"How long for a gaming night?" Topic

I just updated my blog asking for advice on how to fit a gaming night in during the week.

tyler.provick.ca/?p=658

I'd love some responses.

I'd say about 4 hours is pretty reasonable.

Our gaming group games every wednesday night from 7 to 10pm. It usually works out pretty well. If a game is going really well and we don't feel it is decided yet then we may carry it over into the next week and just slide our schedule back one week. (Note this only works if someone has a space to leave the game set up for a week. We are fortunate to have a couple of guys who can do this)

We usually run from 7:30 to about 11 PM every other Friday. That's reasonable for me.

Joey

For or World in Flames game we ran from 6:30 to 11:00 pm every Monday. We would complete any impulse started before 11. Our Saturday games started at 6:30 pm and ended when the cows came home.

Terry

We run 6 to 9 or 10 depending on what we are doing -- Friday Night.

Other times (Sat or Sun) we may go 8 to 10 hours but this is like once a month.

mjc

4-5 hours is probably a decent minimum to be fairly flexible in what you game. 6-7 hours would probably be max for many of us married folks.

Thanks,

John

We usually play from 7 to 10 pm every Thursday during the winter. Summer is a no go, too warm and everyone is on vacation.

When someone is sober enough to drive the rest of us home…

or …

4-6 hours including setup and breakdown..

In line with many of the comments above, 7-10 is pretty common with us, often finish even earlier (we were done by 8.15 this week!).

There are loads of good games you can play in that time, you just need to be prepared in advance and accept that the 20 player refight of Borodino is going to have to wait until the weekend.

3 – 4 hours, we usually start 8ish and finish 10:30 – 11.
Happily i live about 5 minutes walk from my regular opponents house.

Dang. I just wrote a long post at your blog, but I'm not sure if it went through or not (I got two error messages). Rather than lose it, I'll repost it here:

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I'm thinking skirmish gaming is the way to go. Usually fewer figures and you can often multipurpose your terrain (particularly wilderness, rivers, things like that). I would also suggest cardstock/paper buildings. There are lots out there and they are less expensive than resin buildings, and this is an important consideration before you invest in an untried genre.

Okay, now that I've made a general suggestion, I'll make a specific one (especially since someone else suggested Legends of the Old West). But first, let me say that I'm one of the owners of Hawgleg Publishing, so I'm VERY biased. But if you're interested in gaming the Wild West, might I suggest you look into Gutshot? It won an Origins Award for "Historical Miniatures Game of the Year" and (if you'll pardon me blowing my own horn), it's a lot of fun.

There was a great podcast comparing Gutshot and LotOW:
link
Just go 2:43 into it (and yes, that's two HOURS and 43 minutes) and take a listen. It's a very thorough discussion.

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Now, enough of my hard sell! On to other games. I would also suggest you head over to Two-Hour Wargames and take a good look at the MANY great options offered by Ed Texeria. Ed has got a big following by offering games that can be played quickly, yet still offer depth and great playability. Here's his Website:
link

And make sure you hit Ed's FREE downloads:
link

If you were going to buy one of his games (and I suggest you do, they're really good), I'd suggest ALL THINGS ZOMBIE. It won the Origins Award for "Miniatures Game of the Year" and it's really fun.
link

Hope this helps, and please excuse me for the hard sell (and no, I'm not associated with Two-Hour Wargames or a lifelong friend of Ed's… I'm just a fan of his work).

We normally run about 7pm to 10.30ish…….although if the game in engaging enough, this has known to run to about about 11.30ish,

Sundays, when we game, its usually about 12.30ish to about 5ish

So, for our group, its about 4 – 5 hours. After that, spouses start getting irate, and we start tiring of each others company :)

1830-2300 some games last the full length, others set up later depending on work. We have the skittle alley for the entire duration, and the pub does good ale and food,

Tally Ho!

7:30pm till 01:00am for our club every Friday…

So glad I get a lie-in Saturday mornings!

Weekdays are always a compromise, simply don't select rules systems that require a long time to play and you are one step ahead though!

My local club runs 7pm – 10.30pm which is enough for many newer rules, which recognise we have wives, parhaps kids, or at least jobs to hold down!

At a weekend is another matter – dig out In the Grand Manner and 3000 figures if you can, time may not be an option. But on a Thursday, it'll be Warhammer (ancients if possible) and a hundred models instead!

We used to run 7.30 – 10.30 once a week.

When we do an evening it is a Friday and usually runs roughly 8-11 as some of us have little kiddies we need to get to bed first.

The problem we find is how tired the guys are by Friday night so we need to keep the time down.

Fridays would be good. Not sure how much of a nerd my friends are. They may still think that Fridays are for going out to bars and clubbing. I used to play Magic every Friday from 7:30 until around 1am.

I'm planning a meeting with the group to hash out when they want to play, if they can commit to anything at all, what period, scale, type of game, etc.

Two of the game clubs I go to from time to time have a general rule of thumb one is from 12:30 to 16:30 on Sundays, and the other open gaming from 10AM to 4PM on Saturdays. Average I would say is in the 4 hour gaming block with an hour set up and about 1/2 that to pack up.
VR
James Mattes

Our local gang plays the first and third Thursdays of the month, from about 6:30 – 10pm. We play one game and everyone helps set it up and take it down. We have played everything from small skirmish games to larger battles with a couple of hundred figures.

The majority of my gaming group has young kids which we need to get off first.

We tend to game fortnightly, though often weekly during the summer hols at each others houses.

Favourite night is a friday night as no one has work the next day. We usually start about 8pm and finish at midnight, though we don't usually end the evening until we've had a good natter about the game.

I'm usually packing away at about 1.30am as I lost my gaming room to child number two and can't leave it set up.

We game usually 7pm to Midnight on fridays, though actual GAMEtime usually doesn't kick off until 8:00 or sometimes even 9 if people need to destress more than normal that week.

Damon.

I have two nights i wargame Monday (1930hrs to 2300hrs) at my own house then Wednesday at a wargames club (1830hrs to 2300hrs
the club also runs some weekend to
readingwargames.co.uk

We do Sunday 12 PM to 4 pm. Then Monday and Tuesday nights 7 PM to 10 PM. Just the three of us but we have been doing this for 8 years straight!