40k Slowness - The game killer

[Panzer]

The difference is that the Fly keyword ultimately has no effect on its own and only gets to do something from the outside.

[Silas7]

@OP

 

I suggest you try playing 1500 and/or without stratagems.

[Lord_Caerolion]

That special mention it gets is a special rule. In the vernacular of 7th Ed’s USRs:

 

‘Units with this special rule may move over other models in the Movement and Charge phases, and do not measure vertical distance when doing so.’

 

And other interacting rules:

 

‘This model adds 1 to hit rolls when targeting units with the Fly Universal Special Rule.’

 

Sure, it doesn’t have the words ‘special rule’ included in the text, but what manifest difference is there between Fly and a USR? They’re both a non-standard rule applied to multiple different units where it’s easier to just write it once in the rulebook rather than on each unit’s datasheet. If anything, it’s similar to 7th Ed’s Unit Types... which were ultimately just groupings of special rules.

 

So is "ORK" a special rule? It interacts with lots of other rules, just as Fly does.

[kombatwombat]

The difference is that the Fly keyword ultimately has no effect on its own and only gets to do something from the outside.

Sorry I don’t understand what you mean - could you please clarify?

 

It’s probably clearer to use an example:

 

Fly is a rule that lets a group of units move over other models and ignore vertical distance when measuring, which is not normally permitted. Some other rules reference units with Fly.

 

Relentless is a rule that lets a group of units move and shoot Heavy weapons, which is not normally permitted. Some other rules reference units with Relentless.

 

In the context of that example, how is Fly different from a USR?

[kombatwombat]

So is "ORK" a special rule? It interacts with lots of other rules, just as Fly does.

Does ORK confer a special exemption to the rules onto units with it?

 

If not, then whether or not it is a special rule is surely self-evident.

[Exilyth]

To speed up the game:

• office supply stores have sticky page marking flags which can be put on the top or side of a page, overlapping, so the flag sticks out when the book is closed - makes it a lot easier to find certain pages. I have the end of lore/beginning of rules, the weapon summary and a few other important pages marked in my codices.
• Reading the codex a lot: a rule you know in your head doesn't have to be looked up
• Reading the rulebook a lot: a rule you know in your head doesn't have to be looked up
• it helps to print out the 'battle primer' and a cheatsheet of your armies rules, e.g. a table w/statblocks for units and weapons and shorthand rule descriptions, preferably with reference to codex page so you don't have to search around when you need a specific rule. Also only include the rules you need, e.g. skip psychc powers if you've got no psyker.
• Playing with a lower points limit can help as it usually reduces the number of units and/or complexity of interactions.
• Planning ahead what you will do in your next turn during the turn of your opponent can help save time - just don't get too distracted. Same goes for your opponent during your turn ofc.

[Lord_Caerolion]

 

The difference is that the Fly keyword ultimately has no effect on its own and only gets to do something from the outside.

Sorry I don’t understand what you mean - could you please clarify?

 

It’s probably clearer to use an example:

 

Fly is a rule that lets a group of units move over other models and ignore vertical distance when measuring, which is not normally permitted. Some other rules reference units with Fly.

 

Relentless is a rule that lets a group of units move and shoot Heavy weapons, which is not normally permitted. Some other rules reference units with Relentless.

 

In the context of that example, how is Fly different from a USR?

 

 

What he means is that FLY, in and of itself, is not a rule. It's a Keyword. Other rules have different impacts on units with this Keyword, like ORK isn't a special rule, but rather other rules have special effects that affect only units with that Keyword. Similarly, FLASH GITZ isn't a special rule, even though it means they don't stop the rest of the army benefiting from a Clan Kultur, because the actual rule is called Gunz for Hire.

 

 

Does ORK confer a special exemption to the rules onto units with it?

If not, then whether or not it is a special rule is surely self-evident.

As above, FLASH GITZ applies an exemption to rules in exactly the way that FLY does, in that there is no rule directly named FLY or FLASH GITZ, but they get exemption in another rule. Therefore, FLASH GITZ is a special rule.

[Panzer]

 

The difference is that the Fly keyword ultimately has no effect on its own and only gets to do something from the outside.

Sorry I don’t understand what you mean - could you please clarify?

 

It’s probably clearer to use an example:

 

Fly is a rule that lets a group of units move over other models and ignore vertical distance when measuring, which is not normally permitted. Some other rules reference units with Fly.

 

Relentless is a rule that lets a group of units move and shoot Heavy weapons, which is not normally permitted. Some other rules reference units with Relentless.

 

In the context of that example, how is Fly different from a USR?

 

 

I'm honestly not sure how I could make it clearer, so I unfortunately have to say no to that request.

[Halandaar]

 

To speed up the game:

• office supply stores have sticky page marking flags which can be put on the top or side of a page, overlapping, so the flag sticks out when the book is closed - makes it a lot easier to find certain pages. I have the end of lore/beginning of rules, the weapon summary and a few other important pages marked in my codices.

 

+1 for this; makes it a lot easier during my first few games with a book to find my way around it. 

[Varizel]

I think the length of the game can be attributed to several things.... inflation of model pts, more shots (due to weapon stats increase or the added models), and bazillion dice throws.

 

Model pts inflation is .... well... GW need to sell models, so they just lower the points so you can take more, thus buy more. Since you take more, you shoot/fight more.

then comes the one that i think really holds up the game...

 

Dice throws....

you got on average like this

shoot, reroll miss/1, wound, reroll fail/1, save and then MAYBE feel no pain. that's like 4-6 times throwing dice, for a single unit. 2 of them are rerolls fails, in which you have to suss out success, and then fail. After that you gotta throw it again, and suss out the fail and success again to tally the total of hit/wound.

GW really needs to stop all the reroll madness. Before somebody said, well it's just rerolls on a couple of dice man.... well, you still have to look for fails, most of the time just 1. And dice thrown are quite a lot nowadays. Take for example, intercessors bolt rifle strategem. That's 40 dice being thrown, then you have to fish out the fails. then throw again, and fish it out again. All for just one unit, for one either hit or wound... most likely both.

 

The game goes way faster on 8th i think after casualties piles up (less models) , CP went dry(less amount of shots etc) and less rerolls going.

 

My 2 cents.

[Ishagu]

The dice isn't causing any delays. Heck, you can get a dice app and do it in seconds if you have too many to roll.

 

The slowest part of the game are deployment and movement.

[toaae]

The dice isn't causing any delays. Heck, you can get a dice app and do it in seconds if you have too many to roll.

 

The slowest part of the game are deployment and movement.

 

I my experience playing with 170+ ork models, the slowest parts of my game are Pile-in and consolidate moves, and rolling tons of dice. Not really the deployment phase or normal movement. And sadly, a dice app isn't readily accepted all around, at least ever since GW's app disappeared. A shame I paid for it and have lost access to it when I updated my phone.

[Ishagu]

If my opponent is bringing 170 Orks I take out a chess clock. In a 4 hour game he gets 2 hours and not a second more. 1hour 30 in a 3 hour game. If he can't play at a sufficient speed that's on him. He needs a dice app or ways to play efficiently.

[toaae]

If my opponent is bringing 170 Orks I take out a chess clock. In a 4 hour game he gets 2 hours and not a second more. 1hour 30 in a 3 hour game. If he can't play at a sufficient speed that's on him. He needs a dice app or ways to play efficiently.

 

... Ok. Not entirely sure what the point is, there.

 

I play in time, and have never clocked out on a chess clock. My point was, from my experiences at the extreme end of model count, normal movement and deployment aren't as big a time hindrance as dice and Pile-in/Consolidate moves.

[Ishagu]

The point is that some players chose armies which take long to play. Orks don't need to be run as a 170 model horde, and if you chose to play them that way you'd better be a quick player.

[Tyriks]

I think a lot of the speed issues come down to user error. I never have problems against some opponents unless we are goofing around a lot. What armies we use or how many dice we are throwing isn't an issue. But there's a guy that plays Orks that makes even 1000 pt games take too long because he doesn't bother to memorize even the basic rules like to wound or the order of operations in combat, he seems to expect his opponents to take care of the math for his rolls, and he never knows his own units well enough to play without constantly checking the book. I don't expect him to get better because it just doesn't seem like he wants to.

 

In all other games, it does seem like deployment takes up a lot of time. We don't seem to lose much on rolling. Movement can be a time sink but it isn't always. Looking up rules is probably a bigger loss. We do play with clocks now because of that Ork player but he's the only one who has ever run out, I believe.

[Lexington]

They need a full, functional, all-encompassing 40K app that keeps track of all the rules and is updated immediately with FAQs/Erattas. It boggles my mind that Corvus Belli, a company whose annual budget is probably on the level of GW’s executive party catering costs, can have an incredibly solid, public, free web app for Infinity, while GW is still stuck in the dark ages. A good 40K app would do wonders to speed up the game.

 

They shouldn't consolidate it because this way they can rebalance individual factions.

Eh, by the same token, it makes system-wide changes very clunky - see the way “reinforcements” is handled. It also bloats rulebooks with multiple re-declarations of the same rule.

 

This isn’t to say that USRs should be the end-all-be-all of individual rules. They tried that in 7th Edition, and it was an incredible mess (how many different “infantry goes faster” rules were there? Eight? Fifty?), but the all-keywords method that 8th has applied has its own issues. There’s already a couple of de-facto USRs in 8th - and, yes, that’s what Fly is - and they could stand to have a couple more. Not sure it’d have an enormous effect on the speed of the game, but it’d definitely make the system feel less brambly and unkempt.

[Marshal Rohr]

They need a full, functional, all-encompassing 40K app that keeps track of all the rules and is updated immediately with FAQs/Erattas. It boggles my mind that Corvus Belli, a company whose annual budget is probably on the level of GW’s executive party catering costs, can have an incredibly solid, public, free web app for Infinity, while GW is still stuck in the dark ages. A good 40K app would do wonders to speed up the game.

 

They shouldn't consolidate it because this way they can rebalance individual factions.

Eh, by the same token, it makes system-wide changes very clunky - see the way “reinforcements” is handled. It also bloats rulebooks with multiple re-declarations of the same rule.

 

This isn’t to say that USRs should be the end-all-be-all of individual rules. They tried that in 7th Edition, and it was an incredible mess (how many different “infantry goes faster” rules were there? Eight? Fifty?), but the all-keywords method that 8th has applied has its own issues. There’s already a couple of de-facto USRs in 8th - and, yes, that’s what Fly is - and they could stand to have a couple more. Not sure it’d have an enormous effect on that game, but it’d definitely make the system feel less brambly and unkempt.

 

 

GW may actually be developing this, if you go by their recent job announcements. 

[Noserenda]

Cheat sheets are a definite good idea, i got into the habit when before HH had the red books and it was handy to have all the odd special rules and weapons on a sheet separately because the books were unusable for games and Battlescribe etc are awful for rules lookups. I got a bit complacent in the middle but once again they are lifesavers for my Sisters or any super mixed 40k army drawing from a few books. 

Super easy to make if someone hasnt done so already, either find a PDF of the book or take photos of yours, crop and paste relevant bits Frankenstein style into a paint doc and boom! Cheat sheet done! 

Though i did feel a bit bad for the KSons player reading all the nonsense a near pure Sisters of Silence army was about to do to them :D 

[Lexington]

GW may actually be developing this, if you go by their recent job announcements.

Man, I hope, but it’s been like two whole years since they announced it was in the works. Talk about needing to speed things up...

[kombatwombat]

An all-encompassing, regularly updated official app would be a godsend.

 

Keeping in mind that GW needs to be making money out of this, my preferred model would be:

 

- an official app with a subscription service that gets you access to an army builder and core rules with regular automatic updates for FAQs etc

- purchasable ‘bolt-ons’ for each Codex that add that Codex’ rules to the app and army builder, with FAQ updates covered by your subscription fee

- a summary of changes document and post on WHC whenever they do an update

- a physical big rulebook with a blurb about it being useable for games, but informing you that the app exists and has the most up-to-date rules

- physical Codex/Campaign Supplement books with the same blurb about the app, and included in the price is an access code for that book’s rules bolt-on for the app

 

This way you have one place on your device for all your relevant rules, that are kept up to date, and you can still buy books for people that like the tangible feel and want to have some form of the rules in perpetuity for nostalgia games years down the track. And of course, GW makes bank off our subscription fees.

[Wulf Vengis]

19.99$ usd a month.

 

Yearly would be better but...you know GW.

[Panzer]

If GW ever gets around to actually release a proper app for 40k instead of just talking about it, chances are it'll be like the AoS app. 99c a month with a free list builder and stuff and if you want the rules included you have to buy them for the regular price via the app.

[Slasher956]

Which is similar to the WM/H app....

 

the app it self was (2nd Ed...not sure about it now) free with the core units that come in the rulebook.  All the stats where in the app so you could share a list with your opponent and see all their cards (when the game was over you couldnt see the cards from their list any more).

 

You could purchase the faction book which allowed you to view all the cards of that faction + any more that where released in later.

 

Once you can view the cards you can use them to build your list.

[Panzer]

Yeah with the exception that in the AoS app you can build lists without buying the faction book because the battlescroles (AoS datasheets) are all free anyway.