I posted this on Warseer before, figured I would post it here too.

Had an interesting thought of a balancing mechanic for AoS in competitive play. Rather than playing to a given point limit, games are set up based on time.
NOTE: I am not saying this is THE definitive solution. There are problems with it, but its worth thinking about. I haven't tested this but felt it was an interesting approach that might be worth discussing.

For those of you not familiar, the Death Clock is a mechanic used in Privateer Press competitive scene, where both players are alotted a certain amount of time for the entire game... say 60 minutes. This requires a chess clock (or mobile app). During a player's turn, they can spend as much time as they want, but the time is deducted from their total time. Games will play out normally (with scenarios etc) but with the added threat that if your time runs out, you lose the game. I believe there is a minimum amount of time that has to be spent during your turn.

You would comp it further with limitations on Hero models, monster models, number of duplicate warscrolls, Max number of wounds per warscroll, remove sudden death rules..

Some benefits of this system:
- Players have to govern their own list building. Sure you can technically drop your whole collection down... but if you spend 45 minutes with your first turn, you are in serious threat of timing yourself out. The army has to be large enough to accomplish its goals in scenario, but not so large that you are fumbling for time or so small that you risk being tabled. This is based on how well you know the game and make decisions quickly, and puts a little more skill into the list building aspect.

- It puts a check on summoning more units, as the more guys you bring on, the more time you will eat up. Time required to cast the spell, and deploying 30 models, and then having to move those 30 models the next turn will eat up a significant chunk of time.

Some obvious problems with this sort of system:
- It punishes horde style armies. But I would argue that this is true in any timed tournament environment. This problem could be addressed in 2 ways - 1) remove the Sudden Death rule 2) awarding additional time (but not too much time) to players with larger armies. For example, in a 60 minute death clock game, if Player A's army is 1/3 or larger than Player B's army, then Player A gets an additional 10 minutes. This is a small bonus that does not tip the balance in favor of the horde army (ie the army is 1/3 larger but the player only gets 1/6 more time).

- This system does nothing to address internal balances between units. One way around this would be with some limitations to duplicates of warscrolls taken. Aside from this, I'm not sure you can address these issues. Stormvermin will be better than clanrats without points to balance them out.

Thoughts?