Your goal needs to be to finish within 60 minutes, where "finish" is defined as one player kills an opponent's entire squad or reaches 200 points. If that means you have to rush some moves, then you have to rush some moves. NickName once said (I'm paraphrasing because this was years ago but I still remember the gist of it) that you don't have unlimited time to think through every move, only as much as is possible to still genuinely try to finish the game within 60 minutes.

I don't have such a problem with counting out a bunch of squares and then just spinning a commander, as long as you don't do it too often and/or that counting is useful later. Plenty of times I count out a move and spend a minute or two figuring it out, decide that then isn't a good time to do it, and spin a commander; but then in a couple phases I do that move I planned out and get it done quickly because I did all that counting earlier.

Obviously I wasn't in Indiana but those have always been some of my thoughts. Intent is important, and both players need to be playing with the goal to be 200 points in 60 minutes. Sometimes you don't get there, and that's ok, but you need to be trying.

Great topic Les!

As a judge, how do you fairly rule on a guy that has "30" dudes, and then his opponent has only "9"? Obviously, it's going to take triple the time for the guy with "30", because he has a lot more to move. The 1st rnd or 2, "shouldn't" take much time, because it's the beginning ( because on some maps, that's just how long it takes to get to the gambit area- and there isn't much complicated stuff happening yet ). I can see rounds 3-6, taking much more time, because that's when the majority of the rolling and calculating, talking etc., takes place (attack and saves-and especially a swarm grenade squad will invoke a "crap load" of save rolls, and also what if the dudes saving have free re-rolls, Force, and Master of the Force abilities-which causes the player with the high activations have a longer round, because his opponent is taking some of his time rolling saves). So another factor is the map. Some maps you can get to gambit in rnd 1, and some it could possibly be rnd 2 or 3. I think that it's a judges responsibility to set the tone from the beginning of the tourney. Announce that slow play won't be tolerated, and even go as far to say the specific minutes allowed per person each phase ( you have to be specific-but be practical and fair ). The other thing is this. Some guys play super FAST, which shouldn't penalize the guy that doesn't want to play/can't think as fast as the fast player. Which also raises another good point. If I have Dodonna, San Hill, or Ozzel ( there are others I know ), these players have the luxury of activating 1, which is half the time it takes their opponent, which leaves them with more time at the end to activate the rest of their entire squad..............HOW do you measure that in time? They could have to activate, literally their entire squad while the opponent is watching them mercilessly maneuver all their guys/killing their guys, with attacking, and activating special abilities. There has to be a fair balance in this case, because even though they have tempo control, they have to to be given reasonable time to move their squad, not rushing them to move their entire squad in just a few minutes. So, if they take a total of 30 seconds to move half their squad ( their activation time alone ), then their opponent activates their entire squad, there must be given reasonable time to activate the rest of their squad, and the "impatient" player needs to take a chill pill, before reporting the "slow" play. This player should be given more than the usual "per phase" time, because, he took very little time in the beginning of the round, activating only one, per phase. The other important factor is this.........................the judge has to be impartial, non-"judge"mental, and MUST, see the slow play first hand, and not automatically give a slow play warning, on just the word of the impatient player, that may think that their fast play, means that his/her opponent has to play at their same pace. Now if the judge witnesses it first hand, than by all means, WARN, the slow player. The other problem is this. People can be really "sneaky", and play fast throughout the entire match, then all the sudden, become a "slooowwww" player, conveniently at the end of the match, delaying, so that they can pull out the victory.

Anyways, slow play is a delicate, and difficult thing to fairly judge on, especially with a complicated game with many different factors and variables, and different varying types of players and their varying personalities, that can potentially cause "issues", when all squads vary, especially with all the varying different complex squads, that can cause or bring up a lot of grey areas, which can be interpreted in different ways.

I don't play tournaments for this reason. I like to think out my moves and make the best choice. I also don't like playing timed chess. I like to have a few beers with my buddy charlamange1st and have a well thought out match.

This style doesn't quite fit in a tournament setting so well. My games take about 1hr45min to 2hrs and I'm cool with that.

I guess the point of this thread is "don't play in regionals unless you are willing to adjust to speed."

maybe a suggestion if this is a problem is to add a chess timer to the games with 30 minutes on each side. assess some kind of point penalty for going past your time.

example: 5 point per minute over maxing at 25 points and going longer than 10 extra minutes forfeits the match. Maybe people will play with The Father every match then so they only have 3 acts.

Having played a 20 to 30 activation squads in the past with San. I can tell you that spinning a mouse only takes a second. With the nine figures of an opponent spinning my mice is only at most 10 seconds leaving me 4 minutes and 50 seconds to mover the rest which should be easy because my opponent isn't moving. Yes I get that you have to think about what he might do the next round, but 5 minutes should still be plenty of time. because in the 20-30 activation squad only at most 10 are going to be actually doing stuff. It is really pretty easy. people just make it harder then it actually is.

yeah, a lot of tournament folks
have been calling for this to be elevated from floor rules to game-level sportspersonship for years,
so it's great to hear this being addressed.
I get it - site rental has a firm deadline,
and there's setup, packup and often its at a convention so
you've got hours of travel ahead of you...
that's why tournaments have to run like a well-oiled machine, on time hehe.
So, from that point of view, slow play is exceedingly selfish and ruins the fun for everyone hehe.

In Go, Chess, and every other competitive boardgame tourney you can think of,
theres a 'shot clock' - you're on the clock. no draws, no adjudications pauses etc,
just, a 30mins per side clock.

I know some folks are masters of the slow play - separatist and paratus or zann consortium mirror squads,
lobot squads, and swap squads at half health are notorious for slow play.
but, it ain't fun, and 9/10, it doesn't change the actual outcome.
you'll meet that one lucky squad that's all autodamage or Vong... and no amount of slowplay will defeat that.

in trying to balance for the meta,
you're vulnerable to their kitsch theme squad hehe.
that's the tournament though...

I'm also going to say - Dynamic Duos has not once had an issue of slow-play, at tournaments locally, ever that I can recall.
no gambit means no TKO crud, there might be a fibonnacci 'siamese fighting fish circling",
but that's a round or two at most...

I did not know my squad or map before the Indiana Regional (Brian made my squad) I had 20 activations with Dodanna and most of my games finished within 30-45 minutes Lillian and myself played 15 rounds and finished the game. Randy and Myself played a 15-20 minute game. Its not as hard as people think it is.

Actually Jim I went 7-0 in that Regional, all 3 point wins. Jason and Graham B. are the only others to score 21 points in a tournament. But who's counting?


I will say that the game has been getting more complex mechanically as time has gone on, possibly too much so. The major tournament players can usually keep up with it, sure, but any new or just slightly less-active players might have trouble just because even if they know their own squad inside and out, their opponents might be unknown and complex. As a high level player it's easy to just say "get good, play quick", and to a certain degree there is a general philosophy of playing more quickly that needs to be adopted by more players, but I do sympathize with people that have trouble with the 1 hour time limit. That's why in my post above and when I judge the important thing is that the player is clearly TRYING to finish the game in 1 hour (again, where finishing means somebody getting 200 points).

That's definitely true. If you can get comfortable playing faster, you'll also start playing better.

It's a real and unfortunate problem. WotC made around 700 unique sets of stats, and the vast majority were fairly simple and most were pretty crappy and don't get played.

In the V-sets we have released 778 sets of stats (not including Epics) and are now releasing 36 new ones every 6 months. So just based on number alone we've over doubled the size of the game already. Then consider the fact that there are exceptionally few worthless pieces made in the V-sets (which is by design, unlike WotC we have no incentive to pad sets with filler) and we are pushing the design space a lot more than WotC ever did, which adds to complexity.

It's definitely a problem. The game is really complex and I believe overly difficult for new players to get into. It's a very hard problem to fix at this point, though. We probably should have thought about it back in 2010 and built in some safeguards (like rotating sets or smaller set sizes from the start or just being more mindful of complexity), but nobody had any experience doing anything like this before so we've been learning as we go.


This has definitely veered off on a tangent, but I just wanted to say that I totally get where you're coming from. I don't know the best solution. Maybe you and your friends could slowly introduce the V-sets into your games one at a time, from the beginning. Assuming you have a good grasp on the WotC game, add in Destiny of the Force. Once you've got a good idea how most of those pieces work and how squads with them play, add Renegades and Rogues, and so on. That way you still get some new variety to the game and don't just play the same old WotC stuff again and again, but you don't get overwhelmed with new stuff.

I also played James 2 time in an hour at the Chicago regional changing squads in between the first and second game and neither of us had played the others squad ever.