40k Slowness - The game killer

[Grimdark_Garage]

Thanks for all the responses guys. I share the same opinion as the majority of you; players not knowing their rules!

 

I have in the past played 3 different types of player :

 

1. The guy who knows his rules and is knowledagble of other rules

2. The guy who knows the game and his rules but is very slow and provides commentary for ALL dice rolls

3. The guy who knows the mechanics but not his nor the basic rules of other factions

 

I do have a good buddy who i play who is a well seasoned tourney player and our games are always very swift.

 

 

Saying that, i do find the Charge>Combat>Consolidate actions very time consuming. more so than other phases for the amount of models in action.

 

 

I would love to find a player who would be willing to play a game without Strategems and see just how swift the game could be.

[Panzer]

I have someone in my group who plays without any Stratagems except for the occasional re-roll because he can't be bothered to remember or look up all the Stratagems he has access to. He knows all the other rules though and doesn't waste time. It doesn't make much of a difference compared to people who know and use their Stratagems.

[Silas7]

For some reason i'm finding some comments abrasive, so for my last post on the subject I will say that 40k has trended into larger model counts per game over a long period of time, to the point where it's reaching faux apocalypse levels. It seems like, kill team is the new 40k and apocalypse becoming the new epic. Leaving "40k" stuck in this grey area between the two and with players unwilling to adapt or show a level of flexibilty because ITC and other tournaments around the world have reinforced a certain rigidness into the player-base.

 

If a player takes longer to play or some other reason that makes finishing the game undo-able causes you to feel like your time was wasted, you really should take another look at why your playing in the first place. Make sure that if you want a beer&pretzels game or something more focused that you talk it over before lists are picked and dice are rolled.

[Marshal Rohr]

A monthly subscription model wouldn’t be as effective because of the massive amounts of time between codexes. Monthly subs work for Netflix, Hulu, etc because they update their offerings monthly. If you play Dark Eldar or Orks or Guard? You’re paying 240$ a year for the same info Battlescribe does for free for multiple years between updates. It would be different if GW had regularly scheduled model releases for each faction, but they are only updated when the designers feel like it. Given the disinterest showed for updating basic troops slots for the most out of date models, you’re paying premium prices for nothing except a few strategems and rules alterations every few years.

[Ishagu]

For some reason i'm finding some comments abrasive, so for my last post on the subject I will say that 40k has trended into larger model counts per game over a long period of time, to the point where it's reaching faux apocalypse levels. It seems like, kill team is the new 40k and apocalypse becoming the new epic. Leaving "40k" stuck in this grey area between the two and with players unwilling to adapt or show a level of flexibilty because ITC and other tournaments around the world have reinforced a certain rigidness into the player-base.

 

If a player takes longer to play or some other reason that makes finishing the game undo-able causes you to feel like your time was wasted, you really should take another look at why your playing in the first place. Make sure that if you want a beer&pretzels game or something more focused that you talk it over before lists are picked and dice are rolled.

This is and isn't true. Most of my lists have around 40 models. Some armies can have 170. Even a faction like Orks and Nids doesn't have to spam 100+ models, that's a choice. People are free to make it, but they have to play quickly. Didn't chess clocks fix the time it takes to play recently? :-P

 

I do agree that the game is probably at the limit of how long it takes at the moment. Most play is very casual but it can spiral into taking too long if people aren't somewhat careful.

[Tyriks]

$20 a month seems extremely high. Even if that came with every rule in every book I'm not sure I'd pay that much.

[Ishagu]

Subscription model doesn't work for this, I don't feel. Updating digital codecies and free FAQs and Erratas are fine. No one has to keep track of every book and rule.

[kombatwombat]

$5 per month plus the Codex bolt-ons seems much more likely and reasonable.

 

US$5 is about AU$7.33, so down under we can expect to pay AU$9.99, because GW are a pack of racist :cusss. :)

[Xenith]

6.5 ed 40k with a thousand sons army. Is took me 30 mins to deploy and roll for 15 spells and boon of chaos.

[MegaVolt87]

Warmahordes waroom app should be the benchmark for a wargaming app, its pretty much perfect. 

[TheTrans]

8th is the true dice edition. More dice on target = win.

So better armies have volumes of dice to throw, that are normally rerolling some in some way... just slows :cuss down to a crawl.

Hordes then exacerbate this with movement, pile ins, fight twice stratagems etc.

[Panzer]

8th is the true dice edition. More dice on target = win.

 

So better armies have volumes of dice to throw, that are normally rerolling some in some way... just slows down to a crawl.

 

Hordes then exacerbate this with movement, pile ins, fight twice stratagems etc.

 

That's neither new nor unique to this edition though. More dice = more reliability = win.

[toaae]

 

8th is the true dice edition. More dice on target = win.

 

So better armies have volumes of dice to throw, that are normally rerolling some in some way... just slows down to a crawl.

 

Hordes then exacerbate this with movement, pile ins, fight twice stratagems etc.

 

That's neither new nor unique to this edition though. More dice = more reliability = win.

 

 

Yeah, but it's impossible to argue that this edition doesn't have more dice rolling. Guns have more shots and there are far more re-rolls then there's ever been. When it comes to how much time is spent rolling dice, 8th edition blows every previous edition (at least as far back as 3rd) out of the water.

[ERJAK]

With a list I'm comfortable with against an opponent that knows their rules as well we can usually get the game to it's conclusion in about 2 hours 15 minutes. There are some factors that affect this (anyone who plays a horde army is a problem) but that's about the average.

 

It's better than 7th where my opponents setup and first psychic phase would routinely take an hour and a half or more combined by themselves.

[Emicus]

L2P issue.

The better you are at the game; from measuring the quirky deployment maps, to knowing your own codex, to tricks for speedy dice rolling, to planning your strategy in advance instead of humming and hawwing.

 

All saves time :) ofc your opponent is half of this battle against time!

 

I have 40 dice, 4 sets of 10 in different colours. Every chance I get I separate them into individual piles. Saves heaps of time. Much easier to get blue+yellow+2 green than to count up 22 dice.

 

Know you stratagems. Truer than ever with all the new ones we keep getting. I went through my TWO decks (marine player) and took out all the ones I'll never use with my Primaris only army. Pick out hellfire shells and whirlwind fire twice, etc. Then work work work that deck.

 

I have foam for my army. When I take casualties I put them straight in the bag rather than a 'dead pile'. Saves post-game time and there is a definite psychological factor for the opponent too!

 

List building: have a boring army. Less unit variance is less rules to remember. Branch out when you get comfortable!

 

Play smaller point games. Ain't no shame in 1k and if yiu somehow find yourself with spare time, play another game.

 

Attacker/defender scenarios and playing a reverse rematch finally answers the question 'did the terrain win the ame '

[MARK0SIAN]

I think the App idea hasn’t really taken off because, honestly, what could you really charge for on the App that isn’t available on Battlescribe?

 

Battlescribe is just too good as a free (or very low price version) for a paid app to compete with.

 

Battlescribe doesn’t allow you to view the main rules or stratagems but you’d still have to buy the codex for those even if GW did have their own app. And if they bundled them into a bolt on for the App I can’t see it being any cheaper than the current method.

[Volt]

Dice count is definitely the main issue. If you play Kill Team or Apocalypse you'll notice the game goes by pretty quickly, even if you don't use movement trays in apoc, because for the most part the amount of dice being rolled is fairly minimal. Meanwhile in 40k depending on the unit you can end up rolling literally over 50 dice for a single fight phase or shooting action. It's just bonkers. When you add all of the cancerous re-roll options on top of that, you'll easily spend most of your time in any game dealing with dice instead of moving models around. If 8e gets any changes, it's that everything needs their attacks axed with most models only getting one die per shoot or fight action. 10 Guardsmen should only get 10 shots, not 40.

[Marshal Rohr]

The datasheets/strategic/objective cards can either help speed up the game or slow it down dramatically depending on how organized your opponent is.

[MegaVolt87]

I think the App idea hasn’t really taken off because, honestly, what could you really charge for on the App that isn’t available on Battlescribe?

 

Battlescribe is just too good as a free (or very low price version) for a paid app to compete with.

 

Battlescribe doesn’t allow you to view the main rules or stratagems but you’d still have to buy the codex for those even if GW did have their own app. And if they bundled them into a bolt on for the App I can’t see it being any cheaper than the current method.

 

GW could easily have a paid app like the warmahordes one. All it takes is the GW lawyers to shut down battlescribe, which they are well in their rights to do to protect their IP. 

[Zephaniah Adriyen]

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.

 

You mean Battlescribe? It's not 100% what you're looking for, but it's close.

 

Edit: Yeah, I didn't read the third page of this topic. Sorry.

[mughi3]

Well as somebody who regularly plays 5th, horus heresy as well as 8th. I can say that yes 8th started out streamlined but has now bloated out to the point it slows the game down annoyingly if you use certain rules/phases.

 

The command point/character beacon re-roll spam is one big one. it is very refreshing to go back and play an edition where what you roll is what you get with a few limited exceptions for twin linked weapons or master crafted weapons(for a single re-roll in CC).

 

Another is the cards, some people really enjoy them but they add another mechanic/phase to the turn that changes the objectives randomly instead of having fixed objectives at the start of the match.

 

third adding extra phases as mentioned above is a biggy as well. the fact that in previous editions (3-5) you used psychic powers when they intuitively were needed (a shooting power used as a shooting attack, a CC power used in CC etc..) instead of having it's own separate phase. or CC when you charged in the charge distance everybody who could swing from the beginning of the combat did, then you consolidated into each other at the end if the fight was still going.

[Panzer]

I think the App idea hasn’t really taken off because, honestly, what could you really charge for on the App that isn’t available on Battlescribe?

 

Battlescribe is just too good as a free (or very low price version) for a paid app to compete with.

 

Battlescribe doesn’t allow you to view the main rules or stratagems but you’d still have to buy the codex for those even if GW did have their own app. And if they bundled them into a bolt on for the App I can’t see it being any cheaper than the current method.

 

The AoS app does fine despite Battlescribe existing so I don't think that's true at all.

[Ishagu]

I don't think the game is more bloated than it was at launch per say, providing you're familiar with your army and not souping up.

 

My Astartes and AdMech aren't any slower to play. I do think that the speed of new releases keeps people from becoming familiar with everything, however.