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Incoming shower thought. To arrive at this question went like:

If the physical scale of 40k is standardised...
-the size of the table/mat (6x4)
-the size of unit bases
-the size of the basic terrain

...and the length of a game is 5+ turns, how long should it
take for basic infantry to run from one short edge of the board to another?
Should they be able to? Does the physical scale of everything, along with
a certain perception of time passing on the battlefield, allow for faster movement?
How much "time" is passing during a battle/phase, in comparison to ground covered, I guess?

Would battles feel more chaotic?

In my head this made sense, but I'm not too sure looking at it now

I think it's an interesting enough question. An intercessor is 4cm without its base; that's 1.57"
representing 8' of real world height. That same intercessor moves a little less than 4x its height each move, with the capacity to sprint (advance), on an average roll (3) an extra 2x its height. It can also charge... But for the sake of the calculation to come, I'm not going to worry about that.

So at just less than 4x its height, that's about 30' and then an average of 15' more for an advance. That makes a 90" Onslaught board's long side 450' or 150 yards. So how long does it take for a Genetically engineered super soldier in power armour to run one and a half American football fields?

The world record for a 20th century human is Stanely Floyd's 5.22 seconds, which we're going to round up to six , not just for the sake of easy mental math, but because Stan had an ideal running surface and optimal conditions, while the Marine does not. Add to that the time it would take the same soldier to snap off 2 shots with 10th ed Bolt Rifle, and make 3 close combat attacks call it another 4 seconds per turn.

So 10 seconds per turn, means a game represents 50 seconds of battle time. That's at a break-neck flat out fighting advance. If you assume taking cover, picking a target, sending/ receiving orders, feinting you could make the case to go for up to 5x the flat-out pace, in which case you'd be looking at 4 minutes and 10 seconds. Some games might represent five or even ten minutes.

Now if you want to assign a bit more abstraction, I could see someone making an argument that a game might even represent a whole hour- that's a slow engagement... lots of abstracted hiding, waiting for an opening, strategizing, etc.

Now here's the kicker: that works for an Intercessor, but when recalculate for a tank, it's going to paint a very different picture. And then for a jetbike. And then for a flier. And then for a knight.

The only scale of time I've ever worried about in any brand of minis game is real time.
As in its x-oclock & we have x amount of time to play this game.

How much fictional "time" each turn supposedly represents is irrelevant as 99% of the games are stand alone events with no story attached or discussed.
Maybe a 5 turn game represents 5 minutes. Maybe 5 hours. Maybe 5 days. Maybe....more.
And there's nothing that says all games must represent the same amount of time, so.....

A good thread and interesting to think about.

I have to admit I don't think about it myself while playing, I play 40k as more of a game than as a simulation.

I think I also just ignore anything that would harm my immersion and enjoyment. The "scale" of the game has always been "off" but I just pretend it isn't.

PenitentJake wrote:
I think it's an interesting enough question. An intercessor is 4cm without its base; that's 1.57"
representing 8' of real world height. That same intercessor moves a little less than 4x its height each move, with the capacity to sprint (advance), on an average roll (3) an extra 2x its height. It can also charge... But for the sake of the calculation to come, I'm not going to worry about that.

So at just less than 4x its height, that's about 30' and then an average of 15' more for an advance. That makes a 90" Onslaught board's long side 450' or 150 yards. So how long does it take for a Genetically engineered super soldier in power armour to run one and a half American football fields?

The world record for a 20th century human is Stanely Floyd's 5.22 seconds, which we're going to round up to six , not just for the sake of easy mental math, but because Stan had an ideal running surface and optimal conditions, while the Marine does not. Add to that the time it would take the same soldier to snap off 2 shots with 10th ed Bolt Rifle, and make 3 close combat attacks call it another 4 seconds per turn.

So 10 seconds per turn, means a game represents 50 seconds of battle time. That's at a break-neck flat out fighting advance. If you assume taking cover, picking a target, sending/ receiving orders, feinting you could make the case to go for up to 5x the flat-out pace, in which case you'd be looking at 4 minutes and 10 seconds. Some games might represent five or even ten minutes.

Now if you want to assign a bit more abstraction, I could see someone making an argument that a game might even represent a whole hour- that's a slow engagement... lots of abstracted hiding, waiting for an opening, strategizing, etc.

Now here's the kicker: that works for an Intercessor, but when recalculate for a tank, it's going to paint a very different picture. And then for a jetbike. And then for a flier. And then for a knight.

Its worth reading the scale notes in the front of the original Rogue Trader book. They're not shy about telling people that the model scale and the horizontal board scale are not the same. Or even particularly related. And that horizontal distances have been further shortened (like weapon ranges) for a better game experience.

So any 'y inches equal x feet' is completely not intended.

Many wargames with a more realistic bent will list things like ground scale for movements and ranges, time scale per turn and will also list how many men each figure or stand represents.

All that is relatively useless for a game like 40k, which has none of those, and has more in common with a cartoon battle than a historical simulation. To be fair to GW, they know this and haven't even attempted to address these issues since RT.

However, it's still an interesting question even if operating within the odd assumptions of the 40k universe. How much compression would be necessary to justify a couple platoons and vehicles completing an entire battle on a field only the size of a football pitch?

Well, it takes PRECISELY 8 weeks, 8 days, and 8 hours for Angron to resurrect, so from the moment of his death to whenever you have the ability to use Blood Tithe (now) or the new mechanic for 10th is that span of time.

That could be 1 turn, and it could never come up in game. So we're working with a sliding time scale where a turn/game doesn't always represent the same amount of time.

 Eilif wrote:
Many wargames with a more realistic bent will list things like ground scale for movements and ranges, time scale per turn and will also list how many men each figure or stand represents.

All that is relatively useless for a game like 40k, which has none of those, and has more in common with a cartoon battle than a historical simulation. To be fair to GW, they know this and haven't even attempted to address these issues since RT.

Rogue trader had to deal with making a niche inside the historical wargame market, so had to talk about things like that. It also was a bit more simulationist with its setting material.
Modern warhammer... eh. i don't think the designers think of it as anything other than 'The Game.' They don't address this sort of thing because it isn't relevant to what they're making.

I agree with the folks pointing out the 40k game scale is an abstraction- the terrain is broadly to scale, but the game distances are not.

This is most readily apparent in weapon ranges- a real assault rifle has an effective range greater than the <50yds most have in 40k rules. I highly doubt that the technology advances of 39000 years have reduced effective ranges so drastically, and lore tends to support ranges at least equivalent to modern weapons in the same roles. Clearly this abstraction is not linear to support gameplay considerations- most real man-portable, crew-served, heavy weapons have combat ranges more than double the basic combat rifle range.

Having said that, I think the shortest ranged weapons give an indication of the combat speeds of the soldiers involved. Most pistols and shotguns have a 12" range. In reality, this equates to effective ranges of 50yds up to 100 at the extreme. However, most 40k pistols look more like SMG equivalents, and combined with the general increase in tech levels, 100-200yds might be a better estimate.

Various editions have made it clear that unit movement speeds are not a flat-out sprint, but a cautious advance whilst keeping an eye out for enemy contacts and booby traps. That is why the speed of advance was slowed entering difficult terrain, because it was usually harder to spot the above entering dense terrain and troops were more cautious. Charging and running represented a faster advance, but still suggested a degree of caution (again represented by slower assaults in difficult terrain and random run distances, later random charges). So generally not full sprints, although I think rolling a 6 on a run would be the closest to this (later rolling two 6's for charging). Put together, that means a fast run would be in the ballpark of 12-18" of movement. To simplify the abstraction, lets take 12" as a human run speed (with a combat load). This would be roughly 100-200yds based on the range estimate above.

This site has some ideal movement speeds: https://spotterup.com/the-soldiers-ideal-speed/#:~:text=While%20troops%20may%20move%20at,of%20time%20and%20short%20distances.
The site suggests a sustainable soldier walking speed should be 6.5kph, but a soldier should be able to sprint 100m in 12s (30kph), both with a "patrol" load of 16kg for combat. If we take the above distances and assume 1yd=1m because I'm lazy, then the max movement for a human soldier of a single turn is as short as ~30s (for about 200m/12" ) or as long as around a minute for a fast walk (at 100m/6" ). That would suggest 40k battles are short affairs around 5 minutes in length. As they are a single aggressive firefight in a key point of the overall battle (as suggested by Epic 40k), this does seem reasonable.

As per the abstraction, I think the game mechanics of movement speed and turn/game length have no real bearing on the actual size of the board. A classic 72" by 48" board is less than 150m by 100m, but could take many turns for infantry to cross, rather than a single 12-18s turn at full sprint. This is purely a consequence of having nice big models at the current scale that are great for modelling vs most people not have access to sports halls to fight battles over- 72x48 is about the largest practical size for an everyday board that most folks (incl. kids) can reach across to move models. Killteam has a smaller scale and has less abstraction as a result- most firearms have unlimited range within the board sizes used. Having said that, the weapons that do have ranges are weirdly short.

Not quite sure where I got it from, but I thought 40k was meant be an explosive 30-60 seconds when two forces make contact.

Ground scale and time scale is a little abstract in a tabletop miniatures wargame, especially one where models represent individual figures. There is always compression of distance to be able fit in a workable tabletop.

Older game systems used to provide a ground scale and time scale. The TSR Chainmail, for instance, stated that the ground scale was 1" equals 10 yards and a turn was roughly one minute of time. In that game, though, individual models were a "representation" for the unit where each model represented 20 models "in real life." So it was OK to have horses 15 to 20 yards long and 10 yards tall since it was simply a representation of the unit. Its a visual game and we want to see the models.

The 1980s Wargames Research Group (WRG) Wargame Rules for 1925-1950 had a ground scale where 1" equaled 50m and it was assumed that players were using 1:285 scale models. They saw a friendly and enemy "bound" representing five minutes of time on the battlefield. Now, with that ground scale a 1/285 tank is almost 1" long on the tabletop and thus 50M or more than 5 times as long a tank in "in real life" using the ground scale of the game. To go true scale would require a room instead of a table. Games where a 1:285 or 15mm tank model represents a platoon can get around this by saying that the model represents the "footprint" of the unit, often by also incorporating a base. Tabletop wargames require abstraction.

Playing a game with "28mm" figures with a model to unit scale of 1:1 means that we will have lots of "compression" of movement and shooting ranges. This is life. Flames of War at 15mm scale recognizes this with their "telescoping ground scale" where they fudge distances to fit a battle on the table top. So there is "zoom" for close range things like assault but then the scale "zooms-out" as you consider other things like artillery and movement out of contact.

So trying to determine an exact time scale for 40K by trying to work back how far an Intercessor could run or shoot on the table is doomed to provide a misleading result.
.
For me, a turn of 40K represents in tabletop time who long it takes to read, reflect and act on on an Oath of Moment. No more, no less.

I've never viewed 40k as being directly representative of anything. The view we take of the table is that of them men you see in films with stick pushing things across big maps.