20+ hours of gameplay: is this game too long?

[Guest]

@Whackamatt:

I’m not sure if I will ever find a group of players who will be willing to dedicate themselves for the full weekend that is seemingly required to finish the game.

Get better friends.   :lol:

Hehehehe :-D

I’ve got some of mine coming over to play, as I am the only one with a big-ass table which easily fits the global game and leaves plenty of room for the boxes, battleboards and IPC tracker. Of course, it helps that I have no pets or kids :wink:

[WILD BILL]

We are now in our 3rd game. The first Global game only lasted two rounds (took like 5-6 hours), and the axis made so many mistakes, we ended it. The 2nd game we had 3 players to start so we played E40 (a forth jumped in on day 2). It was a great, back & forth game that ended in the 11th round w/axis conceding. It would have went at least 2-3 more turns before a total kill, but the writing was on the wall. I think it lasted about 15-16 hours, over 2 days. The 3rd game we are playing global again. Two of us started it, but we have let people jump in and out. It is hard to get like 4-5 people together for a marathon game like this. One guy walked in and said lets start a new game (we were in the middle of the 3rd round of that 3rd game). The reaction was “are you nuts, you know how long it took to get this far” (about 5-6 hours). Most powers were just getting their feet wet.

[HipHopBernie]

My friends and i dedicate an entire weekend of beer/weed/Axis. Our first global game was a practice run that lasted only a few hours, but our second game was roughly 15 hours. Good times! If you want to play a short game, go play Monopoly.

[GrayBlaZe]

I’ve been playing my first game since Aug 25th, eighteen days now, averaging about 2 to 5 hours a day to it.  Been going real slow to look at all possibilities.  I’m in round twelve, UKs turn.  China is gone, of course France has been long gone and the US is sitting strong in Rome, (South Italy) facing off with the Germans and what ever is left of the Italians.  The Germans and Russians are having a war of attrition on the Eastern Front.  Japan and UK are trading blows in India.  Japan can’t get it done because the US & ANZAC keeps bothering them.  It been very interesting, hope to be finished by Christmas, wife wants the War Room er, Dinning Room back.

[WILD BILL]

Just had to ask GrayBlaZe, are you playing yourself? Not that that’s a bad thing, many (myself included) have had some very interesting games on our own. Some times when you go back the next day you see something you missed the day before, and kick your own A$$.

[GrayBlaZe]

Hello Wild Bill, we talked before months ago on the Pacific 1940 site.  Yes sad but true, my play group consists of me, myself and I.  My sons and son-in-laws who I would normally play with live in Pittsburg, North Carolina, Ohio, and Germany, so I’m stuck playing by myself.  I really do enjoy it though because I can take as long as I want to plan and move.  The game played this way is interesting because there are no real surprises (if I sneak one in on myself it’s because like you said I did a dumb ass move the day before) so it’s mainly a game of what stategy I can muster up with the each armies current situation, slow death by attrition and luck of the dice.  I did miss a few strategic moves in the beginning with the Allies so the Axis has been on the early move, however, as the game is designed it’s not in the Axis best interest to drag it on so now the Allies are starting to turn the tied by round 13.  The US has just moved into the Soviet Far East with a larger armada than the Japanese can produce.  The US is also still threatening Germany via South Italy and Grease and fixing to move into Norway with another armada.  While Japan is fighting its but off to take India and Germany does the same on the Russian front, the US and ANZAC are starting to make the difference.  So either way in the end I will win and I will feel great, however, it will be bitter-sweet because I will be the looser.  Next game I’ll change sides.

[marechallannes]

You need experienced players that’s a fact.

We practise a few games Europe 40 and Pacific 40 before.

We will do 2 - 3 games of Europe till we get our first and big global game on 2nd November.

Starting at 2 pm we hope to finish it at 2 am.

Normaly our playgroup has two gaming rounds a month.

[spectre_04]

It’s always been my experience that the fewer the players the faster the game.  Now I am not saying that fewer player makes it a better game, it does make it different going head to head.  The fact that just two players goes much faster is a no brainer though.

[builder_chris2]

The mechanics of the game, the size of the board and the victory conditions all combine to make this “EPIC game” a very long, long, LONG a** game no matter how experimented the players are, no matter if you have 2 players or the max number of players, no matter if you purchase your units before the previous players turn is over or even if you start conducting combat moves while the player before you is placing their units and or if your “play fast” and or if the dice are “crappy or good”.

I’ll try to explain my reasoning…
Let’s just say (hypothetically speaking) that the classic game of A&A had 10 territories and 0 sea zones. Yes, I know it has more than 10 and it has sea zones (that s not the point).  Remember this is a “hypothetical situation that is designed to help explain/understand why the “EPIC scale” of the game itself and the core mechanics of the game make it such a LONG A** game.

Ok, so again…HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING…

Imagine that the classic game had 0 sea zones and 10 territories and that the Axis started the game controlling half of those territories and the Allies started the game controlling the other half of them.

Now imagine that the 10 territories are all in a straight line with the axis controlling half the line and the allies controlling the other half of the line (kind of like a game of tug-o-war).

Now imagine the “victory condition” is to have one side control 7 of the 10 territories.

Now, in every “global game” of axis and allies (from classic to the cool a** 40 shhhhtuff we have now) the core mechanic has always been and continues to be that only ground units can capture land, so due to that core mechanic we can eliminate the issues that sea units, sea zones, and air units present to the game because ultimately its ground units taking territories that ultimately determine victory.

Ok so back to the example…

So with our 10 territories lined up in a row like a tug-o-war game we begin the game.  if both sides were to also start with no units on the “board” their “first turn” would simply be building units in “territory one at either side of the board”. Becosue infantry have a move of one it would efectivly take 5 turns of play just to get both sides to the “center of the board”. Once there, the side that went first (like in chess) would have a slight advantage becosue they would be crossing the line “first”. If they wone that first battle and than player two countee attacked and lost, than those ground units would have “ganed ground”. In other words it would have taken them 6 turns to to move and control 6 terrtiroies.  If player one got lucky enough with the dice and managed to do the same thing on turn 7 and he managed to move and control the 7th territoriy at the end of the 7th turn.  It would have taken him 7 turns to win the game.

Please for give me for being such a jurk about how I am trying to explain this (part of it is being done this way to help me rationalize my own thinking and part of it is becosue…well…all this “debate” seems pointless simply due to the sherar EPIC scale of he game and the core mechanics.)  Any way…

Now imagine that this little tug of war game is only between two players, and each player (going as fast as they can through their turn sequence) takes 5 minutes to take their turn. One round of this game would take 10 minutes and this simple little 7 round game of tug-o-war game just became a 70 min game.

Now compound that by adding another POWER to each side and the game length for each turn just increased. Notice I didn’t say add another PLAYER but I said add another POWER.  Because if each power has to stand in line and wait their turn to get on the roller coaster, it doesn’t matter if it’s the same two players taking turns or 4 players taking turns.  It’s the number of Powers that increase the length of each game turn. From the days of classic its been a 5 power game, than 50 made it a 6 power game and now this global 40 makes it a 9 power game.  Stand in line in the grocery store, if theirs only 2 people in front of you even if they have tons of junk in their cart or if they only have 1 item in their cart, you still have to wait in line (ok, maybe you don’t HAVE to, but most people do).

Now compound the board by adding more territories and the number of turns to complete achieve victory just compounded, not because of crappy dice, but because if you only had to capture 2 territories before but now you have to capture 6, or 8 or 10 or 14, etc, etc, etc…You need more turns to do it because ground units can only move one territory at a time.  You can slightly off set that by using tanks since they have a movement of 2 but hypothetically speaking that’s only going to increase your move “behind the front line” because if both sides had tanks on the front line, blitzing would be a irrelevant. Now you look at the number of territories from board to board and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that its going to increase how long it take to win the game.  hell, if the US want to take Egypt its going to take them 7 turns just to march across the top of Africa to get their and that’s just one VC (game of tug-o-war).  Every VC in the game is in essence a single and separate game of tug-o-war, so now you compound the games length even more when you make it that there are 14 VC that the Axis need to control and yes, the allies only need to control the Axis capitals (3 VC) but this IS a game of economics as well as a game of tug-o-war so now the game is compounded even further because even new players catch on to the capitalistic principle behind the game…the side the makes the most money the fastest for the longest will most likely win.

ALL that said, so long as the game is played as its intended to be played “by the rules” this game will be a very long game.  From my assessment (and I’ve tracked every game our group has played so far…the longest being 16 hours non stop and it still was not finished “per the rules” and I also use a home made spread sheet to track games so I do know how long each game is taking, how long each round takes to play, etc, etc, etc… in other words, I’m not “guessing” how long we’ve played so far…YES…I”M A FREAK!!!).

Anyway, all that said…I ran across a set of house rules for the revised game some time ago that had the Axis taking their turn at the same time and than the “allies taking their turn at the same time.  I thought this was a clean way to spread the game up IF you had a separate player playing each power so that they all “did their move at the exact same time”.  In other words, if you have a 6 power game and you have to wait in line for 6 people to take their turns you can shorten the time you wait in line a lot because if the Axis took their turn at once and the allies took their turn at once, each side is only waiting in line for 1 person rather than each single person waiting in line for 5 others to take their turn.

I’ve never played a game like that but the idea makes good logical math…on the smaller boards like revised and maybe even 50 and 1942.

Now…I might still try that with something like 50 but I don’t think that would work too well with a game like global 40.

BUT…if two players playing a game of pacific would say take 10 rounds to end that game and if 2 players playing a game of Europe would take say 10 rounds to play Europe, if you combined the Europe and the pacific per the rules than players have to wait in line behind each other and so a global game of 40 still hypothetically takes 10 turns to play but you have to wait in line for 60 turns if there are just 6 powers because when a power on the pacific board is taking their turn, powers on the Europe side are just standing in line and vice verse so by combining the two games you’ve just doubled the time to play a global game.

However, if you had a minimum of 4 players, 2 playing the Europe half of the board and 2 playing the pacific half of the board with each half being played “at the same time”, you should be able to play a “global 40” game in the amount of time that it takes to play just a pacific or just a Europe 40 game.

The turn sequence would need to be paid a little closer attention to…for example…

The Europe turn order is this…
Germany, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, Italy, United States, France

The Pacific turn order is this…
Japan, United States, China, United Kingdom, ANZAC

And the Global Turn order is this…
Germany, Soviet Union, Japan, United Kingdom, ANZAC, Italy, United States, China, France.

If you take the Global Turn and splits it up into Europe and Pacific but keep it in the same order, its like this…
Europe Pacific
Germany
Soviet Union
Japan
United Kingdom United Kingdom
ANZAC
Italy
United States United States
China.
France

On the Europe board things would go like this:
Germany would go 1st
Soviet Union would go 2nd
United kingdom would go 3rd… BUT before they take their turn they would need to see if Japan has units on the Europe board. If Japan has units on the Europe board, Japan gets to move them before UK takes their turn.
Italy would go 4th…BUT before they take their turn they would need to see if ANZAC has units on the Europe board. If ANZAC has units on the Europe board, ANZAC gets to move them before Italy takes their turn.
United States would go 5th
France would go 6th…AND since China has no possible way of getting onto the Europe board, France would have nothing to check before they took their turn.

On the Pacific Board things would go like this:
Japan would go first…BUT before they take their turn they would need to see if Germany first had units on the pacific board followed by Russia.  If Germany had units on the pacific board they would get to move them followed by any Russian peaces that are on the pacific board before Japan would get to take their turn.
UK would go 2nd
ANZAC would go 3rd
US would go 4th…BUT before they take their turn they would need to see if Italy has units on the Pacific board. If Italy has units on the Pacific board, Italy gets to move them before US takes their turn.
China would go 5th…and before the next round started players would need to look to see if there are French units on the pacific half of the board, if there are, they move before starting a new round.

It sounds simple enough; there are some minor things that would need to be taken into account, for example, the US player on the pacific half would need to “barter with” the US player on the Europe half since they share income but the UK would not need to do this since they already have “separate capitals”.

And when units of any power “crossed the boarder line” between board halves they would move what they can on their respective half/turn and the player on the other half would take control of them and finish any move on their respective turn of the other boards half. In other words if Russia moved units from Europe into the pacific the Europe player would move them on his Europe turn but the units would not get onto the pacific half of the board until it was “Russia turn” on the pacific board.  Russia could most likely even be played by the same player on both boards since they really don’t have much invested in the pacific half like the UK and US do. And the same thing for the Germans and Japs on the “other half” of the world, one player should easily be able to handle the Japs and one player should easily be able to handle the germens since neither of them are really entrenched in the other halves of the globe.

Everything else should work out like a standard global 40 game.

One thing is for sure, you need a minimum of 4 players to do this easily, two players might be able to do it, but I can see how that would get too confusing especially since an axis power takes the “first turn” on both halves of the board and since you would still have to “wait in line” since one person can’t be in tow places at one.  For example I just don’t see how one player could play Germany and Japan for at the same time.  Heck, even in our global games, the UK and the US players “work the board” in separate halves, it’s just easier that way so having one player o the pacific half that plays the UK an don player on the Europe half that plays the UK should be no problem.

Something like this would NOT work well on a 50 game or a revised game, the boards are not large enough and the units on Europe and pacific in those tow games are interdependent on each other, every one know s it’s a race to Russia for both Germany and Japan.  But in the global 40, Europe and pacific truly are two separate “theaters of war” and they are pretty much completely independent of each other.

Well, one thing for sure is that I will be trying this with my game group in a few weeks.  The last time we got together, playing for 16 hours straight left me with the worst hang over I’ve had since my drinking days in the military…and I wasn’t even drunk…how could I be with the need to do so much freaking thinking.  Don’t get me wrong, it was way cool fun…BUT…it proved to be too long of a game even for an AA junky like myself. And most players don’t have that much time, they want to show up, play a game…FINISH IT…have some beer, and pizza and go home in time to kiss the wife and tatter tots good night (or at least kiss the wife good night).

[general jason]

I don’t think anybody is arguing that AA40G isn’t epic. I agree if people want to play games that are guaranteed to be shorter they should stay away from AA in general. I think people are wondering whether there is any solutions to bring the Round Time faster so the game progresses further before ending it. I think most people here are committed to the 12-hour game, but would rather see the game into Round 12 by then and finished rather than Round 6 and having to call it.

2 cents.

[builder_chris2]

I agree with you, but shy of changing something significant about the games core mechanics (and turn sequence is core) there is not much else that I see as being a viable option for “speeding things up”.

I too like the long game that Axis and Allies has always been and hopefully always will be but unfortunately this game is TOO long to attempt to play it in one sitting.

I personally wouldn’t have bothered even trying to think of a way to “shorten the game” because I really enjoy playing this game and I gladly devote what spare time I have every month to playing this game. But the reality of the matter is…unfortunately most people are not THAT addicted to playing A&A.  Its tuff enough to find players to play a 7 to 10 hour game and its even tougher to find players that will start a game one week and return in two or three weeks to finish it…ESPECAILLY if they feel like they are on the verge of loosing when they last played it.  That sounds about as much fun as playing the first 3 quarters of a football game and ending it being behind by 30 points and than knowing you need to return in two weeks to finish loosing it. What’s the point and more in importantly what’s the fun in that?

I’m sure every player sits down to a game of A&A because they not only enjoy the game but because they have “the hope” they will win and they accept the chance they might loose.  But who wants to sit down to a game seeing that their going to loose (thus the constant debate over game balance). No one wants to start or restart in a week or two a game they are just losing. Hell, some players don’t even want to FINISH a game they are loosing thus the reason so many people post that players just “conceded” when they see the end in site.

Chess, clocks and fast play can only do so much for the time it takes to play the game because players still have to wait in line for EACH POWER to take its turn when if you think about it, you could cut the time to play the game in half by playing both boards at the same time.  Think about it, why does Japan need to wait for Germany, and Italy and ANYTHING on the Europe half of the board to happen?  That’s like saying that if youre in line a the grocery store you need to not only wait in line fore the people that are in front of you in your line but you also have to wait for the people in the other line next to you to go be fore you can check out.

This EPIC scale board TRULY divide’s the game into two distinct and separate halves (two check out lines…why wait for one check out line to clear out be fore you check out in the line your in)?

Anything else is going to shave off seconds to each round; playing the two boards at the same time has the potential to cut 30 to 40 minutes off of each round.

Every game we’ve played so far the first 3 rounds take about 2 hours each and each consecutive round takes just about 1.25 hours.  Theoretically you should be able to split that time in half for each board, players would be more engaged instead of waiting 45 minutes to an hour or more for their 15 minutes or less of fame (game time) and the game would/could possibly progress in the similar way as the global sequencing but in half the time.

I know I’m going to give it a shot and I would be real interested in hearing if this works for other players.  But, like I also said I’ll bet the bummer is you need at least 4 players to pull it off and if players are having trouble finding one player to compete against its just going to make it that much more difficult to find three more players.

[calvinhobbesliker]

In the later rounds, Japan will have to see what Germany and Russia do

[allweneedislove]

@builder_chris2:

The mechanics of the game, the size of the board and the victory conditions all combine to make this “EPIC game” a very long, long, LONG a** game

The mechanics of this post, the size of the paragraphs and the wording conditions all combine to make this “EPIC post” a very long, long, LONG a** post

[Make_It_Round]

I, for one, am in favour of epic posts.

Back to the content:

@builder_chris2:

Imagine that the classic game had 0 sea zones and 10 territories and that the Axis started the game controlling half of those territories and the Allies started the game controlling the other half of them.

Now imagine that the 10 territories are all in a straight line with the axis controlling half the line and the allies controlling the other half of the line (kind of like a game of tug-o-war).

Now imagine the “victory condition” is to have one side control 7 of the 10 territories.

So with our 10 territories lined up in a row like a tug-o-war game we begin the game.  if both sides were to also start with no units on the “board” their “first turn” would simply be building units in “territory one at either side of the board”. Becosue infantry have a move of one it would efectivly take 5 turns of play just to get both sides to the “center of the board”. Once there, the side that went first (like in chess) would have a slight advantage becosue they would be crossing the line “first”. If they wone that first battle and than player two countee attacked and lost, than those ground units would have “ganed ground”. In other words it would have taken them 6 turns to to move and control 6 terrtiroies.  If player one got lucky enough with the dice and managed to do the same thing on turn 7 and he managed to move and control the 7th territoriy at the end of the 7th turn.  It would have taken him 7 turns to win the game.

Please for give me for being such a jurk about how I am trying to explain this (part of it is being done this way to help me rationalize my own thinking and part of it is becosue…well…all this “debate” seems pointless simply due to the sherar EPIC scale of he game and the core mechanics.)  Any way…

Now imagine that this little tug of war game is only between two players, and each player (going as fast as they can through their turn sequence) takes 5 minutes to take their turn. One round of this game would take 10 minutes and this simple little 7 round game of tug-o-war game just became a 70 min game.

Now compound that by adding another POWER to each side and the game length for each turn just increased. Notice I didn’t say add another PLAYER but I said add another POWER.  Because if each power has to stand in line and wait their turn to get on the roller coaster, it doesn’t matter if it’s the same two players taking turns or 4 players taking turns.  It’s the number of Powers that increase the length of each game turn. From the days of classic its been a 5 power game, than 50 made it a 6 power game and now this global 40 makes it a 9 power game.  Stand in line in the grocery store, if theirs only 2 people in front of you even if they have tons of junk in their cart or if they only have 1 item in their cart, you still have to wait in line (ok, maybe you don’t HAVE to, but most people do).

Now compound the board by adding more territories and the number of turns to complete achieve victory just compounded, not because of crappy dice, but because if you only had to capture 2 territories before but now you have to capture 6, or 8 or 10 or 14, etc, etc, etc…You need more turns to do it because ground units can only move one territory at a time.  You can slightly off set that by using tanks since they have a movement of 2 but hypothetically speaking that’s only going to increase your move “behind the front line” because if both sides had tanks on the front line, blitzing would be a irrelevant. Now you look at the number of territories from board to board and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that its going to increase how long it take to win the game.  hell, if the US want to take Egypt its going to take them 7 turns just to march across the top of Africa to get their and that’s just one VC (game of tug-o-war).  Every VC in the game is in essence a single and separate game of tug-o-war, so now you compound the games length even more when you make it that there are 14 VC that the Axis need to control and yes, the allies only need to control the Axis capitals (3 VC) but this IS a game of economics as well as a game of tug-o-war so now the game is compounded even further because even new players catch on to the capitalistic principle behind the game…the side the makes the most money the fastest for the longest will most likely win.

ALL that said, so long as the game is played as its intended to be played “by the rules” this game will be a very long game.  From my assessment (and I’ve tracked every game our group has played so far…the longest being 16 hours non stop and it still was not finished “per the rules” and I also use a home made spread sheet to track games so I do know how long each game is taking, how long each round takes to play, etc, etc, etc… in other words, I’m not “guessing” how long we’ve played so far…YES…I”M A FREAK!!!).

Great post, BC2.

I have often thought of the game in terms of this ‘tug-of-war’ analogy before, especially with regard to the situation on the Eastern Front between Russia and Germany. It seems like all that matters there is how many territories there are that remain between the two capitals, and sea units only figure into it if there are active transports in the Baltic that can let land units ‘jump’ a few squares. Thus, it’s a pretty simple front, but it’s still enjoyable and worth playing. Hey, I’d even consider playing your 10-square tug-of-war variant if I was in a rush or I was trying to demonstrate the principles of the game to a first-time player. But we’re not talking about whether or not such a game would be fun, we’re talking about whether or not such a game would be quick.

In terms of play speed, I think you’ve over-simplified the ‘temporal calculus’ involved in the analogy. Yes, there may be multiple tugs-of-war going on–it’s true that even on the simple Eastern Front there are at least three dominant (North, Centre, South) and two less efficient, but still viable ‘tugs’ (Scandanavia and the Middle East) occurring simultaneously. However, the speed of resolution won’t necessarily be dramatically increased by this variety of paths, because good players will always choose the most economical route and push the hardest there, making it essentially a 1-tug rather than 5-tug game.

Going back to the 10-square model, let’s say that the furthest squares away represent the capitals, or the major ICs, whichever, and those are single squares. Now let’s modify the example by saying that square 1 is attached to 2 squares, square 2a and square 2b. And that these are attached to squares 3a, 3b, and 3c, which are attached to squares 4a-4d, which are attached to squares 5a-5e, which match up perfectly with the enemy territories 6a-6e, which then reduce symmetry to one square back at square 10. I’m not great at posting graphics in the forum, so this’ll have to do as a crude representation of the expanded board of the original thought experiment:

*
   **
  ***
 ****

---

---

****
  ***
   **
    *

Clearly this model of the Eastern Front is still a 1-tug game, though forces can be ‘filtred’ through different cords in the rope. Since the dynamic of this model is nearly equivalent to the simpler 10-square version* , the time spent on the game won’t be larger by a multiple, but will only be slightly added to by the cognitive time required for players to distinguish which of the 5 cords is the optimal, or ‘real’ tug. Or so I (reasonably) postulate: the matter could only really be resolved by empirical research.

Granted, the model gets uglier when you add more enemy capitals, victory cities, ICs, naval and air bases, territories with high IPC yields, convoy boxes, etc., but these are all flourishes on the basic dynamic. Usually, there's really only one enemy capital that really matters to you at the time, and thus your goals are generally reducible to one, or perhaps a couple of main objectives. "Where's the real tug?" may become my new in-game mantra. Be warned!

As for adding other powers, that in itself also doesn't account for a great increase to gameplay time. France and China's turns, for example, rarely take more than two minutes. And adding an Italian tank or three to the Eastern Front model doesn't complicate things much. If we return to your 'shopping' analogy, minor powers are like bachelors: they're buying one loaf of bread each, and they're using the express lane. It's the major powers who are the old grandmas of temporal consumption: they've got a huge trolley filled with loose vegetables, and they're paying in pennies. At the same time, the game/supermarket wouldn't run without their business, so what're you going to do except help them sort the lint and buttons from the change in their purse? Gameplay can be sped somewhat, I've noted, by having a game secretary or moderator reminding players of what phase of their turn they're in, what decisions should be the focus of their immediate attention, how much time has passed or is left in their turn, and so forth. Having a 'banker' ready to distribute IPCs at the end, and someone to adjust the income charts throughout, helps expediate turns as well, and gets grandma through the line in a timely fashion.

Despite all of these 'cheats', the game still seems incredibly long. Is it significantly longer than other A&A games? Well… it sure seems like it thus far. But then again, the first few games are always longer, aren't they? When I started on Pacific '40, it took me upwards of eight hours to finish a game. Now I can conclude one in three hours or less--I've gotten 60% quicker. Perhaps, as my group's competency in Global '40 grows, we'll be able to finish what now takes us 20 hours in a mere 8--we'll get 60% quicker. Perhaps I've been impatient, and blown the whistle too soon on this game's (purported) length? Only time will tell...

[allweneedislove]

@Make_It_Round:

I, for one, am in favour of epic posts. They’re better than nasty little content-free swipes.

yes my post was content free. but there was nothing nasty about it. and it was not intended to be a swipe. if you are offended builder_chris i apologize.

[Make_It_Round]

Sorry for the misunderstanding, allweneedislove. Had my “humour-dar” switched off. I’ve retracted the remark.

[builder_chris2]

no offence taken.

I too (as you can tell) like the long posts like just like I like the long games of A&A…BOTH show the kind of thought I like to put into things…but than again I’m a game geek as my wife so often and fondly calls me and something about the written word brings out the talker in me (I can’t’ figure that one out yet since I cant spell to save my life and if anything I’m under educated when compared to most people).  ANYWAY…

The points you make (as well as several others that have been posted on this topic) about “flow control” of the game do help.  I’m not saying they don’t.  When you get in a check out line at any store, the line that has “the best checker” is always the faster line in comparison to the other lines regardless of how many persons are in line and how many items they have. in other words how well, the assembly line works is as important to how many parts need to be put on and how complicated it is to put each part on.

The more Powers you have in a game, the more parts in the assembly line.  The minor powers are well…just that…minor parts in the assembly line and in the case of France they take seconds compared to the several minutes that the BIG powers take to do their turn.

However, when you lay out the game in an assembly line with each power (no matter how small or BIG they are) in a line (as the turn order is “out of the box”) that makes the LONGEST critical path possible.

If you can cut the game into two halves (Europe and Pacific) and make them into two separate critical paths, you can shorten the time it takes to play each round by half or more (depending on how many “BIG POWERS” there are in each assembly line). Its a the over lapping of critical path activities where ever possible that will save you the most time.

Example:
If Germany takes 15 minutes to do their turn
And if Russia takes 10 minutes to do their turn
And if Japan takes 15 minutes
UK takes 10 minutes
ANZAC takes 5
Italy takes 5
USA takes 10
China takes 2
France takes 1

Because everyone has to wait in line for each other in one assembly line that’s a critical path of 73 minutes per round (give or take several minutes for slow play or fast play).  Now a good checker could clear that check out line in maybe 70 minutes just buy their skill, so having a banker, a task master and a chess clock to help keep everyone moving through the assembly line can obviously help. But it can only do so much.

Now, multiply that by the number of rounds it takes to play the game of tug-o-war in the examples above at IF the shortest tug of war is 10 rounds, that’s a game that last…700 minutes or 11.66 hours.

Now, break the critical path into two assembly lines and it would look more like this.

Europe Pacific
Germany, 15 Japan 15
Russia, 10 UK, 5
UK, 5 ANZAC, 5
Italy, 5 USA, 5
USA, 5 China, 2
France, 1

41 minutes 32 minutes

You still have the 73 minutes to play “each round, but you did it in 41 minutes on one board and 32 minutes on another board.  You just shorted each round by 32 minutes (73 – 41 (the longest critical path) = 32 minutes).

Now, multiply that by the number of rounds it takes to play the game of tug-o-war in the examples above at IF the shortest tug of war is 10 rounds, that’s a game that last…410 minutes 6.8 hours.

Breaking the game into two critical paths IS more than possible in this EPIC game (IMO) because there really is that much of a separation between the two theaters of war in this game when compared to any games before it.

Players on the pacific should probably wait till the round on the Europe board is finished before starting another round (this will probably help with any “overlaps”). But in short, by having the tow half played at the same time (overlapping critical paths) you just shaved an approximate 4.86 hours off the game compared to the 30 minutes that you could shave off by keeping them in one critical path chain and having a good “system” to get everyone through the check out line faster.

BUT…while this idea has plenty of merit…like in construction, the more tasks you have running at the same time, the more crew you need. So having both half’s of the board being played at one time would require a minimum of 4 players compared to 2 players, so for some people, this idea just wont work because they don’t have the available players.