Game length issues

It’s been my experience that a game of Global is going to take a minimum of 10-12 hours to play….and that’s just getting to a point where one side concedes. Usually about round 5 or 6. What I’m going to start asking my group is that we try to take no longer than 1 hour for a round of play. Of late it’s been up to 2-1/2 hours for one round. That’s too much. I think the biggest challenge to speedy play is the side conversations and socializing. I think that’s unavoidable so I may have to gently coax folks along. I tend to overthink my moves and during the combat move. I will move and remove units as things look different once I’ve move my units into place for combat. Or I might see an opportunity I didn’t see before moving units. I have to work on that. The most obvious thing is staying focused and on task when it’s your turn. Also might want to overlap turns somewhat. Like start purchasing units while the previous player is placing new units and collecting income.

All that said, this is a common question/concern for all new players to Global.

I think that the trick is to plan for a 2 day game to begin with. If you can’t get your players to commit to both days in the planning stage then try for different dates and find something that works for everyone. I’m certainly a big fan of players being ready to take their turns when it’s their time by knowing what they are purchasing and a general sense of what they are going to do.

As far as discussing strategy goes, one thing you can do is have times during the game where one side has to leave the room for a specified length of time. When their time is up it’s time to come back to the table and play the game even if they aren’t finished arguing over what they should do next. These are like time-outs and you would maybe get one per round or a certain number per game. The thinking behind this is that they can speak freely and come to some consensus as to what they are going to do in a round so they don’t have to debate it for the entire round instead. Just make sure that everyone knows that they are on the clock when there is a time out. It also gets everyone a break away from the table to stretch their legs and eat/grab a drink/take a piss/pray for better rolls/check their messages without completely halting the game.

I’ve played 100 live games of G40, G42, and G41.  I don’t play AAA.  I do have some observations, and some advice.

First, its just a really long game.  G40 is especially long, because the first 4 turns not everyone is in the war, and actual fighting tends to kill some of the raw bulk of the units/combats to processed, but in any event, those first 4 turns are kind of a preliminary to get to the “good stuff” (eg post turn 4).

When we played (Classic) in college, we were always starting late (12p), cajoling new players, ignoring other guests who weren’t into wargames, drinking avidly, arguing about rules.  In those 4-5 years, we barely could get to the real grit of the game and finishing wasn’t likely by 5am.  Maybe we played 4-5 times.

This is really funny when you compare the rules complexity and game size of G40.  Classic is a pretty small map with a pretty basic setup, yet we couldn’t really figure out how to make it a routine.

Now, we play as part of several clubs, and at Gencon.  There are not many new players, and definitely no “maybe ill play” people.  Both are huge time sucks, and also don’t really exhibit competitive play so there is no way to draw lessons from what goes down.  Only experienced people come to the table, and they tend to know how to approach the game, so its mostly business–-our socializing is playing the game.    With other games or game groups, this may not be even desireable (to limit socializing), but in AxA, the “crowd” probably doesn’t represent a super social subset anyways.

Back to the game,

1. many people suggest combining or truncating parts of the turn.  This is not what I would recommend.  There are many variations of this, but all of them tend to blur the conduct of the game and/or obscure weak play by permitting the players to do anything they want in any order (such as revising your buy after you see the combat outcomes).
2. Playing with the paper money is a waste of time (about 30m)
3. People need to focus on setup not wander in whenever
4. eat before you play stopping to eat is a huge waste of time and right after you finish, someone else is hungry
5. quit smoking.  Going outside to smoke makes role playing games and wargames impossible because no-one is at the table.
   6)  when it isn’t your turn, think about what you’re going to do.  You can chat or mingle or whatever but you should never say "Oh, its my turn, damn, lets start processing now (after a 45 minute wait on the rest of the players).
6. help.  Without trying to mess up your pieces or make decisiosn for you, when its not my turn, im moving chips, removing casualties, gathering the other players die, laying out control markers, cleaning up army men.  I’m acting like a banker when its not my turn, managing the board while the other players announce casualties.
7. narrate the game.  if you say out loud whats happening, and gently remind people when it is their turn, everyone can hear the conduct whether they are watching it or not.
8. pre-organize the pieces.    someone suggested egg boxes, dividing the stuff makes setup/cleanup even easier, this wastes a lot of time (when all the pieces are just lumped in the box, 30+ min extra)
9. commit to play, show up on time.  If there are people who are reluctant to play, immature, etc, they are not helpful to your game, they are an impediment.  Adding semi-dedicated players is a waste of time.  Selling the game to new players is pretty fruitless considering the learning curve.
10. shut up.  I cant count as well when you are talking.  I cant focus.  Same goes for me on your turn.  Chat, but do as an aside and keep the game as a priority.
    12)  Watch each other, count and recount.  We all count buys.  We all count incomes.  We all announce hits and count total hits.  This prevents both cheating, mistakes, and omissions.
    13)  use minidice to represent air moves.  We use the “moves remaining system” (rather than “moves used”).  so each plane or set of planes has its own range dice.  This is a HUGE help.  If you don’t use minidice to show how much EACH AND EVERY plane has moved, there is a much higher chance of slop.  This is especially true when you reshuffle your plane allocations, ill tell you right now that it is pretty much slop city if you re-allocate planes when 10-15 of them are available to support your battles.

Many of these things will not really reduce the total time of play to some reasonable limit, unf.  They can shink it to 45 m setup 2 hours first turn 1-1.5 per turn after that.  There are other setup versions (G42) that are a bit more expedited, but its simply a very, very long game.  We usually begin at 10am and end around 5-6, T6-8.  Same at tourneys, with an earlier start.

Have fun my friends.

9. pre-organize the pieces.    someone suggested egg boxes, dividing the stuff makes setup/cleanup even easier, this wastes a lot of time (when all the pieces are just lumped in the box, 30+ min extra)

This one’s a good point. I’ve used cereal box cardboard with sticky tape to divide the piece boxes into air/land/sea for all powers except France and China. Germany/Japan/USA also have artillery sections although this seems less useful because players aren’t always as disciplined in putting the artillery back in the artillery space. Perhaps for USA because there are so many piece one box with two sections for air/sea and one full box for land would be best but that is not what I have.

One other point is having a large number of dice in each of four colours so you can roll all at once and having an agreed value of each colour. We only have 3 colours which isn’t quite right.

The mini dice idea for tracking plane movement is a good idea and one that my gaming group uses. Even on turns such as G1 and J1 where we know everything can land in Western Germany/Kwangsi. This might take up and extra couple minutes per turn but saves a good 5-10 minutes at non-combat to try and figure out what has what for moves left and also the inevitable argument that will occur when your opponent says “that can’t land there”!

I’m looking to invest in my own trays for components to seperate everything. Once I do that I will combine my global and 1942.2 games, piece wise, into one. I currently do not have a game room so storage is what is slowing me down in doing this. It’s easier for me ATM to place everything back into the Europe and pacific boxes.

I see some of the things we do to speed things up already suggested.

Another idea that I have not seen would be to allow all players access to a battle calculator. A lot of time can be spent manually counting units and adding up power. Especially when both sides do it every turn - for example to usual G/R stack stand-off, which can last for quite a number of turns.

Some players prefer that everyone rely on their own brains of course.

“allow all players access to a battle calculator.”

If I were playing chess, I wouldn’t allow my opponent access to chess strategy guides, a chess computer’s advice, or a grandmaster standing behind them.  It is a simple calculator, but besides belaboring the decisionmaking process it feels like its better kept out of live play imo.  No doubt people in AAA use them but they also use low luck, that’s the playstyle of an no time limits PBEM game and its more like PBEM chess (where you could openly or secretly consult those things or the forums) than a live chess game.

That said, I’m always counting these in my head, like blackjack card counting, years of warhammer 40k d6 rolling and odds running.  Not using a calc seems like it encourages better play.

I am not a fan of battle calculators in live play.  It takes away so much of the drama when you look at the results and decide that you have a 93% chance of winning with 12 units left over on average.  It also dramatically slows down gameplay, especially when employed on anything besides the final siege on Moscow.  The 20 minute gaps as people make a series of calculations for the next few rounds in various battles and purchase options takes away so much from the event.  It definitely does not reduce the game length from my experience.

@taamvan:

“allow all players access to a battle calculator.”

If I were playing chess, I wouldn’t allow my opponent access to chess strategy guides, a chess computer’s advice, or a grandmaster standing behind them.   It is a simple calculator, but besides belaboring the decisionmaking process it feels like its better kept out of live play imo.   No doubt people in AAA use them but they also use low luck, that’s the playstyle of an no time limits PBEM game and its more like PBEM chess (where you could openly or secretly consult those things or the forums) than a live chess game.

That said, I’m always counting these in my head, like blackjack card counting, years of warhammer 40k d6 rolling and odds running.   Not using a calc seems like it encourages better play.

@Arthur:

I am not a fan of battle calculators in live play.  It takes away so much of the drama when you look at the results and decide that you have a 93% chance of winning with 12 units left over on average.  It also dramatically slows down gameplay, especially when employed on anything besides the final siege on Moscow.  The 20 minute gaps as people make a series of calculations for the next few rounds in various battles and purchase options takes away so much from the event.  It definitely does not reduce the game length from my experience.

Agree.

For Us we have a 5 min meeting if requested at end of turn or before a turn.
Best to have the UK split sides so You always have 2 guys rolling dies on each end of the battle boards. FEC Anzac - Japan  UK- Germany  Russia China - Japan. UK players split US and if agree, roll on each end for battles with Japan. Japan just has to wait if Russia’s dicing with Germany.

We play 10 hours ave and get in 6 to 10 turns. We pretty know which sides gonna win. If we play longer game sits until next date. Last game just went 6 hours. YA !!! we finally beat the best German player we have. Depends on how many show up for game. 6 players the best. In our group we have everybody pretty much has learnrd how to play all countries. That helps if you are short players and don’t have to wait for the new guy, but if that happens that is also good because now you have another player in your group.  More the better. One thing that slows us down is if Germany has to play Italy. We try to have the German buys done so he can jump to Italy’s buy. But lately are teams have been taking longer times on meetings because the games are getting pretty good.

I read and re-read this post. I can’t help but think this person is a wee bit….oh what’s the word I’m looking for?..domineering…overbearing maybe? That said…some good points were made.

@taamvan:

Back to the game,

1. many people suggest combining or truncating parts of the turn.  This is not what I would recommend.   There are many variations of this, but all of them tend to blur the conduct of the game and/or obscure weak play by permitting the players to do anything they want in any order (such as revising your buy after you see the combat outcomes).

That’s been my experience too.

2. Playing with the paper money is a waste of time (about 30m)
   What?! How did you come to that conclusion? Paper money (or chips) is a big part of the A&A experience. A must in my game room.

3. People need to focus on setup not wander in whenever.
   As one who hosts a lot of games, I set the game up the night before.

4. eat before you play stopping to eat is a huge waste of time and right after you finish, someone else is hungry
   Not eating for up to 12 hours is not fun. I always provide a buffet style meal and keep drinks & snacks flowing. A crock pot full of chili or stew is a wonderful thing. It does not slow the game as the players wander over between turns to fill their plates and eat.

5. quit smoking.  Going outside to smoke makes role playing games and wargames impossible because no-one is at the table.
   As an ex-smoker, I “get it”. It’s never an issue when someone wanders outside for a smoke. It’s always between turns. If they’re getting attacked, a quick head out the door brings them right back in. Not an issue at my games.

6)  when it isn’t your turn, think about what you’re going to do.   You can chat or mingle or whatever but you should never say "Oh, its my turn, damn, lets start processing now (after a 45 minute wait on the rest of the players).
Agreed.

7. help.   Without trying to mess up your pieces or make decisiosn for you, when its not my turn, im moving chips, removing casualties, gathering the other players die, laying out control markers, cleaning up army men.   I’m acting like a banker when its not my turn, managing the board while the other players announce casualties. 
   ummm….oh hell no! Don’t touch my men! Or move my units or do any rearranging of my pieces! Bad juju and poor game manners. At least ask if you’re so OCD…but don’t freak when told “Don’t touch my men.”

8. narrate the game.   if you say out loud whats happening, and gently remind people when it is their turn, everyone can hear the conduct whether they are watching it or not.
   Agreed. Good communication always makes for a good game.

9. pre-organize the pieces.    someone suggested egg boxes, dividing the stuff makes setup/cleanup even easier, this wastes a lot of time (when all the pieces are just lumped in the box, 30+ min extra)
   Agreed. Very important. Always better when there’s no pile of casualties cluttering the table.

10. commit to play, show up on time.   If there are people who are reluctant to play, immature, etc, they are not helpful to your game, they are an impediment.   Adding semi-dedicated players is a waste of time.   Selling the game to new players is pretty fruitless considering the learning curve.
    Seems pretty harsh to me. How do you get new players and rookies to your table (or return to your table) if you have such a arrogant, unwelcoming attitude?

11. shut up.   I cant count as well when you are talking.   I cant focus.   Same goes for me on your turn.  Chat, but do as an aside and keep the game as a priority.
    “shut up”…really? If you can’t conduct your turn or play while others are talking…you shouldn’t be at an A&A table. Especially when there’s war-whooping going on as the dice are thrown and the casualties are counted.

12)   Watch each other, count and recount.   We all count buys.  We all count incomes.   We all announce hits and count total hits.   This prevents both cheating, mistakes, and omissions.
Agreed. Although I’ve never really had any cheating issues in all the years I’ve played. I think folks that play these game are good & honest folks anyway. Generally speaking.

13)  use minidice to represent air moves.   We use the “moves remaining system” (rather than “moves used”).   so each plane or set of planes has its own range dice.   This is a HUGE help.   If you don’t use minidice to show how much EACH AND EVERY plane has moved, there is a much higher chance of slop.   This is especially true when you reshuffle your plane allocations, ill tell you right now that it is pretty much slop city if you re-allocate planes when 10-15 of them are available to support your battles.
I’ve never used any types of counters until recently when a new player to my table showed me how well that works for keeping things straight. Not the end-all if it’s not used though. Seasoned players can do a good job of keeping things straight.

Many of these things will not really reduce the total time of play to some reasonable limit, unf.  They can shink it to 45 m setup 2 hours first turn 1-1.5 per turn after that.   There are other setup versions (G42) that are a bit more expedited, but its simply a very, very long game.   We usually begin at 10am and end around 5-6, T6-8.   Same at tourneys, with an earlier start.  Â

Have fun my friends.

I guess my game table is a bit more relaxed and “forgiving” If someone is getting their panties in wad over something, I tend to remind them that it’s only game meant for fun. Not rattled nerves or anger or trying to control others. That’s my take anyway. Love this game indeed!

This all reminds me of the time I declared war turn 1 with Japan for the first time…

“You can’t do that! You have to wait until turn 4! This isn’t 1942 here!”

Grabs rule book and reads

“Sh^t I guess he can do that”.

I mentioned this because I find a big help for whoever is playing the USA/China/Anzac is declaring war right away. I find it very boring not being at war and I could imagine for less enthusiastic A&A players it’s a “I’m never playing this again” type of deal while going through all those turns watching the Axis and UK Europe take forever to play and all you can do is build armies. If a person is feeling like it’s long and drawn out game then when it comes to their turn they make sure to take their time just so they have some playing time too. And yes we could switch to Global 42 but we all would rather play 1940. I’ve never attempted a G1 or even G2 before though.

i was more trying to be funny it was late at night, but my tongue in cheek advice was more addressed to the “old me” of the college days.

the eat before thing is from the college days as well of course you have to eat during the game we can barely make it through more than one round before everyone breaks to eat. � �  my poorly articulated point is that everyone should eat before the game and then again hopefully all at the same time

im also an ex smoker which is why that point is particularly apt for myself

the shut up thing was inspired from Gencon…during the tourney there was this table of free form RPG players right next to us chanting WHEEL OF FATE! WHEEL OF FATE! WHEEL OF FATE! every five minutes it was obnoxious. � � I wasn’t trying to squelch a good time

the part about new players, I’ve found that most people find the commitment of time (and learning) offputting about this particular game. �  Its just pretty hard to attract someone that isn’t gung ho about it already

If you’re inviting new players force them to watch Young Grasshoppers tutorial series on how to play G-40 before they come over to play the game. That should shave off a good hour of explaining who’s at war with who and what are these damn neutral countries all about. They will be itching to SBR your major complexes for a max damage of 20 by the time they get there.  :-o

I host many games and I agree with Maddog and General. We pretty much do the same thing and I do have all the storage around my tables to put away and build pieces.
Got icp victory magnetic tracker boards and we use poker chips which is so easy for everybody to use. I still love the money but I got bank boxes in the middle of both sides of table for everybody to pay and collect. Buys go on table with chips under the pieces when u buy and when they collect just ask them to see chips. Easier to count from other side of table when you see the color of poker chips.

Regarding the battle calculator, if you don’t allow it people need to count up odds with a pen and paper going into likely second round outcomes in many cases. That just takes even more time. I guess there just needs to be some sort of reasonableness applied. Maybe you can use the battle calculator when it isn’t your turn?

@simon33:

Regarding the battle calculator, if you don’t allow it people need to count up odds with a pen and paper going into likely second round outcomes in many cases. That just takes even more time. I guess there just needs to be some sort of reasonableness applied. Maybe you can use the battle calculator when it isn’t your turn?

Precisely our rule, use anything you want when it’s not your turn. On your turn it’s just you and your team’s brains.

Here’s a little something I do, that I’ve found really helps to shave a few minutes off every turn.
It might seem simple, but you’d be surprised how much time can be spent digging and returning pieces to their trays, if you don’t have a good system in place…

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=35904.msg1411574#msg1411574

You can see an example image in there at the bottom using 1942.2 but I adopt the same system in G40. Once I started doing this, I never went back. Now I’m a big proponent of grouping by shape, and trusting in color differentiation for easy recognition, rather than the other way round. Hard habit to break, for the OCD sculpt collector, but it works. Even chainsmoking degenerates like me can make the extra effort to be better orgnaized haha.

Also, like others have mentioned before and elsewhere too, my group separates combat movement, and combat proper with the purchase phase. So the phases like this…
repair, combat movement, purchase, combat, non com, placement, collect.
If you want to pick up the pace it’s highly effective for focusing your players. It doesn’t change anything compared to the standard phase order of “purchase, combat movement, combat proper” other than the speed with which your players will make decisions.

I’ve played hundreds of games, some face to face, a lot on AAA.  Obviously the quickest FtoF was with experts, like Gargantua & his crew in Vancouver, while the slowest FtoF was w/novices. Here’s some of the more important lessons I’ve learned about game time, some of these will be repeats, sorry:

1. MOST IMPORTANT: Some one should act as taskmaster, making sure players are planning before their turn, make sure players are “done” with combat moves so that you can start rolling, keep track of battles and battle results, do double count of money, etc. That sounds annoying, but it’s really easy to let large amounts of time slip by when a player is “planning” or whatever when really they are just dithering.  The game has to keep good pace with people kept engaged, otherwise the moment there is a break, peoples’ minds start to wander and then they wander and start talking about other stuff, bringing the game to halt.

2. No battle calculator. That is a huge time suck to plug in all the stats and run numbers etc.  Plus, it really is a violation of the spirit of a FtoF game where there is some expectation of living with the fog of war.

3. No TV in room.  The moment someone says “let’s turn on the game while we play” you know that’s going to spell disaster.

4. Don’t Play with newbies. This sounds mean, but playing with newbies will inevitably slow the game down terribly for obvious reasons. Not only do they suck up time trying to understand what to do, they make mistakes and then you have to rewind the game often to make it at least somewhat competitive. The only thing you can do here is trying to help them by talking their turn through with them… this gets a little absurd to the extent you end up playing against yourself with just a warm body as a stand-in for the hypothetical other side.

5. No beer before noon. A&A isn’t A&A unless there is beer, but once the drinking starts, play does start to suffer, so best at least to try to mitigate it by waiting some. (FtoF games for me usually start at 9am).

6. Do not use income tracker.  What a waste of time. It rarely is accurate in my experience. Counting the money on the board can be done quickly and accurately, especially if you do a double count, See Taskmaster up above.

7. Have 2 rolling boxes/areas on the sides of the game.  Having to roll dice far away from the battle and/or move pieces off the board to the far side of the play area is painstaking and subject to accidents.  Making battle-board battles quick and easy will save time.

8. Set up game night before if can.

@Karl7:

4. Don’t Play with newbies. This sounds mean ……

Yes it does! Thankfully some of us are happy to give them the experience to warrant your playing attentions Karl :-D

Nothing to do with wanting to win of course ……

@Private:

@Karl7:

4. Don’t Play with newbies. This sounds mean ……

Yes it does! Thankfully some of us are happy to give them the experience to warrant your playing attentions Karl :-D

Nothing to do with wanting to win of course ……

ha ha… I play newbies all the time, but there’s no getting around the fact playing newbies makes for a slower game…  :lol: