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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)