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How do you guys handle games that dont finish in the time allotment?

Just curious what most people do as i played 3 games over weekend and had opponents say both ways.

The game ends, period. "Talking it through" is cheating and collusion and should get you kicked out of the event and blacklisted from competitive play.

Removed

I don't go to tournaments but at narrative events, the other player and I usually roughly guess how long it would take to finish a game when we're given a time warning.
If one player has taken a particular beating we usually call it but don't log it as a concession because it's agreed by both sides that the game wouldn't be fun to continue. I've both offered to call a game and had the offer myself and IMO it helps to keep things on a good level. I've only had two games where someone has forced a continuation despite playing Iron Warriors in HH1 where they could have forced it as per the rules.

depends on the game, FoW v3 had a semi decent system, "there are now draws" victory condition no met is a drawer

also games were seldom fixed length and only had a single game time out in a few years of event playing.

a tournament system needs to address how to handle this in its design, and you need adjudicators who are on the ball with regard to deliberate slow play

for casual games its not uncommon here to look at the table and work out whats likely to happen, usually without much fuss

I'm not sure how you score points after the time limit is up. Why should players be allowed to get points for turns they haven't played. This is a failure of the tournament format where a win loose or draw scoring would imop sort things out better. If you need those points for your standing, play faster? Finish Games? Or live with the points you earned and tray again next time? This question should be addressed by the TO ahead of time.

The whole "talk about what MIGHT have happened" is IMHO just ridiculous and gamey. That's how you get gak like that one tournament where the guy conceded before even playing a round because they "discussed" what would be done and probability said XYZ would happen.

It seems like any decently run tournament should lay out the procedure ahead of time for how to score games that end on time.

The small local ones I’ve gone to in the past always just count victory at the end of the last round played.

For fun non-competitive games that we needed to end early, we usually discuss the “what ifs” as we are packing up. If we had gone another round would it have changed anything? Have a chat about what could have been, what it would have taken for the results to flip, etc.

If one person at a tournament is doing it I'd expect everyone to do it and a judge to go in and determine points if the players cannot come to consensus on the remaining turns. The alternative is having a chess clock or potentially being punished for your opponent being slow or being rewarded for playing slow yourself. The real question is whether you use chess clocks or you talk out the turns you haven't played. I talk out my casual games when the game peters out. If you're not going to win anything by shooting your lasguns at your opponents tank turn 5 and your opponent wants to go then there's no reason to roll it. Inventing rolls I'm very iffy on, but you can get a lot done in 10 minutes if you don't exactly measure things out and just roll important rolls. I think skipping 10 Guardsmen attacking in melee is fine even in a tournament if the Guardsmen are very unlikely to change anything.

Depends on the situation. If board is obvious enough vp's can be talked over i go that route even in non-tournament game. If there's serious what if's then that's it.

But when it's just move models to place a and b and that's it without even dice roll needed...

Most accurate score to what it would have been in the end is optimal result. If score would be 82-76 in the end then 'anything different to that is sub-optimal

It's a tournament setting and the time limit is part of the event. If you don't finish within the time limit then you simply end the game at that point, add up the win totals (could be points remaining, objectives held, points etc.... depending on the event and what the TO has set for it).

Talking through turns is often nearly impossible unless its a foregone conclusion already. Thing is both players will have a different plan and vision of how the turns will turn out; its not as simple case of pressing "auto resolve" in Total War and just letting it all math out. Both players could have justifiable reasons to consider that they might win (even if they get tabled they might argue that they could have held enough winning points/objectives etc...).

Talking it out would just lead to long arguments or endless circular discussions or a nightmare for the TO having to mediate between players to reach a fair conclusion. It would likely take longer than just resolving the turns.


This isn't a "normies" vs "Tournament players" thing its just a functional thing.
Heck many "normies" also end games early (game night ends etc....) and just total up who wins based on score etc...


Talking it out is more what I'd expect at a narrative event where the conclusion of the battle is part of a story being written by the games and thereupon if you run out of time you might well talk it out. Because in those events winning/losing is often not the full purpose of the players gaming. So there's far less mental pressure on people to want to win in that regard compared to a tournament where winning really is part of the core of the event. Yes taking part counts, but people LIKE to win and want to win etc...

Last round is actually generally rather easy to figue out.often with zero dice roll needed.

 Overread wrote:
Talking it out would just lead to long arguments or endless circular discussions or a nightmare for the TO having to mediate between players to reach a fair conclusion.

Or, worse, what often happens is that one of the players (often an Important Pro Player) pressures their opponent into accepting what was "clearly the right outcome if you understand 40k as much as I do" and gets a bunch of extra VP for MoV scoring, or even a fraudulent win when the on-table outcome was a loss. Or a losing player will just shrug and let their opponent have whatever final score they ask for because who cares, they already lost the game and it's not worth fighting over it.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Overread wrote:
That's a rather extreme reaction.

Much as I dislike tournament play, so is saying someone should be blacklisted from tournament play for resolving things a different way to the way you think they should.

This is definitely something that should be covered in the tournament pack, though, to eliminate any confusion.

This is it, basically. Ideally the question of how you'd handle that should be cleared well in advance by the TO, ideally in the tournament pack. If you need to make that decision for yourself at the table, you're already deep in 'second best solution' territory.

 Dysartes wrote:
Much as I dislike tournament play, so is saying someone should be blacklisted from tournament play for resolving things a different way to the way you think they should.

It isn't when "resolving things a different way" consists of blatant cheating. Should it be a legitimate "different way to resolve" things to bring loaded dice or to move your models an extra inch to improve your odds of a key charge? If you are caught cheating you should be banned from competitive play and openly colluding with your opponent to create a fraudulent game result is as black and white as it gets.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Much as I dislike tournament play, so is saying someone should be blacklisted from tournament play for resolving things a different way to the way you think they should.

It isn't when "resolving things a different way" consists of blatant cheating. Should it be a legitimate "different way to resolve" things to bring loaded dice or to move your models an extra inch to improve your odds of a key charge? If you are caught cheating you should be banned from competitive play and openly colluding with your opponent to create a fraudulent game result is as black and white as it gets.

In a tournament setting, 'talking it out' is functionally the same as colluding to falsify/ make up points or game outcomes, and should be handled as such. It just opens up too many avenues for abuse. Deliberately slow play is considered an infraction in most tournaments for a reason.

Except isn't the default in tournaments that if time runs out for one person the other still gets to play?

Wayniac wrote:
Except isn't the default in tournaments that if time runs out for one person the other still gets to play?

It is when the tournament is using chess clocks, where each player gets their own share of time for their actions. If your opponent runs out of time on their clock you get to continue playing with any remaining time on your own clock and your opponent is unable to do anything (except sometimes roll saves). But OP seems to be describing a scenario where chess clocks aren't being used and there's a single time limit for the round, after which all active games end.

Tsagualsa wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Overread wrote:
That's a rather extreme reaction.

Much as I dislike tournament play, so is saying someone should be blacklisted from tournament play for resolving things a different way to the way you think they should.

This is definitely something that should be covered in the tournament pack, though, to eliminate any confusion.

This is it, basically. Ideally the question of how you'd handle that should be cleared well in advance by the TO, ideally in the tournament pack. If you need to make that decision for yourself at the table, you're already deep in 'second best solution' territory.

I agree that it should be resolved by the TO before the event since running out of time can easily happen through an event not just at the very end. If you've got X number of games in Y amount of time you've got to complete within that timeframe otherwise it all falls apart.


That said talking it out isn't easy. Even without cheating its easy to have pages of arguments online about which unit might win in an encounter and that's just 2 units fighting. Don't forget even at a tournament some are going to understand maths theory and some won't; some will have a more hands on grasp but not a functional mathematic background approach to the game. Not to mention all the ins and outs of taking chances and where things move too.


Heck I'd argue that discusisng theory of gameplay is a very weak point in general in wargaming. Just notice how many threads we have on how to build a list; on point costs and stats and then how hard it is to get a discussion going on "ok so how should we tactically play." It's a huge grey area that shows that wargaming in general (at least fantasy/scifi) has a general community black hole in conversing about actual play tactics and play and such. Which would be a cornerstone to talking out how the game might have ended.


And there in lies another issue. You can get bad dice rolls; you can get totally beaten by the random luck. There's always chance and opportunity. You can't catch a player easily making a mistake when you're talking it out and even if you can what happens when they start going back on what they say or they say something impossible. Ok so we might have to re-measure that distance here to just confirm that you could charge that unit etc... Suddenly you're basically trying to play out the game after-time to justify and back up your talking it out.


I just see it as impractical. If the primary interest is SAVING time at the end because you've run out of time; then talking it out could end up lasting way longer or just as long and certainly isn't going to be a 5 min thing for every encounter.

Wayniac wrote:
The whole "talk about what MIGHT have happened" is IMHO just ridiculous and gamey. That's how you get gak like that one tournament where the guy conceded before even playing a round because they "discussed" what would be done and probability said XYZ would happen.

how is it gamey? its turn 4 and each player has 2-3 units left alive, playing through the last turn verbally by saying "i'll move my tacticals on that objective behind obscuring so you won't be able to shoot them and they'll give me 5pts " isnt gamey

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
The whole "talk about what MIGHT have happened" is IMHO just ridiculous and gamey. That's how you get gak like that one tournament where the guy conceded before even playing a round because they "discussed" what would be done and probability said XYZ would happen.

how is it gamey? its turn 4 and each player has 2-3 units left alive, playing through the last turn verbally by saying "i'll move my tacticals on that objective behind obscuring so you won't be able to shoot them and they'll give me 5pts " isnt gamey

But the game is over.
Time was called.
Tournaments have time limits, that's part of the format.

 Blndmage wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
The whole "talk about what MIGHT have happened" is IMHO just ridiculous and gamey. That's how you get gak like that one tournament where the guy conceded before even playing a round because they "discussed" what would be done and probability said XYZ would happen.

how is it gamey? its turn 4 and each player has 2-3 units left alive, playing through the last turn verbally by saying "i'll move my tacticals on that objective behind obscuring so you won't be able to shoot them and they'll give me 5pts " isnt gamey

But the game is over.
Time was called.
Tournaments have time limits, that's part of the format.

idk, i think playing half of a round is much more gamey...

"Oh i went first and we ran out of time at the end of my turn, gg i win because you don't get to score in your turn"

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
idk, i think playing half of a round is much more gamey...

"Oh i went first and we ran out of time at the end of my turn, gg i win because you don't get to score in your turn"

That's why most tournaments have a rule that you can't start a turn with less than X minutes left in the round and do not play partial turns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
how is it gamey? its turn 4 and each player has 2-3 units left alive, playing through the last turn verbally by saying "i'll move my tacticals on that objective behind obscuring so you won't be able to shoot them and they'll give me 5pts " isnt gamey

Ok, let's say it's valid in that one specific situation. How do you make a rule that permits that one resolution but not "I'd definitely make that charge and be on the objective" or "there's no way you can get line of sight to me in time so we'll assume I hold this for two more turns" or "there's no way I don't roll at least 6" of extra distance on my advance rolls over two turns so I get this one too"?

Finish the turn & count pts as they stand.

I don't accept the "talk things through" method in caual games, so I sure as Hell wouldn't accept it in a tourney setting.

Slow play is hard to prove with deliberate intent, especially if its a larger event with people attending that the TO doesn't know.

It's the kind of thing that you might not spot until you review a players win-loss record and review past matches. So its the kind of thing that you might not get caught doing the first few times, but if you kept at it you might well get found out in time.

But this assumes TO's talking to each other and recording and saving and reviewing game matches and such.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
The whole "talk about what MIGHT have happened" is IMHO just ridiculous and gamey. That's how you get gak like that one tournament where the guy conceded before even playing a round because they "discussed" what would be done and probability said XYZ would happen.

how is it gamey? its turn 4 and each player has 2-3 units left alive, playing through the last turn verbally by saying "i'll move my tacticals on that objective behind obscuring so you won't be able to shoot them and they'll give me 5pts " isnt gamey

It's tournament play, Vlad. It's all about "points". Let it rot and die.

Maybe, but going straight to bans and the like is worse....
How bout having a clear & concise player packet that goes over everything, but that may be too much to ask for.

It's not an insult if it's demonstrably true by their posts tone & wording.

Racerguy180 wrote:
Maybe, but going straight to bans and the like is worse....

Why should a confirmed cheater be allowed to continue to participate in competitive play? You don't need a "clear and concise player packet" to understand that using loaded dice is cheating, you shouldn't need one to understand that collusion to manipulate scoring is cheating.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
Maybe, but going straight to bans and the like is worse....

Why should a confirmed cheater be allowed to continue to participate in competitive play? You don't need a "clear and concise player packet" to understand that using loaded dice is cheating, you shouldn't need one to understand that collusion to manipulate scoring is cheating.

collusion
/kəˈl(j)uːʒn/
noun
secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy in order to deceive others.

If the TO and other attendants know that it's being done and do it themselves then it's not collusion is it? It's a bit like saying "preventing your opponent from rolling saves once their chess clock runs out is cheating, that's not part of the 40k rules if I want to roll my saves I'm going to roll my saves and we're going to have a fight if you try to prevent me from doing it."

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
Maybe, but going straight to bans and the like is worse....

Why should a confirmed cheater be allowed to continue to participate in competitive play? You don't need a "clear and concise player packet" to understand that using loaded dice is cheating, you shouldn't need one to understand that collusion to manipulate scoring is cheating.

When has someone - especially a Self-Important Big Name - been banned/blacklisted from tournament 40k and it has stuck?