Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've been kinda wondering this, but how long is a game turn supposed to equal in real life terms? For D&D 1st edition a round of combat was something like 1-10 minutes or something insanely huge. 3rd put it down to 1 round = 6 seconds. What is Warhammer's "conversion" rate?

Working mostly off of the movement of infantry, 6-10 seconds sounds about right. Each squad runs moves somewhere around twice the length of a Rhino. Consider the size of a real tank, and how long it would take you to jog that.
Consider also: if it were longer, heavy weapons would be able to move a bit before firing. In ~10 seconds, I'd like to see you run a few yards and then fire a missile.

I can't see it being that short - after all, an IG officer needs the time to give orders to multiple squads, and he'd have to be a hell of a fast talker to give that many in 10 seconds!

I think it depends on the scale of the battle. Also note that not every action is at the same scale as others. In large games, an assault phase could end up filling as much as 10 minutes, where as in small ones, an assault could be over in a matter of seconds. There really is no true scale to combat, because it's written as a set of game rules, not as a way of representing real combat.

A game like Inquisitor has each action representing only a matter of seconds, 5 being generous.

I had a game where one assault phase saw 30 of my Guardsmen die to Kharn, Abaddon, and a bunch of Berserkers. Couldn't have lasted more than 10 seconds...

Brother SRM wrote:I can't see it being that short - after all, an IG officer needs the time to give orders to multiple squads, and he'd have to be a hell of a fast talker to give that many in 10 seconds!

"Sergeant Blank, fire on those Blanks!"
"Sergeant Blank, I want that Blank dead, now."
"Sergeant Blank, move up and capture that objective."

I don't know all of the IG orders, but I could bark a few of those out in 10 seconds. Either way, maybe 10-30 seconds is about right.