Tournament Play

[MARC C]

I ran another tournament last weekend. One thing that bothers me is the fact that people playing larger armies (15 to 18 orders) are taking more time to play their turns. With slow players it get ridiculous. Some guys never plays more than 2 turns before the 90 minutes are over. In one case they played 1,5 turn. I get complaints after each tournament. Some players want us to use Chess Clocks. Because of the AROs some say its not possible. Have you tried it? How do you deal with this problem? Telling slow players to play faster doesn't work.

Also, some people are extremely slow to deploy. We had one game that took 30 minutes for both players (15 each) to deploy.
Do you use a set amount of time. Lets say 5 minutes per player?

[Claudius Sol]

This is just a problem that exists in the tournament scene of Infinity.

At Bayou, I played maybe half of my games to completion, turn wise. I had a lot of orders due to Impetuous, but even then I was playing pretty fast. At Rumble this year, I played 3/4 games to completion. The last game ended after turn 1.

If you get through turn 2, I'd call that a success. The only way to alleviate it is by extending time, which isn't always feasible.

Two hours for a round seems like it might be the way to go. At Rumble, we had a slight variant in round time due to time limits. The last game was only 90 mins and started relatively quick.

Getting people more practice will speed things up. Try implementing a local ideology of "Roll and let's see if it matters". It's an ideology I have shamelessly adopted from Dexter and it can really speed things up. It stops people from spending exorbitant amounts of time on rules look-up when it might not even affect them.

[MARC C]

Glad ( not sure I should say that!) that its not only a local problem.

"Roll and let's see if it matters" : Now that is something I do myself, but implementing it across the board would indeed speed up play.

Not sure I want to do 2-hour games. With 4 rounds that's 9+ hours with breaks and lunch.

I'm going to do a few games with a chess clock. I know 2 guys who tried it and said it worked. They didn't see any problems with the AROs. Most of AROs are now FtF anyway with N3. Unopposed are very rare.

[Claudius Sol]

Try things out and see what works for you!

I wish you the best of luck, Marc.

[VisOne]

Our big tournaments like CanCon for example have it explicitly stated in the players pack/rules that if you bring a large list models/orders wise you must be able to play it effectively. That means order management, time management and model management.

They also cap the combat group at 2 so effectively no more than 20 orders (excluding LT) can be brought.

I don't like to penalise people for their aesthetic, list composition or play choices but if they detract from the tournament by playing slow because they did not organise themselves and therefore mitigating other players ability to have fun or compete on the same level as everyone else then they have to accept they will be penalised for their tardiness.

You can for example give vito points whether they be KP or objectives to the opponents they have shorted by not allowing them to play out their turns.

You could try the sports/comp scores sort of systems that other games have. I'm not a fan of sports or comp but I think a cumlative score on list compostion and use of orders would be good in a tournament I would have to come up with a different name to differentiate it from sports/comp though so people don't use it as a way to burn players who actually built a competitive list and played well. Its more there too as already mentioned penalise those who didn't build a suitable list and or played their list poorly.

Still all that has its own set of issues with being super subjective and the sports/comps influencing scores in other game systems tournaments its a huge bug bear to many many gamers.

I wish there was a better answer I think the only real good way of addressing the issue is community awareness which equates to peer pressure on people to perform as expected.

[MARC C]

Tournaments are fairly new in my area. This is the second in six months. I plan to do 4 a year.
Order cap is interesting.

My experience with sports/comp scores is very negative. Once we had a group of six 40K players who used that to their advantage. Giving their friends the highest scores while giving everybody else the lowest mark. With only 12 players it made a big difference.

Peer pressure is probably the most effective solution. ;-)

[Section9]

Tournaments are fairly new in my area. This is the second in six months. I plan to do 4 a year.
Order cap is interesting.

Capped at 2 combat groups, I could still push ~28-30 orders in a list with a large number of impetuous models. 8 Kuang shi seems to be pretty normal for Imperial Service ITS lists...

Heck, I can run 17 orders in a single combat group of JSA counting Impetuous orders. Asuka, 4 Aragoto, Yojimbo and Musashi. Engineer, maybe a doc and a Kempeitai to fill out the list. Though I'd probably swap the doc for a Weibing.

[TanKoL]

Then ... simply a cap of 20 orders overall ? (with regular orders being the first discarded if over 20, to avoid abuses)

This problem is not limited to Infinity, it happens VERY often in WHFB and 40K too around here. I try to crack down on it when I'm a TO, but the main issue is that most players are afraid to be "that guy" by calling the TO because the other player is slooooooow (I hate slow players ... I loathe them, it's visceral)
The clock system probably doesn't work well due to the ARO mechanics and the fast paced nature of the game

The problem -as usual- comes not from the game but from the players who:
- don't know the rules
- don't know their own troops profiles
- don't know their weapons stats
- can't make up their f*****g mind
- don't plan their own turn during the other player's turn, updating it mentally after each order spent

Also, I think I'm going to refuse the "cigarette breaks" during games where I play from now on (in events, weekly FLGS games are another story) ... there's breaks in-between the games !

[Harlekin]

Things ran pretty smooth at my tournaments during the last few years of N2.
But with N3 it starts to feel like starting anew for most players, again and the games just take quite longer than ever before.

As I aim for offering ITS (it's the official tournament system after all), any comp, sportsmanship or other penalties/bonusses just doesn't work as it's no part of the ITS rules.
Same for order or combat group limits.
As much as I see the reasons for it, it's still not part of the official tournament play.

As my tournaments are rather small (18 to 26) and I know most of the players, it's not this big a deal. I just tell everybody to hurry up and plan for 90 minutes per game (but schedule 120) - when 90 minutes are done, I decide whether the players not finished yet are allowed to take another turn or have to be done.
It's no ideal situation but it works for those rather small tournaments and most players are quite fine with it.

[MARC C]

As my tournaments are rather small (18 to 26) and I know most of the players, it's not this big a deal. I just tell everybody to hurry up and plan for 90 minutes per game (but schedule 120) - when 90 minutes are done, I decide whether the players not finished yet are allowed to take another turn or have to be done. It's no ideal situation but it works for those rather small tournaments and most players are quite fine with it.

Do you do 3 or 4 rounds ?

[Harlekin]

Most of my tournaments are 3 rounds. But it depends on the location.

[pinguinkind1990]

One time at the first belgian championship i played with chess clocks and alll games went pretty fast. But as i remember we mostly had only combat group anyway and it was no ITS but custom missions tournament at the end of 2012.

Anyway, i like the idea of having a chess clock - a player with more miniatures has more orders and more opportunities to aro, but one aro is not as important for him as the aro in a team with lesser models (since there are more models/orders/aros to correct mistakes). And i like to give both players an equal amount of time during the match, that sounds fair to me.

[Picken]

Ehm that last post was from me, tapatalk loggged me in with the wrong account.