This has been a question I've been thinking to myself for a long time now: how can I shorten my playtime so I can be done with a game in 5-6 hours? I usually play 2000 point lists but I've had games that I've done at 1500 points and lower that don't finish at the time I want to get them done by. My local hobby store gives us a period of about 12pm to 5 or 6pm on Sundays to play 40k and I normally never even end up finishing a game. I'm going to play a 1250 point list against my friend today and was wondering if anyone had any advice for speeding up the process of playing a single game of 40k?

What list are you using? Different armies have different techniques for speeding up play, i.e. having psychic cards, knowing how many shots/attacks you have without needing to count, etc.

Without trying to be rude or curt, one surefire way of being able to speed up the process of playing a game of 40k?

Both parties to know their applicable rules, inside and out, and to have applicable FAQs on hand to curtail any arguments.

When people aren't having to flip through rules or FAQs? Game goes much quicker.

Also, for both parties to remain focused on the game. It's one thing for you to say hello to somebody and have a brief "how are you doing" chat while the other person does their turn...it's quite another thing for someone to wander off and go chat with someone or go to a shop to get a drink/snack or whatever.
The former doesn't really interrupt the flow of the game, nor potentially lead to conflicts of rules or "did you do that, really?". The latter most certainly can in some circumstances.

There isn't much you can do beyond knowing your lists well. 2,000pts between two people who know everything inside and out usually runs 3-4 hours for me, I've never gone six hours and not finished.

Quick measurement does help, though; instead of trying to measure precisely every single model in a unit you measure carefully for the front line and then sort of shuffle everything else in behind. And I've seen people bring printouts that contain statline/weapon references for just the models in their army to avoid needing to flip back and forth between various sources to look things up.

 mrhappyface wrote:
What list are you using? Different armies have different techniques for speeding up play, i.e. having psychic cards, knowing how many shots/attacks you have without needing to count, etc.

Definitely true, I run with Tau most of the time and know my codexes inside and out. As well as every single universal rule that applies to most armies, except the newer ones.

2000 point games should NOT be taking you 5-6 hours. Generally, that should be a 3 hour game at most.

The main time drains in a game are,

1) Constantly looking up rules, faqs, etc...

2) Not rolling dice fast enough. Sometimes you do have to roll dice individually, especially when mixed saves are involved. But if there aren't mixed saves, you should roll your saves all together.

3) Slow measuring. Usually when moving a unit you only need to make 1-2 measurements and then move the rest of the unit roughly the same distance. If you are constantly making everybody be at max coherency you're going to lose tons of time.

4) General talking with your opponent and other people around you. While this is usually an enjoyable part of playing, its also a major time drain if you waste a couple hours just talking about stuff instead of actually playing.

I can't imagine what would drag a 2000 point game into a 5-6 hour event. You'd have to be doing basically all of the above for it to drag out like that.

One thing that also affects is your opponent. Friend? Total stranger? Is there mutual trust or not? Big effect

Vassal makes rolling dice and handling labor intensive units like Wyverns and moving large numbers of units so much faster it's not even funny. Sure it removes the modeling aspect and all battlefields are 2d but it's let me squeeze even big games into about an hour or so. Like the Wyvern is an infamous nightmare to do the book keeping for so much as a single squadron of three doing one round of shooting. When three of them fire into a single mob of 'ardboyz you can expect to be rolling dice all day. On a computer it becomes a few clicks and keystrokes.

I haven't tried tabletop simulator yet though.

 TheCadreofFi'rios wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:
What list are you using? Different armies have different techniques for speeding up play, i.e. having psychic cards, knowing how many shots/attacks you have without needing to count, etc.

Definitely true, I run with Tau most of the time and know my codexes inside and out. As well as every single universal rule that applies to most armies, except the newer ones.

Most "normal" 40k games take me about 2.5 hours. If your games are taking 5-6 hours, that suggests to me that you have some somewhat unusual time sinks. What is it that you find yourself spending a lot of time on?

For your Tau, you might take a bit more time during deployment to set up fire lanes, but the army should play pretty quickly overall. Most of your movement phase stuff is pretty straightforward. You have no psychic phase. You'll do lots of shooting, but that should be pretty straight-forward if you're familiar with your rules. The assault phase will mostly be a matter of making a 2d6" move with suits or quickly dying while your opponent rolls dice at you.

* Daemons can take a while to play because their rules change every game, and their psychic phase is complex. Plus they have extra rules like the warp storm to resolve.
* Horde armies like orks and 'nids can slow things down because there are just so many models to physically move.
* Eldar can slow things down because they potentially move in the shooting and assault phases on top of their normal actions.

Most other armies tend to play pretty fast in my experience. This leads me to believe that there are probably some pretty obvious "time wasters" that you can likely identify for yourself. If I were to ask you, "What are the main things that slow down your games," how would you respond? Your games are taking about 3 hours longer than mine. I have to think there are some rather obvious culprits that we could address.

 Grey Templar wrote:
2000 point games should NOT be taking you 5-6 hours. Generally, that should be a 3 hour game at most.

The main time drains in a game are,

1) Constantly looking up rules, faqs, etc...

2) Not rolling dice fast enough. Sometimes you do have to roll dice individually, especially when mixed saves are involved. But if there aren't mixed saves, you should roll your saves all together.

3) Slow measuring. Usually when moving a unit you only need to make 1-2 measurements and then move the rest of the unit roughly the same distance. If you are constantly making everybody be at max coherency you're going to lose tons of time.

4) General talking with your opponent and other people around you. While this is usually an enjoyable part of playing, its also a major time drain if you waste a couple hours just talking about stuff instead of actually playing.

I can't imagine what would drag a 2000 point game into a 5-6 hour event. You'd have to be doing basically all of the above for it to drag out like that.

Maelstrom missions on complicated terrain at 2000pts can easily take 6-8 hours to complete. Tournament Eternal War missions are fast, but this does not apply to any and every case of 40K match possible. OP may have sound reasons for his games to last that long...

I have done higher point Maelstrom missions. They do last slightly longer, but not significantly so. A 2k maelstrom mission should still not take anywhere close to 5-6 hours.

I arrange my dice in neat rows on my opponents turn so I can quickly grab a bunch without counting them one by one. It certainly makes my games a bit faster.

nou wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
2000 point games should NOT be taking you 5-6 hours. Generally, that should be a 3 hour game at most.

The main time drains in a game are,

1) Constantly looking up rules, faqs, etc...

2) Not rolling dice fast enough. Sometimes you do have to roll dice individually, especially when mixed saves are involved. But if there aren't mixed saves, you should roll your saves all together.

3) Slow measuring. Usually when moving a unit you only need to make 1-2 measurements and then move the rest of the unit roughly the same distance. If you are constantly making everybody be at max coherency you're going to lose tons of time.

4) General talking with your opponent and other people around you. While this is usually an enjoyable part of playing, its also a major time drain if you waste a couple hours just talking about stuff instead of actually playing.

I can't imagine what would drag a 2000 point game into a 5-6 hour event. You'd have to be doing basically all of the above for it to drag out like that.

Maelstrom missions on complicated terrain at 2000pts can easily take 6-8 hours to complete. Tournament Eternal War missions are fast, but this does not apply to any and every case of 40K match possible. OP may have sound reasons for his games to last that long...

Nothing about maelstrom should make games take twice as long as a normal game

My group have been taking forever with games, but usually play 2v2 which can take longer.

Recently we played a 1v1 at 750pts and that took 3 hours. Apart from me, no one in the group has played for longer than 6 months, so there's still some rule learning/remembering, especially army/unit specific things that other players can't necessarily help with.

We have seen things speed up, but we're mostly sticking to low points games until we get faster, then we up the points so games don't get longer and longer.

So although some people are suggesting there's something wrong with what you're doing, it could just be experience. It depends how often you play as well. We only play maybe 2 games a month, so it takes time to remember rules for new units and the like.

The best advice I can give, which someone's already mentioned, is having your units' profiles, weapon profiles and special rules on a sheet of paper. Don't refer to the BRB or Codex for standard/regular things, just have a reference.

Also, have you seen these - https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/597998.page ?

 CrownAxe wrote:

nou wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
2000 point games should NOT be taking you 5-6 hours. Generally, that should be a 3 hour game at most.

The main time drains in a game are,

1) Constantly looking up rules, faqs, etc...

2) Not rolling dice fast enough. Sometimes you do have to roll dice individually, especially when mixed saves are involved. But if there aren't mixed saves, you should roll your saves all together.

3) Slow measuring. Usually when moving a unit you only need to make 1-2 measurements and then move the rest of the unit roughly the same distance. If you are constantly making everybody be at max coherency you're going to lose tons of time.

4) General talking with your opponent and other people around you. While this is usually an enjoyable part of playing, its also a major time drain if you waste a couple hours just talking about stuff instead of actually playing.

I can't imagine what would drag a 2000 point game into a 5-6 hour event. You'd have to be doing basically all of the above for it to drag out like that.

Maelstrom missions on complicated terrain at 2000pts can easily take 6-8 hours to complete. Tournament Eternal War missions are fast, but this does not apply to any and every case of 40K match possible. OP may have sound reasons for his games to last that long...

Nothing about maelstrom should make games take twice as long as a normal game

There was more to my sentence than just Maelstrom, so let me elaborate on "complicated terrain": fully 3D, dense terrain without smooth mat to just push models around, with a lot of wobbly model spots or detailed POV LOS checking, etc... Tactical Supremacy Maelstrom objectives often require actual thinking how to achieve them in a single turn with whatever forces you have left on the table. Horde armies on such tables (or resurrecting forces like Endless Swarm, that cancel diminishing turn lenghts) lenghten the game significantly... There are all sorts of things that may make 40K games last 8 hours. "A typical ITC" game may fall under "shouldn't take more than 3-4 hours, you're doing something wrong" statement, but it is not true, that no 2000pts 40K game may take that long even when played flawlessly and without any time wastes. So I would advice caution when throwing definite statements and assumptions at anyone before understanding what they are actually playing.

Start timing yourself, with timers. As you can see, there are many different aspects that can drag it out. I've never had a game take that long unless it was APOC though.

Yea so I played my entire game today in about 2.5 hours at 1250 points. It was definitely a faster than normal game for me though because my opponent conceded half way through my 2nd turn after I blew up his command squad.

 TheCadreofFi'rios wrote:
Yea so I played my entire game today in about 2.5 hours at 1250 points. It was definitely a faster than normal game for me though because my opponent conceded half way through my 2nd turn after I blew up his command squad.

...2.5hrs for a turn and a half? At 1,250pts? What armies were you using?

Have to say I am drawing a blank on how you pad a 2k points game out for 8 hours even if you are lovingly moving a hundred orks by hand across precarious terrain.

In any case I would advise measuring the various sections of the game and see where the time adds up.

The start of the game takes longer because more stuff is alive. There are therefore more decisions to be made, more units to move and more dice to be rolled. Later on though things should speed up because one or both players should have lost most of their stuff.

Think about what you are going to do in your opponent's turn.

- Know your codex (it should be a rare thing to have to look something up in your codex)
- Know your opponents codex (especially if they play a relatively common army like marines/tau/eldar/guard)
- Know the BRB rules (this one comes with some leeway since there's a million rules, but knowing the basics will let you play most games without looking things up)
- Don't use too many psychers (the psychic phase can take a long time as there's more to think about beyond str and ap vs T and saves and generating powers can take forever as well. It's not unknown for a psycher heavy army to spend the first 10 minutes sorting out powers and gifts, though experienced players will have this down to less than 2 min more often than not)
- Don't have a million models to move each phase (nobody likes watching their opponent take 30 minutes to move all 250 conscripts/cultists/boyz/gaunts etc)
- Don't measure to the exact micron when it won't make a difference (move the front guys the required distance and eyeball the remainder to maintain existing squad cohesion, if you scatter a large blast 1" on a land raider, you're still going to hit it, no point measuring if there's nothing else that can be hit nearby)
- Don't tell a story when "[unit A] into [unit B] with [weapon], hitting on [number]'s" will suffice (these *points* marines into that *points* guard squad with bolters, hitting on 3's *rolls*, wounding on 3's *rolls*, that's *counts* 6 wounds at ap5)
- Avoid reserve heavy armies as they mean multiple deployment phases (and interceptor since you play Tau)
- The least amount of special rules the better

Aside from knowing your rules and the rules of 40k very well, a dice rolling app. I use the 40k Assault Dice app, and it saves so much time it's unreal. Not having to count, roll, and read all the dice saves a very significant amount of time. Like, easily 30+ minutes over the course of a game, probably even more with horde armies. Also, not being a super stickler with measuring. A millimeter or 2 isn't going to make or break the whole game. It's better to just play on than sit there and agonize over moving your models.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 TheCadreofFi'rios wrote:
Yea so I played my entire game today in about 2.5 hours at 1250 points. It was definitely a faster than normal game for me though because my opponent conceded half way through my 2nd turn after I blew up his command squad.

...2.5hrs for a turn and a half? At 1,250pts? What armies were you using?

"his command squad" is a clue if his regular partner plays say... a IG full foot platoon list, I could see why games would take forever.

That still seems like a stupid long amount of time

I tend to paly Horde nid lists.. and generally never have less then 150 models on the table and I generally don't have issues getting a game completed in 2.5hrs you normally get allocated in a event.

Your mate needs to learn how to play

In the nicest way possible i can't conceive how any game 2000pt or under can go on more than 3/4 hours if both players know the rules.

Ultimately you're at most playing 7 turns and unless someones doing something seriously wrong by turn 5/6/7 both players should have lost the majority of their armies.

Our FLGS is open weekdays 7-11, we regularly play 2500pt games of all mission types and finish on time, can usually get 2 1500pt games in. Tournaments usually allow 3 hours per game and most people finish while doing everything to the book.

Are you and your opponent taking roughly the same time per turn?

I can't speak for who you're playing but with tau you're obviously not spending ages (or seconds) on the psychic phase which is the usual black hole to drain time, Resolving lots of complex melee combats is the other thing that takes ages but with tau i hope you're avoiding them too!

One suggestion when using ranged weapon reliant armies is count your dice in your turn. When playing ad mech i'll be sat there with groups of 36 dice ready for each unit of grav kataphrons, definitely saves counting time.

Two areas I can see taking a lot of time might be Deployment and planning your turn.

Learn how to deploy your army. On a fresh table with new terrain arrangements it can seem like some players hum and hah about where to put each unit. So, know your list, how it plays, and where the objectives are placed.

The other thing might be are you making plans during your opponents turn? I think someone mentioned this, but it's worth repeating. Don't just sit there watching, think about what you're going to do. But don't over complicate things. And if you know your army well, and how it plays, this will take even less time.

BrianDavion wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 TheCadreofFi'rios wrote:
Yea so I played my entire game today in about 2.5 hours at 1250 points. It was definitely a faster than normal game for me though because my opponent conceded half way through my 2nd turn after I blew up his command squad.

...2.5hrs for a turn and a half? At 1,250pts? What armies were you using?

"his command squad" is a clue if his regular partner plays say... a IG full foot platoon list, I could see why games would take forever.

Even if your opponent has 400 guardsmen on the table it still only takes a half hour, 45 minutes tops for his first turn (they quickly get shorter). Moving and shooting with a blob of 50 shouldn't take more than 6-7 minutes. Played a game of 200 guard vs over 400 and we did 5 turns in under 4 hours, I cannot picture an army that takes longer outside of perhaps daemons doing all their bookkeeping.

 Kain wrote:
Vassal makes rolling dice and handling labor intensive units like Wyverns and moving large numbers of units so much faster it's not even funny. Sure it removes the modeling aspect and all battlefields are 2d but it's let me squeeze even big games into about an hour or so. Like the Wyvern is an infamous nightmare to do the book keeping for so much as a single squadron of three doing one round of shooting. When three of them fire into a single mob of 'ardboyz you can expect to be rolling dice all day. On a computer it becomes a few clicks and keystrokes.

I haven't tried tabletop simulator yet though.

I'm with you on the Wyverns. One of the guys at my FLGS sometimes saves a significant amount of time by simply removing a unit if it's small enough and a Wyvern squadron (2 or 3) target it. He'll then try to remove said units, and by wrecking them, hopefully time will be saved by them not firing more.

Come to think of it, finishing off opposing units instead of leaving them in greatly reduced numbers, though possibly inefficient with your shooting, can make subsequent game turns a lot faster. One less thing that has to move, shoot, possibly assault, get shot at again, etc.

Get the new sisters and negate one whole phase

1. cut points from 2k down to 1500
2. reduce unit variety
3. reduce base count (e.g transports, superheavies)

I've found that the best way to speed things up is to not play the game.

Anywayz, smaller pt games is the way to go if you still want to play.

Don't listen to them... most of them are very experienced players with very streamlined everyday 40k experiences - most people aren't like that and struggle to get past turn 3 or 4 under 3 hours at a tournament.

The Americans especially seem to be able to finish full games in 2.5 hours, which may be due to their meta (5 Flyrants vs 5 IK or 5 Tau suits couldn't take very long I guess).

But here's the deal: I'm just as slow as you are and my 2000 points game will take 6 hours most of the time, because of the following:
1) Trying to get all the rules right despite not knowing them enough
2) Trying to get all the moves / target priority right despite not playing often enough
3) Playing too many points despite not being fast at this game.


So here's how I would go about solving your problem (and mine):

1) Drop to 1000 points maximum
2) Leave the rules for after the game, take a note, roll a 4+, check later what was the answer
3) Leave tactical superiority to experience, go through your decisions quickly and just learn from your mistakes instead of trying to prevent them

I'm going to echo Morgoth, you guys are reale experienced and play highly streamlined it seems. At tournaments there are time limits so you learn how to play fast.

Cut down on number of models used on the table rather than
points. I have played games of 2K GK that went faster then 1K footslogging eldar. On the table is important sincee some armies (mostly DE) never really leave their transports so that doesn't add time.

You can save a lot of time by not splitting hairs about rules or shots or cover saves. for example: my gaming group uses a simple house rule for cover: we decide the basic cover terrain gives a model (usually 4+) and if it's on the base you get the cover, this saved us a lot of time.

Know your rules and list. Battlescribe is godsend especially the option to have a list of all weapons/ stats at the end of the print: have this handy.

There is a big factor you have no control over tough: your opponent. If he is a slow player your game is going to take time. I have a regular in my gaming group who cannot seem to remember his rules/wargear. Games with him take almost an hour extra then against someone else.

morgoth wrote:

Spoiler:

Don't listen to them... most of them are very experienced players with very streamlined everyday 40k experiences - most people aren't like that and struggle to get past turn 3 or 4 under 3 hours at a tournament.

The Americans especially seem to be able to finish full games in 2.5 hours, which may be due to their meta (5 Flyrants vs 5 IK or 5 Tau suits couldn't take very long I guess).

But here's the deal: I'm just as slow as you are and my 2000 points game will take 6 hours most of the time, because of the following:
1) Trying to get all the rules right despite not knowing them enough
2) Trying to get all the moves / target priority right despite not playing often enough
3) Playing too many points despite not being fast at this game.


So here's how I would go about solving your problem (and mine):

1) Drop to 1000 points maximum
2) Leave the rules for after the game, take a note, roll a 4+, check later what was the answer
3) Leave tactical superiority to experience, go through your decisions quickly and just learn from your mistakes instead of trying to prevent them

Earth127 wrote:

Spoiler:

I'm going to echo Morgoth, you guys are reale experienced and play highly streamlined it seems. At tournaments there are time limits so you learn how to play fast.

Cut down on number of models used on the table rather than
points. I have played games of 2K GK that went faster then 1K footslogging eldar. On the table is important sincee some armies (mostly DE) never really leave their transports so that doesn't add time.

You can save a lot of time by not splitting hairs about rules or shots or cover saves. for example: my gaming group uses a simple house rule for cover: we decide the basic cover terrain gives a model (usually 4+) and if it's on the base you get the cover, this saved us a lot of time.

Know your rules and list. Battlescribe is godsend especially the option to have a list of all weapons/ stats at the end of the print: have this handy.

There is a big factor you have no control over tough: your opponent. If he is a slow player your game is going to take time. I have a regular in my gaming group who cannot seem to remember his rules/wargear. Games with him take almost an hour extra then against someone else.

I was beginning to think I was alone! Glad other people are like me and my group. We're playing a 1500pts 2v2 this week (750 per player), so we'll see how long that takes.

 Kanluwen wrote:



Both parties to know their applicable rules, inside and out, and to have applicable FAQs on hand to curtail any arguments.

This, 100 times this...

I think more info is required. What, exactly, is taking the time?

Take the 2.5-hour, 1250-point, 2-turn game as an example. Can you roughly break down what those 2.5 hours were spent doing? I just can't figure out how it can take so long.

You clearly want to speed things up a bit so I'm going to assume you've already eliminated the obvious time sink of spending a lot of time talking about random stuff and not actually playing the game. So what parts of the game were taking the time?

In general I think the advice here has all been spot-on:

1. Know the rules - this includes the core rules, your own army rules and a decent idea about your opponent's rules

2. Know what stuff to measure accurately and what doesn't matter so much. It's a good idea to measure things like melta ranges before you even move models and agree with your opponent whether something will be in range or not. Then you can move units more quickly by accurately moving the closest models and not measuring movement for the rear models.

3. Think about what you're going to do while your opponent is measuring/thinking. (Note, this is also why games get so much quicker when random chat is reduced).

4. Perform mandatory actions quickly. I have a pet peeve when my opponent is doing a purely reactive action, such as taking saves or firing overwatch, and they take ages to actually roll the dice. Once you've decided on an action you just need to carry it out so don't mess about and get it done!

 TheCadreofFi'rios wrote:
Yea so I played my entire game today in about 2.5 hours at 1250 points. It was definitely a faster than normal game for me though because my opponent conceded half way through my 2nd turn after I blew up his command squad.

We're going to need more information than "Yeah, so". What you're describing is not "normal".

How experienced are the people involved?

Are both players moving each model painstakingly slow in order to have exactly 2" between models?

Is movement taking 30 minutes?

Are you having tons of side conversations?

What exactly is taking the longest in your games?

I think playing a bit fast and loose with movement is probably a good idea until you're more confident with rules.

Having an understanding that you're not going to be super strict on ranges, line of sight etc. will speed things up.

With units, move the front rank or front model then shuffle everything else up rather than measure individually.

You could argue this might give advantage but if both players are doing it, it's likely to even out during a whole game.

Finally know the weapons stats, roll to hit/wound/saves off by heart so you can quickly make large dice rolls.

For movement, I typically move the closest few models, the rearmost model, and just scatter the rest between. Much faster.

Earth127 wrote:
I'm going to echo Morgoth, you guys are reale experienced and play highly streamlined it seems. At tournaments there are time limits so you learn how to play fast.

I haven't gone to a 40k tournament in 4 years. And even before I went to 40k tournaments semi-regularly, games didn't last that long.

Quite frankly, taking 5-6 hours to play a 2k game is insane. You'd have to be practically dragging your feet, reading the rules for each phase almost verbatim each turn. Thats literally the only way I can see a 2k game taking that long. You would have to be deliberately trying to drag them game out for it to make it that long, assuming you actually are familiar with the rules.

- Think in your opponent turn, move in yours.
- Do not open up your books to look stuff up, and never argue about anything.
- Use multi coloured dice for multiple weapons or effects.
- Skip useless actions.
- Just remove models if they have nearly 0% of survival.

Well, obviously you should look stuff up if there is a question. But if you know a rule, don't waste time with double checking.

At what point do we start the clock? My games can take very long but thinking about it made me realize something.

I am counting the time for actually setting up the table. As in we need to move the actual tables around and back after the game.

Counting from the first die roll to the last a 1.5K game (wich is what we play most, I haven't played a game of 2K or more in over a year) can go from 90 minutes to 3 hours. And that difference mostly comes to the factors I mentioned in my ealrier post.

Well, even setting up shouldn't take all that long.

Depends on if the board already has terrain nicely laid out or if you need to set up a table from scratch, including removing bunched up terrain that might've been just lying around. Setting up can occasionally be one of the longest parts to games I play.

I don't see why setting up would take more than 15 minutes.

Slipspace wrote:
I think more info is required. What, exactly, is taking the time?

Take the 2.5-hour, 1250-point, 2-turn game as an example. Can you roughly break down what those 2.5 hours were spent doing? I just can't figure out how it can take so long.

10 min to set up table, 10-30 min to roll all pre-game stuff, 10-30 min to talk over all the rules ambiguities, 20-40 min to set up armies and here you can start the game. It usually lasts a bit longer that all the pre-game aspects.

 koooaei wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
I think more info is required. What, exactly, is taking the time?

Take the 2.5-hour, 1250-point, 2-turn game as an example. Can you roughly break down what those 2.5 hours were spent doing? I just can't figure out how it can take so long.

10 min to set up table, 10-30 min to roll all pre-game stuff, 10-30 min to talk over all the rules ambiguities, 20-40 min to set up armies and here you can start the game. It usually lasts a bit longer that all the pre-game aspects.

See, much of that seems like way too much time.

It should take at most 5 minutes for both players to roll their psychic powers and warlord traits. I play a GK list where I need to roll for 11 psychic powers. It takes me less than a minute to roll 3 sets of dice and write down the powers on my army list.

Discussing rules ambiguities is something that should happen only rarely with players who aren't complete noobs. Likewise, deployment shouldn't last more than 5 minutes per player, unless there is a horde army which still shouldn't take more than 10 minutes or so unless you take a long time measuring out max coherency for each model.

5-6 hours is more the realm of outright in person apocalypse games in my experience. Games that often have teams rather than just being the usual 1v1.

Even horde Orks vs horde Guard don't tend to take six hours at 2k points. How have you been taking that much time?

Know your rules, looking up stats and/or answering queries takes time.

Plan your turn during your opponent's turn. Deciding what to do takes time. You can have that time overlap with something else though.
Thinking about how your army deals with certain things when not playing helps too (e.g. I know my FMC's stay in the sky around knights, no weighing benefits to take time).

Know and accommodate time consuming aspects of your army, find a way to get it done more efficiently. If you play Tzeentch daemons, have a quick way to roll and record powers and rewards; have a quick way to get models moved if you play orks or IG; etc.

Have your dice arranged so that they are quick to counts; e.g: have dice in piles of 10, taking out 2 and rolling is faster than counting out 8.

I usually play two 1850 games each saturday (our local GW is open 11 - 8) and usually have a ton of extra time for painting or kill team or the such. I could probably play 3 games if table space wasn't so limited. We play maelstrom too, usually a good amount of models too.

I don't see what's taking so much time.

my gaming group did a 44k point apocalypse game (8 player vs 6 players) last month and it "only" took 8 hours

biggest part is know your rules, know your codex, have quick reference sheets available.

lists need to be done for the points total ahead of time. if I agree to an 1850 point game I pull out my take all comers 1850 list for fluff/fuin if that is game desired, competitive, or straight up waac tournament level list (depends on opponent and what they want) I keep lists for 750, 1000, 1250, 1500 , 1750, 1850, and 2k up to date for my main armies printed out in binders for the army I brought that day.

table should either be set or quickly terrained clubs vary but mine we do divide tale into 6 pieces, at least one large piece of los blocking terrain per 1/6 (fairer to assault armies) then small stuff to taste rarely takes more than 5 min of shuffling.

roll for mission type and place objective should be quick and setup / counter deploy should be sub 10 min a side.

I would be shocked if any phase took over 7 min after that and over 20 min per player turn (increase to 25-30 min for 2 player games due to waiting for consulting each other) would be considered slow.

the biggest factor there is many of us know the rules and know the basics of other codex rules for every army. so long as you see the other person's army as wysiwyg or they explain it will rules arguments are few and far between. even then it is usually just a quick book glance and if not found within a min and no other table knows then roll it off though if it is my table I just give it my opponent's favor if I am ahead to help make things closer.

I am just going to echo what other people have said, know your rules, play wysiwyg and be planning in your opponent's turn. Also when moving squads, measure for a couple of them and the rest of the squad just moves up behind. If there is a rules disagreement don't waste time arguing over it, just roll a dice to see which way it goes and check what it should have been after the game (or if it is a universal rule ask the guy at the next table).
That being said most of my 2000 point games do take about 4.5 hours, but only because we let them. That's just how long we tend to have to spend at our flgs and we prefer to take our time over one game (chatting and getting food and such) than try and rush and fit in 2 games.

 roflmajog wrote:
be planning in your opponent's turn.

It's been said a few times, but it bears (bares, barres, Le Bares) repeating. Plan ahead.

I don't play pick up games much, nor many tournaments, but when I have, if the other player start's saying "What to do, what to do?" and stares at the board for 5 minutes, I know we won't be finishing the game within the time limit.

"What do you mean 'What to do?' You had my whole turn to figure that gak out!?"

Speed up a game of 40k? The answer is less points.

If you are inexperienced and need to learn rules. Use less points for less models for less rules to take care of.

Playing against a guy who just takes forever to make a decision? Less points means less models means less decisions to mull over.

Playing in an escalation league and your 2500 point match takes 7 hours? Tough luck bro. There's no timers for some players.

Your first tournament game ends at turn 2 and you lost? Chess clocks would be amazing for this, but requires all attending to be on board.

Points are already part of the game everyone uses. Tone down the points and you'll tone down the time

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I usually play two 1850 games each saturday (our local GW is open 11 - 8) and usually have a ton of extra time for painting or kill team or the such. I could probably play 3 games if table space wasn't so limited. We play maelstrom too, usually a good amount of models too.

I don't see what's taking so much time.

There have been a lot of comments similar to this "what's taking so long" and "there's no way it can take that long".

The difference is, as you've said, you play 2 games every Saturday. Try being a new player (I'm not, but others are) who only gets to play maybe once or twice a month. That's plenty of time to forget that particular unit's Ld characteristic, or what you need to hit in assault with WS3 versus WS5 or whatever. I'm surprised at how many people here are being so dismissive - stating outright that it's just wrong that it takes that long.

There have also been lots of useful comments (no point in me repeating them).

OP, ignore the people who seem to think everyone should know every rule from every faction from their first game. Listen to those giving advice - a lot of it is good. And it's right that knowing rules will speed things up, but you're not necessarily going to remember everything overnight. The more games you play, the quicker you'll get.

(@gummy - I don't mean this to be aimed solely at you, it's just your comment really highlighted the experience factor that many seem to be forgetting)

The WS thing doesn't make sense. The WS chart is very easy to remember. If you are higher than the target, you hit on 3s. If you are equal or lower(but not half) than their WS, you hit on 4s. If their WS is double yours or higher, you hit on 5s.

Ballistic Skill? Rule of 7(7-your BS=dice roll needed. If BS6 or higher, you get a reroll equal to how much higher your BS is above 5. BS6 hits on 2s with a 6+ reroll, BS7 with a 5+ reroll, and so on)

Ld characteristic is something that should take maybe 5 seconds, most of which is picking up your codex and flipping to that handy dandy quick reference chart on the back page.

So yes, it is absolutely unreasonable for a 2k game to take 5-6 hours unless one or both players are total newbs, in which case they should be playing much smaller games.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The WS thing doesn't make sense. The WS chart is very easy to remember. If you are higher than the target, you hit on 3s. If you are equal or lower(but not half) than their WS, you hit on 4s. If their WS is double yours or higher, you hit on 5s.

Thanks for highlighting my point so well - "If you are equal or lower(but not half) than their WS, you hit on 4s. If their WS is double yours or higher, you hit on 5s". So if I'm WS4 and they're WS8, you're saying I hit on 5s. BRB says I'm hitting on 4s.

Turns out it's not that easy to remember, is it?

The last few comments highlight another suggestion that in my opinion every 40k player should have: quick reference sheets.

On 3 sheets of A4 paper you can get 99% of the information you'll need to refer to in any game of 40k.

Start with your codex table of all your units stat lines and your armies weapons.

Tables for to hit and to wound (you should know these off by heart pretty quick but occasionally you'll need to check if S3 can wound T7 and the like.)

While it may seem obvious the BS to hit table and reserve roll table are worth including because you will brain fart sometime and forget them.

The D6 lists for penetrating hits, perils of the warp and deep strike mishap. If it's relevant catastrophic damage and stomp tables for super heavies.

I personally have my warlord traits table included to save time trying to find the damn thing.

You can also include the special codex rules you find yourself looking up on a regular basis

If you don't have the cards i'd also have another page for psychic powers and tactical objectives.

Beyond that i keep editing mine so once i'm certain i know a rule i take it off the sheet, if i find myself checking the same thing - put it on the reference.

If you give someone who just understands the basics of 40k a good reference guide they should be able to play only slightly slower than a veteran who knows the rulebook by heart.

 Whittlesey40k wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
The WS thing doesn't make sense. The WS chart is very easy to remember. If you are higher than the target, you hit on 3s. If you are equal or lower(but not half) than their WS, you hit on 4s. If their WS is double yours or higher, you hit on 5s.

Thanks for highlighting my point so well - "If you are equal or lower(but not half) than their WS, you hit on 4s. If their WS is double yours or higher, you hit on 5s". So if I'm WS4 and they're WS8, you're saying I hit on 5s. BRB says I'm hitting on 4s.

Turns out it's not that easy to remember, is it?

Umm, no. Thats very very easy to remember. There are only 3 possible values.

And even if this is a stumbling point for a player, its not really possible for it to balloon a game from a normal 2 hours to 5-6.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
I think more info is required. What, exactly, is taking the time?

Take the 2.5-hour, 1250-point, 2-turn game as an example. Can you roughly break down what those 2.5 hours were spent doing? I just can't figure out how it can take so long.

10 min to set up table, 10-30 min to roll all pre-game stuff, 10-30 min to talk over all the rules ambiguities, 20-40 min to set up armies and here you can start the game. It usually lasts a bit longer that all the pre-game aspects.

See, much of that seems like way too much time.

It should take at most 5 minutes for both players to roll their psychic powers and warlord traits. I play a GK list where I need to roll for 11 psychic powers. It takes me less than a minute to roll 3 sets of dice and write down the powers on my army list.

Discussing rules ambiguities is something that should happen only rarely with players who aren't complete noobs. Likewise, deployment shouldn't last more than 5 minutes per player, unless there is a horde army which still shouldn't take more than 10 minutes or so unless you take a long time measuring out max coherency for each model.

Do you realize that most people, including many tournament goers, are strictly unable to deploy their army, thought process included, in less than 10 minutes?

It may be faster for you, but it's still a very slow game for most people.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I usually play two 1850 games each saturday (our local GW is open 11 - 8) and usually have a ton of extra time for painting or kill team or the such. I could probably play 3 games if table space wasn't so limited. We play maelstrom too, usually a good amount of models too.

I don't see what's taking so much time.

Dude, you're playing at least two games every week and you wonder how people who don't can be slower than you?

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Whittlesey40k wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
The WS thing doesn't make sense. The WS chart is very easy to remember. If you are higher than the target, you hit on 3s. If you are equal or lower(but not half) than their WS, you hit on 4s. If their WS is double yours or higher, you hit on 5s.

Thanks for highlighting my point so well - "If you are equal or lower(but not half) than their WS, you hit on 4s. If their WS is double yours or higher, you hit on 5s". So if I'm WS4 and they're WS8, you're saying I hit on 5s. BRB says I'm hitting on 4s.

Turns out it's not that easy to remember, is it?

Umm, no. Thats very very easy to remember. There are only 3 possible values.

And even if this is a stumbling point for a player, its not really possible for it to balloon a game from a normal 2 hours to 5-6.

You should reread what you wrote - Whittlesey40K is showing you that there is a serious error in your shorthand... Judging from that, MAYBE your games should in fact take a bit longer than they do to be by the actual rules?

 G00fySmiley wrote:
my gaming group did a 44k point apocalypse game (8 player vs 6 players) last month and it "only" took 8 hours

biggest part is know your rules, know your codex, have quick reference sheets available.

the biggest factor there is many of us know the rules and know the basics of other codex rules for every army.

In other words, you are very experienced and that makes you fast. I don't see how that's going to help a less experienced player play faster though.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Whittlesey40k wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
The WS thing doesn't make sense. The WS chart is very easy to remember. If you are higher than the target, you hit on 3s. If you are equal or lower(but not half) than their WS, you hit on 4s. If their WS is double yours or higher, you hit on 5s.

Thanks for highlighting my point so well - "If you are equal or lower(but not half) than their WS, you hit on 4s. If their WS is double yours or higher, you hit on 5s". So if I'm WS4 and they're WS8, you're saying I hit on 5s. BRB says I'm hitting on 4s.

Turns out it's not that easy to remember, is it?

Umm, no. Thats very very easy to remember. There are only 3 possible values.

And even if this is a stumbling point for a player, its not really possible for it to balloon a game from a normal 2 hours to 5-6.

My point is, you got it wrong!

If their WS is double yours (e.g. they are 8, you are 4) then you hit on 4s not 5s. I'd rather you slow the game down by actually checking the rules than just get it wrong.

It's hard to argue that it's easy to remember when you remembered it incorrectly!

Ok, I made 1 mistake. But thats still not going to slow a game down that much. And your insinuation that I am somehow cheating or something is not appreciated. We're still in a result where people are slowplaying by an insane amount of time. We're not talking 30 minutes to an hour of time here. We're talking a solid 3-4 hours of extra time that makes no sense how its getting swallowed up. You could play an entire 2nd game with time to spare. It makes zero sense, something is wrong with anybody who is taking that long to play.

 Grey Templar wrote:

So yes, it is absolutely unreasonable for a 2k game to take 5-6 hours unless one or both players are total newbs, in which case they should be playing much smaller games.

Or maybe, there's a whole spectrum between "badass like Grey Templar" and total newb, a spectrum along which most players place in the "6-turn games @ 1850 points take at least 4 hours" category, and many in the 5+ hours.

morgoth wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

So yes, it is absolutely unreasonable for a 2k game to take 5-6 hours unless one or both players are total newbs, in which case they should be playing much smaller games.

Or maybe, there's a whole spectrum between "badass like Grey Templar" and total newb, a spectrum along which most players place in the "6-turn games @ 1850 points take at least 4 hours" category, and many in the 5+ hours.

I'm sure there is a spectrum, but a player with a reasonable amount of experience and knowledge should be in the 2k game in ~2.5 hours. Not nearly double that time.

Some variation would be normal, but 5-6 hours for a reasonable sized game is way outside the margins.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Ok, I made 1 mistake. But thats still not going to slow a game down that much. And your insinuation that I am somehow cheating or something is not appreciated. We're still in a result where people are slowplaying by an insane amount of time. We're not talking 30 minutes to an hour of time here. We're talking a solid 3-4 hours of extra time that makes no sense how its getting swallowed up. You could play an entire 2nd game with time to spare. It makes zero sense, something is wrong with anybody who is taking that long to play.

Dude, you have 40.000 posts on dakka... how long have you been playing this game again?

 Grey Templar wrote:
Ok, I made 1 mistake. But thats still not going to slow a game down that much. And your insinuation that I am somehow cheating or something is not appreciated. We're still in a result where people are slowplaying by an insane amount of time. We're not talking 30 minutes to an hour of time here. We're talking a solid 3-4 hours of extra time that makes no sense how its getting swallowed up. You could play an entire 2nd game with time to spare. It makes zero sense, something is wrong with anybody who is taking that long to play.

You do realize, that "there are circumstances possible to make 2k points games legitimately take 6hrs" is not the same as "all 2k points should take 6hrs"? I have about 100 games a year, I have everything about my faction (and those I usually play against) memorised, I can easily fit 1850 points tournament Eternal War game on "standard" table in 3 or even sometimes 2 hrs with everything included (depends on how fast tabling occurs). And yet, I often play 2K points games that take 6-8 hours because they cannot be sped up anyhow. Wonder that...

morgoth wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Ok, I made 1 mistake. But thats still not going to slow a game down that much. And your insinuation that I am somehow cheating or something is not appreciated. We're still in a result where people are slowplaying by an insane amount of time. We're not talking 30 minutes to an hour of time here. We're talking a solid 3-4 hours of extra time that makes no sense how its getting swallowed up. You could play an entire 2nd game with time to spare. It makes zero sense, something is wrong with anybody who is taking that long to play.

Dude, you have 40.000 posts on dakka... how long have you been playing this game again?

That is quite irrelevant. I know many people who've been playing amounts of time all across the spectrum from over a decade to less than 3 months. I've played in metas all across the west coast of the US. I have never met anybody who would take 5-6 hours to play a 2k game. Even someone whose only started a few months ago. Once you have a decent handle on the rules, even with the occasional rules question or dispute, a 2k game would take maybe 2.5 to 3 hours tops. 5-6 would be impossible unless you were overthinking the game, constantly looking up rules, measuring far more meticulously than is necessary, excessively chatting with people, and maybe taking some breaks.

5-6 hours is appocalypse game levels of time investment. For a normal sized game, its far outside any reasonable deviation. Besides, the OP was asking for help to cut down this time. So we're trying to help him do that, but we first need to know what is taking such a huge amount of time out of their games.

If someone's WS is very noticeably higher than another's in assault, it doesn't hurt to simply ask "Hey, your WS is 7 and mine is 3, do I hit on 5+ or 4+? I know you hit me on 3+, of course." Take 30 seconds to flip to the page on the rulebook, then you can say "Alright, so your CC guy hits my regular dudes on x+, but only hits my slightly better at CC dudes on y+."

 Whittlesey40k wrote:

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I usually play two 1850 games each saturday (our local GW is open 11 - 8) and usually have a ton of extra time for painting or kill team or the such. I could probably play 3 games if table space wasn't so limited. We play maelstrom too, usually a good amount of models too.

I don't see what's taking so much time.

There have been a lot of comments similar to this "what's taking so long" and "there's no way it can take that long".

The difference is, as you've said, you play 2 games every Saturday. Try being a new player (I'm not, but others are) who only gets to play maybe once or twice a month. That's plenty of time to forget that particular unit's Ld characteristic, or what you need to hit in assault with WS3 versus WS5 or whatever. I'm surprised at how many people here are being so dismissive - stating outright that it's just wrong that it takes that long.

There have also been lots of useful comments (no point in me repeating them).

OP, ignore the people who seem to think everyone should know every rule from every faction from their first game. Listen to those giving advice - a lot of it is good. And it's right that knowing rules will speed things up, but you're not necessarily going to remember everything overnight. The more games you play, the quicker you'll get.

(@gummy - I don't mean this to be aimed solely at you, it's just your comment really highlighted the experience factor that many seem to be forgetting)

I apologize. I only skimmed through the OP and I never noticed he was a new player, if he is then that changes my post. I apologize.

Get trays to move your squads quickly.

And if you're a new player you should not be playing 2000 point games. There's far too much going on.

Until you have the basics down, and no longer need to consult the tables for hit/wound, keep your points down around 750-1000 max.

Play with troops. If you're learning don't jump in the deep end.

morgoth wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
my gaming group did a 44k point apocalypse game (8 player vs 6 players) last month and it "only" took 8 hours

biggest part is know your rules, know your codex, have quick reference sheets available.

the biggest factor there is many of us know the rules and know the basics of other codex rules for every army.

In other words, you are very experienced and that makes you fast. I don't see how that's going to help a less experienced player play faster though.

I played a lot in 5th (stopped shortly after 6th was released got some models since to paint but no table time). I have really only been back into playing for about 5-6 months. I just took the time to read through codexes, read some stuff online about armies (tactica and whatnot) and printed out some quick reference sheets. The group I am with has only been playing at the FLGS for less than a year, they started with klill teams to build some basic understanding and everybody has put forth the effort to learn about each other's armies to make games fast and enjoyable for everybody. We only meet one evening a week (tuesdays), except the big apocolypse game (saturday) some of us have a lot of models so made it happen (I own over 100 terminator models and they were almost all on the table) Now I am not going to pretend the studying armies and rules did not take time and I read the rulebook cover to cover several times but I think it was worth the effort.

 Grey Templar wrote:

I play a GK

mystery solved

Now try to set up 6 times the amount of models. Oh, and unit coherency and positioning is much more important. 1" of bauble-wrap can mean difference between your important mob getting charged by an invis deathstar and scoring a point and winning a game.

As pointed out before:
-know the rules.

And more:

-Have a plan: don't spend 10 minutes/squad thinking what it will do in your turn. Think about it during opponent's phase.
-Prepare dice for combined throws: 18 shootaboys in a battlewagon, with some big shootas+ the BS of the BW, all possible in one throw (with 2/3 different colored dice). As long as the bw stays alive, the amount stays more or less the same so keep those dice together. Saves alot of time that you don't have to count those +/- 50 dice every turn again.
-put your hordes in vehicles makes up alot of time in the moving phase


IMO, fast gaming is a skill that needs to be learned. One or 2 battles with time limit is enough. Both of the players will discover alot of time saving "tactics" that way.
Let's say 90mins a game for 6 turns, 750-1000 points. Time each turn with an alarm. If time's up, the turn is over, simple as that. (I know, opponent could "tactically" stall the game in your turn but i suppose you test it in a friendly game with the objective to shorten gametime and not to WAAC)
-deployment phase: 15 mins/player
-each turn: 5 mins/player
that makes 90 mins, and you'll discover after turn 3 that you're allready done and you still have 2 min's left.

Thake that lessons in bigger battles with the same opponent profit

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, obviously you should look stuff up if there is a question. But if you know a rule, don't waste time with double checking.

Nope, this is how you waste time. You here are methods to deal with rules issues in fast game:
- Know your rules and play with someone who also knows their rules. Discuss potential hot issues before the game.
- Just give your opponent minor rule dispute wins. Losing a few marines mos of the time isn't worth losing 10 minutes.
- If it does matter agree on a temporary ruling and look it up your opponents turn.

Whatever you do do not pause the game to look stuff op and discuss rule issues when you want to play a fast game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Perhaps the most important rule to keep things fast avoid your weakness when choosing your army.

Don't play a move, shoot, jump / assault move army ( Tau eldar etc.) if you are the kind of guy who likes to think before each move. Just as it isn't advised to play a horde army if you feel the need to measure every model, don't play complex mixed units if you are having a hard time figuring out wound allocations or rolling those saves fast correctly and you shouldn't play an army with lots of random effects or special rules if you are having a hard time remembering them.

 koooaei wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
I think more info is required. What, exactly, is taking the time?

Take the 2.5-hour, 1250-point, 2-turn game as an example. Can you roughly break down what those 2.5 hours were spent doing? I just can't figure out how it can take so long.

10 min to set up table, 10-30 min to roll all pre-game stuff, 10-30 min to talk over all the rules ambiguities, 20-40 min to set up armies and here you can start the game. It usually lasts a bit longer that all the pre-game aspects.

This is what I mean when I say I don't get how it can take so long. 10 minutes to set up a table seems fine. Any more than 10 to do pre-game stuff just seems excessive. Like, how does it take that long? What are you doing in those 30 minutes?

Conceivably you need to roll for a bunch of psychic powers but even then you're talking 12-15 max, that should take about 5 minutes. Then you have warlord traits (about 30 seconds) and maybe some weirdness like combat drugs or C'Tan powers (again, no more than 30 seconds).

Rules ambiguities? Like what? At most I can see it taking 5 minutes to check something in an FAQ, but that should then mean there's a corresponding drop in the amount of time spent discussing similar things during the game. 40 minutes to deploy is, frankly, ridiculous. Even the biggest of horde armies should probably take no more than 15 minutes to deploy, and that's pushing it. I'd say 10 minutes would be a reasonable upper estimate, so around 20 minutes total.

I don't think this really has anything to do with experience, either. It's simply a process that needs to be completed, with the exception of actually deploying, which does require some thought.

BrianDavion wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 TheCadreofFi'rios wrote:
Yea so I played my entire game today in about 2.5 hours at 1250 points. It was definitely a faster than normal game for me though because my opponent conceded half way through my 2nd turn after I blew up his command squad.

...2.5hrs for a turn and a half? At 1,250pts? What armies were you using?

"his command squad" is a clue if his regular partner plays say... a IG full foot platoon list, I could see why games would take forever.

I have played infantry heavy IG, orks with green tide and 2.5hrs for turn and half for 1850 pts would be slow.

Also it's not like other armies don't have command squads. Space marines IIRC have command squads as well. At least used to. Last one I own was 6th ed dark angel one though.

Slipspace wrote:

Rules ambiguities? Like what?

Like when an opponent wants to field a unit that can charge from deepstrike and wants to add in calgar to charge with them. Or wants to field sisters of silence formation with rhinos and we got to find out weather rhinos add to +3" anti-psy bubble or not. Or wants to start d-wraiths in ynnari raiders. Or i want to field a unit of footslogging boyz and add in a biker boss and want to use waaagh for run + charge with this mixed unit. Cause all this stuff is game-changing and you got to know a hellton of rules that are not always clear and can be interpreted in a million different ways...So you got to check faqs first. Than if there's no answer there, crawl through a rulebook with a ton of rules spread out across different sections. Just check ymdc part of the forum if you don't understand "What can take so long". To give quick answers to this never-ending questions you got to spend a lot of time keeping in check with what's going on in 40k world of rules. Not everyone does it. So, it's very time-consuming when there's no rule-nerd around who could help with all this stuff.

As for model placement, it's a nightmare for larger armies. That's why i've moved to bully boyz in trukks. Can still take some time when the opponent has a lot of ranged ap2 (happens almost all the time) cause you still got to play around with model placement for cover to not auto-lose.

And all those rule questions are once in a lifetime. Once it's solved it's done. Does OP play with new opponent all the time?

I generally fit an 1850pts game in 3-4hrs.
Set uo is roughly 45mins. Both players agree on terrain placement and rules. Roll the mission, plave the marker(s), roll traits, deployments, sides deploy. Sometimes give a brief run down on what does what.
I know the commoj rules, but how exactly does a ram work? Can you have multiple challenges in a combat?

Templates are a pain, is that 5 or 6? How about here? Now scatter, that's goin over here, now you reckon thats 3 or 4? Maybe even these 2 over there?

It's all well and good when your shooting is composed entirely of grav but if I'm firing a bunch of pistols then charging for 50 attacks with a few mauls, swords and fists thrown in that takes a lot longer, have you egver tried digging the 5s out of 80 lasgun rounds? I don't know you shoot an imperial guare platoon in 5mins.

2hrs is fine between two experianced players, I dare say ~3-4hrs is average for an average player. But just repeating that takong more than 2hrs is poor isn't really fair.

tneva82 wrote:
And all those rule questions are once in a lifetime. Once it's solved it's done. Does OP play with new opponent all the time?

Taking into consideration most people play once in a couple months, it's pretty common to face new difficult rules questions every game.

Also you barely improve if you only play like once every few months, sure your tactics become better but actual speed of play doesn't really.

Experience counts for a lot, but so too does regular play. As an example, I've been playing M:tG (boo, hiss, I know) at competitive level for 20 years (on and off). But I probably only actually play every 2-3 weeks (for a few hours) - so I'm a bit rusty.

Last time I played 40K was about two months ago, around 650pts to teach a new player. Game took about 4 hours.

Last 'proper' 40K game I had was... hrm, last summer maybe? My housemate has lost the buzz so it's up to me to train the new player up so we can get some decent games in.

If you're playing two decent sized games a week, that's a huge advantage.

 koooaei wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

Rules ambiguities? Like what?

Like when an opponent wants to field a unit that can charge from deepstrike and wants to add in calgar to charge with them. Or wants to field sisters of silence formation with rhinos and we got to find out weather rhinos add to +3" anti-psy bubble or not. Or wants to start d-wraiths in ynnari raiders. Or i want to field a unit of footslogging boyz and add in a biker boss and want to use waaagh for run + charge with this mixed unit. Cause all this stuff is game-changing and you got to know a hellton of rules that are not always clear and can be interpreted in a million different ways...So you got to check faqs first. Than if there's no answer there, crawl through a rulebook with a ton of rules spread out across different sections. Just check ymdc part of the forum if you don't understand "What can take so long". To give quick answers to this never-ending questions you got to spend a lot of time keeping in check with what's going on in 40k world of rules. Not everyone does it. So, it's very time-consuming when there's no rule-nerd around who could help with all this stuff.

As for model placement, it's a nightmare for larger armies. That's why i've moved to bully boyz in trukks. Can still take some time when the opponent has a lot of ranged ap2 (happens almost all the time) cause you still got to play around with model placement for cover to not auto-lose.

OK, I think I'm getting closer to understanding some of the issues now.

For the sort of things you're describing here I think there are two points I'd make:

1. Players should probably be aware of any rules issues their own units will bring up and do what they can to investigate them before the game. Obviously this isn't always possible, particularly if the player is unaware there may be issues.

2. There should be a limit on how long these issues take to resolve. The most important thing for me is to actually play the game so if a rules discussion goes on for more than a few minutes with no clear answer I'd always revert to either a compromise or rolling for it for the purposes of the current game and then investigate further afterwards. If a quick read of the rule in question, plus a check of the FAQ doesn't get you the answer then compromise and move on.

IMO, if you're having discussions similar to those in the YMDC forum during an actual game something's not right. That's not the time to be having those debates.

Some more avant-garde ways to speed up games. I use these a lot just to keep games simple. I want to tell a story in a few hours and not spend all day doing complicated maths...

Keep units to one armour type
Restrict unit variety (e.g. don't take scouts and marines - just stick to marines).
Pre-plan the mission and keep it simple (or something everyone is familiar with).
Agree to finish in four/five turns (I played an exciting battle over four turns yesterday. It was a good challenge to get all my objectives as quickly as that).
Play two smaller games rather than one large one.
Rather than debate rules, agree to roll a die to resolve any disputes, then look up / debate the rule after the game.
Give players a turn timer (like in chess). This is quite good for speeding up those players who spend ten minutes deciding which of two identical predators to shoot at, or where to place their deepstriking librarian...

Some of these might be things you can do until you manage to play games more quickly, at which point you can revert back to 'normal'



My favourite way to speed up games is to accidentally forget loads of special rules that would have won me the game...

 koooaei wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

I play a GK

mystery solved

Now try to set up 6 times the amount of models. Oh, and unit coherency and positioning is much more important. 1" of bauble-wrap can mean difference between your important mob getting charged by an invis deathstar and scoring a point and winning a game.

I haven't always played GKs. I've played orks, guard, and several varieties of space marine. Against every single codex. And I've watched a lot of games between Horde armies.

Even when you've got nids vs orks, a 2k game shouldn't last anywhere near to 6 hours unless there is a massive time waste somewhere.

And hey, if you want to spend 6 hours playing a game thats perfectly fine, but you could easily speed it up without compromising how you play the game.

Well, another reason is that we haven't played everything vs everyone. Which comes back to experience issues. But anywayz, i'd rather have a simplified version of the game and especially of unit rules. Limited magic and special effects. And more of the actual game.

One of the latest games i've played was csm new legions vs some skiitari mega-formation.

And it took us 40 minutes to just go through the lists! Legions had all the new rules - some of them quite odd. I was playing world eaters, iron warriors and alpha legion. We spent a lot of time headscratching how the faceless warlord trait - that i rolled - actually works and came to a conclusion that it doesn't. Also, the sheer amount of shiny special rules was overwhelming. And than i faced skiitari for the 1-st or 2-d time and didn't know what i'm facing. And they also have a TON of shiny special rules that do a lot of stuff.

If you think that it's no big deal, just look at a special character like celestine or cawl. How many special rules do they have? A LOT. Look at formations and detachments. Once again - a ton of special rules. I pretty much prefer the old approach. Orks: Waaagh, mob rule, furious charge across the board. And a couple of stuff here and there. Fast, easy to remember, common, understandable statlines and units. New orks: mob rule, 'ere we go, sometimes there is WAAAGH, sometimes there isn't, sometimes it lasts for the whole game, sometimes it gives fearless, sometimes boyz get hammer of wrath, sometimes they get it when they roll high enough, sometimes just when they're numerous enough, this meganobz have fearless and ws5 and this identical meganobz are ws4 and not fearless, this boyz are from this detachment and have one rules, those from another and don't...It's even worse with imperial superfriends and eldar rule-countering rules shenanigans.

The easiest way to speed things up and make games more fun and friendly is to avoid the power creep and play a limited version of the game. Single cad, limited set of units and amount of gear they can use. Limitations all in all.

I have to agree with you, Koooaei. Special rules are the biggest complexity in the game.
I don't think I've ever played a game and used ALL the special rules that I should have. it's just not worth the hassle when all I want to do is go RRRRRAH BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! CHARGE!

Honestly - when you're learning - if you can't find an immediate answer in your rules and codex, just agree to play it a certain way in this scenario and find clarity later.

In my first game of 40k ever, we misplayed:

Cover saves
Strength vs toughness, instant death
Barrage weapons
Salvo weapons
Hitting vehicles in melee
Specialist weapons
Leadership tests
Doctrines

Just make a mental note of when you do something that you aren't sure of, and look it up later. For instance my friend and I played "start collecting: Space marines" versus "start collecting: blood angels". My dreadnought punched his Terminator Captain, getting 1 wound through the invuln save. That should have been instant death, at strength 10. But, the Captain went ahead and swung his thunder hammer at initiative 1, exploding the dreadnought, having lost only 1 wound. Whoops! We didn't even disagree on it, just learned the instant death rule later upon more reading.

If you require that everything be absolutely dead on balls accurate in every game you play, from the start, you'll have cripplingly long games, while still trying to figure out if strength 5 versus toughness 4 wounds on 2s, 3s, or 4s, on top of very obscure rules that require way more investigation than referencing a table.

BrianDavion wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 TheCadreofFi'rios wrote:
Yea so I played my entire game today in about 2.5 hours at 1250 points. It was definitely a faster than normal game for me though because my opponent conceded half way through my 2nd turn after I blew up his command squad.

...2.5hrs for a turn and a half? At 1,250pts? What armies were you using?

"his command squad" is a clue if his regular partner plays say... a IG full foot platoon list, I could see why games would take forever.

Well he was playing space marines and put too many of his useful units in one or two squads. Which I concentrated on and destroyed. He had a command squad that got roasted the turn after it dropped and that made him quit. He played a pretty sloppy game to be honest.

The kinds of games I usually play are 2000 points and tend to drag on for various reasons. My second to last game never finished because my opponent wanted to use special tournament rules for scoring that made every turn go a lot longer. It turned out to be a giant stalemate that no one really won in the end. That was a game that lasted more than 5 hours.

 TheCadreofFi'rios wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 TheCadreofFi'rios wrote:
Yea so I played my entire game today in about 2.5 hours at 1250 points. It was definitely a faster than normal game for me though because my opponent conceded half way through my 2nd turn after I blew up his command squad.

...2.5hrs for a turn and a half? At 1,250pts? What armies were you using?

"his command squad" is a clue if his regular partner plays say... a IG full foot platoon list, I could see why games would take forever.

Well he was playing space marines and put too many of his useful units in one or two squads. Which I concentrated on and destroyed. He had a command squad that got roasted the turn after it dropped and that made him quit. He played a pretty sloppy game to be honest.

The kinds of games I usually play are 2000 points and tend to drag on for various reasons. My second to last game never finished because my opponent wanted to use special tournament rules for scoring that made every turn go a lot longer. It turned out to be a giant stalemate that no one really won in the end. That was a game that lasted more than 5 hours.

But how was the time allocated in general?

Take your typical game and break down where you are spending time.

Like how long does movement on turn 1-2 take? How long does the psychic phase take? How long does the shooting phase take? How long does the assault phase take?

For any phase where you are taking a long amount of time, what is that time spent doing?

Stuff like that would help us identify where you are getting bogged down.