I guess this is why BM's have such leeway on what to call as stalling. Personally, if you're taking more than 5 min per turn, and I'm watching you, you're stalling. If you're stalling during someone else's turn (like taking over a minute to click one click of damage or heat), you're stalling. Stalling's cheating, so you'd be DQ'ed.

here is my horror story of a time problem:

Played this guy in a tournament a LONG time ago. He regularly took 5-7 minutes per turn, while all my turns combined were perhaps as long as his longest turn, a 15 minuter which i sat there through, not saying anything, trying to be nice about it. My friends said they could see viens in my forehead getting ready to explode in anger at the guy for it, but I didnt say anything about it. I lost the match, but i did get fellowship that day.

Really pretty obvious when someone is stalling, particularly when theyre playing Bounty Hunter or another fatty. Hell, with a fatty there arent a whole hell of a lot of units you CAN do something with.

One thing that I find helps is to take an active interest in their turn. Help them measure. Use your fingernail to mark a location he measured, so he cant think for a moment and need to remeasure. Hand him order tokens. Hold the tape on unit centerpoints for him. This sort of thing also helps prevent a good many arguements too. A simple glance at the watch and "C'mon man, its been like 4 minutes" should do the job too, although it might not win you any fellowship votes. *shrug*

My method for helping slow players through their turns is to keep track of their orders for them. A polite, "You have X orders left" can help keep them on track - and prevents the "Hmm, lets see, how many orders have I used?" stall.

I can't say I've run into any obvious stallers, just slow players.

The most frustrating slow player I ever had as an opponent could not keep his focus on our game for more than a few seconds. And this wasn't a little kid either. He would watch other games around us, and talk to other players, in the middle of his turn or mine. At one point I had to repeat the declaration of an action four times before he actually paid attention. So time waisting in this game is not restricted to your own turn. If someone wanted to they could burn time on your clock.

take the little cheaters by the scrum of their necks and physically eject them from the venue.....it would be theraputic at least.

I've mentioned this before, but one of the problems with stalling is that's its terribly difficult to enforce. It requires a judgement call by the battlemaster, that, quite frankly, most battlemasters are not willing to make. The judgement call is whether a player is stalling, or whether they're just taking their time. The former is illegal, the latter is not. Most players who stall are smart enough to not make it blatantly obvious that they're stalling. They'll look at the pieces in play, measure stuff, contemplate moves, and tons of other stuff that they would legitimately do if they were just taking their time. The only difference is that they know exactly what they're going to do, they just want to waste a little time before doing it. For this reason, it's almost impossible for battlemasters to enforce the "no stalling" rule.

So, the solution that people talk about are chess clocks. I like the idea, but it's terribly complex. What do you do if the other player has to declare optional equipment on/off during your turn. What about when they have to click damage on their pieces. Also, timers won't be very friendly to new players. My suggestion is this: Use timers for highly competitive tournaments, such as nationals and worlds. For a 60 minute game, give each player 35 minutes. For a 50 minute game, give them 30 minutes. If you run out of time, the opposing player can continue to make plays until the game clock runs out. I don't expect this to happen very often, because this mechanic will deter stalling without it ever happening to come into play.

First: Never play in a venue where the BM has a bad rep, or one whom you think is biased against you. You'll just resent every judgement call he'll make. Find another venue, but if you catch the ire of 3 different battlemaster in 3 different venues, better think hard, do all those BMs have the attitude problem or do you?

Second: Timekeeping is best left to the players, but indeed we need some device to keep up the time. "Chess timer" could work but not in a way how it's used in chess, like each player is allocated a specific time length for the whole round, here you have to give 3 minutes the most for each turn.

How to solve stalling? Let the players know that for the sake of fair play they cannot spend more than 3 minutes each turn. If they are noobs and have difficulties complying with the 3-minute rule, advice him to practice some more some other time, but force him to think fast and hard within time limit, after all it's a tournament and not your regular weekend practice.

Put yourself on your BM shoes, they gotta enforce the rules and at the same time do it without alienating players, it's really not easy. Having a tense atmosphere between the BM and the players does not help in any way.

A chess clock would not be used that way. If the match was 50 minutes, the clock would likely be set to probably 54 minutes, you get 27 minutes each. That is so there is some overrun time for both of you. If you run out of your 27 minutes, you lose the game.

So for your example, it is 15 minutes into the game. You have used 6 minutes, he has used 9. You have a marginal lead. If you sit on your rear for 21 minutes that you have left, it is only 36 minutes into the match and you have now lost the game, since your clock has run out.

If you sit for even 15 minutes, your opponent can take his turns as quickly as he likes, forcing you to use more of your clock, of which you only have 6 minutes remaining. If you play slapdash to just hit your clock, he can take his time to assault you and take the lead. You can't take advantage this way either.

You can't sit on your rear when you are using a chess clock, it can't be abused.. that is the point.

I do see that you COULD try to stall on your opponents turn.. though that would be terribly obvious, since the only thing you could do slowly is roll the dice. You are not doing any orders.. it is difficult to stall on your opponents turn.

Having played chess with a chess clock several times, I can tell you it puts a sense of urgency into the game. It is also vaugely satisfying to smack the timer, putting on his side. Almost a dare to beat you in less time than you can beat him. :)

A chess clock is the best way to try and manage stalling, I can't think of any other system that would work better, but plenty that work worse. And that includes the situation now, where it is sheer guesswork if someone is stalling or not.

If someone can think of something better than a clock of some type, lemme know. ;)

fleabitfox

Or capture it. That's what I do.

no to solve stallers kill something to put you in the lead then youll be supprised how fast he moves to get the extra turns in to get the balance shifted back in his favor

I don't have the money to buy more than one piece of chess clock, and I would need more than three :(.

But if WK is gonna provide it to the venues, then coolness!!!, I'll find a way on how to use effectively a resource at hand :)

I bet he had to take ADD therapeutic class on weekends before he hits the venue and play MW. :p