Normally, anything valuable is hard to find when you trudge through a forum as large as DakkaDakka, but sometimes you find a gem that hits home and sparks a decent amount of good debate. One thread in particular shined some light on a dilemma that has infected many events and tournaments: how do you balance point limits with time limits? Over the past few years a steady march towards higher points and lower times to complete games has gain some steam, with events such as BoLS/WargamesCon running games in two hours at 2000 points being a good example. This is not to say that variety doesn’t exist, but it is safe to say that 2000 points has become more the norm than say 1500 or 1750.
So what does this sort of trend effect have on how we play games and prepare for tournaments? Well that is where Yakface from DakkaDakka comes in. Here is what he had to say about the potential complications with larger and shorter timed events…
In recent years, the trend in 40K tournaments in the US (I can’t speak for any other game systems or countries) is to constantly push the points values used up, up, up. What started at 1,500 points nearly a decade ago is now usually 2,000 points, and with some tournaments even going up to 2,500 points. This has been in response to player demand…I know I’ve been in a store for many a post-tournament gatherings where the players are asking, nay begging, to have the next tournament allow higher point armies. Naturally, Tournament Organizers (TOs) wanting to please their participants have complied by pushing the points limits of tournaments up.
The problem is, while point limits can be increased arbitrarily, the time allowed in a day to complete said games generally cannot be changed. Stores holding the tournaments have to open and close at a certain time and people need to get home and get some sleep, walk the dog, etc. What that means is that although the average points limit for tournament games has increased over the years, the allotted time for said games has generally not been increased to match.
However, for many this hasn’t been a problem at all, because quite a few of those who play regularly in tournaments are veterans of the game. They’ve been able to practice playing at a very quick pace, choose smaller armies that make it easier to complete a quicker game or if they do choose a larger army, they master playing it an extremely fast pace to compensate.
Unfortunately, not all tournament players are wily veterans who are able to put hours into practicing their speed. As with all facets of the hobby, tournaments will always draw players of a variety of skill levels. However, because of the loud desires of those who like to play with larger point values, I believe that the tournament scene as a whole has become fairly unwelcoming to new players in some regards.
The game of 40K has 15 (or so) different factions available for players to choose and it is designed with a points system to allow players to not only pick their faction but also completely customize what type of force they want to play with. In other words, players are free to take all infantry armies or on the opposite extreme pack as many vehicles into their force as possible.
Unfortunately, we’ve gotten to the point where the prevailing notion amongst players is that if someone wants to take a ‘horde’ style army (as its known when the army is made up primarily of low point costed infantry models) then that player needs to be able to play at a faster speed then someone playing an army with less models, just so they can finish their tournament games in the allotted time.
I know a lot of people reading this are saying: ‘so what? Of course people playing horde armies have to play faster, they chose to use that army!’
But take a second and think about what’s actually being said here: Players are consciously or subconsciously being told that they essentially shouldn’t be taking certain armies unless they are skilled enough to be able to play them more quickly than the average player. In other words, horde armies are for ‘advanced players’ only.
Is this a good mentality for the tournament scene and if so how? Should players new to the tournament scene feel like they can’t play with a certain army type or if they do, risk ending up ruining someone else’s game when time is called before the game is concluded? Doesn’t that help to funnel more tournament armies into specific styles of (low model count) armies?
While you’re still thinking about that, let me put forth the real hypothesis of this post: That an unacceptable percentage of tournament 40K games end based on ‘time’ being called for the tournament round as opposed to finishing at their natural conclusion.
I’m not trying to say that most tournament games don’t naturally conclude or even 1/3 of them. But I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the number is as high as 15%. I tend to use more of the ‘horde’ style armies in tournaments and although no one would ever mistake me for the fastest player out there, I’m also definitely not the slowest either. Yet, in every tournament there is at least one game (sometimes more) where I end up playing someone who is a bit of a slow player and/or also has a horde army and we end up having time called on us before our game ends. As I go to lunches at tournaments and listen to players tell stories about their experience it seems like nearly everybody has one game they talk about that ‘only got to turn 4’, or ‘if only we were able to play the last turn like we should have.’
Honestly, playing a game that ends due to time constraints is NOT FUN. Sure you can have some fun moments during the game, but is there anything more frustrating then packing up your miniatures knowing that if you had gotten to play the game to its natural conclusion you totally would have pulled off a glorious victory instead of a tie or loss?
The problem is, tournament organizers are not tracking this statistic and I don’t know why. This is my plea to tournament organizers. I am not saying you should change anything (at least immediately) about your events except to add one question onto your game results sheet:
DID YOUR GAME FINISH PREMATURELY DUE TO TIME CONSTRAINTS? IF SO, PLEASE LIST THE LAST GAME TURN BOTH YOU AND YOUR OPPONENT FINISHED.
And that’s it! Adding that one line to your scoring sheets can make a world of difference towards making your event more fun and fair to all your participants.
How you ask? Well first you have to decide what percentage of games ending due to time constraints is a problem to you. IMHO, even 10% would be unacceptable. A tournament is supposed to be about ALL of your participants having a good time and playing games and if 10% of those games aren’t actually being finished, then people aren’t having as much fun as they should be.
Once you’ve decided upon the percentage that is unacceptable to you and now you’ve added this question to your scoring sheets you can now finally SEE if your event is meeting that goal. If you aren’t meeting that goal, then you now have the knowledge to allow you try to fix the problem and see what effect the change has.
So if one of your tournaments is run at 2,000 points with 2 hour rounds and 15% of the games aren’t being fully finished, the next time around you can perhaps try adding an extra 10 minutes to the round or dropping the points down to 1,750. And again, the beauty is with this question on your scoring forms you’ll be able to see what effect the change has.
The other great thing this would allow you to do, is since you have the army lists for the players you can actually see what types of armies are involved in games that aren’t finishing. Say you have a variety of players who all aren’t finishing several games and they all use ‘horde’ style armies, then perhaps you can identify that while your tournament rounds are long enough for ‘small’ armies, they’re punishing ‘big’ armies too heavily. Or if one guy comes to a bunch of your tournaments using different armies each time but he’s constantly involved in games that don’t finish, you can probably identify that he’s just a slow player. Once you’ve identified a habitual slow player you can take the time to talk to them after the event about the issue, perhaps giving them pointers on how to play faster, etc.
But the point is: Until you start collecting the data, you can’t know if there is a problem, and if there is a problem, what effect (if any) solutions you try to implement actually have.
My final plea would be to consider that although the majority of the people who play your tournaments may clamber for more, MORE points for their games, these are the people already attending your tournaments. The people you aren’t hearing are those who aren’t attending your tournaments. The reason they may not be attending your tournaments is because they don’t like certain aspects of the tournament. Or perhaps they don’t even have a big enough army yet to play a 2,000 point game (for example), but could totally do 1,000 or 1,500 points?
If you’re *always* running 2,000 point tournaments every month, then any player who doesn’t care to play that big a game is someone who isn’t ever going to attend. While you should definitely continue to run 2,000 point tournaments (because most of your players enjoy that level), perhaps consider throwing in a 1,500 point event every 3rd or 4th month? IMHO, variety is the spice of both life and gaming!
In conclusion, while there are certainly some very slow players out there who will never finish a tournament game no matter how long the rounds are, I do believe that we’ve gotten to the point where the clock is set so that *only* players with smaller armies have the luxury of playing at a normal pace. This shoehorns ‘horde’ armies only into the hands of veteran gamers, which leads to less army variety then we would see otherwise. And even then, far too many games than are acceptable are ending due to time being called instead of their natural conclusion.
Until every tournament starts keeping track of how many of their games are ending prematurely, whether or not this is actually an issue cannot be identified and potentially remedied.
I believe Adepticon this year will be including that question on their score sheets, I hope that every other tournament organizer will follow suit…and if not, why not?
Yakface touches on many topics, but his main thrust is about the effects of forcing players to play fast has the tournaments and 40k in general. So besides just simply telling players to play faster what possible ways can the hobby be more inclusive allowing for all types of army lists and gamers to attend events and not feel rushed or imitated before even the roll of the first die?
If you want to read here is the original thread…