# How long is a game of 40K in reality?



## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

Did a search and couldn't find at topic about the subject.

I'm sure it's been asked before but how much time does a game of 40K actually represent?

When thinking about it I'd put a whole game to about 1 minute to 1:30.

Even 10sec per phase seems like allot, 10 sec per turn seems more plausible.

When looking at the Dawn of War 1 intro you could look at it like a normal game of 40K.






Turn 1 SM: The SM move into cover and shoot at the orks.
Turn 1 Orks: The Orks move into cover and shoot at the SM, destroying the Tank, the Orks that didn't shoot Run in the shooting phase.

Turn 2 SM: The SM shoot the incoming Orks.
Turn 2 Orks: The Orks move and assault but are shot down from Overwatch.

Turn 3 SM: They move out of cover and run in the shooting phase, the Dread shoots but the Orks make their cover saves :crazy:
Turn 3 Orks: The Orks declare WAAAAGH!!! Move out of cover and charge the SMs with a few getting killed from the SM Overwatch.
SM have initiative so slaughter a few Orks, since the Orks charged they slaughter the SM. An ork with Tankbusta Bombz slap it to the Dread at Initiative 1 and destroys it with an Exploded result which kills all surrounding SM and Orks. Captain takes a wound from the explosion.

Turn 4 SM: SM Captain is close to objective so makes a move and run move towards it.
Turn 4 Orks: The Orks try to shoot the Captain down but he makes all his armour saves.

Turn 5 SM: Captain makes it to Objective claiming it for the SM.
Turn 5 Orks: The Orks shoot the Captain again and this time he fails 2 armour saves and dies.

SM player has no more models so the Orks win by tabeling their opponent.

Whole intro is 2min long, there are allot of extra scenes in there to make it more exciting so if you think of it all as happening at the same time 1 min for everything that happens seems pretty accurate to me.

Has GW ever said how much time a game represents? What do you guys think? 1-2 min plausible for a whole game of 40K?


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## Fallen (Oct 7, 2008)

those cant be C:SMs they have CCWs...

in general ive always thought that every 500pts reflected between 5-10min at most.


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## Insanity (Oct 25, 2011)

Yeah I agree with Fallen, 5 - 10 minutes seems plausible. So about 30 seconds for one side to move, fire/run and assault. It seems right to me.

Also, is it just me or do the orks in the DOW intro look kind of small for Orks?


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## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

30 Seconds is a LOOOONG time in a combat situation. If it takes you 30 seconds to move 6 yards/meters, then fire yours weapon and then run into an attack you are moving really slowly. I guess the movement phase could be 5 seconds, shooting phase 5-10 seconds and assault 10 seconds.

It's not like you empty a clip in the shooting phase, you pop off a few rounds. Burning people for 10 seconds with a flamer is a loooong time, the short range of the template suggests short bursts of flame rather than a prolonged firing.


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## Serpion5 (Mar 19, 2010)

No, mcc is right. A typical game, even at 1,500 is no more than a few minutes. In reality such a confrontation is still representative of just a small skirmish encounter.


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## Reaper45 (Jun 21, 2011)

MadCowCrazy said:


> 30 Seconds is a LOOOONG time in a combat situation. If it takes you 30 seconds to move 6 yards/meters, then fire yours weapon and then run into an attack you are moving really slowly. I guess the movement phase could be 5 seconds, shooting phase 5-10 seconds and assault 10 seconds.
> 
> It's not like you empty a clip in the shooting phase, you pop off a few rounds. Burning people for 10 seconds with a flamer is a loooong time, the short range of the template suggests short bursts of flame rather than a prolonged firing.


Mag. It's called a mag.


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## ntaw (Jul 20, 2012)

Reaper45 said:


> Mag. It's called a mag.


Mag....azine?

Keep in mind the turns overlap, with the same close combats happening in both player's turns and fliers 'stopping' mid-air while the opponent reacts to them. While player turns can almost represent a simultaneous timeline, the whole game would make sense that it spans about 10-20 minutes of real time. 

We're playing skirmishes, like Serp said. Now apocalypse games...


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## The_Werewolf_Arngeirr (Apr 3, 2012)

Ive played in a few 4k games, yeah those are full on battles.


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## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

Reaper45 said:


> Mag. It's called a mag.


I prefer clip as I was brought up with Doom.



ntaw said:


> Mag....azine?
> 
> Keep in mind the turns overlap, with the same close combats happening in both player's turns and fliers 'stopping' mid-air while the opponent reacts to them. While player turns can almost represent a simultaneous timeline, the whole game would make sense that it spans about 10-20 minutes of real time.
> 
> We're playing skirmishes, like Serp said. Now apocalypse games...


Why would apocalypse change anything? All it means is that more things happen at the same time, having 1 person taking 10 steps does not take any longer than having 1000 people do the same thing simultaneously.

10-20 minutes is a very long time. If you used 5 game turn and walked 6" each turn for a total of 30", then translated that into a real world measurement would it really take you 5-10 min (using half your allotted time as it would refer to a single player) to walk that distance? I dont know the exact measurements but I'd guess it's somewhere around 30 yards/meters in length. 1" on the tabletop does seem like 1 yard or meter though scale is a bit morphed due to heroic scale. You could assume a guardsman is pretty accurate to real world size though.

Did some googling and found that the length of a Leman Russ hull length is 4.5" and the official metric measurement for the same area is 7.08 meters. This translates into 1.57meters per inch on the tabletop. Then again the tabletop version of the Leman Russ might just not be to scale.

Anyways, 30" on the tabletop with the above measurements would be 47.2 meters or 51yards. If you walk an average of 4Km/h or 1.1m/sec it would take you 27.3 seconds to walk this distance or 5.45 seconds to walk 6" per turn. Pretty close to my own estimate :crazy:

Checking wiki it seems walking 4km per hour is something old people manage, 5.32-5-43 is the average for younger individuals (which I would guess applies to combat trained people, and this is walking not dashing from cover to cover).

With an average of 5.35km/h you get 1.49m/s, or 20.1seconds to walk the 30", 4s to walk 6" per turn.


From my calculations I'd guess the movement phase lasts about 5 seconds.


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

In my world a clip is 5 to 10 rounds held together by a metal "clip" ah la the old M1 Garand or the 303 5 round clips.

Something that holds several rounds is a magazine. Mags are what go on you hot rod's wheels.

In terms of time scale I'd look less at straight out over ground speed and more at time taken to execute an attack.

A game of 40k is around about a platoon attack so I'd say the whole game is at least an hour of real time.


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## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

Like I said, I grew up with Doom and in that game this was a Ammo Clip












Here you can see the standard definition of a clip


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## Reaper45 (Jun 21, 2011)

Magpie_Oz said:


> In my world a clip is 5 to 10 rounds held together by a metal "clip" ah la the old M1 Garand or the 303 5 round clips.
> 
> Something that holds several rounds is a magazine. Mags are what go on you hot rod's wheels.
> 
> ...


An hour seems like a long time to me especially since allot of the factions have super human reflexes. Realistically firefights and ambushes happen fact. They can be counted by seconds instead of minutes. So I'd say it depends on what's happening. A firefight could be in fact longer than a melee. Or shorter depending on what's being used.


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Reaper45 said:


> An hour seems like a long time to me especially since allot of the factions have super human reflexes. Realistically firefights and ambushes happen fact. They can be counted by seconds instead of minutes. So I'd say it depends on what's happening. A firefight could be in fact longer than a melee. Or shorter depending on what's being used.


That hour includes a lot of looking, preparing, assessing and all that sort of stuff. You don't just wander out into the open. You sit there and observe for 5 to 10 seconds at least before any move and that all adds up.

Even the most genehanced soldiers can't hear a single enemy shot and immediately know exactly where to go and what to do when they get there. 

Even advancing under fire isn't an all out foot race towards the enemy but rather "pepperpotting" or "movement in tactical bounds."


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

MadCowCrazy said:


> Here you can see the standard definition of a clip



Just like I said then?


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## Insanity (Oct 25, 2011)

I'm not sure what it says in the 6th edition rule book, but in the 5th edition, somewhere in the movement phase stuff, it says that the units aren't just moving straight to the point, they take multiple stops to look around and assess their surrounds, plus I imagine when a unit is in cover they are waiting for an opportunity to stick their heads out and fire.

So I don't think it's as smooth and fast as walking up say 10 meters and firing. But cautiously moving up, keeping low, hunker down into cover, communicating with who ever is in charge, make sure your weapon is ready, spot an enemy in those ruins over there, position special weapons, wait for a clear shot and then fire.

Another good example, while not quite the same as a tabletop game, is the DOW2 intro. The movement phase starts at about 30 seconds, and the whole turn ending around 2 minutes, and that's with just a few units.


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## maelstrom48 (Sep 5, 2012)

One of my buddies once gave me an overview of BFG, and one of his key points was that the ships in that game aren't actually to-scale. Given that space engagements are fought over ranges of tens, even hundreds of thousands of kilometers, the models on a standard board would actually be just a few millimeters long--and that's for point-blank engagements.

I've taken to visualizing 40K the same way. For example, a rapid fire weapon's range is 24" max. Seems awfully close, doesn't it? Speaking from military experience, a trained soldier should be able to consistently hit a man-sized target at 300-600m. In fact, an M16 rifle can engage point targets at up to 800m (though at this distance human eyesight has already faltered, for most people). Vehicles also seem almost unreasonably slow. Honestly, if 40k models were built to the correct scale, I'd hazard that they should actually be the same size as an Epic 40k model.

Time dilation may apply in the same way. For example, when my base was hit recently, the firefight lasted approximately 2 hours. And that was with just a handful of insurgents attacking. I heard an Afghan support gunner squeeze off an entire belt of machine gun ammunition without stopping; it took approximately 15 seconds. So to me, one shooting phase = one reload. Soldiers in my theater of operations are trained to make their combat load (9 magazines) last for extended lengths of time. Marines elsewhere in theater have been known to still have magazines remaining after a 10-hour 'firefight'. A 40k game can only last as long as the infantry's ammunition lasts. So, at absolute maximum, 10 hours.

I'll expand this to flyers as well. Air support from a nearby airfield took about 45 minutes to arrive. I'm lucky enough not to be getting into firefights often (I wasn't actively involved with this one, but sheltering with my unit 400m away), but from reading after action reports, this seems to be about the length of time it typically takes for air support to arrive. Therefore, if a flyer arrives on turn 2, 45 minutes of battle have already elapsed.

So, viewed through the lens of modern warfare, I would deduce that a typical 6-turn game would last 4 realtime hours. Coincidentally, that's about the time a 1850-pt game actually lasts! Whaddaya know?


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

:goodpost:

Cha-ching !

Combat is NOT a quick thing lads.


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## khrone forever (Dec 13, 2010)

Insanity said:


> Another good example, while not quite the same as a tabletop game, is the DOW2 intro. The movement phase starts at about 30 seconds, ending around 2 minutes, and that's with just a few units.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTjyO_FncE4



the movement phase dosnt end at 2 mins!

0:30-0:45 movement
0:45-0:55 shooting/running
0:55-1:10 assault
skip movement
1:10-1:21 shooting/running
1:21-1:30 assault
1:30-1:33 movement
1:33-1:55 shooting / assault

Khrone


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## Shady ed (Sep 9, 2010)

maelstrom48 said:


> One of my buddies once gave me an overview of BFG, and one of his key points was that the ships in that game aren't actually to-scale. Given that space engagements are fought over ranges of tens, even hundreds of thousands of kilometers, the models on a standard board would actually be just a few millimeters long--and that's for point-blank engagements.
> 
> I've taken to visualizing 40K the same way. For example, a rapid fire weapon's range is 24" max. Seems awfully close, doesn't it? Speaking from military experience, a trained soldier should be able to consistently hit a man-sized target at 300-600m. In fact, an M16 rifle can engage point targets at up to 800m (though at this distance human eyesight has already faltered, for most people). Vehicles also seem almost unreasonably slow. Honestly, if 40k models were built to the correct scale, I'd hazard that they should actually be the same size as an Epic 40k model.
> 
> ...


 
Yeah that sounds about right.

I would like to add that I believe it would also depend on what races are fighting. I don't think a 2000 point fight between Orks and 'nids would last as long as a 2000 point fight between Imperial guard and Tau.


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## Insanity (Oct 25, 2011)

khrone forever said:


> the movement phase dosnt end at 2 mins


Sorry, I didn't mean the movement phase ends at 2 mins, I mean the whole turn. Edited the post to avoid further confusion.



maelstrom48 said:


> Snip


I agree, excellent post from one of the guys overseas, with actual experience. To expand on what he said about scale, you could think of each model like the ones on Maps you see in early war movies (not 100% sure on the era, but early war seems right), when they are making plans of attack.


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## stephen.w.langdon (Jan 1, 2012)

Ok I might be wrong in my thinking with this one as I don't have any rules at hand, and might be thinking of a old edition or even a white dwarf rule somewhere (haven't played regular in a long time so forgive me if I am wrong :laugh

But in some missions can't a game change from Normal (Day) to Night Fight and visa-versa?

If this is the case then we could make the assumption that a battle could last up to several hours in some cases.


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

stephen.w.langdon said:


> Ok I might be wrong in my thinking with this one as I don't have any rules at hand, and might be thinking of a old edition or even a white dwarf rule somewhere (haven't played regular in a long time so forgive me if I am wrong :laugh
> 
> But in some missions can't a game change from Normal (Day) to Night Fight and visa-versa?
> 
> If this is the case then we could make the assumption that a battle could last up to several hours in some cases.


ALL games in 6th ed either start as a night fight or end as a night fight. So they all either start pre dawn and go to full daylight or go from daylight to evening.


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## Archon Dan (Feb 6, 2012)

I would agree with the more extended outlook on how much time it takes. The game could be looked at in a disjointed way. In reality, you don't move then shoot. You may do both at once and the phases are a simplification for rules' sake. Turn 1 would take longer in real life as you move to positions, scout enemy movements and maybe engage in a small firefight. But as the battle progresses and you know where your enemy is things speed up. You no longer need stalk through cover but want to engage at this point. And there we must break from the convention of modern warfare. I mean no disrespect to soldiers but they are not as inclined to fight melee as in historical battles. 40K is more akin to this begone era of muskets and swords. So a pure ranged engagement does take longer but not by much. 

Lastly, while those intro videos are awesome they cannot represent turns or phases. As said above the phases are an abstract concept and cannot be applied to real life. You can even see in the second video especially, both sides are moving, shooting and charging simultaneously. But the videos do show the skirmish nature, lasting briefly while other battles could be occurring elsewhere. Remember from history that a single battle could last days with multiple engagements, firefights and lulls occurring over large areas between multiple autonomous regiments, divisions or patrols, etc. A single encounter could be only an hour or several depending on the composition and disposition of those involved.


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Archon Dan said:


> And there we must break from the convention of modern warfare. I mean no disrespect to soldiers but they are not as inclined to fight melee as in historical battles. 40K is more akin to this begone era of muskets and swords. So a pure ranged engagement does take longer but not by much.


Few who serve do so without some recourse to the past.

The muskets and swords of which you speak are perhaps best illustrated by the Battle of Culloden Moor.

A relatively simple engagement where the Highlanders lined up, got shot at by arty for 20 minutes then charged, broke the line were counter attacked and then broke and fled. That took about 3 hours. 

I think is a pretty close analogy to a small game of 40k which follows a similar pattern of advance under fire, close with the enemy then either win or lose the hand to hand.


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## jdb200 (Apr 1, 2011)

You know I think it really depends on your imagination and the scenario you're playing. Many guys are correct that a few minutes could be the basis of your entire game based off of real life combat experience, but I'd like to point out two seperate and fairly recent historical examples from modern war that you could use as well. First, the battle of 43 Eastings pitted an armored US Squadron (Battalion) facing an Iraqi Regiment (Brigade). This was literally hundreds of tanks, and armored fighting vehicles that covered several kilometers with the US Squadron almost entirely destroying it's counterparts in approximately 45 minutes from start to finish. The second, is an operation called Arrowhead Ripper, in which a US Stryker Brigade plus and their Iraqi counterparts took back the city of Baqubah, Iraq. This operation took several days/weeks to completely wrap up. For game play it all depends on how you imagine distances and time. A house to house fight could take an extremely long time, whereas an armored battle covering ten times the distance is completed in minutes. Happy Gaming!


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## Iron Angel (Aug 2, 2009)

MadCowCrazy said:


> Did a search and couldn't find at topic about the subject.
> 
> I'm sure it's been asked before but how much time does a game of 40K actually represent?
> 
> ...


You forgot the part where SM reserves didn't arrive until turn 5


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