Game length problems

[CoyotePBEM2]

Yep half an hour seems about right, that is quite a long time

I think if you have spent a lot of points on skirmishers, usually because the army lists MAKE you have them, you don'w want to do nothing with them?

Andy

Ignore the army lists, have one player take none. I imagine having your impact foot completely disordered by charging phantom skirmishers will show how useful skirmishers are, even if they don't actually fight.

[hazelbark]

This was actually a problem for a well known smoker in our group as he likes to dodge outside for a quick smoke and can't walk away from the game the way you can in others.

An interesting observation. This either shows that moves are quicker (than in that other game) or that the non-phasing player has more involvement, or both. Good news whichever, IMO.

I am afraid I have never had much interest in counting turns, so I have no idea how many turns were played in my average DBM or FOG games.

counting turns in fog seems at this stage irrelevant. But yes quicker moves and therefore non-phasing player is up quick. Partially a byproduct of fewer moving parts.

[mdoolitt]

We've played about 5 games so far with maybe one skirmisher vs skirmisher melee in each. We don't find that these combats take any longer than combats between comparable units of heavy foot. I usually only charge skirmishers if I have an advantage, though. I.e., "my lads have Swordsmen" or "this lot are 6 bases of Protected Javelin vs 4 bases of Unprotected Bow".

A broken LF unit is still worth Attrition points. So someone who fights their LF/LH and loses is that much closer to defeat, no?

[flameberge]

To speed up the terrain placement you guys could get together before the game and roll up and choose terrain before the game and write down what will be placed where on a piece of graph paper. You could also roll up initiative. Then when you get to the club you can just lay down the terrain and since you already know the terrain layout you'll probably have a pretty good idea of how you want to deploy and that will also probably go a little quicker.

[WhiteKnight]

...or have a book with preset battlefields. Dice for which page will be the battlefield tonight and who will have which side as a base edge. If the book runs from open terrain tables and each table steadily gets more and more "congested", the player with initiative could be allowed dice roll +/- modifier?

Martin

[miffedofreading]

As these are friendly games, I do rather like the idea of either getting together before to agree the terrain, or even better agree the "book" of terrain to fight over.

How about this off the top of my head.

Agree 11 interesting board layouts from completely barren to very congested in numeric sequence.

You roll 2D6 (to wait the average towards the middle). This is the base number you would use for which board you are playing on that night.

THEN The person who won the initiative, may move up or down the number of boards equivalent to the difference between the final initiative rolls.

e.g. Romans have a +1 pre init factor and roll a 3 on a D6. Carthies have a +2 pre init factor and also roll a 3 on a D6. Carthies win 5:4. As winners they roll 2D6 and score 8. As they won the init by a net total of 1 they may now elect to play on board 7,8, or 9 Probably let the loser decide which side of the board to come on??

Obviously this is all for club friendlies....

The two nice things about any idea like this with pre generated maps is that the players know the relative strengths of their armies and can devise a plan for each of the maps in advance, so on the day you roll up for the board, put the terrain out quickly and you already have an idea what your plan is going to be....

There is only really one problem with this idea, you have to get all your opponents to agree to it for it to work.

I will ask the guys at the club if they are interested in any form of pregenerated board. I think that however you do it, picking a pre generated board would be both quicker and more interesting.

Andy

[hazelbark]

We've played about 5 games so far with maybe one skirmisher vs skirmisher melee in each. We don't find that these combats take any longer than combats between comparable units of heavy foot. I usually only charge skirmishers if I have an advantage, though. I.e., "my lads have Swordsmen" or "this lot are 6 bases of Protected Javelin vs 4 bases of Unprotected Bow".

A broken LF unit is still worth Attrition points. So someone who fights their LF/LH and loses is that much closer to defeat, no?

Very true.

The exception is sometimes I am willing to risk a LF unit on an even odds charge versus enemy LF to pin them so my heavy forces can engage the LF and kill it. So killing LF is good.

[malekithau]

I have several skirmisher combats per game and haven't ever not reached a conclusion with 800 pts in 3 hours or less

[BrianC]

I've played probably about 6 or 7 games now and find that we can play an 800 point army to conclusion in between 2.5 to 3.5 hours depending on who has lucky dice : ). But 3 to 3.5seems to be average now. Which was nice because our first game was around 5 hours to no where near a decisive result.

Brian

[miffedofreading]

Just played an 800 point game to completion in 3 hours.

OK we did cheat a bit...

Agreed up front there would be no terrain so we just went straight to board and deployed. Because we agreed this in advance no one bothered bringing any medium foot etc at all.

There was a fair bit of skirmishers but we kept them to one ide of the battle line so they fought their little battle to a lengthy conclusion without getting in the way of the main battle llines.


It was a roman civil war battle btw. Main battleline had 3 X 8 base legions on each side that met head on. This was much more tense and fun than it might sound. 3 melees with 8 dice per side initially did a lot of damage with the death rolls. After 2 rounds of combat we had lost 9 bases of legions between us!!

Very enjoyable game, OK i did win, but my opponent enjoyed it too

[hazelbark]

Just played an 800 point game to completion in 3 hours.

OK we did cheat a bit...

Agreed up front there would be no terrain so we just went straight to board and deployed. Because we agreed this in advance no one bothered bringing any medium foot etc at all.

It was a roman civil war battle btw. Main battleline had 3 X 8 base legions on each side that met head on. This was much more tense and fun than it might sound. 3 melees with 8 dice per side initially did a lot of damage with the death rolls. After 2 rounds of combat we had lost 9 bases of legions between us!!

Sounds like a perrfect battle for a 8 stand BG of MF gauls to swing in on a flank....or at least some ligurians to cheer inthe rear.

Add terrain set up and you are up to 3.5 hours a game.