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.

This is just something I'm curious about: Considering how big a deal was made about 8th edition being 'Streamlined'... I haven't personally noticed things going much more quickly than before.
In 7th edition, I would show up at a friend's house at around 5 and play 'till 9, (or sometimes 6 to 10,) and have time to play most of a 2k game. If it went especially long and we couldn't call it early, it might be another hour or two.
Now, we can do a 3k game in about the same time frame... But there's a catch. We both play fairly mechanized armies with lots of tanks and big, expensive models, and I use lots of bikes, Twolves, and other elite infantry... And in 8th edition, all those models got significantly more expensive.
I used to take a Command Squad with four Grav Guns and an Apothecary, it was 200pts flat. If I wanted to take the same loadout now, it'd be 284 - Nearly a 50% increase. A trio of Predators with Lascannons used to be 420 points (Blaze it!), now it's almost 600. Land Raiders went from 250 to 356.

The point is, while we're technically playing a 3k game in the time it used to take to play 2k, our armies aren't any larger. When I'm playing against people who use horde armies, or really anything that didn't get a significant points bump, things seem to take just as long as everything did before.

Are my experiences unique, or is this consistent with what everyone else is seeing?

About 2 hrs for 1st turn, 4-5 hours for the game, and 45 minutes for the rules arguments.

I've found it much quicker than before. With both players knowing what they are doing a 100 power level game can be finished in under 2 hours.

I haven't played a game yet against a true horde list so can't comment on that part though

Ran a 75 Power Level tournament over the weekend. Did 2.5hr rounds. Only one or two games of the seven would take the full allotment, most ended by the 2 hour mark.

If I am playing my Guard, a good amount of time even at 1,500.

With my Marines, I can get two games at 1,500 in at about 3 and a half hours at max.

2.5-3 hours assuming we get on and play and aren't chatting about other stuff (to each other or random other people).

 AduroT wrote:
Ran a 75 Power Level tournament over the weekend. Did 2.5hr rounds. Only one or two games of the seven would take the full allotment, most ended by the 2 hour mark.

Wait... You're using Power Level for a tournament? How the heck do you balance that?

1K5pts games are usually done in about 2h, with a little bit of chatting/down time.

It's not faster than 7th.

-Setting up for missions take the same amount of time.
-Moving still takes time, maybe slightly less than before because you don't need that much finesse with spacing and terrain hugging
-Psychic phase is definitely faster
-Shooting is the same if not slower, a lot of this is attributed to the deliberation of targets for different weapons in a unit
-Assault is way slower, some of this is still attributed to not remembering the amount of attacks or weapon stats, but most of the time is spent trying to decide in which order to activate units. I like the tactical aspect of this, but an explicit order (i.e. initiative order) makes things a lot faster.
-Morale phase is pretty quick

Counting game setup etc we are usually about done with 2 first turns at the 3 hour mark. But I play assault heavy lists and assault phases are easily the most time consuming part of the game.

I find that deployment usually takes much longer as well, because the back-forth system means a lot more decision making (which takes time) and also loooots of downtime. If I'm throwing down my whole army and can tweak as I go, I can make a loose plan and adjust as needed if something's a little off or I make a mistake.
If I am going one unit at a time, I have to be meticulous to make sure everyone is in buff range, I'm not forgetting any details, and that I'm not cutting off a unit that I'm going to be dropping later.

1.5 to 4-5 hours, I've had a few that went surprisingly long. Most seem to be in the 2-3 hour range.

Well depends, are you knew to the rules and your new armies stats? or do you know them all by know? are you talking and having fun while playing? or you in a go go go mode?

I can get a game in and done in an hour if i had too.

But we like to talk, drink etc.. so they are about 2-3hrs long

Local tournaments are all running 2,000 points in 2.5 hours without too many issues.

I mostly play on a Sunday evening against the same set of friends I have always played against. We typically play 3 to 5k points, starting at 5pm and finishing at 9pm even if we haven't hit the last turn. In 7th we had it down that we can usually finish turn 5 by then, in 8th as it was still new we were getting to about turn 3 but this has now crept up to turn 5 again. I would expect 8th to be faster for us.

For people who know their army, it didn't get significantly faster expect for armies that use a lot of template weapons.

But personally, when you try something completly different, I think it did get faster. Our first game in 8th didn't take significantly longer than our 10th.

How the feth can people finish 1500 points gane in two hours? To us it takes at least five...

Though I feel 8th edition is somewhat faster than 7th, but not drastically so. For one, there is certainly way less rules arguments.

My local meta typically (and unfortunately for me, I enjoy bigger games) plays at around 1500 points. In casual matches that level will take an hour and a half, to two hours typically. And that's even against Ork hordes and Guard blobs (those players tend to take up the most amount of time).

At a local tournament I recently won, due to time constraints and space, the games were 1500 points, played on a 4x4 with 1.5hrs hard cap for each game. 3/4 of my matches made it to the end of the game before the timer was up, while some Nid, Orks, Guards, or people who just play slower, didn't get finished their third battle round.

At the low end the of the scale, my first match of the tournament was vs a Grey Knights player, who, through some hot rolls and Guilliman on my side, was tabled by the bottom of Battle Round 3. The entire match took 40 minutes, from deployment, to finishing the scoring.

Army builds have a large effect on the length of the game. Hordes and melee armies tend to take longer. Shooting hordes take a fairly long time, but not quite as much as Orks do. Until you have a blob of Conscripts in rapid fire range...

Compared to 6th and 7th edition, around when I actually started playing 40k, the games are much much faster now. Chalk that up to my experience and memorization of the rules being better than they were, but I'd say its due to the rule system and no more pages of USR's that tend to be not so universal.

It seems to depend hugely on the kinds of armies being used. Unfortunately some of the most effective armies involve tons of models that are moving around a lot and not dying very quickly. These games can go for a while. But with lots of more normal sorts of armies games can go very quickly, especially since, with how fast everything dies now, it's pretty common to see a concession on turn 2 or 3.

I find games to be much much faster compared to 7th. Unless I am playing against IG. Playing against IG now is slower than molasses due to split fire and the amount of firing they can wield.

Its faster but its not the 90 minutes we were being sold on before release.

Not doing difficult terrain rolls helps a lot with the movement phase, shooting is about the same as before really.

I think what helps most is the smaller armies.

 Crimson wrote:
How the feth can people finish 1500 points gane in two hours? To us it takes at least five...

Though I feel 8th edition is somewhat faster than 7th, but not drastically so. For one, there is certainly way less rules arguments.

On the flip side I have no idea how you would drag out a 1500pt game to five hours unless you were not actually playing 90% of that time. Even going at a fairly gentle pace I can't see 1500 taking longer than 2 1/2 hours max.

Depending on how much chatting we do I can get a 2K game in in about 2 hours, sometimes faster and when playing against Guard it can be a lot slower depending on the armies.

I can offer numbers for my last game, the only 8th ed game where I actively paid attention to these things.

1000 points each, Tau vs. Chaos, 13 vs. 6 models, 6 turns, took around two hours to finish.

Personally I don't get the impression 8th ed is any faster. Average model count didn't go down. Number of dice rolls didn't go down (you still have hit, wound, saves, many weapons got more shots, templates got replaced by another dice roll). Cutting away time for some things just gets added elsewhere (say difficult terrain rolls were dropped, but split fire was added and takes time to decide).

I also find it harder to memorize everything, because of bespoke rules. Takes unnecessary time to check up and make sure that this particular model has this particular take on this particular game mechanic. What a disaster.

Waaaghpower wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
Ran a 75 Power Level tournament over the weekend. Did 2.5hr rounds. Only one or two games of the seven would take the full allotment, most ended by the 2 hour mark.

Wait... You're using Power Level for a tournament? How the heck do you balance that?

How do you balance a tournament with points when the points are bad? Same concept.

 auticus wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
Ran a 75 Power Level tournament over the weekend. Did 2.5hr rounds. Only one or two games of the seven would take the full allotment, most ended by the 2 hour mark.

Wait... You're using Power Level for a tournament? How the heck do you balance that?

How do you balance a tournament with points when the points are bad? Same concept.

Not at all. Some units can be overcosted, sure, but Power Level lacks any and all nuance. In effect, when you take a unit with Power Level, you're paying for all the gear that you *could* take, regardless of whether you want or need it, or how potent your actual gear is. It makes cheaper but weaker weapon options (like taking a Storm Bolter over a Combi-flamer) completely pointless, and encourages huge amounts of min/maxing - Or at least Maxing.
I can take a decent unit of Company Veterans that's stripped down for infantry hunting, armed with Storm Bolters and Chainswords. It costs 36 points for two. Or, I can take a Combi Plasma and a Thunder Hammer - It's a more deadly loadout, but is ridiculously topheavy and costs 94 points for two.
Either way, though, I'm spending 3 Power Level, so I should never take the cheaper option, because I'm being charged the same no matter how I run them.
(Company Vets are a good way to bring Plasma anyways, so this isn't entirely hypothetical. If I'm already taking Plasma Veterans, and get unlimited free spending, I may as well make them Combi Plasma and buy expensive melee weapons. Why not?)

This is to say nothing of weapon choices that are explicitly, intentionally billed as more expensive, stronger versions of other weapons. Why should I take a Power Fist when it's identical in cost to a Thunder Hammer but obviously worse?

 Geifer wrote:
I can offer numbers for my last game, the only 8th ed game where I actively paid attention to these things.

1000 points each, Tau vs. Chaos, 13 vs. 6 models, 6 turns, took around two hours to finish.

Personally I don't get the impression 8th ed is any faster. Average model count didn't go down. Number of dice rolls didn't go down (you still have hit, wound, saves, many weapons got more shots, templates got replaced by another dice roll). Cutting away time for some things just gets added elsewhere (say difficult terrain rolls were dropped, but split fire was added and takes time to decide).

I also find it harder to memorize everything, because of bespoke rules. Takes unnecessary time to check up and make sure that this particular model has this particular take on this particular game mechanic. What a disaster.

It will get faster, once you memorize your rules. Myself, playing a Guard army with 50+ infantry, 3 tanks and a bloody Baneblade, with 3 different types of Commanders, vs an Ork list with 100+ Boyz, all sorts of weird special characters and flyers, took two hours to finish.
Things will get faster once the new rule set is ingrained, and memorized.

Yeah if it takes you 3 hours to play a game, one or both of you does not know the rules very well.

Really depends on my opponents. 2 of my regular opponents are slow as hell to play with.

But I have noticed that with 8th edition average game time has gone down by about 33 percent.

Depends on the number of beers consumed
But around 2-3 usually.

Our group here routinely takes 2-2.5 hours to play a 2,000 pt game. That includes setup, playtime, and scoring.