in the first place. The hardest thing, in my experience, is just getting used to remembering to tap the clock, but that only takes a couple of games and becomes second nature for everyone I've seen or played with that did chess clocks.

 Hulksmash wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 notprop wrote:
Puzzling why people aren’t using proper chess clocks in tournaments if you have a game where there are known delaying tactics that cause problems. Seems a must where prizes are a stake.

Because chess clocks don't work in 40k. There are too many ways to waste time during your opponent's turn (slowly rolling saves, demanding lots of LOS checks, etc), and by the time you have a clock system that is correctly tracking which player is spending time you've created something that's more trouble than it's worth and probably slows the game down worse than not having clocks.

I've played with chess clocks at a high level and there is literally no issue. Granted it takes a bit of a spine but if there are a lot of saves you click over to him or if he's taking to long. If he's arguing tell him you'll switch the clock to him. If he's demanding tons of LoS checks then advise that comes out of his time. It's not hard to manage at all but does require a bit of resilience. I don't think everyone needs them. But I think that people should have to play with them if their opponents want to. Because just pulling one out or a timesheet out seems to make slow play issues disappear.

Hulksmash, 40k? I'm comfortable and familiar with clocks in warmachine. I
haven't heard of anyone using them in 40k. I think what makes it work in
Warmachine is that it's become ubiquitous. We don't just wait until Finals
rounds to bust out chess clocks. Everyone just uses them for locals and
even in practice. I think the only times I see clock mistakes happen now
are when people are in new situations (first time cons, first time tournaments,
first time with/against specific armies, etc)

 Bossk_Hogg wrote:
Good on Alex, but dear lord... One fething hour to take a single turn? This is why "I go with all my guys, you go with all yours" needs to be taken behind the shed and shot.

That would mean then they would take something ridiculous like half an hour for his first unit.

Just wait 'till somebody comes into game he figures he can't win anyway so minimizes losses by spending entire game time on his first turn.

I know I wont be "donating" my hard earned money to any of these national events.

Not impressed and not surprised.

Makes me wonder how many of these players are "comp'd". Travel, rooms, fees, etc...

 Valander wrote:
I haven't done it in 40k or AOS yet, but did plenty in Warmachine/Hordes and Wild West Exodus and other games, and you can hit similar nitpicking/arguing/stalling tactics.

The difference, as I understand it, is that WM/H has non-interactive turns. If it's your turn you activate your models, roll your dice, and generate the results. Your opponent doesn't have to do anything during your turn. So if it's your turn you are the only player active, and your clock is clearly the clock that should be running. But with 40k you have a lot of back and forth during a player's turn, and the fact that it's my turn doesn't necessarily mean that I'm the one doing something.

If your opponent starts taking extra time during your turn, you tap the clock and let it eat out of their time.

What will happen there: no, cheater. *slow player hits the clock again and gives it back to the opponent*

For a clock system to work which clock is running needs to be an objective fact that can not be disputed. If there's a situation where a player makes a judgement call and decides "your clock should run, not mine" then it doesn't work. It just generates arguments over whether the clock should be passed or not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hulksmash wrote:
Granted it takes a bit of a spine but if there are a lot of saves you click over to him or if he's taking to long.

Define "too long". And do it in indisputable terms, such that the slow player can't respond with "I'm not taking too long, stop trying to pause your clock" and refuse to let you clock over to him.

If he's demanding tons of LoS checks then advise that comes out of his time.

Then you get the opposite problem: all of my units have LOS at all times, even if it means shooting through a solid wall. Want to dispute this? Better be prepared to spend your clock time to check LOS, and I'm going to make sure that I refuse to accept your check unless you spend a lot of clock time demonstrating it beyond any possible doubt. And then I'm immediately going to make a similar LOS claim with my next unit and force you to spend clock time again. Unless you just want to assume that there is no terrain on the table for my units, and I always have clear shots?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Valander wrote:
I haven't done it in 40k or AOS yet, but did plenty in Warmachine/Hordes and Wild West Exodus and other games, and you can hit similar nitpicking/arguing/stalling tactics.

The difference, as I understand it, is that WM/H has non-interactive turns. If it's your turn you activate your models, roll your dice, and generate the results. Your opponent doesn't have to do anything during your turn. So if it's your turn you are the only player active, and your clock is clearly the clock that should be running. But with 40k you have a lot of back and forth during a player's turn, and the fact that it's my turn doesn't necessarily mean that I'm the one doing something.

No. Warmachine has loads of stuff your opponent does outside of their turn. Tough rolls, counter-charges, reactive movement, models that hit back when hit just as a few examples.

A lot of the problems you list with chess clocks are easily splved by pausing the clock and calling a TO. If someone os being awkward about LoS to stall, call a judge to decide if it has LoS. If the problem persists the judge will tell the player to knock it off.

You're making this far more complicated than it is in order to formulate an argument.

 Sim-Life wrote:
You're making this far more complicated than it is in order to formulate an argument.

No, I'm pointing out the ways that TFG is going to try to break the system. Obviously a chess clock works fine if you're dealing with reasonable people, but with reasonable people you don't need a chess clock because they aren't slow playing to exploit the time limit.

Boils down thusly.

Turn structure doesn't enable or prevent slow play, no matter how it actually works.

Someone intent on playing for time will always play for time, if that's a standard tactic of theirs.

If they dither in the 40k method, where you work out your force as a whole, or in the Warmahordes method, they're still going to dither if they see advantage in doing so.

I've seen people draw out turns by not batch rolling. Now, fair enough if there's differing results needed. But when it's all say, 4+ to hit with 60 shots, and they insist on rolling one at a time? Well, there's nothing in the rules about doing it that way.

I've seen people dither with actually rolling the dice, just holding them in their upturned hand, shaking it for a good minute or two.

I've seen people on batch rolls group the dice into like results, then remove their failed rolls.

And I'm afraid to say that it's the inherent time limitation of tournament play that's the main cause here. When we're playing at home or in a club, we can be a bit more elastic with time if planned properly. That means less incentive to slow play your opponent. But when you've got a distinctly finite time to get things wrapped up in, there's a bigger incentive to do so.

Sure, it's not cheating. The rules don't say 'crash through your turns, quick as you can'. But it is absolutely, 100% pee poor sportsmanship to do so. It's not an advantage brought by cunning manoeuvre, or a carefully crafted list. It's just mucking about so your opponent misses any and all chance to react.

It ain't the game, whatever it is. It's the player.

Addendum - I was thinking X-Wing is perhaps somewhat immune to slow play. After all, your actions are set once the Disco Biscuits go down. But then....you can always faff about in the Disco Biscuit placement phase.

The point of chess clocks in they provide an extra mechanism for catching this kind of thing. Does it eliminate 100% of the problems? No, of course not. It does solve some of them, though, such as the lengthy first turn Tony took in the game in question. If someone is intent on playing for time we can create systems that make that very difficult, which is a far cry from what we have now.

It's also important to realise that just introducing chess clocks isn't a magic bullet. You need proper, enforceable rules for what constitutes time-wasting, clock abuse etc. Even without chess clocks a lot of the problems people are highlighting here could have been dealt with by having proper rules in place for time wasting and judges willing to enforce them. I think the fact a time limit was introduced for the final at the LVO shows the organisers/judges were aware of the problem. Not dealing with it in the semi final was a mistake, IMO, but I'm not sure how much scrutiny there was of that game at the time.

But what of someone playing an infantry heavy army, such as foot slogging Orks, Guard or a small bug based Nid horde?

Their turns are naturally going to take longer, because they've simply got more to do.

Compare their expected turn duration to say, that of my Adeptus Custardcreams (mmmm....Custard Creams). I've got maybe a couple of dozen models at most, so my turn is going to be inevitably swift, unless for some reason I've decided to be a poor sport and go for maximum faffage.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But then....you can always faff about in the Disco Biscuit placement phase.

Yeah just stall until game ends if it's good for you. Say you either are going to lose anyway so ending game now means smaller loss or you are slightly ahead but know you would lose if it continues...Say in 40k tournament you know odds of avoiding massacre loss is so close to 0% as to make the(still possible technically) >0% chance you don't get wiped. You get first turn. If scenario has first blood you take it and then for rest of your turn you stall until time's up. Opponent didn't even get a turn and lost by first blood...

Extreme example but technically possible if player feels so inclined...

Though for orks etc time limits then needs to be set up long enough you can realistically play game with those as well. Decreasing game size if extending round length isn't possible.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But what of someone playing an infantry heavy army, such as foot slogging Orks, Guard or a small bug based Nid horde?

Their turns are naturally going to take longer, because they've simply got more to do.

Compare their expected turn duration to say, that of my Adeptus Custardcreams (mmmm....Custard Creams). I've got maybe a couple of dozen models at most, so my turn is going to be inevitably swift, unless for some reason I've decided to be a poor sport and go for maximum faffage.

The entire point of a tournament game is that each player competes as equally as possible on the table. How is it fair that you get to monopolise the game time because of your army choice? You know the tournament rules beforehand so you have to tailor your army selection to those rules. If your army takes so long to play that you're effectively stealing time from your opponent it's you that need to adjust. That's not exactly a new concept. Also (and I don't know why this has to keep being repeated) simply introducing chess clocks doesn't fix everything on the spot. We still need to determine what an appropriate length of time for a tournament game of a certain points level should be. This shouldn't be punishing for players who take large model count armies but at some point it may indeed become a consideration in army selection. AFAICT WM/H, which uses a chess clock system, doesn't exclude horde-style armies other than possible in the most extreme of cases.

Having a smaller army with fewer decisions is actually a valid meta choice for long tournaments anyway. I've rejected quite a few lists for X-Wing tournaments, for example, because playing 6-8 games with a complex, multi-ship list that relies on precise manoeuvring and forces lots of critical decisions over the course of a game is something that's very difficult to run after 5 or 6 games in a day. The list itself may be good but the fatigue of playing it can make it worse than it actually is the deeper you go into a tournament,

Indeed.

There may well be a hypothetical 'perfect system' which could eradicate or seriously discourage playing for time.

Tournaments, as mentioned, heighten the appeal because there are necessary, unavoidable time limits to get the games done in. I understand a common rule is 'no half turns', which helps somewhat. Certainly, it prevents me having the final say if I went first, as you're guaranteed your player turn.

Already, those make certain army builds ill advised or outright undesirable - an all infantry Ork army for instance. Even playing with alacrity, your turns are gonna take a while. And when you need to be getting up close and personal wiv da ol' boot levva, that's just not gonna work. Whether or not the army itself is flawed (different topic, I'm just working with a clear example, making no judgement), you're instantly at a disadvantage tactically to a shooty army. Not only are their turns gonna be shorter, but they can hammer away at units to bag First Blood and possibly Kill The Warlord, bagging VPs far earlier than you're realistically able to. All they need to do is fall back from your advance for a turn or two to really compound things.

But when someone does it from the get-go? That's not a flaw in the game I'd say, just that specific player.

Pretty sure Clocks are not the answer to counter durdling, like Docs pointed out the massive variable in model count where a 2000pf list can vary from under 10 to over 200, and the even huger swing in dice chucking

Games the do use clocks usually top out at the 40-50 model mark and generally have little to no interaction from the inactive player

You could most likely teach 40k players to clock but the lack of crystal clear, non-abusable rules and player resistance suggest its wasted effort

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Pretty sure Clocks are not the answer to counter durdling, like Docs pointed out the massive variable in model count where a 2000pf list can vary from under 10 to over 200, and the even huger swing in dice chucking

Games the do use clocks usually top out at the 40-50 model mark and generally have little to no interaction from the inactive player

You could most likely teach 40k players to clock but the lack of crystal clear, non-abusable rules and player resistance suggest its wasted effort

Well yes the time available for each player would need to be assigned so that it works with horde armies. But at least then it prevents one player from eating whole game time either getting win that way(his army would lose if game goes more than 2-3 turns) or forcing enemy to do mistake.

Instead if somebody deliberately wastes 1h on 1st turn(ridiculous) all he archieves is making his remaining turns be very short or risk losing by clock.

Problem is going to be to figure how much time horde armies need for selected game size or should game size be dropped.