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If an actual live action battle was occurring (albeit a miniature one) during a game of 40k, how long would it be when perceived by the soldiers fighting it?

How long would a game turn be?
How far is six inches for our miniatures?
I know there's no definite answer, as we can only base this upon opinions.

I would say that a game turn would take around 2 minutes, maybe less.
I base my opinion on the estimated time it would take for a group of Berzerkers to disembark from a rhino, move up, fire their pistols, then charge an enemy unit.

I'd say that an inch is about ten meters or so (thanks to Atode)

so a lascannon can only shoot 48 meters lol?
i think we devolved out technologies as humans

Atode wrote:i think we devolved out technologies as humans

What?

I think he's French Canadian?

He's right though. Fluff wise, humanities technological prowess has significantly regressed.

As to your question, I think its hard to translate miniature time into real time. Think about it. You roll a units shooting (so you miniatures acquire a tagret, aim, and squeeze the trigger) roll to hit and wound (the shots either fly wild or hit true,) and then... nothing happens for 10 minutes while we squabble about rules (our models stand around wondering WTF the dudes they shot at aren't dying).

Ignoring that, I think your estimate of a few minutes is about right. Often a real world firefight only lasts a few minutes, though it can seem longer to the participants.

I figure each game turn to be about twenty to thirty seconds, based off the following scenarios:

- A Guardsman fires a lascannon fires at a Rhino, lifts his head, and sees the Rhino has been destroyed. His sergeant speaks two words into his comm, waits a few seconds, then nods. "New target: the Defiler." The Guardsman pivots the lascannon, confirms the target with his spotter and fires again.

- A Space Marine charges into combat against an Ork. The initial swing is wide, but the Marine is able to parry the return blow. There's a brief moment of facing off, both looking for an opening, then the Ork roars and makes an ill-advised attack.

The Marine neatly sidesteps, fires his bolt pistol to blow off the Ork's hand as it tries to pull up the choppa from where it stuck in the ground, then the Marine delivers a terrifying punch to the side of the Ork's head whilst its attention is diverted.

The Marine takes a quick look around to confirm his squad have fared as well, the squad regrouping as they begin to move around, flanking the Ork force.

- The Imperial Commander surveys the battlefield as the Elder approach. As they near the lines of the Imperial army, they begin to spread out, take cover, and so forth, and the Shining Spears begin an elaborate flanking manouver. Smiling grimly to himself, the Commander speaks into his Vox - "Spring the trap."

The Eldar advance falters as two Valkyries approach from the eastern flank, one of them gunning down the Shining Spears as it arrives.



In the first two cases, I took small moments of the battle which I can easily picture taking twenty to thirty seconds. In the last, the "trap" would take approximately a minute to come to fruition from the start of the game, which represents the time at which the Valkyries successfully Outflank on turn 2 or 3.

In terms of distances... No idea. Based on the above, with thirty seconds I think you could effectively move about 60 metres whilst watching out for snipers, covering one another, and so forth. With a little more recklessness, you could easily make that 100 metres. Therefore, treating these as being regular moovement and running respectively, I would estimate one inch being the equivalent of about 10 metres. Clearly liberties are taken with model scales, in that case...

Commander Endova wrote:I think he's French Canadian?

and then... nothing happens for 10 minutes while we squabble about rules (our models stand around wondering WTF the dudes they shot at aren't dying).

Hahaha. True true.

Just remember, in a way, both your turns take place simutaneously.

Snikkyd wrote:Just remember, in a way, both your turns take place simutaneously.

For sure.
That's why I'm asking how long a game turn would take instead of a player turn.

I think every inch is more like one meter, and the weapon ranges are just so low for the sake of them game.

Haha sorry my first reply was typed out ridiculously fast.

I merely meant to point out that if one inch is one meter a lascannon (range 48") could only shoot 48 meters, which seems implausible because this setting is far into the future. We have bullets that can travel much further then 48 meters at the moment with current human technology. Factor in the X amount of years to reach the technology able to replicate a lascannon and the range on our weapons should (knock on wood folks ) increase significantly.

For most of my models it takes their entire lives. Poor little plastic men. If only you had a competent general, you might live to see another Lidrise (the plastic lid of their carrying case. I'm hilarious)

There's a lot of answers to these type of questions. Warhamemer never pretends to be an 'accurate' simulation of anything and as seen in the comparison between Guardsman and Marine measurements can be relative. That said, Warhammer 40k, is supposedly a true skirmish game, and the rules never state that the measurements, ranges and table size are anything other than aproximately scaled to the miniatures. Thus a few assumptive measurements and estimations can be made.

Taking a 28-30mm tall (in armor) space marine as standard, we can determine the following
1)marine is aproximately 7 feet
2) 7 game feet is aproximately equal to 28-30mm
3) 4mm=one foot
4) Keep it simple and say that one inch (25 2/5 mm) equals around 6 and a half feet.
5) 6 inches of movement (one movement phase) equals aproximately 39 feet.
6) One game turn is equal to the amount of time it takes a soldier to advance 39 feet and either fire their weapons or charge into hand-to-hand-combat

Anybody want to hazard a guess how long that takes? My guess is somewhere between 30 seconds and a minute, but only someone with combat experience is likely to be able to give us a good estimate.

Of course with hand to hand combat this breaks down after one turn as it artificially lenghthens the time that H2H combat would likely take, but still, I think the above is a pretty good estimation

I think this is harder to calculate than it appears.

A game with a lot of vehicles and just shooting would probably be a lot quicker than in "real life."

A game with a lot of assaults and close combat would most likely be a lot longer in "real time."

If it helps at all, it takes less than 10 seconds to reload the main gun on a tank.

There are no realistic scales in 40K.

Even if there were, all wargames tend to run into the problem that IRL soldiers do an awful lot of standing around between bits of action.

While a tank can realistically move at maybe 15mph across country, the actual rate of advance of tanks in combat -- for example during the Normandy Campaign in WW2 -- is often a couple of miles per day.

I reckon a game of 40K represents a few minutes of intense action in between long periods of boredom.

Kilkrazy wrote:There are no realistic scales in 40K.



I reckon a game of 40K represents a few minutes of intense action in between long periods of boredom.

Ya, a lot can happen in a few mintues.

I'd say an entire game is about a minute. How long can it take to move 200 feet? Not to mention they probably aren't taking their sweet time at it, I'd probably be running like hell. Movement based only, one minute for the whole game.

I usually consider 6" to be 50m.

lordrevege wrote:If an actual live action battle was occurring (albeit a miniature one) during a game of 40k, how long would it be when perceived by the soldiers fighting it?

How long would a game turn be?
How far is six inches for our miniatures?
I know there's no definite answer, as we can only base this upon opinions.

I would say that a game turn would take around 2 minutes, maybe less.
I base my opinion on the estimated time it would take for a group of Berzerkers to disembark from a rhino, move up, fire their pistols, then charge an enemy unit.

I'd say that an inch is about ten meters or so (thanks to Atode)

Play DoW or DOW2 PC games. 6 turns is like a few minutes in them. A vehicle moving 12 inches is probably 100 yards or so. The time it takes to stop and prepare/ fire all weapons is about 10 seconds. Infantry run about 30-50 yards at 6 inch runs. Takes them about 10 seconds to prepare and fire heavy weapons. A 2000 point 6 turn game is no more than 10-20 minutes tops IMO.

A game would probably only take minutes in real life.

Just because of ammunition, numbers of combatants etc.

For example in real warfare british troops carry enough ammo for 33mins of sustained fighting which is generally more than enough to at least route/delay an opposing force of roughly equal size.