Game Length

[Thunder_God]

What's your experience for the game's length, at various model count/SS levels, once you know the rules well?

A friend and I played the game Thursday night, Seamus versus Lilith starters, plus their respective Totems, and we nearly finished 4 turns in 3 hours(!!!).*

Now, we did have to look up the rules, and only at the end of the evening did we have the whole to-hit chart and damage charts memorized, and the format of the cards didn't help - but I'm getting the sleeves to hold them properly, but game length will be a big deal in whether my friend will pick this game up as well.

So, what's the expected game length?

(We also didn't play with schemes, obviously, and we dropped morale rules that one game cause we forgot them, and the "Slow to Die" on the Belles (whoops), so there'll be more things in the game to do, obviously)

We're seasoned Warmachine/Hordes players, so we know a large part of it will go away once we know not only the rules of the game, but our models.

* Edit: Just remembered, we also ran a fake melee duel between Seamus and the Mature Nephilim first, till one died, heh. Not noticing the range icon on Live for Pain meant it went somewhat longer )

[Ratty]

Don't worry to much. Me and a mate meet up each week and I think we are now down to a 35ss in about 2 hours, and that's us being very relaxed, chatting etc. Though we always run out of time when we play a 4 player 35ss game.

[Q'iq'el]

After you learn the rules and more importantly, what the models do, a game of 30~35SS lasts about 2~2.5 hours.

However, in my experience, if you make it 45SS, it kind of explodes and becomes really long, regardless of the level of the players. I think the main reason is that almost everything becomes multi-model affair and there's not only more interaction between all the individual rules to track (for example all the extra buffs you'd normally have to choose from, but you can take them all in bigger games), but also a lot more flipping and dueling going on.

[Koali]

I think 30 SS could be finished in 2 Hours...

But in the begining we needed much more time...

Because of chaecking out what our models can do... and so on...

[Doctor Amos]

I finish most of my games in an hour to an hour and a half, and that's with setting up terrain. YMMV, I guess.

[deadboy]

Provided there is a good level of experience I think 25-45 ss games tend to take 90-120 minutes. I had thought the higher SS games would take longer but it seems like the higher point games tend to hit a point where everything goes nuts and models just start exploding and things finish up in the same time frame. That may relate to the fact that I am usually playing Lil or Z and things either go my way or they don't though... Not often close

[pugwhan]

What's your experience for the game's length, at various model count/SS levels, once you know the rules well?

A friend and I played the game Thursday night, Seamus versus Lilith starters, plus their respective Totems, and we nearly finished 4 turns in 3 hours(!!!).*

Now, we did have to look up the rules, and only at the end of the evening did we have the whole to-hit chart and damage charts memorized, and the format of the cards didn't help - but I'm getting the sleeves to hold them properly, but game length will be a big deal in whether my friend will pick this game up as well.

So, what's the expected game length?

One way to speed up the game that I've found is to go to http://tabletopgeeks.com/malifaux-downloads/, download and print out the "Malifaux Full Reference (Rising Powers)". Keep this in a clear sleeve close by and it contains a LOT of the info you'll need while playing. The first few games will take about twice as long as they will once you get more familiar with the game.

[mythicFOX]

I'm with the guys above, once you're familiar with the game and your crews, a 35ss game should be taking 90-120mins. That's with a reasonable amount of chat and pausing to think.

MX is one of those games that really speeds up once you move from playing the rules to playing the game.

[Mentat_Canis]

Ya 35ss is an hour and a half to 2 hours. I did a 55pt one master game in I think it was 2.5 hours but that was benefited by having an arachnid swarm replaced turn 2 and Golem turn 4. Yay Colette.

It goes a lot faster once you get the duals down quick and also once you know what special rules every model has so that you don't have to look for Hard to wound 2 you know it has it.