How long do you think a phase should last in a game? Do you think phases should move more quickly at certain points of the game?

Moses and I timed out phases a while back using a stop clock and found that in real time, most phases were taking the same amount of time after round 1. Even the final phases could go that long, and I remember a couple of games we played where we were close to rolling initiative with less than a minute to go in the game and then discussed the practicality of just sitting back and waiting out the clock instead.

One game we played, at the 28 minute mark or so, I won initiative, and had to really think about a hard move. After I completed my phase, I stopped the clock, and wrote down the time. 2 minutes had gone by, and Jim and I both agreed that it didn't feel like 2 minutes. Neither of us were distracted from the game during those 2 minutes, nor did we stop what we were doing at any point in that to discuss something else. He just waited for me to finish. I asked him if he thought I was taking too long. He said no, he would have done the same thing.

Then at the end of the game, there was 1:15 on the clock, and it was Jim's final phase. I was already activated out. The question he proposed then was whether him delaying the phase would constitute slow play, since I had taken longer earlier in the game. And it's a fair question. Why should I expect him to rush his move just so I can roll initiative in the hopes of winning on the next round?

I'm not sure there's an easy answer to this.

To me this is definitely an issue that could go onto the Judges test. It seems that setting clear time limits on phases would not be a good thing because in all actuality some times every player will need that extra few seconds to collect their thoughts.

The example that you use of you and Jim though is a specific example. The two of you are both very experienced gamers who know most/all of the rules without needing to think about it too hard. You both also know most of the pieces in the game inside and out and probably devote at least 10 hours a week (or more) to the game.

Gen-Con this year will be the week after a new set is released (if I am not mistaken) so that throws familiarity with the pieces right out the window. When a player is unfamiliar with the pieces that his opponent is playing that can make the game go slower.

At Gen-Con last year I had to face some squads that I had never seen before, (no one at our venue had ever used San Hill, and swarm squads generally were not seen). And against those squads my round time increased significantly because I was attempting to contemplate something that I had never before seen.

Does 1 minute and 30 seconds sound like a reasonable guideline, sure it does. But if someone is taking 2 minutes does that seem reasonable? yeah it does. What if someone who typically takes 2 minutes has to make a difficult decision and takes 3 minutes on deciding a move? or delays the game by calling a judge over to make a ruling (usually a time extension on the game is awarded in major tournaments). To me I think that 4 minutes per phase is too much. But I don't think that 3 minutes is. With that said if I am taking 3 minutes per phase then 20 phases is all I get at max; most likely closer to 12 phases, perhaps 14 if my opponent is playing quickly. if I have 14 activations then that is only 2-3 rounds. Perhaps I can bring in Mr. MTB with the knowledge that if I play on the slower side of things (within what is previously discussed as reasonable) then I know I only need 3 ugnauts and a gonk to last me the entire game.

Defining slow play changes the game meta entirely, and if you do it in such a way that it can be exploited advantageously then you have skilled players who will attempt to take advantage of it (as demonstrated last year by all of the shooting squads who were playing on Mustafar, or Dr. Divot's Geonosis). If a clear advantage can be gained by playing slowly there are those who will take advantage of it. Anyhow I guess it is time for me to get off of the soap box.

It's variable based on the situation.

Spinning an Ugo in anything over 5 seconds is stalling.

Taking a minute to consider an important move after winning the init on the engagement round is understandable.

In an endgame dice rolloff between two melee characters, that same minute is stalling.

That's why there can never be a fixed time per activation/phase. It would lead to more abuse than it solves.

Only a clock with total time per player would have any benefit. If I've played 10 minutes of a game, and my opponent has played 50 and we don't finish there's a clear problem. A player should be able to play his squad to completion in around 30 minutes. The fact that I will play mine in 10 should mean the game will go 40 minutes or so.

I think the chess clock is a really good idea. It would solve some problems if not all with stalling IMO.

Tonight the nemesis at the LGS and I were paired in a match and he stalled for time when we got the 5 minute warning. He was ahead in points and was counting and recounting movement for pieces that had nothing to do with the action in the game just to try to stall and win by points. He failed to realize that we got to finish the round after time was called. I ended up winning because of that fact, but it really irked me that he was deliberately trying to stall so I couldn't take down enough of his pieces to win. Really I only care about stalling when it is near the end of the game and one player is trying to change/prevent an outcome of the match by taking longer than they have to to do their moves.

Also if it is a newer player I cut them slack because they don't always know what to do in every situation. But experienced players really don't have much excuse for persistent slow play at the end of the match.

What if one considers a move for a minute just to end up spinning an ugnaught. Many times I have had to make a tough decision... do I engage or delay engagement. Not time based delay, but strategy delay. Does Vader move out now... or in 2 turns. I think I will just spin my uggie.

When someone traces the same LOS multiple times.

When I can repeatedly pick their eventual move out before they even start their turn, yet they work through every figure on the board before doing so.

When we finish round two and the clock has less than 20minutes remaining.

When they suddenly speed up after I take the lead in points with less than 10 minutes left. I then intentionally slow down and hope they get frustrated.

There are always extenuating circumstances. If you spun 10 ugos quickly, and one time thought over one a bit while working out some timing issue it would be clear that it wasn't stalling. If you spend a minute on every ugo then you aren't playing fast enough to complete a victory in approximately 30 minutes.

I have to agree that "stalling" is something that has to be determined on an individual basis.

However, I'd say that there are certain things the are absolutely stalling. Especially when done on an on-going basis. My last opponent in the Championship last year was doing nothing but stalling. He did what others above have described...checking LOS over and over, counting squares in every possible direction for all figs, fingering every piece, then ultimately spinning an Ugnaught. My opponent pretty much only advanced a reinforcement Ugnaught to Gambit as his last move each round. (With the exception of the Ugnaughts in Gambit, his pieces never left his starting area.)

I had him on the ropes, though. One more round and I would have killed his Aurra and won the game. But he stalled the last five minutes and ran the clock down. I was literally watching the seconds tick away the last few minutes as he did his LOS/counting/fingering/spinning maneuvers.

As I've said many times before, I should have called the judge. The problem, unfortunately, would be the same problem the 100 point tournament had...when the judge was watching, the player sped up, only to slow back down when the judge left the area.

Now, how do we define specifically what slow play is? I don't know that we can.

Should we put a specific time limit on each phase, say two minutes? I don't think so. As others have said above, you may legitimately need three minutes one phase or ten seconds the next. And if you say "two minutes," then there will be those who go exactly two minutes just because they can.

I guess I'd lean more toward each player being entitled to exactly half the clock time. I think that's what people are saying about the chess clock. How I use my 30 minutes would then be up to me, and my opponent would have an equal opportunity.

Honestly, though, the only time I've ever run into somebody stalling is at GenCon. I'm guessing it's the "high stakes" of the tournaments. For two years in a row I've had one opponent each year stall. So, two different guys out of all the games I've played...both at home tournaments and at GenCon tournaments. That's really not that bad a ratio.

Slow play is anything in which the "Average" phase is longer than 30 seconds. I expect a minute or two after that beginning init of each round, but plays after that should, for the most part, be clear.

I think "fast play" should be the expectation in competitive events. Those that practice are rewarded with experience and those that didn't practice will be more likely to make mistakes.

I would totally agree with a board game timer of some sort that if it buzzed, your opponent got to spin whatever activations you have left that phase. Other than the first round, and first initiative, 1 minute is WAY too much. I'd not want this everytime, but I think that it'd be fun to try once or twice to see how the games play out. Fast games = good.

Just curious how you would work this into the confines of the game rules? Say the situation is like you mentioned above, would the game end at that 40 minute point? What becomes of your remaining time? What if neither of you were finished playing your squad through? What if your opponent was winning at the end of the 40 minutes? I like the idea in general, just curious about the details.

See, that's the only thing that concerns me about the idea of a chess clock as well. What do you do when one person has run out their half of the clock. Because even then, you could have a strategy of trying to make your opponent use up their clock time first. Even if you've used 25 minutes of your time, when they've used all 30 of theirs, if you're allowed to just continue playing, and moving your pieces as long as you have time left...that's a LOT of unanswerable damage at the end of a game. I know I could EASILY abuse that. Heck, if you're playing Boba BH, you could just get him into a shooting position, take his Twin Attack, say you touch activate everything else, and then have Boba attack again right away. That's like a 20 second process. So, at the very least, Boba would put out a ton of damage at the end of the game there, if not squeeze in a Disintegration or two along the way, most likely.

On the flip side, if the game automatically ends when one player reaches their 30 minute mark, that's just as easily abuseable, and could almost encourage slow play for some people.

So, something like the chess clock would definitely need some careful consideration.

I know at GenCon, slow play was a big deal, and after many discussions with people, it's definitely a subjective thing. What one person might think is slow play is not what someone else does. There was one game between my buddy James and Eric (Engineer) where Eric asked the judge to come over and keep an eye on things because he thought James was slow playing. Well, the problem was, it was a 200 point game, James was playing San Hill, and Eric had a WFF swarm (with like 16+ activations). So, their first round took almost 20 minutes. Well, on average, that was really not more than about 30 seconds per activation. But Eric called over the judge purely on the fact that the first round took so long. Was it slow-playing? Was it too long? It's so subjective. The crux of the matter is, if you're going to play a high-activation army, then you better be ready to play pretty quickly, otherwise, about 30 seconds per activation is pretty normal.

Even after all the different issues at GenCon, and after dealing with some slow-playing issues at my LGS, I am convinced that there is no change necessary to the rules system to deal with slow play. If someone is playing deliberately slow, it's blatantly obvious, and calling a judge over can address it. But as I've said many, MANY times in the past, learning to capitalize on someone else's desire to play slow is the best option. If you believe they are playing slow, then you already have an advantage, because you know that your opponent doubts their own strategic skill in being able to beat you. So, they are depending on their ability to manipulate the game. I've yet to play a squad that wasn't able to work around this. You simply play smart, and play quick. While they are taking their sweet time to determine their next move, you have already figured out what all their possible moves are, and your best responses to those. So when the opponent moves something, you immediately respond with your two activations (i'm talking like, 10 seconds for your whole phase sometimes). That REALLY unnerves them even more, it makes you look superbly confident, and makes them doubt their chances of winning even more. Then, all it takes is to get a small point lead, and let them slow-play as much as they want to. 90% of the time, they'll end up making really stupid mistakes at that point, because they then switch to rushing their moves to try and catch back up at the very end of the game. This is when you deal the really crippling blows and win the game anyways.

I've yet to lose a game and afterwards say "You were playing SO slow, and you cost me the game!" I might've said now and then "Oooh, if only we had time for one more round" but any time I've said that, I know that we played a good game, at a good pace, and it was my own fault for not getting the victory points fast enough.

So, in closing.....stop trying to fix the problem that other people have. Learn to overcome it.

whoever runs out of time first loses. No ifs, no buts, no score. You spend too much time thinking and moving you forfit your game.

There is no way to abuse it. The time limit is 60 mins. You get 35 mins on your clock. More than enough time to play in but you go over it and you lose for being retarded (literally). Hell you even get 5 minutes more than the opponent so there is no excuse.






At the moment there are only a few ways to deal with slow players.
A) call them on it and end up with a hostile game (witnessed this at gen con)
B) call a judge on it and end up with a hostile game (saw this at gen con to)
C) play really fast and insult them when they are thinking
D) Belt the T%@T and end up with charges brought against you and expulsion from the store/tourney/DCI

I don't know that causing an opponent to win by default because you took to much time on your turns is a good response. I don't know what a good response is but putting a 35 minute death clock on the map is not something that I would appreciate.

OK then, so from the other side of things, again, I play super-fast, and try to keep my opponent as confused as possible, making them use up their game-clock simply by trying to figure out what the heck I'm doing. I can almost guarantee that in most of the games where I played fast as I described before, that I won those games anyway, and most times, before time was called.

I'm not 100% opposed to the idea, but I still don't think it's refined enough to not be abused.



And why doesn't my suggestion above make your list? I'm telling you, one of the big issues with slow play at GenCon happened during the 200 point tourney on Thursday afternoon, and it happened to my buddy James. Now, James is possibly one of the slowest players at our LGS, but he's also one of the best. He doesn't slow play on purpose to stall, and in the last year, he's become WAY better. That game where he was being accused of slow play was completely bogus, and he's was well within the 1 minute per phase type of range.

Now, that said, I play against James at least once every other week. He ALWAYS plays a little slower against me than some of the other guys, because he is trying to be extremely careful about everything he does in order to try and beat me. The faster I play, the longer it takes him every turn to figure out what to do next. And while he's figuring out what to do, I've already figured out what all his possible moves are, and started to decide what my responses would be. This puts him so far on the defensive, he starts making mistakes VERY quickly.

I played one game against him a couple months ago, where he had a decent fighting chance to come back and win the game near the end, but because I had played so agressively early on, and put him in so much of a defensive mode, he didn't take the chances he needed to in order to win.

Yes, some people are going to play slow specifically just to try and win by stalling. A chess clock type thing certainly would help with that. But I have yet to run into a person that has actually been able to beat me by playing that way. If you lose to a squad like that, it means you probably didn't have an optimal squad build anyways, as the only real ways to stall/turtle effectively are through tricks like Override and such.

I dont really see it that way. The intentional staller is not the only problem. The "purposeful" staller is also a problem. There is absolutely no reason a player should play so slow that they eat up more than say 40 minutes out of an hour. Or that a round should take 20 minutes, as in the case of your friend. That is absolutely slow play and needs to be addressed by the judges.

This idea that we should allow slow players time to think about every possible move is idiotic. Its the very reason the Chess clock was invented for Chess. You have a limited amount of time, and you must move within that time frame. I dont like the per activation time clock idea either, but an overall timer would be the way to go.

I understand that newer players might take a while to figure it out, and us experienced guys are faster typically. However, there is nothing in this game that is so important that you need 5 minutes to stare at every piece on the board to figure out. Make a decision and deal with it. Its not like you are really going to make a better decision by waiting anyway, statistically speaking. If you dont know the pieces, or the map, or the strategy well enough to move in a certain amount of time, then you dont deserve to win.

Its no fun for the experienced guy to have to play a 1 hour 4 round game, no matter how unintentional it was.

My personal favorite moments are when the clock has rung (so we are finishing the last round) and my opponent has no way to win, but doesnt realize it. I used to think it was better to tell them there is nothing they can do, but that never worked. Now I just sit there laughing in my head, waiting for them to figure it out - watch them counting spaces, realizing I set up perfectly to prevent the critical attacks that might allow them to catch my points lead

So....in a 200 point game, if both players have 15 activations (not terribly unusual for 200 points) it would be slow play if you use between 15 and 20 minutes for a round? That's only 30-40 seconds per activation, which is right in line with what most are saying is generally acceptable.

Now, of course, I'm playing devil's advocate there, and I'm the first to admit, if you're going to build a squad with that many activations, you've got to know how to play it quickly. But still, 30 seconds per activation is VERY good IMO in most cases, especially if you're playing against a tough opponent that you know you need to think carefully in order to beat them. I played a 17 activation, Thrawn/Trooper squad using Adm Ozzel a while back, and I still managed to finish 3 out of 4 games before time was called. The only one that I didn't finish was the final game of the evening (for 1st place for the night) against James, and that was really only because he spent the last 10 minutes racking his brain trying to find a way to beat me (which he couldn't).



Definitely agree 100% with you here. I think a large aspect of the entire thing is simply that less-skilled players show up to major events like the GenCon Championship, and when you show up to something like that knowing from the start that you aren't as skilled as some of the other contenders, then you know you need some other trick in order to win. Hence the 'intentional' or 'purposeful' slow players.

And this is what drives what I've been saying. Most of your slow players are doing so either to try and cheat their way to victory, or because they already know they are at a disadvantage in terms of skill. Sure, forcing them to use a clock might make them play faster, but they'll probably just make more mistakes as well. I guess it would then serve the purpose of weeding out more of the under-skilled players, but I'll stand by my sentiments that I think you can just as easily win those games by psychologically out-playing the person.

Maybe I just have a unique experience since we had quite a bit of issues/discussions regarding slow play at our LGS over the last year or so.

I've got two ideas:

1. Use a chess clock, but don't have anything in the game depend on it at all. My theory is that simply having a device track the time it takes will make you move faster. Odds are, this will work somewhat.

2. Using a chess clock, create a "Gambit Clock" rules. At the end of 60 minutes, your opponent gets points based on how many minutes you used up. Thus, if you took 40 minutes and only gave your opponent 20, there is a 20 point differential. At this point, it is something that is important, but it is also rewarding fast play instead of discouraging slow play. If both players took the same amount of time, nobody gains anything.

I like this! Perhaps the gambit is too conservative in points price perhaps 2 points per minute. Oh I like this very much!