How to speed up the game?

[Wassa]

Our club nights are generally 4 hours, but one of those hours is spent setting up and deploying.

 

So this gives us 3 hours to play, and guard are slow to shoot.

 

 

We're playing 2000 points, are there any ways to speed this up?

 

(I tried to use the dice app to speed it up but the opponent wanted me to use normal dice)

[apologist]

I don't think there are any magic methods; most speed will come down to familiarity and practise.

 

You can shave a few seconds off (which will add up) by simplifying your weapon choices; keeping upgrades out of infantry squads and in their own dedicated squads. Knowing there are no special/heavy weapons (or other exceptions) in a squad means you can simply count off the models. On the downside, of course, you lose flexibility in your army list.

 

Beyond altering your army lists, I've found that using the right dice – relatively small, and high contrast so they're clear to read – and rolling in batches of ten helps.

 

If you're happy to play around with missions, then playing escalating engagements (where you start with just one or two units on the board, and bring things on from reserve) is a way to bypass the long deployment phase.

 

A final suggestion is simply to play smaller games. 2000pts is a lot to cram in; you might end up having more fun by giving yourself less time pressure.

[Kastor Krieg]

How about electronic dice rollers with presets? There are phone apps that can do that (can't recall names off the top of my head), where you can set up a profile, say "Lasgun Guardsman", have it shoot 50x at given X+, re-roll misses or whatever. That could speed this up for you.

 

For extreme speed, math (weighted results) instead of dice?

[Ciler]

One thing that - i find - speeds things up considerably is not to check everything the other player does. He says he's in range, don't re-mesure unless it's really critical ; he rolls, don't recheck all teh rolls and stats, just go straight to "OK 5 saves at AP-1", etc... It boils down to trust, though admittedly not everyone is worthy of it.

 

Also, one thing to look at is whether special terrain rules add any significant value, because they can often be slow and cumbersome to apply. GO with the basic "in terrain element cover out of it no cover"...

[MARK0SIAN]

The apocalypse deployment rules are actually pretty good for getting things done quickly. You can do a simplified version which I’ve done and it generally worked well:

 

Each side bids a time to set up (in minutes, not more than 30)

Side which bids lowest gets +1 to first turn roll

Deploy simultaneously

Any thing you can’t deploy in the time you bid cannot be used.

[Tirak]

When I was getting ready for Adepticon I made a concerted effort to get my turns down to a point where I'd be able to finish in regulation time. I was running a somewhat small army of only around 100 models, but guard can go quick if you know what you're doing. Here are some of the things I did and do to make my turns go fast.

 

1. Know your army. If you can't recite the range, strength, AP and damage for every single weapon immediately off the top of your head, study your codex until you can. Bonus points if you can do the stats for all your characters as well, though 90% of them will be a variation on 4+/4+/3/5+/6".

 

2. Know your firing groups. Do you know how many shots your infantry squad makes when at full strength? Do you know that immediately without thinking? Learn that. Learn how many dice you need for every single unit so you don't have to spend time tallying up your squads. My infantry squads are 9+1, that's 9 las and a boltgun. At rapid they're 18+2 and at FRFSRF they're 40-4+2. If you're running 10 infantry squads, and it takes about a minute or a minute and a half to just pick out dice, then you're looking at 60-90 minutes of your game spent just gathering dice for your infantry.

 

3. Bring The Dice. You're guard, you shoot massive salvos, bring massive salvos of dice. I just use 12mm war dice, I have 80 of them, I bought a 40 pack of the blue and black and the red and black, then i took all the black, dumped them into a dice rolling cup, which is called the Punisher Cup because I break it out for my Vultures, and then the blue and red dice are laid out on the table in blocks of 4. It's easy, it's fast, and you build shooting sets up quickly and efficiently. 

 

4. Bring The Right Dice. No huge casino dice or monopoly dice, you want itty bitty tiny dice you can hold twenty of in your hand at any one time. And no weird crazy symbols or hard to see colors, just big obvious bullets. Half the time the guard is picking out the hits from the misses or vice verse, so that should be a piece of cake unless you want to waste time.

 

5. When he's going, you're planning. Your turn is not the time to think up a plan, your time is to enact  your plan. The moment he says "Ok I'm done," you move immediately and without hesitation. Some finagling is to be expected if you're working angles and cover, but you should already know where everyone is going, who everyone is going to shoot and what powers everyone is going to get.

 

6. Know how to move. Some people measure every guardsman. This is wrong. Your formations form a frame, measure and move the corners of that frame and then you can fast fill the rest. If you're running forward, measure the leading infantry then match the formation. Unless you're playing an absolute ass or you're being a total dick, no one will have a problem with this.

 

7. Know what you've done. If you've got to stop and say "Wait... did I shoot with him?" and you can't get that memory down, use counters. I have a simple system that works in my head, but some folks prefer counters to lay down when they've done something. Common ones are things like the milk collars that you break when you open a new gallon of milk, pull them off and you've got ready made colored rings. Some people use hairbands or little stones that used to be pokemon damage counters. Find a system so that you never have to stop and wonder if you've performed an action yet.

 

8. Know your army. This was first, this must be last as well. Bringing your time down as guard is fundamentally about knowing who you are as guard. Know every inch of your codex because every time you stop to check you're wasting far more time than you think you are. Know your army and you can end a turn faster than a Space Marine player.

[our_baz]

@tirak makes some excellent points. Familiarity will deffo speed up proceedings. This is a two way street however, your efforts can be undone by an opponent constantly checking information in a codex every roll (happened to me at my FLGS, 3 1/2 hours for 1000 pts game, I was nearly crying by the end).

Also 2000 pts in 3 hours (removing set up etc) is pushing it In my opinion, as said earlier try dropping points to 1500.

[librisrouge]

When I was getting ready for Adepticon I made a concerted effort to get my turns down to a point where I'd be able to finish in regulation time. I was running a somewhat small army of only around 100 models, but guard can go quick if you know what you're doing. Here are some of the things I did and do to make my turns go fast.

 

1. Know your army. If you can't recite the range, strength, AP and damage for every single weapon immediately off the top of your head, study your codex until you can. Bonus points if you can do the stats for all your characters as well, though 90% of them will be a variation on 4+/4+/3/5+/6".

 

4. Bring The Right Dice. No huge casino dice or monopoly dice, you want itty bitty tiny dice you can hold twenty of in your hand at any one time. And no weird crazy symbols or hard to see colors, just big obvious bullets. Half the time the guard is picking out the hits from the misses or vice verse, so that should be a piece of cake unless you want to waste time.

 

5. When he's going, you're planning. Your turn is not the time to think up a plan, your time is to enact  your plan. The moment he says "Ok I'm done," you move immediately and without hesitation. Some finagling is to be expected if you're working angles and cover, but you should already know where everyone is going, who everyone is going to shoot and what powers everyone is going to get.

 

8. Know your army. This was first, this must be last as well. Bringing your time down as guard is fundamentally about knowing who you are as guard. Know every inch of your codex because every time you stop to check you're wasting far more time than you think you are. Know your army and you can end a turn faster than a Space Marine player.

Everything Tirak said is solid but I can't emphasis these enough, especially 5. I get really irritated when I'm playing folks and they spend the first ten minutes of their turn coming up with a plan. Its nuts. Did they legitimately decide to turn off their brain for my whole turn? I don't get it. I typically start moving models the instant my turn starts unless something unexpected happened in their assault phase.

 

Decisiveness, brother. 

 

[sairence]

Can only agree. Point 5 is probably by far the most important thing during your match. Knowing your units is part of the essential preparation, but planning your next turn has to happen when your opponent is playing his. You should rarely have to stop and think about what to do when it's your go.

 

Apart from being much faster, it can also be a nice tool to unsettle your opponent. ;-)

[Diagramdude]

Movement trays and the official GW Assault Dice app (currently available only for iOS). 

The appeal of the GW Assault Dice app is it is officially recognized by GW and it should be accepted at any tournament you go to. It makes rolling out 80+ lasguns take less than 10 seconds.

[Azaiel]

This one might be obvious, if so then I apology.

 

One thing we do that speeds up dice rolling is to have atleast three different colored dice. Why?

 

Say you have a unit of 10 guardsmen shooting, one has a plasmagun, leader has boltpistol and 8 lasguns. Take 8 white, one green and one/two red dice. Let the green one represent plasma and the red boltpistol. Since they all hit on 4+ in this scenario you can roll them all at the same time but still keep track of the different weapons for the wounding roll.

[Lord Raven 19]

This one might be obvious, if so then I apology.

 

One thing we do that speeds up dice rolling is to have atleast three different colored dice. Why?

 

Say you have a unit of 10 guardsmen shooting, one has a plasmagun, leader has boltpistol and 8 lasguns. Take 8 white, one green and one/two red dice. Let the green one represent plasma and the red boltpistol. Since they all hit on 4+ in this scenario you can roll them all at the same time but still keep track of the different weapons for the wounding roll.

I do this all the time

[duz_]

Dont over think your actions

This seems to be the biggest killer I've noticed other more casual players make

 

Having regularly attended tournaments this edition you should be able to comfortably finish a game in 3hrs including deployment

 

If the club is more social and youre chatting as you go that's probably what's killing your time and if that's part of the weekly event then you'll just have to accept you may not finish games

[Kinstryfe]

Lots of good pointers here. I'd just add that, for setup, be prepared ahead of time. My guardsmen mostly live in Ziploc bags. When I know I have a game, I go thru my models and pull everything I need and separate it from everything else. For my infantry squads, I'll have one bag of grunts and one bag with the sergeants, special, and any heavies or vox I'm bringing. Another bag for my mortars and one for any characters. Tanks are big enough that they're easy on their own. If possible, I'll show up early and separate the guardsmen into groupings so I can deploy quickly.

 

It takes more time for me upfront, but it makes the game much quicker once it's started.

[sairence]

I have my squads sorted into my bag in the way they're deployed. So 10 in a row, with sergeant, vox, special and grunts. That way i just take out one row at a time without having to think about them.

[WarriorFish]

Some good points here I can't add much to. The more of your turn you can do in your opponents the better, along with familiarity with the rules you may be surprised how fast turns can go. Of course much depends on other factors, such as the game size and events but it'll always help. The Tactica Generalis is a little dated perhaps, but should be worth a read :tu:

[Feral_80]

Apart from AM specific issues (horde), which can be addressed by list designing (do not play horde, period), the main problem is unsolvable as it would require giving up a core game mechanic: mass rerolls. Unfortunately, introducing rerolls to the current extent was really detrimental to the game. All armies have it in some ways, and AM certainly has a lot of it as well. It is not only terribly boring, it is also so time-consuming that it takes away all the advantages that 8th ed. in theory had over 7th in terms of game length. Matches last pretty much the same time, even if we tend to play to a slightly higher amount of points now.

 

Why oh why GW do you always have to mess up things?

[brother_b]

I routinely play guard (and dabble a bit myself) and find three things that slow the game.

 

1. Lots of shooting, be it lasguna or tanks. That's lots of dice rolling.

 

2. See above posts- lots of dice means lots of rerolls.

 

3. Orders- planning them, issuing them, and the rolls/rerolls added by them.

 

Solutions? My friend knows his army and is well versed in his tactics. His knowledge and experienced directly impacts the speed and that's what I've seen across the game.

[Diagramdude]

The GW assault dice app really streamlines the dice volume problem. And all variations of rerolls are very easy once you learn the controls. I used it in a tournament this weekend. Resolving each FRFSRF squad of 36+ lasguns took about 5 seconds each.

[tychobi]

Chess Clocks. No other method works to force efficiency fairly. Points reductions don't work until they nuter the game entirely. All the stated strategies to be more efficient are good but the clock brings it all together!

[Captain_Krash]

GW rules (meaning a "My Turn/You're Turn style game) are not optimized for chess clocks. This isn't warmahordes.

 

Krash

[Shamansky]

GW rules (meaning a "My Turn/You're Turn style game) are not optimized for chess clocks. This isn't warmahordes.

 

Krash

I'd say "my turn/your reaction - your turn/my reaction". There is no such thing as one's turn actually, both sides are active during both halves of game turn.

 

In the end all we have to speed up the game is experience.

[WarriorFish]

A subject for another topic perhaps

 

We've also forgot the most Guard way of speeding the game up: delivering His hammer without mercy, as is proper. Your opponent's turns are a lot shorter when you're killing all his models off

[FallenSoldiers]

One thing I definitely do is to lay out all the stratagems and psychic power cards I plan to use during the match. It’s a good way to not forget your options as well as having them handy for knowing costs etc.

[Diagramdude]

I love chess clocks in the competitive setting. It is the only way to protect both players from intentional OR unintentional slow play. You get 90 minutes, I get 90 minutes. It really keeps you moving efficiently during your time, and you really don't care if your opponent is efficient or not with their time. It doesn't matter. If they dawdle and play slowly, great! Keeps their clock ticking. You'll still get your 90 minutes. And once they run out, they're done. They're only making save rolls for the rest of the game. GG