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Hi, So, I'm still building up and enjoying my Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum) army . I have 1.5K built and painted so far. I am working on building up to 2K.

However, I game on weeknights, and I get to the store late due to work and traffic. I typically play against a Tyranid or other Imperial Guard player. Unfortunately, even 3 turns takes us like 3-4 hours sometimes.

I was wondering if I played Dark Eldar or regular Eldar would give me faster turns. Another option are Blood Angels, which I also like, but I think I prefer the Eldar/DE. My other motivations are because I also like the models for these armies and they give a different play experience. Also, I don't want to build and paint another horde army. So, would playing one of these other armies help me play faster games?

You'll definitely have much faster turns with any of the Eldar forces due to much lower model count, but general experience with the game will help you be a much faster player overall.

^^^^
This.
Lower model count factions have shorter turn times. Practice and experience speeds turn times up even more.
Tyranid vs IG turns can be very long indeed, if both players have big hordes of miniatures.

Between the two, probably Dark Eldar. Eldar do so much work in the psychic phase it'll take almost as long as your shooting phase. Dark Eldar, on the other hand, don't have a psychic phase at all!

I think the fastest GW army you can possibly play is Imperial Knights. 4 models for 2000 points!

Movement Trays are your friend here.

Movement trays are also very in character for mordians.

If you go for full gunlines AM is very quick to play. You skip the movement phase completely, probably the psychic phase as well and the opponent will not catch you in close combat that easily.

Dark eldar throw lesser amount of dice but a pure gunline won't really work, you need to move and assault as well. More decisions to make, while the typical AM lists are way easier to play, that's why they're also quicker to play.

Your current games are actually quite long. Most of my 1.5Kpts games are over under 2hours, when I play against somewhat who plays quickly.
My advice would therefore be the opposite: stick to your army. The better you know it, the faster you'll play it. You'll know your rules better, and be more accustomed to the way it should play (so less time trying to figure out what your next move should be).
3-4h for 3 turns isn't because of your army size, it's because you (or your opponent) spend a lot of time not rolling dice/moving models. If you're idling because you need to check the rules/try to figure out what to do, you can improve it. If it's because you're chatting with the other person/taking it easy, then it won't change with the army.

As said before, I don't think it's related to your models count. It is more about how you play and how you know the game.

I watched an interview of an ITC player, saying that with its 400 conscripts list, one of his turn lasted about 20 minutes. That's because he knew what to do, and did not do a lot of movement.

As the opposite, you can have a very elite army, and take a long time to play, for example if you want to optimize all your deepstrike. Really depends on gamestyle.

You should be able to shave some time off of that even with an AM army of that size. The movement trays are a great idea nowadays in 8th edition.

Something I did when my group was getting into Adepticon mode years back when we did that kind of stuff was to buy a chess timer. The goal was to just make sure people knew how much time they were spending thinking about moves. I'm sure it got on everyone's nerves, but it did help speed games up, particularly for our "slow player".

Having all that been said, small model count armies means ultimately fewer choices to make and actions to perform, so it would mean less time overall spent on that. If that's the majority of your game, that's probably a gain worth considering. On the other hand, if you're spending a lot of time on setup, rules questions/disputes, and small chat, then maybe that would be a better thing to try to limit.

You guys may have a point. A lot of our games seem to slow down because we talk a lot, and also because a lot of people come to our table and ask questions. I’m very guilty of this, as I tend to enjoy engaging in conversation — which distracts me and my opponent.

I'm in the same boat. I just came back to wh40k recently with 8th edition, last played when my Catachan army was brand spanking new.

The first few casual tournaments I went to (1250 and 1500 pts each) were timed on 1.5 hours per match. In the 1250 tournament I had 1 game go full term (mostly because I got slaughtered) but the others I only got thru turn 2 or 3. In the 1500 point tournament I only got past the 1st turn in 2 of them. It was very frustrating and demoralizing as the meat of the game really starts on turn 2.

So I looked to picking up a few new pieces to my army to try and make things faster. My existing army was mostly infantry. Lots and lots of squads of dudes. So I picked up some Bullgryns and a chimera. Now I've got 250ish points in essentially 1 unit instead of 5 units. I picked up a 2nd leman russ and outfitted the same way as my existing one. Bam another 4 squads reduced to a single unit - and because its the same as the other one it gets faster remembering how to play them.

It still takes some time each game, but its getting faster and faster every time I play. So I recommend sticking with them, bulk up on some more point heavy models and keep practicing. And take some time to look at a new angle of your army, you might find something you can add that'll help reduce play time.