Longer Games and it's impact on events

[Magnus The Blue]

Hey all,

After a good few games and lots of conversions with other (events and casual) it's clear to me that 3.0 takes significantly longer to play (more so than just normal delay due to learning a new edition).  In addition to this the fact that later turns seem to be important in more games (used to be possible to call the winner after turn 3 70%+ of the time).  Combined these present a real issue for running events.  If you don't have longer game times, lots of games will not get to the last turns or even make an educated call about how they will go.  So to me time limits HAVE to be increased or risk pushing the mega even more towards God-character/monster mash armies (as they are more likely to actually finish the game).  The problem comes when you move to say 3 hour games (seems about right to me), fitting 3 in a day is a stretch and 6 over two days seems unmanageable.    So will we see some events going to 4 games (or 6 game weekenders going to 5 games)?  Either way it's going to get harder to meaningfully separate players for larger events.  Or will we see smaller events popping up?  1500 seems reasonable with the new smaller boards.

What do others think?  Am I just getting slow in my old age or is the tournament scene going to have to adapt?

[lare2]

Gotta agree. I normally have a 3 hour window to play a game and, if I remember correctly, I'm yet to fully finish a game. I kinda just put it down to us all learning the new edition but I have been thinking along the same lines as you. Maybe a lower points limit rather than 2k might become the standard? I'd be happy with 1.5k.

Edited August 11, 2021 by lare2

[Noserenda]

With playtesters involved in running tournaments i guess we shall see what they think as the scene recovers from Covid as they are likely to know better than most.

[RuneBrush]

I think this is going to be highlighted as an issue as we see more events being played.  I personally found 3 hours for AoS 2 could be tight in some situations - armies with lots of models tended to require a lot longer to play and some armies were notorious for requiring longer turns.  With even more to think about, I also think it's important to not underplay how mentally challenging playing three games in a day actually is - it wasn't uncommon for the last game to take longer if both players were a bit frazzled.

I do think AoS 3's heavier monster/hero leaning could help to reduce the time a bit - though arguably there's more things for them to do, so it's possible that won't help much.

Smaller game sizes should reduce the game duration, but we're in a really weird situation.  2k was largely the army size that people/events automatically defaulted to when points arrived with AoS.  Because of that, many battletomes have been written around the thinking that this is the "normal" game size and we have some armies that don't scale very well to different game sizes.  I suppose the real test is going to be when a TO has a gamble and runs a 1500 point event.

[Popisdead]

3 hours ago, Magnus The Blue said:

What do others think?  Am I just getting slow in my old age or is the tournament scene going to have to adapt?

I think it's new edition slowness.  Over 6 months of playing your list you'll get to know what the missions are, tactics/actions/strategems/etc you're using, what monster and hero abilities you're using, stats on things faster.

I remember the start of 8th ed games taking forever and by the end of that edition games were under 2 hours.  You just got to know your stuff and the game.  This is a much bigger change from second to third than first to second.  

Tournament players are going to be players driven to know their army and get games in lots so they can prepare.  There will be people with less experience but those won't matter as much in the standings and bottom tier games tend to be more fun and laid back and enjoyable.  So it won't matter really.

[chuckecheese]

Tournaments and events, maybe, but I think Popisdead is probably correct. I played the same 2k list 3 times and the third game got through 5 turns in 3 hours and I am a casual gamer that talks too much.

 

For my local group we are starting up a narrative campaign event, the organizer settled on 1500pts so we could get two 2.5hr games in per meeting. It is a casual thing, but I think doable.

[Landohammer]

I have attended 3 third edition events so far with 2.5 hours rounds. I have finished 43/45 of my turns, using Sylvaneth and Nighthaunt armies. Third is not slower than second. In fact, there are about 15% less models on the field and the table is smaller. So in a vacuum, games *should* go faster than in 2nd. My club mate has finished 45/45 of his turns using Ogors. We have also played multiple practice games and finished them all handily within 3 hours.  

 Its a new edition, and people just take time to learn it. I am seeing some delays and "analysis paralysis" with battle tactics and command abilities. Most notably "redeploy" and "unleash hell" where the inactive opponent will often ask for a second to think. Also there are 18 new battleplans to learn. All of these delays will go away as people  get games under their belt.

The players/armies who aren't going to finish games in 3rd, are the same ones who didn't finish games in 2nd. The key difference with third, at least in my experience, is that most games are decided on turn 4-5. So an incomplete game is more of an injustice because so many points are scored in later turns.  

 

 

 

Edited August 11, 2021 by Landohammer

[Fert]

To expect a game to wrap up in 2.5 hours both players must be proficient with their army/rules and efficient with their time management.   It takes time to master this.  It requires practice and overall game plan.  Other things that will increase speed;

Measuring tricks (placing markers for accurately measured distances and specialized measure tools such as a 3" combat gauge).  

Quick dice rolling (of course let your opponent see the dice) and sorting.  The best way is pick up your failed dice, leaving the successes.  1. Your opponent can verify the successes 2. you can then just scoop up the successes to roll or count.

Quick counting.  I find that group in 5's is the easiest to count.  Especially when 10+ dice are being counted.

Clear easy readable dice.

Just my opinion of course!  Happy Gaming!

[RuneBrush]

11 hours ago, Fert said:

Quick counting.  I find that group in 5's is the easiest to count.  Especially when 10+ dice are being counted.

Clear easy readable dice.

The way I improved my dice counting was to have my dice in distinct sets of ten - so ten blue, ten red, ten green etc.  I've probably a dozen "sets" of dice like that, which means I can quickly pick up 23 dice because I just need two sets and three odd.  Rolling in a dice tray also helps to contain dice you're rolling - easier for your opponent to see the results and means you've less chance to lose a dice under a piece of scenery.

[AaronWilson]

I've only played 3 games of AoS 3 so far, so I don't have the largest data set to draw results from. My first game was over by turn 2, around 1 hour 30. Another took 4 hours and we got to turn 4 but this was a very slow friend using a new army and new to the edition. My third we played 5 turns each, including setting table up / putting things away in < 3 hours.

I think a large portion of it is people learning the new edition, AoS 2 - 3 had a very significant change in not only the turn structure, but to a lot of core mechanics, new scenarios, new ways to score, a lot more decision points in battle tactics, as well as now a there is a lot of player agency in the opponents turn. Between deciding your heroic action, command abilities & monstrous rampages a slower player can now slow your turn down a lot more as well.

I think the increase in points paired with the extra decision points in the game is probably a net even and once people have digested the edition and don't need to be referring to rulebooks, GHB etc so often we should see game time come down to a normal amount.

All I would is slow players (not in a negative way, people that just take longer to make decision) will probably extend game times, not only do they have more decision points to make them selves but they decisions now to make in your own turn. 

[Fert]

9 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

The way I improved my dice counting was to have my dice in distinct sets of ten - so ten blue, ten red, ten green etc.  I've probably a dozen "sets" of dice like that, which means I can quickly pick up 23 dice because I just need two sets and three odd.  Rolling in a dice tray also helps to contain dice you're rolling - easier for your opponent to see the results and means you've less chance to lose a dice under a piece of scenery.

That's an awesome idea!

[plavski]

AoS 3's move away from re-rolls to modifiers should also speed up games.

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

My initial impression is that the glass half full re:game time is that once people become familiar with the battle tactics the definite increase in decision points created by new 3.0 rules will be offset by increased “path dependency”.  All of which is a complicated way of saying if you’ve picked “Slay the Warlord” that turn than your choice for your Heroic Actions and Monstrous Rampages (nonetheless your good old fashioned, move, shoot and charge) will be those best suited to achieving this.

The underlying condition to this though would be that secondaries are ultimately complimentary to the primary objective scoring.  I think this could very well prove to be the case given their variety.

When I think of slow games in 2.0 a common culprit was opponents struggling with difficult prioritization.  They’d try to set up too much and then struggle to react when step B in a five step plan (that itself was only one of three plans they’d made for that turn) fell through.  That’s when analysis paralysis would really kick in.

Once we’re all familiar with the secondaries and the battle plans there is an optimistic case to be made that priorities should be a lot clearer, improving focus & planning.

At least I hope…

[Newtype_Zero]

This past weekend I played at a 100 person event - 5 games over 2 days, each round was 3 hours. I finished all except for my last game with at least 45 minutes left, so 2:15:00 games in general. One of them even started 15 minutes late because my opponent showed up late.

The only reason my one game took longer was because it turned out my opponent and I had met previously and hadn't seen each other in a bit. It was the last game and neither of us was in contention for anything, so we spent the majority of it catching up and drinking beers.

I don't think there's a time problem with 3rd and any slowness is due to people still learning the rules.

[RuneBrush]

12 hours ago, Newtype_Zero said:

This past weekend I played at a 100 person event - 5 games over 2 days, each round was 3 hours. I finished all except for my last game with at least 45 minutes left, so 2:15:00 games in general. One of them even started 15 minutes late because my opponent showed up late.

The only reason my one game took longer was because it turned out my opponent and I had met previously and hadn't seen each other in a bit. It was the last game and neither of us was in contention for anything, so we spent the majority of it catching up and drinking beers.

I don't think there's a time problem with 3rd and any slowness is due to people still learning the rules.

Out of curiosity, was your impression that the games you played had around about the same number of models per side as the previous version?

[Newtype_Zero]

10 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Out of curiosity, was your impression that the games you played had around about the same number of models per side as the previous version?

Tough to say since prior to that I had only played about 4 games over the last 1.5 years and the majority of my games were against armies I'm not familiar with (Dominion SCE, Seraphon, OBR and SBGL). That said, my 2nd edition list for Ironjaws (the army I played for this tournament) was 45 models (9 units) while the list I used for this tournament was 36 models (10 units). So in my case, less models but not by much.

[Dingding123]

4 battle rounds instead of 5 might be spicy; would give lists an incentive to put their best foot forward and light a fire under it.  That wouldn't fly for special battleplans, though.