Grand Moff Boris wrote:
I don't really think you understand what is happening in the situations being described. It's not about how fast it takes to activate characters on a tempo control squad.
It forces the opponent to position a lot more carefully than if there is back-and-forth engagement. Only a moron puts his pieces in a position to be unloaded on by the opponents' forces at the end of a round, and a tempo-control player - most of those I have fared against, anyway - can move their pieces into a new hiding position very, very quickly to wait around for the next round in the hopes that I - the non-tempo control player - will make a poor move that allows them to unload then. But when I don't the hiding game continues, right up until the final 10 minutes of the game when time is called.
So my choices are to commit suicide with my squad by positioning for a strike on the next round that I will never get to take, or force my opponent to come to me at the end of a round, which he won't do either because my pieces are perfectly placed to prevent him from seizing the end-round strike.
It's not really slow play in the sense of taking a long time to figure out which pieces to move. It's just a lot of boring inaction that neither one of us are really in a good position to overcome without handing the game to the other player.
In cases like these what usually happens is we get down to the last 15-20 minutes and then one of us is close enough to force the action in the middle of the round, but odds are time will be called before the game is over at that point.
Dennis, what I'm trying to get at though, is partly what you've identified in your post here. 90% of the time, people play either with or against tempo control squads, with this hide-n-seek attitude until the last 10 minutes of the game, where they make an all out attack and either fail miserably, or win brutally. On both sides of the coin. My point has always been, and from talking with Bill I know he feels similarly, that there's really no need to wait so long to do that. You can spend 6 rounds jockeying for position, or you can make that same pounce on round 3 and have the game be over in 45 minutes. If it's going to be a suicide run, or forcing your opponent to come to you, either way you slice it, one player or the other has to make the first move.
Yes, when playing against tempo control squads, often-times being that person who 'makes the first move' can be a death sentence. Hence my comments about learning the squads/tactics of tempo control better. There are ways to play with/against tempo control to mitigate those risks. Most times, you have to make a bigger risk to get a bigger reward as well.
My point has always been though, if the game is going to come down to a mad rush for points in the last 5 minutes anyways, you may as well just do that earlier in the game and be done soon enough to go get a soda.
Grand Moff Boris wrote:
That is not the same thing as in SWM, where you might be on an unfamiliar map or you are not sure about LOS from specific positions. Should every move require that level of thinking? Nope, of course not. But it does affect the overall pace of the game for people who are playing strictly for points, or for people playing against someone with that mentality.
This comes down partly to a super-competitive event vs. a more casual one, but...
Anyone who makes the excuse that they are unfamiliar with the map, or they don't know the LOS on this map....those are NOT valid reasons for slow play in my book. I spent HOURS before coming to Gencon this year studying some of the newer maps. I sat at my dining room table with my dry erase markers, and my LOS tools, and my minis, studying set-up areas, key LOS, safe squares, etc. I wouldn't have been anywhere near as comfortable with Taris or Teth if I hadn't done that. Sure, maybe not everyone has the time to do that kind of thing, but that is NOT an excuse to slow down the game. Just as it's no excuse to slow down the game because you don't know the abilities on your cards.
To compare to the Magic example you gave:
Grand Moff Boris wrote:
In Magic, you know you can play a land card each turn. You know you can attack with the creatures on the table, what can block, and you can eyeball the mana on the table vs. the costs of cards in your hand. You either turn the cards sideways to play new cards or to attack, or you don't. Period.
The same applies in SWM 75% of the time as well. There are ALWAYS pieces in the back-field or far enough out of play that should require almost no thinking at all about them. People will sit and waste a full minute trying to decide where to position their San Hill, Dodonna, or Battle Droid Officer. Those players simply need to take some time to THINK about the various maps/strategies (on their own time, not during the game), and realize that there are simple, quick, ways to decide where to move or tap those types of characters. I truly believe a large portion of slow play can be attributed to people who struggle deciding what to do with inconsequential pieces.
Yes, I understand this ends up coming off as a slight against people who are just naturally slower players. But enough of you are familiar with my buddy James here in Cincy to know that he's improved his play speed immensely in the past 2 years. It can be done. It's a matter of whether it matters to you or not. The current rules system doesn't make it matter, but these suggested changes should help.
dnemiller wrote:
It is comments like this that I find discouraging. This discussion on how to deal with slow play is three years old. If you have not presented it in 3 years I really have no idea what you are waiting on.
I'm assuming he's referring to something he mentioned in a past thread. I for one, can't even remember the stuff that I suggested in some of those threads. So, Dennis, if you have something particular in mind, by all means, just suggest it again, rather than posting things that sound to me more like "Boo hoo, nobody wants to listen to my ideas". I don't think that's what you're trying to say, but it's how it appears to some degree.
empirejeff wrote:
You know, if the first tie breaker was total number of points you scored in all your games (ideally with the max you can score in a game is the point limit, scoreing 174 points in a 150 points odes not make much sence) that would encourage you play down to the end every time, even if the game was totally one sided. In order to score as many points as you can, killy your oppoent pieces and gambit.
I'm pretty sure something like this has been suggested several times, with the major hurdle to such a system being how to implement it into the DCI Reporting software. It's a piece of cake to tally up tournament placement by hand this way, and it's how we did it quite frequently at the LGS before we got more serious about DCI. It's also how we usually determine placement when we do EPIC events at the LGS, as it does force people to just engage and get as many points as they can, rather than sit back and win on gambit/time limits.