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I think each turn, in real time, represents about 10 seconds of action (including both sides). Most games are about 6 turns, so that means the games we play are only about a minute long! That's my current theory anyway. What do you guys think?

The version I know of was that each phase lasted 6-seconds. But that was in a thread long forgotten

A turn probably represents ~20 seconds in realtime.

well a Vulcan Mega-Bolter fires 6000 rounds a minute i bleieve i read and it shoots 60 rounds a turn so there are like 100 turns in a minute?

HellsGuardian316 wrote:The version I know of was that each phase lasted 6-seconds. But that was in a thread long forgotten

Actually, I was going to say that at first but that means most games aren't even a minute! That may very well be, but man does it take a long time to play a 36 second battle.

I figure a 2-inch model represents a 6+ foot tall space marine.
By that math, a 6-inch run would be what, 18 feet in real space?
Assuming that in a real battle, all squads would run at the same time (as in, not take turns moving), I'd say that a turn lasts as long as it would take a person to potentially run 18 feet, shoot at someone, and then bonk them with something. For me, that would take maybe... five to six seconds to run, about that long to aim and shoot, and then another three or four seconds to assault. So potentially a turn could last 16 seconds, assuming that all of that happens every turn, and that no psyker abilities or artillery take longer to load/cast/fire/etc.
So that means a 6 turn, two player game would potentially be 192 seconds long, since each player would have 6 turns that are each 16 seconds long. Shorter if there are phases in which nothing, or nearly nothing happens.
But still, a three-minute battle in real time does take quite a while in gametime xD

6 seconds to run 18 feet? That seems a little slow to me. Pretty sure you can do that and get some shooting done in that time. CC does complicate matters a bit though.

6 seconds from a dead stop to 18 feet away, usually wearing heavy armor and carrying fairly weighty weapons, of course. 18 feet, naked, running across a grassy field, maybe three seconds.

Well there is that little known rule were naked models run 2d6 in the shooting phase.....

It would make sense. What about naked Jump Infantry?

Crackgnome wrote:6 seconds from a dead stop to 18 feet away, usually wearing heavy armor and carrying fairly weighty weapons, of course. 18 feet, naked, running across a grassy field, maybe three seconds.

I'm sure if I search hard enough I can find an actual reference, but a commonly quoted police statistic is that an average person can cover 21ft in 2 seconds.

Well i would say it all depends on the army. Say a army like tyranids the turn would be quite quick because how long does it take to stride/hop/scurry forward and slice somebody in half? Another army like IG or even space marines would take longer. IG would have the Chain of command then the loading and firing of the ordnance and the tanks trying not to run over infantry. so I would say anywhere from 10 minutes or less to about a hour at most for a normal 1500 pts game.

Personally, I'd say 5-20 minutes. I remember someone saying they interpreted tabletop games as ether a small skirmish, or part of a larger battle. Makes sense once you think about it, especially because another guy called 40K crunch a large scale skirmish, comparing it to Fantasy.

Depends on size, in a book I read how 3 crisis suits and some Kroot died to 10-20 or so SM, and that may have been only like 5 minutes. In another how a choas army was besieging a IG fortress, and that took days. I guess it depends on what's happening, melee may take 1-5 minutes, movement may be 30 minutes to several hours, shooting can be minutes to hours,consolidating after melee which is more like a few more minutes, and the charge into melee may be moments.

Ineed2bucks wrote:Depends on size, in a book I read how 3 crisis suits and some Kroot died to 10-20 or so SM, and that may have been only like 5 minutes. In another how a choas army was besieging a IG fortress, and that took days. I guess it depends on what's happening, melee may take 1-5 minutes, movement may be 30 minutes to several hours, shooting can be minutes to hours,consolidating after melee which is more like a few more minutes, and the charge into melee may be moments.

and that sumns up this thread....

I guess our only semi-reliable source are games and books. DoW is (AFAIK) Warhammer 40k in real-time-strategy. That means we could use it to calculate how long would a battle last with a certain number of forces. The books help too.

The books and games deal with battles on a much larger scale usually.

It has to be longer than seconds. I can't remember the exact scenario it might be Dawn of War, it goes from dark to light. Takes awhile for that to happen

But that is a dawn assault. You literally attack at the crack of dawn.

AustonT wrote:

Crackgnome wrote:6 seconds from a dead stop to 18 feet away, usually wearing heavy armor and carrying fairly weighty weapons, of course. 18 feet, naked, running across a grassy field, maybe three seconds.

I'm sure if I search hard enough I can find an actual reference, but a commonly quoted police statistic is that an average person can cover 21ft in 2 seconds.

Think of it this way. If a relatively 'good' score for an American football player to achieve in the 40-yard dash is about 4-4.5 seconds, the average person is likely to be slower. Now grow to the size of a Space Marine, which is already heavy (not to mention more dense, as well), then add on his armor and equipment. Even with all their augmentations and implants and genetics and what-not, chances are your rate is going to lie somewhere between 'normal' and 'athlete.'

Seriously though, it all depends on the situation. I've read around half of the HH novels, plus Sigvald and Brothers of the Snake. There have been various instances where they mention "So-and-so did this and this and this and this and this and this..."etc., "all before his opponent's weapon hit the floor." So its not unreasonable to assume that the game we play (whether you see it as a skirmish, or as a zoomed-in view of a larger battle) in 6 turns (how many hours? ) could really take only a minute (assuming it averages to 10 seconds per turn in real-time). Its all circumstantial. You may eat your Coco Puffs in 15 minutes, but I eat mine in 10. See?

Just my thoughts though.

A short dash across open ground. A double-tap from a rifle. Perhaps a swing or two with a sword.

I would put each game turn at about 3 to 6 seconds, with some extra allowance for dramatically "elastic" timing.. it is a cinematic game after all.

Belexar wrote:I guess our only semi-reliable source are games and books. DoW is (AFAIK) Warhammer 40k in real-time-strategy. That means we could use it to calculate how long would a battle last with a certain number of forces. The books help too.

Yeah, but in DoW you need to have all the units produced before you can actually do that, and the capacities of some models in DoW may not really match those on the tabletop.

You just run the chronometer once all your troops are ready.

Somewhere between 1-3 minutes. As pointed out earlier, 40K games are more a zoomed in microcosm of a larger battle, we're really just playing out a climactic point of the battle.

Honestly, I've always wanted to play an Epic game with a small area marked off: that's the concurrently running 40K game with units able to leave one game for the other.

I've always wanted to play BFG, land troops maneuver in epic, and fight in 40k. Basically using epic as a campaign map.

To me, there's 2 ways to interpret a 40k battle.

Method 1: Look at how long it takes to do things.
In a 6 turn game, someone sitting down with a semi-automatic rifle firing as fast as he can only gets 12 shots.. An average human can swing his sword 6 times. A tank moving at max speed can go 72", which translates to about 216 feet (0.04 miles or 0.06km).

All these things should happen very quickly. I estimate a turn lasts about 3 seconds. So, a six turn game lasts about 18 seconds.

This makes sense if you think about the battle in the larger context of the war. We're talking about space faring empires waging war. Ground combat is completely silly. So, those 18 seconds represent the time it takes from the two forces spotting each other to when the air support arrives and the real battle starts.


Method 2: Try to logically explain game mechanics.
If you have two squads, each wanting to shoot at a transport and it's occupants. The first squad to fire doesn't have the opportunity to fire at the occupants, they can only try to fire at the transport. The 2nd squad to fire can wait to see what the result of the first squad's firing is before they decide what to shoot.
There's also things like a squad shooting and wiping out an enemy squad can effect the cover saves of subsequent shooting. But, they don't effect the cover saves retroactively.
Or, if you and an enemy unit are charging at each other as quickly as possible, one unit will end up getting a charge bonus, while the other doesn't.

The only way any of this makes sense is if we accept that the game is not, in fact, an extrapolation of a real time battle. And, that units moving, shooting, and assaulting are not actually simultaneous. The only explanation is that there's some code of honor in the 40th millennium that makes armies actually having one squad active at a time, and to take turns attacking each other.

So, the tabletop battles actually are real-time for the in-universe battles.

3 seconds? That's way to short. You have to think about what is the busiest turn a guy can have in 40k, not his normal turn. A soldier can move 6", fire a reasonably aimed burst from his weapon, charge in 6", partake in a furious melee, then flee in terror at his opponents prowess a full 12", take a quick look back and think about stopping and regrouping. That's quite a bit actually, even for 6 seconds. Going back to my original 10 seconds or more guestimate.

Brother_Khiros wrote:Now grow to the size of a Space Marine, which is already heavy (not to mention more dense, as well), then add on his armor and equipment. Even with all their augmentations and implants and genetics and what-not, chances are your rate is going to lie somewhere between 'normal' and 'athlete.'

I think Marines would be crazy fast, in terms of foot-speed. Their already enhanced anatomy would make them prodigous athletes, and that ability would be further enhanced by their armour.

I'd say an armoured Marine, moving at speed would be at least covering 100 metres in 10 seconds, probably more like 6-8 seconds, and would be able to keep that speed up for, well, a long time!

In Tales of Heresy there's a Marine moving flat out and iirc he's coving metres with every step. May have been downhill, but still.

Just imagine that tanks, infantry, etc. are only moving 6" because they are being massively cautious and doing auspex sweeps and whatnot...

Though how the heck I could make that theory apply to Skimmers I do not know.