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I'm an old D&D nut and I love how you can picture the battles, every players turn happens in seconds; based on Initiative each player-character and NPC move in different orders. Essentially you make decisions and moves in slow-mo, where a battle that takes an hour to settle with dice-rolls take place in that character's realtime about 10 intense minutes.

In 40k, each player gets a turn to move, shoot then assault. Then in assault the other player also gets a turn to counter-attack before he gets to move etc...
I'm finding it very difficult to picture it happen in realtime... and having the entire army "wait" for the other team seems a little chivalrous if you're trying to kill them...

Anyone have a theory on how it works?

Each turn is hard to imagine them practicing war stuff realistically, considering as you said that you shoot and assault before somebody else does.
But you can see them shooting volleys of fire at them and then moving in directions, though you don't see it as smoothly as you'd think. Also, assault is easier to imagine thinking that they are running at them and then one army rushes at another in assault.

Phloop wrote:I'm an old D&D nut and I love how you can picture the battles, every players turn happens in seconds; based on Initiative each player-character and NPC move in different orders. Essentially you make decisions and moves in slow-mo, where a battle that takes an hour to settle with dice-rolls take place in that character's real time about 10 intense minutes.

In 40k, each player gets a turn to move, shoot then assault. Then in assault the other player also gets a turn to counter-attack before he gets to move etc...
I'm finding it very difficult to picture it happen in real time... and having the entire army "wait" for the other team seems a little chivalrous if you're trying to kill them...

Anyone have a theory on how it works?

its just a way of organising chaos in real time it would happen almost at once you could be shooting as i assault (that would be a cheaters paradise)

Realy it all happens simotamistly, i mean moving, shooting and assault, but your enemy does it at the same time.

Imagine your turn, in a proper battle, your enemys turn would be happening same time.

Like Dark angel said just a way to organise the chaos of a full scale battle.

As for actual time scales, a typical 40k game is suposed to last about 30 seconds to 1 minute. Which puts about 5-10 seconds per turn.

Jesus, you play 3 hours and the battle's only a minute and a half? Hmmm...

I want to some how do a simulation, if everything happens simultaniously, how it'd look with everyone sprawling out and getting mowed down...

Thanks for your opinion, guys

No no, when he said the "battle" is only 30 seconds to a minute, he meant more along the lines of each firefight or melee confrontation. Each "skirmish" perhaps would've been a better term.

The battles themselves could vary immensely in time depending on an endless multitude of factors. Thus it's also hard to assign a "Real-time" scale, as, just like in an actual engagement, you're not going to just rush in guns blazing hoping you don't get dropped.

No, I did indeed mean each game, at least according to GW. It's worth remembering that we only play the most interesting part of the battle. All the stalking, bombardments, moving troops in to position, is covered by deployment rules.

If each round was a minute long, these would be the galexy's slowest infantry, with the most fleet of eldar running in to assault (with a 6 on a run), taking one step ever 2 seconds.

The thing is - That's like saying "Okay - a real engagement ALWAYS follows a set time limit. All things happen at the same pace, in the same order, every single time." which, obviously, is horribly incorrect. You can't really set any time scale to a turn. If you're in the streets of a bombed out, seemingly abandoned city, for instance, you're not going to be charging down the road with no regard for your surroundings. You'd be moving slowly, cautiously, and be watching for traps, snipers, ambushes, etc...

That's why saying that a turn, or a unit's movement, has a set real-time value isn't true in the slightest. Those 6" of movement could take a few seconds in real-time, or they could take minutes, depending on how fast the unit would be covering that distance. The same thing with shooting. Obviously your troops aren't just popping off the odd shot or two. They -are- taking shots but they're also laying cover fire, switching empty magazines out, etc...

So I can see a skirmish or exchange taking 30 seconds to maybe 2 minutes, but the overall battle, definately not.

Technicaly, a full game at 1000pts is a skirmish, so I agree, that could take 30 seconds to 2 minutes.

What is a battle? What an exhange?

Personaly, I can't imagine orks or Korne Bloodleaters "moving slowly, cautiously, and be watching for traps, snipers, ambushes, etc..." Hense why I calculated the Eldar speed (or waaaagggh ork) above at 18 inches in a turn.

Yes people reload, or spend time searching for their targets, but that's also why they sometimes 'miss'. Not because they pulled the trigger and were wide of their target, but because they to buisy reloading, or keeping their head down, or looking for an ambush during that shooting phase.

I never said "Okay - a real engagement ALWAYS follows a set time limit. All things happen at the same pace, in the same order, every single time"

I said that a game turn takes somewhere on the order of 5-10 seconds, (often, it seems twoards the upper end) what the models do during that time may differ dramaticly. Tau might move up a street in two waves, each fireing while the other moves, Korne Marines might run up the middle of the street yelling about a blood god, and and IG guardsman might line up a shot and fire off an aimed burst, while the guardsman next to him lets his lasgun rip on full auto.

5-10 seconds is actualy a reasonably long time, see how far you yourself can go in 5 seconds, or how many soda cans you can hit with a bb gun (if you have the capablity)

The timescale will never be perfect, because the turn system is designed for gameplay, not reinactment, but that doesn't mean it took half an hour for my Hammerhead to drive across the Costco sized board. (Costco is a wharehouse store, for those not in america)

yeah I always invison the battles as one small part of a much larger engagement that is taking place. Now as to the one army shooting and then the next, well maybe 40,000 years down the road they have gone back to the (American) revolutionary war fighting style.

edit: I don't know what this style of fighting was called, I just know it was stupid.

And maybe they might be running that 6" if they're bloodthirsty Khorn Berserkers. Whereas a squad of Guardsmen might carefully be advancing along because god-knows about anything tears them to shreds

So saying a unit moves in a set timeframe for a 6" movement phase is unreliable at best.

If you're shooting, and you miss, then you're shooting and you miss. The 1 or 2 shots you might get in the shooting phase only represent part of the entire firefight that would otherwise be raging at a certain point.

And I never claimed you did say those words. Read er' again.

The thing is - That's like saying "Okay - a real engagement ALWAYS follows a set time limit. All things happen at the same pace, in the same order, every single time."

What I meant by that, is you're still trying to provide a definate timeframe when that's really not possible. How do you know that those Tau or those Guardsmen aren't taking 2 or 3 minutes to advance over all the rubble and trying their best to remain unseen behind cover? I mean there's no question that the Khorne Berserkers would be charging up the road impervious to any hazards, screaming something like "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" or "I LIKE KITTENS!"

You -cannot- translate a turn based game into a real-time context when there're so many variable factors that would drastically affect the conversion from turn to time. The only way to effectively come anywhere close to being able to gauge a game in real-time would be to play one as such. Even then, it would still be quite off in a slew of regards, but at least you'd be able to build a general idea as to what it would look like. Unfortunately that would be sheer hell to try and concentrate on.

And again, boardsize varies. Which would also affect the stream of time. Obviously a smaller board means engagements will be much smaller and faster, and 30 seconds to 2 minutes would be reasonable. But as boardsize goes up, so too would the length of the battle. (And Costco is international mate. I'm not in America but I sure do have a Costco. And a Great Canadian. Together they save me about $200 a month on groceries. Go bulk stores!)

I always thought of each turn as representing roughly 15 seconds in a turn with only shooting and movement, but turns with CC can get up to 45 seconds probably. A unit could move, shoot, charge, attack 4 times, the enemy could run, they can pursue, all in 15 seconds? no way - it has to be longer. Variable turn duration.

True CC all depends on the size of the units and the size of the actual creature, walker, troop or what not. Like if its 10 BA DC Marines vs a squad of fire warriors that would be done in like 10 seconds however if it were like a Bloodthirster vs harliquins I would think it would be a much more epic fight.

Ok, I admit I straw-maned a bit in my last post, I appologize. Still, I cannot agree with you. While I'm not going to say a game took exactly 1 minutes and 23 seconds, I think we can get a reasonable idea of timescale, and therefore, aproximately how it 'really happened in real time'.

The time I'm sugesting isn't that definate. There's a lot of variation between 5 and 10 seconds. And even that could be streached to 3 or 15 without to much difficulty, but 2-3 miniutes is just doesn't seem reasonable.

6"is suposed to be ~30ft(10m). So ignoring difficult terrain (which could reduce their movement), its hard to see guardsman taking 2-3 minutes to travel that far, even moving tacticly. (Thats aproximately the length of my livingroom.)

This problem with a turnbased game is that both player's second turns must start about the same in game time. If it takes Korne Berserkers only ~10 seconds to cover their turn, and the guardsmen 2 minutes to do their turn, what are the Berserkers doing for the other 90 seconds?

Now, I am not sugesting that a battle takes only a couple minutes. I'm sugesting the game takes place over a couple minutes. Logicaly there are several minutes, if not hours of movment, potshots, walking paranoid threw the jungle, what have you before the game ever takes place. And just as logicaly, theres minutes to hours worth of retreats, hidding, and just plain running that takes place after the game, that would still be considered part of the engagment. And battles themselves are often several different engagments over a protracted period of time. As gamers, we just play the most interesting part, the turning point so to speak.

Turn based games work exactly because each turn repersents about the same alotment of in game time for each player. If they didn't, if a turn could be as long as I wanted to it be, then there seems to be no reason why I can only go 6" in the movement phase, 12" in a turn, or launch only 1 missile.

This problem with a turnbased game is that both player's second turns must start about the same in game time. If it takes Korne Berserkers only ~10 seconds to cover their turn, and the guardsmen 2 minutes to do their turn, what are the Berserkers doing for the other 90 seconds?

That's the problem with trying to turn a turnbase into a timebase setting. We only see the most essential part of each action, just like we only see the turning point of the battle. We only see the "movement" part in the movement phase. The A to B. We don't see everything in between. We don't see the technical stuff, because that would overcomplicate things. So there could be a vast difference in the times of all actions depending on the attitudes of the forces. The Guardsmen might only cover one block in real time, while the Korne Berserkers would be on their 3rd or 4th block after the same amount of time. They wouldn't advance slowly whereas the Guardsmen would. They might cover 30 in 25 - 30 seconds advancing at a slow but steady pace, while the Khorne Berserkers might be up to 60+ft in the same time running flat out. That's where assigning time to movement would be hard. Like you said both players would have to be moving their units at the same time, but they would also have to do so keeping their army's fighting style in mind. Are they cautious or bloodthirsty? Do they try to sneak or make themselves known? etc... Things like this would also affect time.

Like I said the scale of the board and the armies on it would probably do a lot to determine the length, scale, and point in the battle as well. Obviously the larger the board and army upon it, the greater aspect of the overall battle being shown. On a smaller 3X3 Skirmish board, you would indeed be looking at only a few intense seconds in one part of the battle. Whereas on a larger 6X4+ board with 2000pts+ armies, which is generally the minium scale our group uses, the battle is representing a larger portion of the battle and thus the timeframe would be of a larger extent overall. Like I said, terrain, gaming area, and army scale would all drastically change the scale of time.

Turns do represent a certain time period that's generally the same for all, yes. But as I've been saying the amount of time actually used in that period by the soldiers of that army would be immensely different thanks to a boundless variety of factors. If it were real time, you wouldn't be moving your units 6", as that's a feature of a turnbased game. You also wouldn't be launching only one missile, etc...

You only measure distances, count shots, etc... because you're only representing that much happening over the "time period" of that turn. Your units aren't moving 30ft and then stopping. They aren't popping off shots 1 or 2 at a time at exact measured ranges, etc...

I guess the best look we'd get at a proper real time game would be, like I said, to play one, or to just hop on the ol' Dawn of War for a bit. Other than that you better invent a time machine and travel to the 41st Millenium

Ok, I admit I straw-maned a bit in my last post, I appologize.

Don't worry mate. I don't think you really hurt anyone's feelings It's the internet. Nuff' said.

Oddly, most of what you said is the same things I say to argue the opposite. Clearly your troops arn't moving 30ft and then stopping. Nor nessiaraly moving, comeing to a compleate stop, then shooting. For what becomes a turn of "Move 6 inches, fire lasguns for 7 hits, 1 dead enemy" could be your guardsmen running up to some cover, hitting the deck then firing off a series of shots. OR moving up 2 men at a time while the rest of the squad shoots and tries to pin down the target enemies OR guardsmen fireing around a corner before finaly sprinting across a clearing to cover ~30ft away.

And while your doing this, your oppoenent is doing a simmilar amount of stuff, be it running down the middle of a street or carefuly moving from cover to cover. So only at the end of the full turn, do you know what happened during that turn's worth of time. Not because they're waiting for eachother to move, but because all the activities of the turn are occuring at some time over the course of the time.

But I don't think the amount of time it takes to do aproximately 1 turns worth of action will ever be more then 20 seconds, and closer to the given 5-10 seconds. Even in large games, time doesn't slow down, it just takes more turns for the game to conclude. Even assault isn't unreasonable. Particularly when you include that he's throwing a frag grenade in before he gets there, it's not hard to see a Space Marine incapasitating 1, 2, or even 3 guys in a few seconds with his combat knife or bolt pistol.

Oddly, most of what you said is the same things I say to argue the opposite. Clearly your troops arn't moving 30ft and then stopping. Nor nessiaraly moving, comeing to a compleate stop, then shooting. For what becomes a turn of "Move 6 inches, fire lasguns for 7 hits, 1 dead enemy" could be your guardsmen running up to some cover, hitting the deck then firing off a series of shots. OR moving up 2 men at a time while the rest of the squad shoots and tries to pin down the target enemies OR guardsmen fireing around a corner before finaly sprinting across a clearing to cover ~30ft away.

And while your doing this, your oppoenent is doing a simmilar amount of stuff, be it running down the middle of a street or carefuly moving from cover to cover. So only at the end of the full turn, do you know what happened during that turn's worth of time. Not because they're waiting for eachother to move, but because all the activities of the turn are occuring at some time over the course of the time.

But I don't think the amount of time it takes to do aproximately 1 turns worth of action will ever be more then 20 seconds, and closer to the given 5-10 seconds. Even in large games, time doesn't slow down, it just takes more turns for the game to conclude. Even assault isn't unreasonable. Particularly when you include that he's throwing a frag grenade in before he gets there, it's not hard to see a Space Marine incapasitating 1, 2, or even 3 guys in a few seconds with his combat knife or bolt pistol.

Huh. As far as I gather then, we're arguing the same thing with the only differences being that (a) I'm saying that use of time represented in a turn, as well as the amount of time represented in each, varies. And (b) that the real-time length and scale a game represents is related to the board size and points value played.

Well, for a) we're both saying it use and time in a turn varies, I'm saying it varies between 5-30 seconds, and you seem to be saying it varies between 20 seconds to 5 minutes. So you just have more variation then I do.

b) yeah. I think it's about the same for a 400pt battle as it is for a 10,000pt Apoc game. (the length of a turn that is). My models don't get smaller, so I assume the scale remains the same.

Well, for a) we're both saying it use and time in a turn varies, I'm saying it varies between 5-30 seconds, and you seem to be saying it varies between 20 seconds to 5 minutes. So you just have more variation then I do.

b) yeah. I think it's about the same for a 400pt battle as it is for a 10,000pt Apoc game. (the length of a turn that is). My models don't get smaller, so I assume the scale remains the same

Eh. Not so much 20 seconds. Up to 5 minutes maybe, but about 10 seconds to 5 minutes seems an accurate range to place within. Especially if they're garrisoning a large building, they'd probably need about 2-4 minutes to check a building in true scale and clear it, making sure there're no traps or ambushes in the process.

Otherwise, sorry for the mixup

No problem

You don't clear a whole building in one turn do you? If your looking at a full size building, you could do one room per turn, with each room counting as a seperate 'enclosed area'

Or if you build the terrain good enough, you can play it with normal rules, using the inside of the building as the board. In which case you might take a turn or 2 iniside one room, or charge threw a full (less then 60ft) room and into the next one.

The building fragments we usualy play with on our 4x6 board would actualy be quite small IRL, As noted above, a floor from a large office tower could easily cover most if not all of an entire board. (4x6 board = 240ft x 360ft)

The other thing to remember is that all distances in 40k are vastly reduced so that we can fit both models and board in a single room!

Given the massive reduction in shooting ranges, it seems sensible to reduce movement 'ranges' by the same amount.

Otherwise, 'realistically' a model could run the entire length of the gameboard in 10/15 seconds. Therefore each turn must be two seconds long, right???

Time and distance in 40k is representative to make for a balanced game, not to be realistic. I think you have to think of it as such.

- Every model, when moving, is being cautious and covering squad mates.
- The 'Heavy 3' section of your Heavy Bolter's profile actually represents a ton more shots than that. The two 'Rapid Fire' shots of your lasgun actually represents covering fire, sprays of gunfire AND aimed shots.

I'm sure I heard somewhere that each turn was meant to represent a few seconds of decisive action coupled with a few minutes of creeping around, holding areas, waiting for orders, assessing location etc...

In the darkness of the far future, there is only paintball. (about the ranges they use)

In the darkness of the far future, there is only paintball. (about the ranges they use)

Woodball or Speedball?

Go Woodball! >

ArbitorIan is correct in that 40k only makes any sense if the figure scale and the ground scale are very different. Figure scale is 28mm, which is (close to) 1:72. According to that, weapons range is ridiculously short -- 24" (rifle range) is only 144 feet, and so on. (Plus that would mean each soldier can run on 36 feet in a turn!)

The given scale for Warhammer is 1"=5' or 1:60. Which does tend to make the math easier. The problem with saying the ground and models are on different scales actualy comes from the terrain & LOS rules. The terrain, which is the ground, is built on the same 1:60 scale, and to say those are off just make the board look really weard. Using true LOS seems to indicate that everythings on the same scale aswell.

Even if you take the ranges as "engagment ranges" rather then max range, it's still only 1/2 of what it should be. Bring on the half sized models!

Ultimately, the size and range come from this WFB in space. Traced to their roots, the range of the guns come from a game system designed to deal with arrows and crossbows, not rockets and rifles.

A 28mm guardsman should be able to shoot something about 15m or say 50' away. In the game he can't even shoot the length of the table. Maximum ranges in the game for basic infantry weapons are not much greater than truescale throwing ranges.

Very little in the game is truescale for the reasons mentioned.

Nice observation about the roots of the game Mars.Techpriest. I've never had anything to do with WFB but I'm willing to bet that even their ranges are scaled down given the actual ranges of arrows, bolts and siege weapons.

A 28mm guardsman should be able to shoot something about 15m or say 50' away. In the game he can't even shoot the length of the table. Maximum ranges in the game for basic infantry weapons are not much greater than truescale throwing ranges.

Very little in the game is truescale for the reasons mentioned.

Nice observation about the roots of the game Mars.Techpriest. I've never had anything to do with WFB but I'm willing to bet that even their ranges are scaled down given the actual ranges of arrows, bolts and siege weapons.

Let's not forget that in a combat situation, you'll rarely see anyone other than a sniper using their weapon at anywhere even close to it's full range. For those that have been to Iraq/Afghanistan, you all understand what I'm talking about. You're never firing your M4/C7/G36/AK/whatever at an enemy that's little more than a blob on the horizon. Realistically speaking, ranged combat in terms of firing distances is really quite close. The range on the weapons in 40K simply emulates this fact and translates it into a visualization of the density of the surrounding terrain, the close assault nature of firefights, the fact that in dense combat conditions, your shots are more likely to hit an obstruction before they carry out their full effective range, etc...

All GW is doing is putting this into an easily representable form. It's not that the mini couldn't shoot across the table, it's just that for them to do so, accurately, and without hitting any obstructions, would be rather unbelievable.

And yea, that is a good observation. Kudos for thinking of that element as well.

I agree with Metalifan, which is why I put it at double. The Modern military exersises & weapons tests I could find information on put 'engagment range' at 250-300ft. (or about double 40k's ranges.) It's even noted as such in the rulebook. The bullets don't stop magicaly at 24", its just that after that distance, your poor guardsman doesn't have much hope at hitting anything. Hense "if the weapon is out of range, you automaticly miss"

And FYI, for WHFB, an average bow has a 24" range. (12 close range, 24 long range)