Of clocks and activations

[mo11usq]

Not sure how faction relevant this is, but perhaps we resurrs contribute more than most...

Life has reduced my hobby time of late, and what time I've had this year has mostly been spent on Guild Ball. This is largely because my local group have been running a league, and it is a new shiny puzzle box to try (so far unsuccessfully) to unlock.

GB is a fun game, but I ultimately prefer the mechanics and experience of Malifaux.

However, playing on a chess clock is simply amazing. It basically guarentees a game will last 1.5hrs or less, which either means I can get 2 games in an evening or get back to the family with something of an evening left. Can't overstate how fantastic that is. On top of this, clock is an interesting resource and frees one up from the responsibility of agonising for ages over what is the most efficient move in a difficult situation.

Additionally, having a fixed 6 (in rare cases 7) models in your team, makes for fewer interactions, generally quicker turns, and arguably a simpler game. Due to 'killed' GB players coming back on the pitch each turn attrition works in a different way from Malifaux, but heavy summoning sort of does a similar thing on top of Malifaux's other complexities. Basically, I've just found having fewer models around is quite nice.

I think essentially what I'm getting at is a wish for competative Malifaux to incorporate a clock and downsize the scale of the game by a few models. More a statement of opinion than seeking response, but fuck all else of interest seems to be happening on this forum lately and my commute is all the more boring for it.

 

[solkan]

Why on Earth did you post this topic here, instead of in the more general discussion area?

Especially since the topic of chess clocks comes up occasionally, with the most common result of the conversation being "If you're all so fired up to use a chess clock, knock yourself out and try it."  

And formats like Henchman Hardcore (which even somewhat new players can play in an hour) exist for a reason.

[Ludvig]

I play guild and arcanists and I very rarely end up with more than eight models in any starting crew so maybe you just picked the wrong faction.

Still haven't tried guild ball but I keep hearing good things about it. We set times to two hours in our club (those of us interested) so that we could prepare for tournaments. Those games ended up with a lot of fast decisions becaude both players knew they had to be fast. Just a verbal agreement usually does the trick. It's very hard to push a game of Malifaux down to 90 minutes though. It can be done with killy pools, I had players finish in about an hour when I did a reckoning game with two killy schemes in the pool for an event last year. I think several crews where around 6 or 7 models in that round.

Just having Punish the weak in a pool usually pushes activations towards the lower end.

[Sagrit]

The problem with chess clock in Malifaux is that it's gard to figure it out who's time is running now... You have to make lot of decision not only on your turn, but mostly on your opponents turn. For example my model attack yours : you have to decide to cheat it or not, you have to take a look on enemies Attack Action, it's triggers, think (or ask) about any hidden mechanics or synergies with other models around e.t.c. So it looks like it's your opponent turn, but it's you who is spending a time. 

And if you want to switch clocks in such situation you will face a necessity to switch clocks on every flip and will be rediculous :)

We did tryed chess clock in local Meta (not me personaly, but there was couple of tournaments in 2016). The good thing about it : every game was finished before 2 hours passed, players simply start thinking about time and play faster (without smoke breaks in the middle e.t.c.). The bad thing : chess clocks scares new and midcore players so they skip such events.

Me personaly totaly agree with your point. This is the actual reason why i am mostly playing on Tournaments and skip "friendly play" - on tournaments i do know time limits, i know that i will face 3-4 different opponents and i can plan my evening. Every "friendly play" i had was 3+ or even 4+ hours long just because .... well, you know, it's a friendly play, no need to rush....

[Rillan]

11 hours ago, mo11usq said:

Not sure how faction relevant this is, but perhaps we resurrs contribute more than most...

Life has reduced my hobby time of late, and what time I've had this year has mostly been spent on Guild Ball. This is largely because my local group have been running a league, and it is a new shiny puzzle box to try (so far unsuccessfully) to unlock.

GB is a fun game, but I ultimately prefer the mechanics and experience of Malifaux.

However, playing on a chess clock is simply amazing. It basically guarentees a game will last 1.5hrs or less, which either means I can get 2 games in an evening or get back to the family with something of an evening left. Can't overstate how fantastic that is. On top of this, clock is an interesting resource and frees one up from the responsibility of agonising for ages over what is the most efficient move in a difficult situation.

Additionally, having a fixed 6 (in rare cases 7) models in your team, makes for fewer interactions, generally quicker turns, and arguably a simpler game. Due to 'killed' GB players coming back on the pitch each turn attrition works in a different way from Malifaux, but heavy summoning sort of does a similar thing on top of Malifaux's other complexities. Basically, I've just found having fewer models around is quite nice.

I think essentially what I'm getting at is a wish for competative Malifaux to incorporate a clock and downsize the scale of the game by a few models. More a statement of opinion than seeking response, but fuck all else of interest seems to be happening on this forum lately and my commute is all the more boring for it.

 

Its all based on Players not on Factions. If u know what your models do there is no problem to make a move. Unless u play summoner vs summoner single game takes about 1,5h without any timings or chess clock. With summoners u need 30 min more on average time it takes u to play game. Once we tried to play on time and result was as i said - it all depends on do u know your cards or no. 
5 turn 50 SS game took me 30 min on taking moves as a Guild, while my opponent played Arcanists and it took him 1h to make his moves. (I expect if my Opponent would take Sandeep instead of Marcus it would took him more time). 

So in our calculation if i took Summoner master and my opponent went Summoner master our game would last about 2,5h that is quite fast for tons of activations game.

 

And btw chess clock is great but it destroys fun for those who cant take actions fast enough and needs tons of time to finaly choose what they want to do. On other hand those kinda of people pisses me off when we play games and there is a time limit.

[Adran]

The last time we talked about it was here (although I know the title doesn't suggest it)

As a rough summery, these threads typically go - "Why don't we use clocks? We have time problems". Most people answer saying "Malifaux doesn't work for clocks", and raise a few of the complications. Occasionally those pro-clocks try it, and go "I think after reflection you're right, they don't work."

I can't remember anyone over the past 10 years who has tried playing Malifaux on the clock and still thinks its a good idea, but there might have been one or two who did. 

 

In relation to your other points, I don't find 40 ss games that much faster than 50 ss games, or 60 SS games that much slower. (Guildball only has 6 players a side, and rarely gets past turn 3 in my experience, but the reports I read still have several games decided with one player losing clock points, so its not just model count,  its the number of choices you need to make that take the time. the end time of guildball is not fixed in a similar way to malifaux. I have had the occasional guildball game (off the clock) go on for more than 3 hours, it was turn 5 before any VPs were earnt. But thats a special and rare game, generally I agree I can get 2 games of Guildball in the time I get 1 of Malifaux unless we are focused on playing 2 quick malifaux games. )

I find game speed is much more a factor of who you play, not what masters you play. I've finished Games against hamlin in under an hour that were really close (I lost, but if I had the card to leap the cerberus on the last turn I would have won) because both players played  crews they knew. 

 

[Durza]

<Modhat> I've just moved this to general discussion as it doesn't seem a faction specific discussion. <Modhat>

Personally with the amount of decisions by both players for every action I don't feel chess clocks are a good idea. If someone wanted to try I'd probably say yes just to try it, but don't feel the need to go out of my way for it. 

[WWHSD]

11 hours ago, Adran said:

I find game speed is much more a factor of who you play, not what masters you play.  

I don't think it matters who I play, it's not going to be a quick game. There's little chance of a game ending in under two hours unless the it's a one sided game decided by an early and overwhelming Alpha strike. 

[Gloomy]

I played a couple of games with a chess clock and I didn't enjoy it. First game we were just switching over between turns, but this became frustrating. Waiting for your opponent to decide whether to cheat or not or check something on his card while your time is running. Next game we tried switching back and forth depending who was making decisions etc but this became very confusing and didn't go smoothly.