Hi All

I have a concern.

Having just attended FSA which was my first tournament and my 3'rd 3000k game, I found it very difficult to deal with the pace of the game.

All-in-all I felt rather unsatisfied by the games, not having really completed any. The closest to completing was the second where we decided to end it end turn 2... I did not feel like I was being particularly slow (although my opponents Si, Steve54 and Par should probably chime in here with their observations)...

Are there any others who have problems with the fast pace or is it something everyone goes through?

Tournaments are by their nature a slightly faster pace than more friendly games. To fit all the games in, allow time for players to eat and refresh and organisers to do the necessary admin, the games themselves have to be played to a strict timetable.

That said I'd expect a normal game of 3000 points to take no more than 3 hours max under relaxed conditions.

First you complain about the games being too fast paced, then complain about not finishing the games. So you're in fact complaining about the length of tourney games not being enough for a satisfying game which is a fair point. As Meph mentioned, you need to fit 3 games to have any chance of separating the players and having a clear winner. Outside of a 7 am start and a 7 pm finish with no breaks, there's no way you can have more than 3 hours for a game in that setting. For what it's worth our friendly club games take around 2h30m including getting drinks and checking neighbouring games. The more you play, the more you'll get the same situations happening for a second or third time and you'll make educated decisions faster.

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I've had issues with pace. There are a couple of tournament attendees that have issues with keeping their games to time despite years of experience. There are four contributing factors:

1. Analysis Paralysis

New players take a while to decide what to do. Especially towards the end of Turn 3 and when trying to think an activation ahead.

You get quicker at this. Good players already know their next several activations ahead and their opponents'. Trick is to not waste time in your opponent's activation just observing, and to think how you'll react.


2. Continual Stat Reference

Looking up the armour for Tactical Marines every time they're fired at sloooows thiiiings down. Especially some players without the quick reference sheet who then flick through several pages of lists to find the right thing.

Have a quick reference sheet, and learn your stats. And if you look something up once then you should remember it for next time.


3. Rules Queries

If you're unsure how x plays, or have a tricky rules situation this stops the game. Still happens as you're experienced as you can get even more finnicky about rules.


4. Tangents

They chat on and on about what happened in the last game, or the battle for Stalingrad, or what they had for supper. It can be frustrating . In 40K tournies deliberate slow play is a real issue.

I like to chat, but if you want extended dialogues then there's after the round, and lunch, and the evening curry.

If your games are taking a while Charles ask yourself which of the four reasons above are contributing.

At the moment I suspect I am guilty of all four.



James

I'm still guilty of checking stats, I'll say what it is, doubt myself and check the sheet...but it's quicker now I'm using nids as its one side of A4

Hey guys

@Mephiston - I totally understand why the games are paced as they are. I am not complaining about the organisation and in fact do not see how one could change the time.

@Carlos - Initially I was not sure whether or not you were having a go at me. I am not having a go at tournaments, simply stating my personal issues with my first tournament and whether the tournament experiance gets better with time/ gaming experiance. You do seem to imply things get better.

Curis - I think you have probably a helpfull list there. I guess I suffer from analysis paralysis (poet & didn't know it?) and stats reference. There were some rules queries, but those (to my memory) took no more than 2 or 3 minutes. Certainly no tangents. I was aware of time and made no space for chit-chat.

My main purpose of this post was to determine whether I am alone in feeling the way I do about the tournament pace (as a noob) and whether this gets better, or whether others generally deal with the tournament pace from the get-go, in which case the prognosis is worse for me.

I am trying to decide whether it would be worth my while (in enjoyment and performance) to attend further tournaments or whether I would be better off sticking with social games.

I am in no way attacking/criticising/complaining about anyone else or organisation or rules or whatever. This is a self-inspection.

PS. to my FSA opponents - I appologise for my slow pace.

Can I ask how many 3k games you had played before the tournament? I only had half a dozen under my belt, but all the guys I regularly play with are tournament regulars, so it certainly helped me to get into the tournament 'mindset' if there is such a thing.... perhaps because we play on thursday evenings, time is always a factor, so you learn to play quick so you can actually finish on time

I am not the quickest player, but I didn't find the pace of any of my games to be excessive, two of them even went to a 4th turn (which PAR and myself had to rush to finish)

I think you should certainly attend at least one more tournament before making your decision, you're in a location with a good few epic players, it might be worth getting a few 'practice' tournament style games in with some of them....

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I think one key thing to try and learn is that your opponents turn is when you do most of you thinking and planing...they spend lots of time moving units and the like which you don't need to be watching hawkishly so this the time to do your plotting.

Sounds trivial but it really does help.

I've also heard having a plan at the start of the game helps but I've yet to master that skill

@kyussinchains

Before the tournament I had a total of 2 x 3,000 pointers. The rest have generally been minigeddon style games.

Your advice makes sence. (as does Meph)

It gets lots better! The record for quickest tournament game was Bob's Templars vs Rug's Guard - under 90 seconds.

First tournament can be a baptism of fire. Your next one you'll feel you're playing just as quickly, but find there's a weird half hour gap at the end of the rounds that's mysteriously appeared.

You will have to expand on that!!

three thunderhawks, all got criticals?

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This was one thing I was worried about prior to playing at FSA, though by the sounds of it I'd managed to get in quite a few 3k point games over the past year or two with Mephiston helping me along - turns out my first ever tourney game was finished with an hour to spare (that's more to do with Curis utterly flattening me though... an experience in which I picked up some useful tips for next time it's obvious that I'm going to get a bunch of angry chaos dudes planetfalling on my blitz)



This is the kind of thing that I found attending FSA really helped with in all honesty, one game every now and then isn't enough to really hammer home stats and make them really stick and prior to FSA I couldn't have told you the armour save of a tactical marine. Three games in one day and I can pretty much recite half my army's stats without checking now just because I realised I'd checked and double checked the same stats over and over and over, whereas in just one game I might only have to check that particular stat once or twice.

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Rug's approach to an army that will orbital bombard then drop and planetfall is to put his entire army in as small an area as physically possible.......and when that is the centre of the plotted bombardment and drop zone it's not pretty

Was Black Templars v Steel legion at FSA 2011 - http://www.epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampio ... php?tid=40 if you want to look further.