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In real time, how long does a battle last?

I imagine it's only a few minutes, but what does everyone think?

It's not the epic battles you read about in the fluff as there aren't the volume of forces in play?

Thanks?

I remember reading ages ago that each turn is about 10-12 seconds in "real time".

Well it probably depends on the point size of the battle. But I would imagine about 1 minute tops. The 10-12 seconds thing seems about right.

But a 750 point battle would probably go a little faster than a 2000 point battle just because of the number of guys involved.

Judging from the pace of real battles, where there's a lot of slow advancing, taking cover, taking shots, advancing again, and the abstracted nature of 40k, I'd say anywhere from about 10 to 30 minutes.

each turn may be about 10 seconds of "action" but there's a lot of buffer time in between where not much is going on and isn't represented in game. Guys stopping for a breather after sprinting across a street, reloading weapons between bursts, generally looking around for the enemy, receiving orders and choosing tactics. Its not a minute of 10-second turns strung together end to end. its about a minute of noteworthy things happening (moving, shooting, assaulting), spread out over half an hour of shuffling about.
Here's an example of ww2 infantry "advancing rapidly" in combat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz0a_QGifPM

Or, to use a more appropriate comparison, a battle lasts about as long as an equivalent action scene in a movie. The final battle scene of Saving Private Ryan is about 30 minutes and is about the same scale as a 40k game. Its got guys moving around, shooting, tanks blowing up, close assaults, and a final objective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmSYoBoOXvw

Lord puberis wrote:
In real time, how long does a battle last?

I imagine it's only a few minutes, but what does everyone think?

It's not the epic battles you read about in the fluff as there aren't the volume of forces in play?

Thanks?

A few minutes at most. Given the units involved, scale of the models and typical terrain, etc, probably no more than 5 minutes, tops, likely even as little as 1-2 minutes. A turn being 10-20 seconds as some others have noted sounds largely reasonable.

I would argue between 2 minutes and 30 minutes depending on points. These are more skirmishes than full company wars. Now 4k or 5k point games I would argue would last at least an hour, as these are closer to large scale battles.

The correct answer is that there is no answer. Some parts of the game (night fighting, random objectives changing every turn) suggest that turns are fairly long, while others (movement distances, IGOUGO and units standing around until it's their turn to act) suggest that turns are a few seconds at most. The only reasonable conclusion is that the game is heavily abstracted and has very little to do with the events of a "real" battle.

 McGibs wrote:
Judging from the pace of real battles, where there's a lot of slow advancing, taking cover, taking shots, advancing again, and the abstracted nature of 40k, I'd say anywhere from about 10 to 30 minutes.

each turn may be about 10 seconds of "action" but there's a lot of buffer time in between where not much is going on and isn't represented in game. Guys stopping for a breather after sprinting across a street, reloading weapons between bursts, generally looking around for the enemy, receiving orders and choosing tactics. Its not a minute of 10-second turns strung together end to end. its about a minute of noteworthy things happening (moving, shooting, assaulting), spread out over half an hour of shuffling about.
Here's an example of ww2 infantry "advancing rapidly" in combat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz0a_QGifPM

Or, to use a more appropriate comparison, a battle lasts about as long as an equivalent action scene in a movie. The final battle scene of Saving Private Ryan is about 30 minutes and is about the same scale as a 40k game. Its got guys moving around, shooting, tanks blowing up, close assaults, and a final objective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmSYoBoOXvw

Definitely have to agree with you here. If the battle only lasts 2 or 3 minutes then your guys had better not be expecting a single cover save, because models running around that fast don't have time to get hunkered down in a ruin enough. When novels describe marines as gunning their way through somewhere in minutes it's because marines pretty much don't need cover when it comes to fluff.

Overall, the only thing I'd say is a couple minutes is kill team level games.

There is no correct answer.
Some actions might only take a couple of seconds in a turn.
But in some turns you are blowing up an Imperial Knight, that is not going to happen in a few seconds.

I think the timing in this game is too abstract to translate to real-time.

Trust me, blowing stuff up does NOT take long.

I'd judge a turn to be twenty to thirty seconds.

You can have night fighting at both the start and end of the battle, so a full day on the upper end. It is already known that the scale of the tabletop is not the same as the scale of the models. The tabletop has been compressed. The canon range for a basilisk is 'over 15km' even if it's exactly 15km, then each inch on the table top represents about 62.5 meters.

An infantry unit using this scale can move a maximum of 1475m per turn. So we're looking at around 15-minutes to half an hour per turn.

 Paimon wrote:
You can have night fighting at both the start and end of the battle, so a full day on the upper end. It is already known that the scale of the tabletop is not the same as the scale of the models. The tabletop has been compressed. The canon range for a basilisk is 'over 15km' even if it's exactly 15km, then each inch on the table top represents about 62.5 meters.

An infantry unit using this scale can move a maximum of 1475m per turn. So we're looking at around 15-minutes to half an hour per turn.

To be fair, a full day (even on earth) can be very short if you are in a Northerly location during winter! Indeed, above the arctic circle there are many nights without a day in between! Also consider the battles are not taking place on Terra. They could be on worlds that spin very quickly, worlds with multiple suns, hive cities with power supply problems, and so on.

Yes, we could also just consider that time doesn't really work in 40k

It depends on how many orks you have to move