Time; How it affects your build and playstyle.

Time is always moving forward. We are always playing against time in a tournament. How does time influence how you build your list? Does it even influence your list? Can time change how we are playing the game?


Does time influence what you put in your list? Do you play a horde list of small elite force? Their are several army types that can help your time management simply by how they are designed or by whats in them.

Terminator style armies- These are usually small, elite forces. The reason they help you with time is they have less moving and shooting than a normal sized army.




Chris Douglas's Adeptus Custodes Deathwing


Reserve style armies-  These armies almost always reserve everything or a large portion of their force. By doing this they tend to speed up deployment and the first couple turns as you do not have anything on the board.

All mech forces- All mech forces can play faster than other lists by speeding up the movement phase.

Some armies can cost you more time per turn than other armies. These factors should be considered ahead of the game and ways to help save time should be utilized.

Horde armies- Orks, Nids, and IG blob armies are examples of armies that will slow the game down. They dent to take longer moving and hand to hand can take longer as you are usually rolling more dice. Movement trays can help with the moving of 120+ figures per turn.

High volume shooty armies-  Dark Eldar and Grey Knights are beginning to look like armies that need more time in their game plan. They tend to throw large numbers of dice in shooting phase. Having your dice presorted and colored may help with these factors.




Xaereth's Dark Eldar at the Bugeater GT 2011


Multiple type armies- Some armies have multiple types of guys in units and can slow down the game in the shooting and assault phases due to different saves. Dark Eldar beast squads and Grey Knights with different weapons are examples.

I tend to lean away from horde armies due to having to move the guys. I prefer small elite armies or reserve type forces. Playing lots of games with your army also speeds up your play by knowing what you are going to do, and how units need to make saves. Always jumping from army to army or even list to list is going to slow down you play.

Not having enough time can force you to make moves you do not want to make or simply not give your army enough time to kill the enemy. Assault armies can need 2-3 turns to come to grips with the enemy. Not getting 5+ turns can affect how much damage they can do. Knowing the game will be cut short can hamper a foot list from reaching objectives. Knowing you do not have a last turn can also cancel the positive effects random game lengths have.

While I do not think we need to make rules or codex changes, simply knowing how much time you need and how much time your list takes can help you play better. Looking at tournaments time limits can also help in list building by ensuring you have the needed time.